Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey Leon here, Before we get to this episode,
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Speaker 1: Previously on Fiasco.
Speaker 2: The closest election in a generation, I.
Speaker 3: Called it at seven fifty two pm. It was all
Speaker 3: downhill after that moment.
Speaker 4: Some strange, unusual things happening in Florida.
Speaker 2: Florida comes out of the Gore column.
Speaker 4: Florida goes Bush, the presidency is Bush. That would be
Speaker 4: something if the network's managed to blow it twice in
Speaker 4: one night.
Speaker 5: In some ways, you can win or lose an election
Speaker 5: based on what the TVs say.
Speaker 4: Well, someone find out for me whether it's a a
Speaker 4: tread of state as a Democrat or a Republican.
Speaker 6: Who would ever thought you'd be on a plane heading
Speaker 6: to Florida to start a recount that could determine who
Speaker 6: the president is.
Speaker 1: The two thousand election wasn't really Jackie Winchester's problem four
Speaker 1: years earlier. It would have been back then she was
Speaker 1: the Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County, Florida, a
Speaker 1: job that put her in charge of making sure that
Speaker 1: election day always ran as smoothly as possible.
Speaker 7: You have only one day to make it right, and
Speaker 7: you're dependent on thousands of volunteers who have maybe three
Speaker 7: days of training every few years, and you cannot control
Speaker 7: what's going on out there and the precincts, and things
Speaker 7: can go wrong.
Speaker 1: After holding the post for twenty three years, Winchester had
Speaker 1: retired in nineteen ninety six. In two thousand, she was
Speaker 1: a volunteer with the Gore campaign, so she wasn't entirely
Speaker 1: on the sidelines, but it was not her burden to bear.
Speaker 1: When her daughter in law called an election day to
Speaker 1: inform her that something had gone awry with the ballots
Speaker 1: in Palm Beach, it.
Speaker 7: Was in all the radios, all that cha. They were
Speaker 7: talking about it.
Speaker 5: Here's how the presidential candidates are listed on Palm Beach
Speaker 5: County's punch card ballot. Voters we talked to feel the
Speaker 5: ballot's layout is confusing, and.
Speaker 7: She said, you know, I'm not sure I've voted correctly.
Speaker 1: After hearing that word spread across Palm Beach that if
Speaker 1: you weren't paying close attention, it was easy to punch
Speaker 1: through the wrong hole and vote for a candidate you
Speaker 1: didn't mean to vote for.
Speaker 8: Here's the problem. In Palm Beach County, they use what's
Speaker 8: called a punch hole ballot. To vote for the first name,
Speaker 8: George Bush, a voter would punch the first hole. Al
Speaker 8: Gore's name was listed right under Bush's, but voting for
Speaker 8: Gore required punching the third hole down, not the second.
Speaker 9: Gore is the second person down.
Speaker 10: This is the second hole down. I made a mistake.
Speaker 1: What made the crisis in Palm Beach so gut wrenching
Speaker 1: was that lots of people seemed to have all made
Speaker 1: the same mistake. These were people who had wanted to
Speaker 1: vote for Al Gore, and instead they voted for the
Speaker 1: right wing third party candidate, Pat Buchanan.
Speaker 11: I almost drove off the road when I heard that
Speaker 11: I voted for Pat Buchanan.
Speaker 12: I am not the only one that was confused, and
Speaker 12: many people probably voted for Buchanan meaning to vote for Gore,
Speaker 12: and that's wrong.
Speaker 1: Pat Buchanan first rose to national prominence as a speechwriter
Speaker 1: and senior adviser to Richard Nixon. He'd run for president
Speaker 1: under the banner of the Reform Party, and his prospects
Speaker 1: in Palm Beach County had not been great, in part
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of Jewish people who lived
Speaker 1: in Palm Beach, and Buchanan had a history of making
Speaker 1: comments that were perceived as antisemitic. Most recently, Buchanan had
Speaker 1: reinforced that perception by arguing in a book that Adolph
Speaker 1: Hitler had never represented a real threat to American interests.
Speaker 8: Palm Beach County is heavily democratic, with large blocks of
Speaker 8: black and Jewish voters, not exactly Pat Buchanan country, Yet
Speaker 8: he polled three times as many votes here as any
Speaker 8: other county in the state.
Speaker 1: Buchanan got more than three thousand votes in Palm Beach County,
Speaker 1: six times as many as he got in Miami Dade,
Speaker 1: which was twice as big. Some voters had punched holes
Speaker 1: for both Gore and Buchanan, meaning their ballots had been
Speaker 1: automatically invalidated. Common sense suggested that most of these people
Speaker 1: had voted for Buchanan unintentionally, then caught their mistake and
Speaker 1: tried to correct it. Even Buchanan acknowledged that some of
Speaker 1: his votes in Palm Beach had probably been meant for
Speaker 1: the ticket that included Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate
Speaker 1: for vice president nominated by a major party.
Speaker 13: If the two candidates they pushed were Buchanan and Gore,
Speaker 13: almost certainly those are al Gore's votes and not mine.
