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Saturday Morning News

Hand Recounts Could Continue Through Thanksgiving

Aired November 18, 2000 - 11:14 a.m. ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Still ahead in our special coverage here on CNN, we will be going live back to Palm Beach County, where the recount, manual recount, continues there. Also, looking presidential -- more than just votes up for grabs here, but a PR war at the same time. And the 11 circuit decision, a decision that came out of a federal court here in Atlanta yesterday, was a setback for the Bush camp. We'll have more explaining what that was all about.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Palm Beach County has been at the center of this disputed election virtually from the start, and 11 days later, they are still counting those controversial butterfly ballots, some 462,000 of them.

Well, joining us now from the land of the elusive hanging chad, CNN's John Zarrella in West Palm Beach this morning -- John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

You know, the big question here this morning is who's buying Thanksgiving dinner because a little while ago, we were asking "What's the timetable to get this thing wrapped up" -- they'd originally thought Tuesday, perhaps Wednesday, then back to Tuesday. And now they're saying, "Well, Tuesday's pretty optimistic." And Judge Charles Burton, who's the chairman of the canvassing board, came out about a half hour ago. I asked him the same thing, and all he said was "We're doing it as quickly as we can."

I have to tell you, there's a tremendous amount of spin going on here. The Republicans come out, and they say that things aren't going very smoothly in there. The Democrats come out, and they say everything's going really well. Judge Burton came out and said, "Look, we've only really had disagreement on about a handful of questionable ballots. Everything else has been resolved and has moved on." And this morning the judge said -- before they got started, he talked to all of the teams that were working. He said, "Look, we've got to get the process moving."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB CRAWFORD, FLORIDA ELECTION OFFICIAL: I don't think any direction, at this point, is perfect. And there's no easy solution, at this stage. But if a judge should rule that the legislature's statement that these elections should be on a time-certain deadline -- if the judge moves that goalpost and we no longer have any deadline, I think chaos is going to ensue and other counties are going to want to get counted. We could be counting votes till Christmas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: Well, hopefully not Christmas, but it does look like there's a possibility it might not get wrapped up by Thanksgiving. They've got about 88 precincts counted right now.

Can't give you net gains or losses for either of the candidates because they don't have those yet. But the problem is, is that until each precinct is completely signed off on -- and that means any questionable ballots within those precincts are determined for one candidate or another or thrown out -- until that's done, they can't sign off on any additional precincts. So we're still waiting, Leon, for actual numbers on who's gaining, who's losing and what the scorecard reads here today -- Leon.

HARRIS: But the plan is, along the way, when they get one particular precinct finished, they'll give you a report on that particular one and then move on? Is that how it works?

ZARRELLA: Well, what they're telling us they're going to do is come out here and give you the last count, the last machine count, which is the verified one from a week or so ago that went into the secretary of state's, and that's what was certified. And then we're going to have to do the math to figure out who gained and who lost, precinct by precinct.

HARRIS: Gotcha.

ZARRELLA: So it's going to be interesting.

HARRIS: And long. John Zarrella...

ZARRELLA: And long.

HARRIS: ... thanks much. We'll get back to you later on, right, John? Take care.

Daryn?

KAGAN: And then there is Broward County, where some Republicans tried to shut down the recount process there yesterday. It goes on today, however. Let's check in with Susan Candiotti, who's in Plantation, Florida, today.

Susan, good morning. Good to see you.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Well, I heard John just joking about Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Here one of the attorneys who works for the canvassing board said that he's already starting to make plans for a New Year's Eve party. Can you imagine?

At any rate, we are into the fourth day of recounts here in Broward County, Florida, and they've been at it for about two hours now. So far, 148 of 609 precincts have been reviewed, with an additional 49 votes for Vice President Gore.

Teams are at work here at the emergency operations center in Plantation, Florida, this very modern facility, where the walls are lined with big-screen TVs. Of course, the volume is turned down. On each team, you've got two counters. One picks up a ballot, and then there are Republican and Democratic observers who decide if a vote is registered. If there is a dispute, the ballot is put into a separate pile, and it would go on to the three-member canvassing board, which is working in a separate room nearby.

