NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2001

And that's counting every last ballot – including those with the faintest dimples to chads barely hanging on.

The Democratic vice president had been hoping for a far-better showing in the recount, even though it has no legal bearing on the election.

President Clinton and black militant Jesse Jackson have been saying that if all the ballots, regardless of how they were marked, were counted Gore would be the clear winner in Florida.

This recount – one of several unofficial, news-media efforts, most yet to come – was conducted by the Palm Beach Post.

While it sustains the contention of supporters of Republican President-elect George W. Bush that he won fair and square in the state that made him the winner in the Electoral College, one GOP spokesman was asking, "So what?"

Mark Wallace, a Miami attorney representing the state's Republican Party, which is conducting its own review of ballots, said of the Post's recount:

"The fact that we gained votes is fine and dandy, but the things [the Post] counted didn't correspond with the law."

Here's what the newspaper said it found when it examined all of the 10,600 previously uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade County:

• An additional 251 votes would have gone to Bush and 245 more to Gore, giving Bush the edge of six votes.

• The vast majority of ballots rejected as under-votes – no clear punch for any candidate – contained no indication of a vote cast for president.

• About 7,600 of those under-votes had no mark at all in the presidential column.

• Most voters who indicated no vote for president did, however, punch choices in other races.

• While 1.6 percent of all votes cast countywide for president were rejected as under-votes, in the 112 precincts with a black majority it was 2.7 percent.

• In the 24 precincts with most voters 65 or older, 2.1 percent cast under-votes.

• In the 217 precincts with Hispanic-majority voters, 1.4 percent cast under-votes.

• At least 2,257 voters had poked at their ballot cards, then failed to insert them properly into the voting machines.

Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor David Leahy said that's because the voters failed to follow directions, which appeared prominently in both English and Spanish.

Although 302 more of those miscast votes would have gone for Gore than for Bush, according to Leahy, they would not have prevented Bush's victory in Florida.

Gore out-polled Bush 328,808 to 289,533 in Miami-Dade County, but lost to Bush statewide on Nov. 7.

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Presidential Race 2000