Not even McCarty can get answers   (FL)

Joel Englehardt    Palm Beach Post    04 September 2008

Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty was in her own element Thursday. As one of two commissioners assigned to the county canvassing board, Commissioner McCarty led the grilling of elections officials, including reticent information technology chief Jeff Darter.

Commissioner McCarty’s specialty is grilling reticent staffers. Mr. Darter’s specialty has been to avoid such grilling. But when he announced to the stunned canvassing board that a daylong hand count of ballots had turned up just 100,002 ballots, fully 2,521 fewer than counted on election day, he had some explaining to do.

More astonishing. Mr. Darter had told the canvassing board just 17 hours earlier, at a midnight meeting, that he had found 2,702 of the missing ballots, which meant he had accounted for 101,747 ballots. The board thought they were within 776 ballots of accounting for all the ballots. That’s why they ordered workers to spend all day counting all the ballots by hand. To close the deal. But no. Something had gone horribly awry. Again.

Now Mr. Darter was saying the 2,700 ballots he said were in hand at midnight were some warped figment of his imagination. Now, after a day wasted, the canvassing board was as far from accounting for all the ballots as ever. “Am I dreaming here,” Commissioner McCarty said.

“We did a different review,” Mr. Darter responded. That’s right, even Mary McCarty could not get a straight answer from Jeff Darter.