That board makes the final call. If they cannot determine the voter's intent, the ballot is rejected.

Now, those participating in the process are mostly volunteers. And we talked to some of them before they came inside this room. They told us why they're here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: I just wanted to do my -- do my duty. I thought it was -- it was something that was a way to serve my country. I thought it was a noble thing to do to make sure every vote was counted.

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: This whole nation, everyone's talking about it. And I just want to help everything be fair and correct.

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: I think it's important. I think that it's important to make sure that the count is correct. And I think also it's important, from a historical point of view. I think, obviously, we're making history here. And you know, I think this is an historic count. It's an historic moment. And again, I think that it's very important that we get the count right and make sure that we count all those ballots out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: The recounting is scheduled to go on until 6:00 o'clock tonight. And the goal here is to wrap everything up by Monday at 5:00.

Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: All right, Susan. Thank you very much. Susan Candiotti reporting from Broward County -- Leon.

HARRIS: Well, believe it or not, there is yet another ballot controversy brewing this morning, this one in Seminole County, where Democrats are challenging thousands of absentee ballots. Our Mark Potter is in Sanford. He's got the latest on a hearing in this dispute.

Mark, what's going on?

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon. That hearing actually ended just a short while ago, and now Judge Deborah Nelson (ph) says on Monday she'll issue a ruling on whether to dismiss the lawsuit. If she allows the lawsuit to continue, we'll then have an evidentiary hearing a week from Monday, on November 27th.

This lawsuit asks that thousands of absentee ballots in Seminole County be tossed out because of alleged violations of the election law in Florida. That suit was brought by an attorney named Harry Jacobson (ph). He's agreed to join us for a few moments here this morning.

Harry, I know it's a big complex, but as briefly as you can, tell us what was done wrong? How were the election laws violated?

HARRY JACOBS, ATTORNEY CHALLENGING ABSENTEE BALLOTS: Thousands of absentee ballot requests were received by the supervisor of elections in Seminole County. Thousands of these requests failed to contain the voter identification number. Florida law provides that where the voter identification number is not included in the request for the absentee ballot, then the absentee ballot request must be rejected.

In this instance, the supervisor of elections did reject thousands of absentee ballot requests and declared them null and void. For a period of 10 days, the supervisor of elections in Seminole County allowed two Republican operatives to come into her office and have the unfettered access to these defective absentee ballot request forms for the purpose of inserting the voter identification number.

Following this task, the two Republican operatives then took these thousands of absentee ballot requests that had now been corrected and resubmitted them to the supervisor of elections. The supervisor of elections then acted on them by sending out the ballot to the voter making the request.

Florida law provides that the only person who is allowed to make a request for an absentee ballot is the voter, his or her legal guardian or an immediate member of their family. This was so important to the Florida legislature that the Florida legislature, in its wisdom, stated that in the event some third party makes such a request, that third party very well may be found guilty of a felony in the third degree.

POTTER: Now, the Republicans are saying that there's really nothing wrong with what the supervisor did. She was simply trying to get the process going, enfranchise these people. There was a -- there was a technical problem. And she was simply trying to enable them to get a vote, and there's nothing wrong with what she did.

JACOBS: I'm afraid that Florida law would disagree with the supervisor. Again, Florida law provides that the only person that is entitled to submit and absentee ballot request, asking for an absentee ballot, is the voter, legal guardian or a member of their family.

POTTER: We've got to go. Thank you for your time. This'll be heard in court, we presume, if the judge allows the suit to continue. Thank you for your time. JACOBS: Thank you.

POTTER: Back to you.

HARRIS: All right. Good deal. Thanks, Mark.

KAGAN: When we come back, we're going to talk about the political posturing involved here. George W. Bush, Al Gore, handling the current situation. Are they doing it in a presidential manner?

HARRIS: Good question.

KAGAN: Thank you.

HARRIS: We will hear from some supporters of both the Bush and the Gore campaigns about that and more coming up.

Don't go away.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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