Media ballot recount proves Gore’s loss

Associated Press

MIAMI — A media-sponsored recount of 10,644 uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade County found a gain of only 49 votes for Al Gore, suggesting he would not have picked up enough votes to win the presidential race.

The results in Miami-Dade are the first in a statewide ballot review carried out by BDO Seidman, an accounting firm hired by The Miami Herald, USA Today and Herald owner Knight Ridder.

The review was of “undervotes” that were not counted by machines in the initial statewide count. Gore’s 49-vote gain was based on the most lenient method of interpreting the challenged punch card ballots.

Even combined with Gore’s gains in recounts in Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia counties, the former vice president would not have overcome a Bush lead that was certified on Nov. 17, the newspapers reported Monday.

“There were many people who expected there was a bonanza of votes here for Al Gore, and it turns out there was not,” Herald Executive Editor Martin Baron said.

“We’ve never thought it’s been in doubt,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “The overwhelming majority of the American people have moved on. This election has been resolved a long time ago.”

The four counties used punch card ballots, which state lawmakers are considering eliminating in favor of optical scanners for the 2002 election in all 67 Florida counties.

Based on the Miami-Dade results, if state election officials had allowed South Florida counties to complete manual recounts before certifying November’s election, George W. Bush likely would have won without the weeks of turmoil.

The critical decision to reject any late-arriving vote recounts was made by Secretary of State Katherine Harris, co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida. She said she would not accept any results after the Nov. 14 deadline set by state law for counties to report vote totals, even though a Leon County judge had ruled earlier that she had the discretion to do so.

Only Volusia County had completed its recount by Harris’ deadline, resulting in 98 net votes for Gore. When she announced those totals, Bush led by 300 votes, and on Nov. 17, after overseas ballots were counted, she certified Bush’s victory margin of 930 votes.

Bush would have stayed in the lead, the review of Miami-Dade ballots suggests, had Harris simply revised her initial certification when recounts came in from the three other counties.

Those results would have given Gore 790 net votes — 567 from Broward, 174 from Palm Beach and 49 from Miami-Dade.

Bush still would have been the victor by 140 votes, the Herald reported.

After a series of lawsuits and countersuits, the Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to Nov. 26. Even then, Harris refused to accept Palm Beach’s results, which were two hours late, and would not accept a partial vote tally by Miami-Dade officials, who had halted their recount.

Harris did factor in new results from other counties, and certified a Bush victory by 537 votes out of about 6 million cast.

The rejection became central to Gore’s contest of the election, which led to the Florida Supreme Court ordering a statewide recount of the undervote. That ruling was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the election but not the mistrust caused by the incomplete hand recounts of the undervotes.

BDO Seidman found that 1,555 Miami-Dade ballots were marked in a manner that might be interpreted as a vote for Gore.

An additional 1,506 bore some kind of marking that might be interpreted as a vote for Bush. There were 106 markings for other candidates.

No markings for president were found on 4,892 ballots, and 2,058 ballots bore markings in spaces that had been assigned to no candidate. An additional 527 ballots were deemed to have markings for more than one presidential candidate.