Goodbye Theresa 
Embattled elections boss LePore ? creator of ?butterfly ballot? ? prepares to leave office 
  
Published Monday, December 27, 2004 at 1:00 am 
by Dale M. King   Boca Raton News

The Supervisor of Elections office on Military Trail in West Palm Beach is calm today. The staff toils in morgue-like quiet. There are no protesters outside, no sheriff?s deputies, no obvious security forces.
In a corner of the spacious room, a flower arrangement withers. A Mylar balloon that says ?Thanks? has lost most of its helium.
And the Palm Beach County elections system is about to lose the woman who?s given 33 years to it ? Theresa LePore.
Leaving ?is bittersweet,? said LePore, who gained international notoriety for creating the ?butterfly ballot? that boggled the 2000 presidential election. It ignited a 37-day fight to pick a president, and put Palm Beach County on the permanent map of electoral ineptitude.
The moniker has stuck, even though the 2004 election was pretty much smooth as glass.
But LePore, who was re-elected to her second term as elections supervisor without opposition in 2000, got the boot in 2004 ? but not by much. Florida Atlantic University professor and former School Board member Arthur Anderson will take over the job on Jan. 4.
LePore?s fans ? and she has a fan page on Google ? contend that she was a scapegoat for a bigger backroom conspiracy to elect George W. Bush over Al Gore. Those who hate her ? and there are still many ? won?t believe her claims that she didn?t hand the White House to Dubya.

The human side
What most people don?t see is the human side.
LePore, 49, a tall, broad-shouldered West Palm Beach native, has faced TV cameras from Tampa to Taiwan with staunch bravado.
But when interviewed by the Boca Raton News, tears welled up and she had to step away to compose herself ? such is the strain of her last weeks on Military Trail.
?I will miss the job, but I won?t miss the aggravation,? she said. LePore was just 16 and looking for summer work in 1971 when she got a job as a file clerk in the elections office. She worked her way up to assistant supervisor in 1978, and won her first term as supervisor in 1996, succeeding the retiring Jackie Winchester.
Had the 2000 election been normal, LePore said, her face would not be known all over the world. And it is ? unfortunately.
?I?ve been confronted in the Atlanta airport,? she said. ?My husband and I were on vacation in New York when a person came up to me.? She was trying to shop in an outlet store when an angry woman walked up to her and said, ?Are you LePore??
?Stupidly, I said yes,? she said. The diatribe that followed forced LePore to put down her shopping and walk away.
The soon-to-be-ex supervisor has bottled a lot of anger and fear inside. Hence, the tears. When she talks of her term, she talks of death threats and hate mail. She says she still drives to and from work via different routes. She has guards, and when she attended an elections supervisors? meeting in Orlando, the hotel stepped up its security.
Even to this day, LePore gets nasty e-mails. ?People say I should be hung for treason for coming up with the ballot,? she said. ?They blame me for everything. They say 9-11 was my fault. If soldiers get killed in Iraq, I get e-mail saying it?s my fault.?
Asked if anyone has ever tried to make good on a threat, she grins wryly, but doesn?t answer.
LePore?s sense of humor is not widely known outside the cement walls of her office. Many of the things she?s endured are not funny.

Fifty lawsuits
As supervisor, she has been sued more than 50 times. Most cases are settled, she said, but some won?t be resolved until she is Jane Q. Citizen again.
Though she knows many people won?t believe her, she said that the 2000 ballot ? called a ?facing page ballot? ? was not a device to aid either Democrats or Republicans. ?It was to help people with special needs and seniors by having everything in one column.?
Thousands of voters said the ballot baffled them. And thus began the tragic 2000 election story.
?It has been used before,? she said. ?It was strange. Mayor [Richard] Daley came down from Chicago to complain about the election. But Chicago has been using that ballot ? and it?s still used there.?
?There was no ulterior motive? for the document that the media dubbed ?the butterfly ballot,? she said.
Once the dust settled in 2000, LePore fought to replace the punch card voting system. But her ion of a touch-screen apparatus landed her in hot water again. Since 2002, she has been under attack ? mainly by Democratic Party notables such as U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler and County Commissioner Burt Aaronson ? for coming up with a system that provided no ?paper trail.?
?They would have done that anyway, even if I had picked the optical scanner,? LePore lamented.
During her last four years in office, LePore has been fighting a two-front battle ? one for the touch-screen machines, the other from those who won?t let 2000 pass into history.
State Sen. Ron Klein cited LePore as a long-standing county employee who was ?dedicated to her profession. She gave her career to the job.?

No ill will
He feels she had no ill intent in what she has done, but he offered a couple of criticisms. ?She micromanaged the office and she didn?t take anyone?s advice. Anyone who tried to be fair with her, she would say she didn?t want to hear about it.?
As a result of the 2000 election, Klein said, ?she lost credibility. Clearly, this flaw was her downfall.?
Despite tremendous angst, LePore said she never even toyed with the idea of giving up. ?I?m not a quitter. I never fell apart.?
She admitted the media scrutiny was torturous. ?Some were calling people I hadn?t seen since high school. The media are out of control.?
Once she yields control of the elections office to Anderson, LePore said she hopes the hammering will stop. But she doubts it.
She is tight-tipped about what she will be doing. She needs four more months of county employment service to get a $70,000 pension. She told the News she has a job, but would not say where.
In the meantime, though, one newspaper and a TV station have filed freedom of information requests for the data.
LePore said she has other ?irons in the fire,? including some kind of book deal.
And as to her successor, she said Anderson should ?learn as much as possible in a short period of time.? She urged him to retain the office staff. And she reminded him that ?this office is non-partisan.?