Florida Town Hands Election To Wrong Candidate

[matcom]

<snip>

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- There were no hanging and dimpled chads like during the disputed 2000 presidential recount, but a ballot mix-up led Palm Beach County officials to mistakenly declare the wrong winner of a small town council race.

Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson attributed the problem to "human error." Elections officials said a stack of 109 paper absentee and provisional ballots from Pahokee's runoff Tuesday was mistakenly added to Mangonia Park's totals, skewing the results of the race in which 122 people voted.

The mistake was discovered Wednesday, a day after unofficial returns handed the race to Mangonia Park Councilwoman Frances Elien, who appeared to win by 47 votes. The new count shows that Elien lost by six votes to challenger Peggy Cook.

"I want to know what happened. They're going to have to show it to me. That's too big of a mistake," Elien said. She planned to meet with elections officials Thursday to check on the results.

She said her concerns go well beyond this election, adding that the mix-up could shake public confidence in future elections.

"We're talking about right now 100-some votes. But when you're dealing with thousands, millions of votes, then it becomes scary and very uneasy," Elien said. "It reminds me of the year 2000, and that's something that I do not want to happen again. Something is definitely wrong."

In 2000, the county's butterfly ballot confused some voters and led them to punch the paper cards for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The Supreme Court eventually halted a recount after 36 days and handed a 537-vote victory to George W. Bush.

Anderson, who defeated former elections supervisor Theresa LePore, the overseer of the 2000 election, noted that more than 40 municipal elections have run smoothly since he took office.

"This was solely due to human error. It had nothing to do with the function of the voting equipment, whatsoever," Anderson said. "In all honesty, we have to say that the process takes a little bit of a hit, but I think that people can find comfort in the fact that this is really very much of an isolated occurrence."

http://www.wftv.com/irresistible/8360142/detail.html

[underpants]

1. (almost swallows gum) the guy's name is Arthur Anderson???

:rofl: