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Saturday Morning News

Hillsborough County Begins Manual Recount

Aired December 9, 2000 - 11:00 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's 11:00 a.m. on the East coast, 8:00 a.m. on the West coast from CNN Center in Atlanta. Welcome to our expanded live coverage of the ballot handcounts in Florida. Good morning to you. I'm Joie Chen at CNN Center in Atlanta.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Bill Hemmer, live in Talahassee.

Joie, Republican leaders descending now upon Talahassee. We'll tell you who's coming and why shortly here.

CHEN: All right, Bill first though, let's get an update on everything that's going on.

Canvassing boards across the state of Florida have about 27 hours now to complete a hand count of so-called undervotes following yesterday's bombshell decision from the Florida State Supreme Court to review at least 43,000 ballots that could not be counted by machine. And more lawsuits are pending in courtrooms all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court today. We have full coverage of this still developing story.

At this hour, a hearing in Hillsborough County is to take up the issue of some 5500 undervotes in the Tampa Bay area. That is the second highest number of undervotes behind Miami-Dade. This scenario is being played out over and over all across the state this morning.

Before the Florida State Supreme Court decision, George W. Bush held a certified lead of 537 votes, but that has dwindled to just 193 now. The court added several hundred hand recounted Gore votes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, which were not included in the November 26 ballot certification by the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris because they were partial, not complete recounts. You may have heard us report a Bush lead of 154 votes earlier, but apparently there was some confusion over the official number from Palm Beach County.

So it all boils down to an overtime weekend to review those thousands of undervotes. Let's be clear, these are the ballots that did not register a vote on the machine counters. Bill Hemmer is watching all of this underway now in Florida's capital city, Talahassee. Bill?

HEMMER: Hey Joie, good morning to you. A couple clarifications here indeed, exactly what you were saying that Palm Beach County vote has a lot of confusion right now. This is our understanding. Last Sunday night when they continued counting, after that certification set by the State Supreme Court, they came up with 215 additional votes for the Vice President. However, it was later in the week when the county concluded there was actually fewer votes than that. That knocked the number back to 174.

Now the State Supreme Court was asked about that in their decision. It appeared that the State Supreme Court told the Circuit Court to go ahead and figure that out. Do you go with 215 or 174? David Boies from the Democrats argued it's 215. Certainly the Republicans would counter with 174.

Now we're also being told that the New York Governor, George Pataki, is headed now for the public library here in Talahassee, along with the Montana Governor, Mark Racicot. They are here again as that -- to draw attention to the recounting that started oh, about two hours ago here in Talahassee. We'll have a bit more on that coming up, but you mentioned that undervote.

This is basically the gist of the argument right now. This is a demonstrator ballot, a punch card ballot that is used in a votamatic or punch card machine. Now of the estimated 45,000 ballots that are considered undervotes right now, about 38,000 deal directly with this particular ballot. An undervote means one of two things: either a, the voter did not make a selection for president or b, the machine failed to read it. So that is the issue.

Now from Leon County, want to go down to Hillsborough County and talk with CNN's Mark Potter, who's in Tampa watching things from there.

Mark, good morning. Hello again to you.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Bill.

Well, we are awaiting the start of the canvassing board hearing. And the area that you're looking at now is the counting room at the Elections Processing Center at the Supervisor of Elections Office just outside Tampa in Hillsborough. These are staff members who are going over the instructions on how to run the machines.

These machines will first be involved in culling out the ballots, the undervote ballots, from the total number. There are about 5500 undervotes here we are told. And out of 369,000 total ballots. And right now, they are co-mingled. They were not set aside at the time. So they are going to have to take these ballots precinct by precinct, put them in these machines where you see the workers looking right now. And a program has been set up so that every time an undervote is recorded by the machine, the machine stops. The worker then pulls out that ballot for a subsequent manual count. And as you can imagine, Bill, that is a slow process, a laborious process. And election officials say that that in and of itself could take as long as 12 hours before they can even being the manual count, looking at those ballots to determine whether indeed a vote has been cast.

Now the supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County, his name is Pam Iorio says that despite that 12 hour period that she estimates it will take to even pull the votes out, this county will be able to make that 2:00 p.m Sunday deadline set by Judge Terry Lewis at the Leon County Circuit Court. The way they will do that, she says, is bringing in extra people if need be and working long hours through the night and tomorrow to meet that 2:00 p.m. deadline.

Now we are panning over to look at the table where the canvassing board members will be gathering. This is one of the canvassing board members. He is a -- on the left. That's Jim Norman, a county commissioner. To the screen right, to his left, the woman sitting there, Pat Frank. And sitting down right now is the Hillsborough County judge, James Dominguez. They make up the canvassing board. And the woman standing on the right of the screen there is the supervisor of elections, Pam Iorio. She is not actually a member of the board. And the reason for that is that she ran for election opposed this time and had to recuse herself. But she is serving as the advisor to this board and is setting the standard here for this county.