Speaker 1: The ballot in Palm Beach quickly became known in the
Speaker 1: media as the butterfly ballot because the candidate's names appeared
Speaker 1: on two opposing pages like wings, and there was a
Speaker 1: row of punch holes running down the middle. Most of
Speaker 1: the voters who had issues with the butterfly ballot were elderly,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of elderly voters in Palm
Speaker 1: Beach County. Here's Jackie Winchester.
Speaker 7: Again, and most of the retirement communities, the big condos
Speaker 7: that tend to vote early in the morning, and it
Speaker 7: was in those. He thinks that all of these people
Speaker 7: were saying that they were afraid they had voted for Buchanan,
Speaker 7: and of course they did.
Speaker 1: Actually, Winchester was eighty nine years old and living in
Speaker 1: a retirement community herself. When I spoke to her on
Speaker 1: election Day two thousand. She arrived at the Gore campaign's
Speaker 1: Palm Beach office at around ten in the morning and
Speaker 1: started taking calls from distressed voters.
Speaker 7: It was just really very sad because these are people
Speaker 7: who had been voting all their allows. Voting was very
Speaker 7: important to them, and they felt that they had lost
Speaker 7: their vote and they wanted to know what they could
Speaker 7: do about it, or said there wasn't anything they could
Speaker 7: do about it.
Speaker 8: It could have happened anywhere.
Speaker 14: A rocket scientist could have happened.
Speaker 8: Meet Jim Pesh. Yes, he designs rockets.
Speaker 7: Let me get this straight.
Speaker 8: You're a rocket scientist, literally, and you had problems.
Speaker 1: As the gravity of the butterfly ballot debacle set in,
Speaker 1: Winchester started to worry about the woman who had replaced
Speaker 1: her as election supervisor in Palm Beach. Her name was
Speaker 1: Teresa Lapour. She had started working at the election's office
Speaker 1: as Winchester's assistant when she was still a teenager, and
Speaker 1: she had been climbing her way up the ladder ever since.
Speaker 1: As election supervisor, Lapour had commissioned the butterfly ballot design
Speaker 1: and she had signed off on it. Others had seen
Speaker 1: it too, both the Democrats and the Republicans in Florida
Speaker 1: had approved the ballot design in advance, but when the
Speaker 1: ballot became a national news story, it was Lapour who
Speaker 1: was held responsible for it.
Speaker 5: The Supervisor of Elections, Teresa Lapour says, voters are across
Speaker 5: the county have expressed their concerns about the presidential ballot.
Speaker 15: If voters need to remember that, they should punch the
Speaker 15: whole next to the ear next to the number next
Speaker 15: to the name of the candidate they want to vote for.
Speaker 1: Lapour didn't conceive of the butterfly ballot thoughtlessly. It was
Speaker 1: an attempt to solve a very specific problem. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, Florida had passed a law making it easier
Speaker 1: for third party candidates to qualify for inclusion on the ballot.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, election supervisors across the state had to
Speaker 1: make for ten presidential candidates. They all dealt with it
Speaker 1: in their own way, which underscorees how strangely decentralized a
Speaker 1: national election really is. Every county in Florida had jurisdiction
Speaker 1: over their own ballots. Teresa Lapour decided that ten candidates
Speaker 1: was too many to fit on one page because the
Speaker 1: type would be too small, so she spread them out
Speaker 1: over to She.
Speaker 7: Had said that she did it that way because she
Speaker 7: felt that she could make the print larger, that there
Speaker 7: are a lot of older people in Palm Beach County
Speaker 7: with vision problems, and that she rather than do it
Speaker 7: the way the other coundies who are doing it where
Speaker 7: the print would have been smaller, that she could make
Speaker 7: the print larger this way.
Speaker 5: Lapour remained silent.
Speaker 16: In response to the anger, She says through her attorney,
Speaker 16: she designed the ballot with the elderly folks in mind,
Speaker 16: with the hopes they could see it better.
Speaker 17: And that's a heavy burden on the shoulders of Teresa Lapour.
Speaker 1: The day after the election, Jackie Winchester visited her oldfe
Speaker 1: in downtown Palm Beach to see how Lapoor was holding up.
Speaker 1: It was a sympathy call from one season supervisor of
Speaker 1: Elections to another.
Speaker 7: She was really being i would say, being dumped on,
Speaker 7: and she was crying. She was very upset, and I've
Speaker 7: told her you know that I was sorry she was
Speaker 7: having to go through all that and she didn't mean
Speaker 7: to cause any problems.
Speaker 1: Did she have any advice for her?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 11: Why not?
Speaker 7: At that point there was nothing that could be done.
Speaker 7: The election was over.
Speaker 1: In fact, Teresa Lapour had a whole lot of elections
Speaker 1: still ahead of her. Lapour, who did not respond to
Speaker 1: my interview requests, described the experience in the two thousand
Speaker 1: and four documentary. I kind of likened the whole thing
Speaker 1: to my perfect storm.
Speaker 18: All the planets were lined upright, and everything just kind
Speaker 18: of collided over Palm Beach County.
