Candidate wants LePore to resign or be removed as elections chief

By Anthony Man
Staff writer
Posted March 26 2004

A candidate seeking to oust Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore demanded Thursday she either resign or be removed from office by Gov. Jeb Bush if she does not prepare a plan to fix problems he said were rampant in the March 9 election.

Democrat Arthur Anderson read a long list of problems he said affected at least 200 voters in the presidential primary and 11 municipal elections March 9. If true, that would account for 0.2 percent of the 98,577 votes cast, but Anderson said he was convinced problems were widespread.

"We are again headed towards an extremely problematic and, yes, catastrophic election process this fall, as was the case in 2000, if intervention does not occur immediately," said Anderson, who called LePore a longtime friend.

Anderson offered no documentation at Thursday's news conference. His list was collected from newspaper accounts, phone calls from aggrieved voters and comments he has heard when campaigning at political clubs, he said.

For example, he stated as fact inaccurate claims in a widely circulated pre-election e-mail that ink from blue pens distributed by LePore's office to mark absentee ballots couldn't be read by tabulating devices, resulting in uncounted votes.

"They [voters] even went into the Supervisor of Elections Office and were given a blue pen to utilize by personnel working there to complete their absentee ballots," Anderson said. "But the ballots [are] not considered official or tabulated if it's with a blue pen. It has to be with a black one."

However, the pens are blue and white on the outside but contain black ink. Besides, LePore said, tabulating devices can read blue ink.

Most of the 200 problem votes Anderson cited involved what he said were 161 absentee ballots rejected because of improper names or addresses. Records at LePore's office show 165 absentees were rejected for those reasons.

"I would look for every possible legal way to legitimize those ballots," Anderson said.

Each ballot was rejected by a unanimous vote by the three-member elections Canvassing Board, which includes LePore, County Court Judge Barry Cohen and County Commission Chairwoman Karen Marcus. Marcus said the Canvassing Board did everything it could to allow absentee ballots.

LePore said the rejections 2.6 percent of the 6,575 absentees actually were an indication the system is operating according to state law.

Anderson said he was concerned the electronic touch-screen voting machines deprive people of their right to cast write-in ballots. "It's not there. You don't see it as an option," he said.

That assertion is incorrect. State law allows write-ins only for general elections, and the candidates must legally qualify in advance, LePore said. When there are qualified candidates, the machines are programmed to allow write-in votes.

Anderson said he has been getting complaints since Election Day, but he provided the names of only nine aggrieved voters: Eight from articles in local newspapers; the ninth is his political consultant, Richard Giorgio.

In a notable coincidence, LePore said and Giorgio confirmed, he happened to vote at the same time LePore was conducting one of her Election Day polling-place visits. But he never raised either problem while she and a media crew following her were there.

Marcus, who spent hours over several days overseeing the election, called Anderson's assertion of widespread problems "completely ridiculous."

The Canvassing Board meetings were open to the public and attended by reporters, political activists and candidates.

"I never saw Arthur Anderson observing, so I don't know how he could know there were rampant problems," she said. "I think he's just trying to make it a campaign issue."

One of his demands Thursday involved the County Commission. He wants the commission to "immediately" tell LePore to prepare a plan of action within a month. If she doesn't do it, he said, the commission, no later than June 1, should ask Bush to replace her.

Such a move seems unlikely.

"I for one wouldn't support the commission wasting its time on that issue," Marcus said.

LePore said there were some Election Day problems because a handful of the 4,500 poll workers made mistakes. Some have been fired, she said.

She dismissed Anderson's comments as a campaign stunt and rejected his comparison of her to suspended Broward Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant, who was removed by Bush.

"I have not overspent my budget by $1 million, I have not fired my employees and hired my friends in here, ... no lost absentee ballots mysteriously found. Nothing is minor, but these are minor compared to anything that happened in Broward County," she said.