WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Election officials on Wednesday disqualified more than 19,000 ballots in a Florida county where confusion over the punch-card system led to a flood of complaints and a lawsuit.
Three people filed suit Wednesday to seek a new election in Palm Beach County, claiming the punch-card ballot was so confusing that they accidentally voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Vice President Al Gore.
Hundreds of Gore supporters also called the county elections office Wednesday, saying they feared they had mistakenly voted for Buchanan.
Lawyers for the Democratic Party said that the design of the Palm Beach County ballot is illegal and that they may ask for a re-vote, but the party took no immediate action.
Election officials said 19,120 ballots in the county were nullified because they showed more than one vote for president. Statewide, Gore was behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush by fewer than 1,800 votes, and Florida holds the key to the national race.
Buchanan got 3,407 votes for president in the heavily Democratic county Tuesday, more than he received in any other Florida county, according to unofficial returns. Two larger counties south of Palm Beach both had much lower Buchanan results — 789 in Broward County and 561 in Miami-Dade County. In Duval County, a much more conservative county in northeast Florida, only 650 Buchanan votes were cast.
The confusion apparently arose from the way the county’s punch-card style ballot was laid out. Candidates are listed in two columns, with holes down the middle between the columns, to the right or the left of each candidate’s name. The top hole was for Bush, who was listed at top left; the second hole was for Buchanan, listed at top right, and the third hole was for Gore, listed under Bush on the left. Arrows linked the names with the proper hole, but some voters feared they had missed the arrows and punched the wrong hole.
Florida law specifies that voters mark an X in the blank space to the right of the name of the candidate they want to vote for.
Jeff Liggio, a lawyer for county Democrats, called the ballot illegal. “Right means right, doesn’t it? The state law says right. It doesn’t mean left,” he said.
Don A. Dillman of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, who has done research on the design of paper questionnaires, agreed that the ballot was confusing.
“I’ve never seen one set up like this,” Dillman said from Pullman, Wash. “It’s very confusing the way they have put things on the right side together with things on the left side. I can see why there might be a problem. If you passed over the first candidate to go for the second candidate, it’s logical that you’d punch the second hole.”
But Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Department of Elections, said the problem was exaggerated.
“I don’t think they are confused. I think they left the polling place and became confused. The ballot is very straightforward,” said Roberts, a Republican appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, George W.’s brother.
Meanwhile, officials began recounting nearly 6 million ballots to determine the next president, while Democrats and some voters complained of irregularities in the election.
The recount in all 67 counties was triggered by state law because Bush led Gore by less than one-half of 1 percent. State officials said they will count every ballot again and expect to be finished by the end of today.
In Florida and elsewhere, Democrats grumbled about long lines at the polls, reports that ballots were late in arriving at polling places and other possible irregularities.
“We’ve received literally thousands of telephone calls and inquiries and reports of irregularities like ballots appearing and disappearing, voter intimidation and the totals of this election sort of mysteriously disappearing and growing overnight,” state Democratic Party chairman Bob Poe said.
Florida elections supervisors also waited for an undetermined number of overseas ballots, primarily from military personnel and their families. The state allows 10 days after the election for the ballots to come in.
The state counted about 2,300 overseas ballots in the 1996 presidential election- more than the margin separating Gore and Bush this time – so there is a remote possibility that those ballots alone could change the outcome.
Although both candidates typically pick up votes in a recount, veterans of the process said it is unusual for one side to pick up enough votes to make a difference in the outcome.