Indecision in the Sunshine State

by Benjamin Flickinger

By now we all know that the presidential race will likely come down to a few hundred votes in the state of Florida that will decide who gets 25 more electoral votes and a majority in the Electoral College. Charges of voting irregularities, "disenfranchised voters," and illegal ballots are being cast by the Democrats, especially in the now infamous Palm Beach County.

But just how close is the race in Florida? It depends on whom you ask and what numbers you use.

After Tuesday's original vote tally, which wasn't completed until early Wednesday morning, Texas Governor George W. Bush (Rep.) led Vice President Al Gore (Dem.) by 1,784 votes out of the approximately 6,000,000 total votes cast. In other words, Bush won by .03% or 3/100ths of 1 percent.

That margin of victory for Bush fell well within the .5% margin that triggers an automatic recount under Florida state law.

Since then there have been two main recount tallies. One, kept unofficially by the Associated Press, is the one that's been seen on TV, websites, and in newspapers since the recount started. The AP has members in all 67 counties who report what each county's tally is before the state confirms and releases it. According to the AP, Bush has also won the recount by a total of 327 votes.

"We have now had a recount of every vote cast Tuesday in the fourth-largest state in the country, and that recount confirms the results of the original count--Governor Bush won the election," said Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The other set of numbers floating around is the official tally as counted and reported by Florida's Division of Elections in Tallahassee. These have been slower coming out, especially in counties with bigger changes that have to be doubly verified. Right now, 66 of 67 counties have reported back and Bush's lead is 961 votes with Palm Beach County left. In the AP's tally, Gore gained 643 votes in Palm Beach's recount, which, if that winds up as the official figure, would leave Bush with a lead of 318 votes.

Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska wrote to the Omaha World-Herald that, "Complicating things further, recounts are not scientifically reliable. For an election this close, you probably should recount 50 to 100 times and then use an average to determine the winner."

"Even then, the loser is going to have doubt in his or her mind," he added.

Also confusing matters even more, if that were possible, is that an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots are still traveling to Florida by mail. Florida law allows ballots from overseas up to 10 days from the election to reach each individual county, provided it was postmarked by Election Day.

"There was a count on election night," Governor Bush said. "There's been a recount in Florida, and I understand that there are still votes to be counted.

"But I'm in the process of planning in a responsible way a potential administration," he added, referring to the news that he is already planning a new Cabinet and administration.

Election officials in Florida do not know how many absentee ballots have already arrived and how many more are still to come. It is thought that the late votes tend to favor the Republican candidate because they come largely from military personnel, though Democrats contend that there will also be a large Jewish return from Americans in Israel.

What is known is that in the 1996 election, the state received about 2,400 overseas ballots after Election Day and 54% of those voted for Bob Dole.

"The only Florida ballots left to be counted are those remaining overseas ballots--and if history is any guide, they will only add to our margin of victory," Nicholson said. "In other words, the election is over, and we won."

In a trend that was followed throughout the nation, rural and small town voters overwhelmingly supported Governor Bush, while the large metropolitan areas leaned heavily for Vice President Gore.

Bush appears to have won 31 states, including the entire part of the country between the coasts if his 17-vote lead in New Mexico holds up, but Gore won the population-heavy states of California, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as the majority of the states in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region.

"The fires of 1968 have been banked," Fred Siegel of the Progressive Policy Institute told USA Today, "but the embers are still glowing. That's what these divisions are."

Bush won 51 of Florida's 67 counties, but Gore's 16 counties included landslide victories in the areas around Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach as well as narrow victories in the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area and in Orange County, home of Orlando and Disney World.

Much of the focus has been specifically on Palm Beach County, with its butterfly ballot, 19,000 discarded ballots, and a supposed spike in votes for Buchanan.

With regards to the ballot, a fourth grade teacher downloaded a sample of the one used in Palm Beach County and asked her class to fill in Gore's circle in blue and Bush's in red.

"Turns out this election was mere child's play. Not one of the 22 students present in class Thursday was confused by the ballot. Each one was marked without error," teacher Lisa Burns said.

Republicans also contend that the 19,000 ballots thrown out for double punching is not unusual. In the last Presidential election, 15,000 ballots were thrown out for the same reason.

Also, Duval County, as strongly Republican as Palm Beach County is Democratic, had nearly 22,000 votes discounted for double punching, despite the use of a different type of ballot.

Mike Langton, chairman of the northeast Florida Gore campaign, claimed that he didn't challenge it because he was told only 200-300 votes had been thrown out.

"I sure as hell would have requested a manual recount if I had known 27,000 votes were nullified," he said.

Mike Hightower, who represents the Bush campaign in northeast Florida, said earlier that the problems were voter error and not mistakes on the part of election officials.

With regard to Buchanan's "spike" in Palm Beach County, he was not the only candidate with a disproportionate number of votes in the county.

Socialist candidate David McReynolds gained nearly half of his statewide total in Palm Beach County, and his 302 votes in Palm Beach was nearly 10 times as many as he got in his next best county (Miami-Dade with 35 votes). Also, Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party garnered 188 votes, his best showing in the state and one of only two counties in which he gained more than 75 votes.

About the only certainty left in this election are three future dates; December 18, January 5, and January 20. Those are the dates the Electoral College votes, the ballots are opened and counted in Congress, and the day the next President is inaugurated, respectively.