Absentee ballots get thorough scrutiny

By Jennifer Peltz   South Florida Sun Sentinel
Posted October 30 2004

The tableau in the Palm Beach County elections office Friday three county officials puzzling over voters' handiwork against a back of political-party lawyers couldn't help but conjure memories of the 2000 presidential election.

Nor could the poster on a wall overlooking them. It was a reproduction of Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion, a 1954 Salvador Dali painting that revisits the famous melting clocks he had painted two decades before.

It was all, in other words, surreal, yet familiar. The divisive 2000 election, and its legacy of scrutiny and litigation, had as many as eight lawyers on Friday watching a county elections board grapple with a small subset of the vote in Tuesday's presidential contest.

It's "the perfect storm" of politics, Democratic lawyer John Whittles explained.

"You've got the 2000 uncertainty, new [voting] machines, early voting for the first time, and the tightest race ever. There are going to be issues," he said.

On Friday, the issue was absentee voters' ballot envelopes with questionable signatures.

Absentee voters have to sign the envelopes in which they mail their ballots. Elections office staffers examine each envelope to see whether the signature resembles what the voter has on file. If the signature seems different or is missing altogether, the county canvassing board a three-person panel that signs off on election results reviews it and decides whether to accept or reject it.

Either way, voters won't be allowed to re-do their ballots or vote at the polls under ground rules the canvassing board set in August and reaffirmed Friday. Democratic lawyers and one canvassing board member, Circuit Court Judge Barry Cohen, said they believe voters should be allowed a second chance "to be as inclusive as possible," Cohen said. But the canvassing board's other members, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore and County Commissioner Karen Marcus, voted no.

Still, the canvassing board's word may well not be the last on whether an absentee ballot counts, given the possibility, and perhaps probability, of court challenges.

That's what the party lawyers were there to prepare for. By the end of the day, they had disputed 31 of the board's decisions. The lawyers' intent wasn't to persuade the board to reverse its decisions, but to build a record of objections that could be used to ask courts to overturn them.

The Democrats disputed 17 rejected signatures. Whittles said he wouldn't challenge any signature the canvassing board had accepted.

"We want every vote to count ... and we want the system to work fairly, and to restore the public's confidence in the system," he said.

The Republicans objected to only one signature that was rejected, but 13 that were accepted. But GOP lawyer Reeve Bright said he was giving voters the benefit of doubt.

"I equate it to being an umpire in Little League baseball," he said. "If it's close, you call it for the runner."

There was no way to tell the voters' party affiliations, but the average Palm Beach County voter is more likely to be a Democrat than a Republican. Democrats make up about 45 percent of registered voters here, to the GOP's 32 percent.

Friday was just a beginning. The canvassing board eyeballed 246 of what county Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore expects to be "thousands" of absentee ballots sent in envelopes with missing or questionable signatures. With both the Republican and Democratic parties encouraging members to vote early, LePore says her office already has mailed about 120,000 absentee ballots, compared to about 55,500 four years ago.