She says they will run a very tight ship. The political parties will be able to watch the process once they get to that manual count, but they will not be able to engage in any mischief. She says they are going to be able to watch and they will not delay the process, which she says will lead them to meet that 2:00 p.m. deadline.

Looks like they're sitting around, a little bit of small talk beforehand. We're waiting to hear them actually begin this meeting. They've got a number of things that they need to deal with. First of all, how they cull the votes out. And then they have to talk, most importantly, about the standard that they use for counting those votes. And Ms. Iorio has said that they will adopt -- she believes they will adopt the Palm Beach standard, the one used by the canvassing board there, where two corners of the chad on the ballot need to be punched out before the vote is counted. But they can also consider other factors on that ballot if those factors enable them to determine the will of the voter.

Ms. Iorio said she wished that she could get some guidance from the courts on exactly what standard to us. Such guidance has not come. And so she not only as supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County, but also as president of the State Association of Supervisors of Elections, is recommending that the counties get together to establish a state-wide standard so that everybody counts these ballots -- examines these ballots the same way.

You can see that a lot of cameras here. And you -- and observers from the political parties are here watching this process. And it sounds like right now, they're getting ready to get started. This is the Hillsborough County Elections canvassing board.

JUDGE JAMES DOMINGUEZ, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD: All right, I'd like to call the canvassing board for Hillsborough County into session. Ms. Iorio?

PAM IORIO, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY ELECTIONS SUPERVISOR: Thank you, Judge Dominguez. We are -- the canvassing board is convened today to manually hand count the undervotes in the presidential election of November the 7th. We will begin this morning by going over some procedures. The first procedure to alert the canvassing board to, and to get their concurrence on, is that we have installed a software program whereby we can run the 369,000 voted ballots through the card readers. And we will do that precinct by precinct. And those ballots, every time there is an undervote, it will -- the machine will stop and our staff will pull those undervotes out by precinct, which then go to manually counting teams.

At this juncture, the first step of the canvassing board would be our recommendation to allow our staff, which is in that glass enclosed room there, to begin the process of feeding the 369,000 ballots through the card readers so that we can begin the process of identifying the approximately 5500 undervotes. That process will take approximately eight hours. And so the sooner we can started, the better.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could I have a motion?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a -- I'll make a motion that that procedure be adopted.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All in favor?

ALL: Aye.

IORIO: OK. So the staff can go ahead and proceed with that process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let them count.

IORIO: Canvassing board members, you do need to be aware of something. There are -- after the November 8th canvass of the recount, there were 5,531 undervotes. At the end of today, we may not have 5,531 because as you handle the cards and you put them through the readers again, if there was a hanging chad that caused a ballot to be an undervote, the process of handling the ballots again could very well have caused that chad to fall off. Thus, we may not have that number at the end of today.

I want everyone to be aware of that fact. That is one of the reasons why the presidential race is where it is today because of some of the peculiarities of the punch card system. And so, as we continue to handle them and run it through the card readers, you're not going to have the same number of undervotes that you had on November 8th, after the automatic recount.

Now our understanding of the Supreme Court decision is that we are to manually hand count the undervotes. And we will only manually hand count those undervotes that have been identified today. So I want all parties to understand the process and the procedure as we move forward. And that there may be some discrepancy between the number of undervotes that were reported on November 8th versus the number of undervotes that we have today. POTTER: That was Pam Iorio, the supervisor of elections for Hillsborough County, talking about some of the peculiarities of the punchcard ballot system. She told CNN this morning that her hope and her belief is that by the time the next presidential election rolls around, they will be on an electronic system, a touch screen system, that will be expensive, but in her view, much more accurate. This is Judge James Dominguez, Hillsborough County Judge James Dominguez, one of the three members of the Hillsborough County canvassing board. And he is the chairman.

DOMINGUEZ: ... that we are -- give direction to the -- one of her staff people to begin, we would like to be able to use the process from start to finish with our witnesses.

IORIO: We're -- if you would allow us a few more minutes to get to the procedures, there's really not much to watch right now. We're just moving boxes in. You...

POTTER: A discussion here between some observers and members of the canvassing board. Ms. Iorio, the supervisor, said that she is allowing, this is an open hearing, allowing political observers to be here, but she says she's going to run a tight ship and not let them slow down this process that she says will lead them to being able to complete this count by the 2:00 p.m. deadline Sunday, set by Judge Terry Lewis in Hillsborough County.

Speaking of Hillsborough -- I mean, in Leon County. Speaking of that county in Talahassee, let's go back to Bill Hemmer.

HEMMER: All right, Mark, thanks. Mark Potter down there in Tampa. Again as Mark was reporting, that scene that you're seeing right now is being played out right now in a number of different places about the state. Kate Snow in Duval County, Jacksonville, reporting a similar situation to what Mark was saying. They need to take these ballots, run them back through the machine, find out which are not recorded by the machine, then take that stack and then they start going to the votes. Again in Tampa it appears in Hillsborough County took take about eight hours to do that.

