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CNN Today

Katherine Harris Under Fire From Civil Rights Commission

Aired January 12, 2001 - 4:23 p.m. ET

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

JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, back in the national spotlight today. She's among the list of officials testifying today before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on alleged irregularities in the Florida vote. Now, some Democrats say that Harris cost Al Gore the presidential election.

CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman joins us now from the hearings at Tallahassee -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Joie, it's safe to say that Secretary of State Katherine Harris did not have an easy time of it when testifying here today. Her testimony before the eight-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission was met, in many cases, with disbelief, ridicule and sarcasm.

She is the chief election officer, but she said she did not know the answer to many specific questions and said she delegated many of these issues to her elections director Clay Roberts, and that seemed to frustrate the members of this board.

One of the heated questions pertained to the Florida Supreme Court ruling that allowed a certification deadline to be moved up to Monday November 27 unless she opened her office on Sunday November 26 so hand counts could resume. Now that day media reports and others said that Palm Beach County might not be able to finish its count by Sunday night.

So the question asked to her was: Why did you not open on Sunday and open Monday instead if you wanted to count all the votes?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATHERINE HARRIS, FLORIDA SECRETARY OF STATE: We had no information or knowledge that the votes wouldn't be -- would not be completely counted by 5:00 p.m. on Sunday...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole nation did; apparently your office was the only one in the world that didn't.

HARRIS: When we decided to open the office on Sunday, when the Supreme Court said, either you will be open on Sunday or Monday, we announced immediately that we would be responsive and we would open our offices on Sunday. When they were open we couldn't -- OK, when they were open on Sunday and other counties had certified their votes, we were notified, late in the afternoon, that Palm Beach County was within two hours of being able to certify their votes, could we wait another two hours? And in terms of my interests and, certainly, having every vote counted, we discussed, couldn't we just be, quote, "gracious" in waiting another two hours? But what I can tell you is, that wasn't the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: Now, during this two-day hearing, one of the frustrations of some county elections officials who have testified is they received no money from Katherine Harris' office for educational opportunities before the election so people would know how to vote properly.

So the question was just asked to Katherine Harris: Do you spend money? Do you send educational resources to the various counties? She said she did not know the answer to that question, she delegated it to Clay Roberts. And Clay Roberts said, we send posters to all the precincts in English and Spanish -- so they have posters inside the precincts where people vote, but nothing else beforehand.

They're taking a break right now; they have about one more hour of testimony here, then the Civil Rights Commission will hold one more hearing in Miami next month before issuing a final report on what may have happened during the election of 2000 here in the state of Florida, and that will be sometime this summer.

Joie, back to you.

CHEN: All right; CNN's Gary Tuchman for us in Tallahassee, Florida.

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