In Duvall County, Kate Snow reports that they're sending a machine up from Miami-Dade to Jacksonville. Once that arrives, they'll start putting the ballots through that machine right there. It could take an awful long time there. Again, the deadline tomorrow set by Judge Terry Lewis last night is 2:00. And as you can see, there are a number of questions throughout the state for how the canvassing boards will operate from here, based on the guidance they were given the State Supreme Court yesterday afternoon.

Back here in Leon County, CNN's Susan Candiotti overseeing now about a ballot recount of about 9,000 from Miami-Dade. They were shipped up here last week.

Susan, what's happening now?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the counting of those 9,000 so-called undervotes from Miami-Dade County began a couple of hours ago and is proceeding as we speak. Perhaps we can take a live look now at what is happening as we can report to you that there was a change in procedure from the ones set last night between the time that Judge Terry Lewis who is overseeing this entire procedure set the ground rules, the judges decided to change the procedure. And now, instead of having approximately 50 county workers looking over those ballots, the eight judges are doing that from the Circuit Court here in Leon County. The theory being, that they believe according to a spokesman for the court, that they'll be able to do a better job and perhaps a fairer job and a more expedient one of going through these 9,000 ballots from Miami-Dade County.

So the way it works now is that you've got these eight judges involved, four at each table. Four tables involved. They will pick up each ballot. Appear to be taking, let's see, is it going on now or do they appear to be distributing some ballots? It might be in the process of a break at the moment. Pick up each ballot, look at each one and decide whether they can determine if indeed there was a vote for Governor Bush or Vice President Gore or if they should reject the ballot, unable to determine the voter's intent.

On hand as well to oversee the process is the Chairman of the Miami-Dade canvassing board, David Leahy. I spoke with him as he arrived this morning. He said that his presence was requested by Judge Lewis, so that he could be on hand if there were any questions and that after all, these were his ballots that are involved in this process and he might be able to offer advice if requested by the judges conducting the counting going on here now.

Just a little bit earlier, we spoke with David Lang, who is the Clerk of Courts here in Leon County, and asked him whether he thinks Americans will be able to trust the procedures going on right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID LANG, LEON COUNTY CLERK OF COURTS: I think any member of the public in this country should take heart and understand that we couldn't have a finer group of folks in there doing these ballot countings. I'm completely at ease with it and every citizen in this country should be at ease with what's going on here at this library this morning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: Now while the counting is going on here at the public library, not far away, a few blocks away over at the Leon County courthouse, they've already begun the process of going through approximately 80,000 ballots that were cast here to separate out roughly 180 or so undervotes. That process going on. As soon as they are through doing that, then they will begin counting the 180 undervotes that exist here in Leon County.

Back here at the public library, we're seeing a lot of comings and goings of various representatives of both the Bush campaign and the Gore campaign. There are also some prominent observers from both parties, who'll be making their way here. And there are objections that are already being noted, although none can be made vocally during the course of this process. But observers from each political party will be here and will be able to watch the proceedings.

Susan Candiotti, CNN reporting live at the public library.

Back to you, Bill.

HEMMER: Hmm. All right, Susan, Thank you. David Cardwell with us now. What are you hearing?

DAVID CARDWELL, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Well, I've been getting some phone calls from some of the county supervisor elections offices around the state this morning. And what they're saying is they're looking for guidance. They're looking for some direction. They've convened their canvassing boards, but now they're not quite sure what they need to be doing. They're really leaning on news reports, morning newspapers, CNN, to figure out what's going on.

HEMMER: Okay, Judge Lewis issued an order last night. And in that order part of it was to tell the county canvassing boards to fax him today an idea, a protocol basically, of how they were proceeding. Is that right? And if so, are they taking that order to heart or?

CARDWELL: Yes. Well, I spoke to a supervisor of one of the larger counties in the state just a few minutes ago. They were not even aware of Judge Lewis' order, much less have a copy of it. They now are very aware of the Supreme Court order, but they did not know they were supposed to fax anything to Judge Lewis. And they did not know, other than through news reports, about the 2:00 p.m. deadline. They did say that a memorandum was faxed from the division of elections giving them some kind of general guidance that they were supposed to conduct the recount, but that's all they've got so far.

HEMMER: They're kind of figuring out as they go, just like we're finding it out as we go.

CARDWELL: That's right.

HEMMER: And they probably feel like it's Groundhog Day once again.

CARDWELL: All over again.

HEMMER: David Cardwell, stand by here in Talahassee. Back to Atlanta now. Here's Joie once again -- Joie.

CHEN: All right, Bill, it is going to be a long day of standing by, standing by for both the Bush team and the Gore team. We're going to get reports from both of those camps coming up after a break.

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