Speaker 1: As lawyers for the two campaigns descended on Palm Beach
Speaker 1: to litigate the butterfly ballot, Lapour would find her working
Speaker 1: eighteen hour days, facing down protesters outside her office and
Speaker 1: receiving so many death threats that she needed a security
Speaker 1: detail to accompany her home at night. Later, Lapoor would
Speaker 1: teller reporter for the Saint Petersburg Times, you want my blood,
Speaker 1: here take it. I'm Leon Nafock from Prologue Projects and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Bush v. Gore. Tonight the
Speaker 1: debate over when a vote is a vote? Nineteen thousand
Speaker 1: Americans were disenfranchised.
Speaker 4: I wanted to cook the books until they could figure
Speaker 4: out how to win an election. They had lost it.
Speaker 1: Results in this one county could tell the tale episode
Speaker 1: three ballot with butterfly wings. How the recount battle in
Speaker 1: Florida started, and how both Republicans and Democrats became convinced
Speaker 1: that the White House was being stolen by the other side.
Speaker 1: Catherine Harris probably the closest thing to a household name
Speaker 1: to emerge from the two thousand recount. As Florida's Secretary
Speaker 1: of State, Harris was the ultimate authority over the state's
Speaker 1: election results on election day, her office was responsible for
Speaker 1: collecting vote totals from all sixty seven counties in Florida,
Speaker 1: then declaring a winner as part of a formal certification process.
Speaker 6: It was kind of a ministerial job. You add up
Speaker 6: sixty seven counties and you say who won the election.
Speaker 1: That's Harris. She was elected Florida Secretary of State in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, so, unlike Jackie Winchester, the two thousand
Speaker 1: election was very much her problem. If her job had
Speaker 1: ever been ministerial, that flew out the window very quickly
Speaker 1: on November eighth. Throughout the recount period, Harris was part referee,
Speaker 1: part timekeeper, someone who advised county election officials on vote
Speaker 1: counting procedure and enforced statewide deadlines set forth in Florida
Speaker 1: election law. Harris's point of view on the butterfly ballot
Speaker 1: issue was that it was kind of overblown.
Speaker 6: As see you where they were confused. I don't think
Speaker 6: I would have made that mistake. It was not that
Speaker 6: hard to vote for Gore. That was actually kind of simple.
Speaker 6: But if somebody wanted to be confused, or I mean
Speaker 6: not wanted to be confused, but they're getting nervous in
Speaker 6: their voting, than perhaps they were.
Speaker 1: The two thousand election thrust Harris into an awkward role.
Speaker 1: On paper, she was supposed to be a political and independent,
Speaker 1: but she was also an elected official, and like the
Speaker 1: vast majority of elected officials, she had a part as
Speaker 1: an affiliation. Harris was a Republican. It wasn't a secret
Speaker 1: she had run for Secretary of State as a Republican
Speaker 1: and she had been aligned with the Republican Party since
Speaker 1: the start of her political career. During the two thousand campaign,
Speaker 1: Harris served as one of George W. Bush's co chairs
Speaker 1: in Florida. She also stumped for Bush as part of
Speaker 1: the Freezon for a Reason bus tour when she gave
Speaker 1: out Florida oranges to Bush supporters in New Hampshire. Again,
Speaker 1: there was nothing inherently sinister about this, but when Harris
Speaker 1: started making one decision after another that seemed to benefit Bush,
Speaker 1: Democrats had a hard time seeing her as a genuinely
Speaker 1: neutral arbiter.
Speaker 5: The Gore campaign press secretary has called the Secretary of
Speaker 5: State in Florida.
Speaker 15: A hack Gore advisor, accusing Florida's Republican secretary of State
Speaker 15: and just try to ensure a Bush victory.
Speaker 1: Harris adamantly rejects the suggestion that she was trying to
Speaker 1: help Bush win, even though she obviously did want him
Speaker 1: to win she campaigned for him. She maintains that a
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, she made unbiased decisions without any particular
Speaker 1: outcome in mind.
Speaker 6: In fact, the law was my only safe harbor. People
Speaker 6: still come up to me and say thank you a weekly.
Speaker 6: I'm in airports every week, so I'm surprised by that,
Speaker 6: but I've never accepted that compliment. I just say, hey,
Speaker 6: I didn't do anything special. I just followed our laws
Speaker 6: and they were sufficient.
Speaker 1: One of the first laws Catherine Harris had to enforce
Speaker 1: after election day was one you might remember from our
Speaker 1: previous episode. It was the law acquiring a statewide machine
Speaker 1: recount whenever the margin between two candidates was less than
Speaker 1: half of one percent. Bush's lead before the machine recount
Speaker 1: was one seven hundred and eighty four votes out of
Speaker 1: almost six million cast, so three one hundredths of one
Speaker 1: percent of the overall vote total.
Speaker 6: We did a machine recount within seventy two hours for
Speaker 6: the entire state. It was remarkable. That was not an
Speaker 6: easy task, but we did that in seventy two hours,
Speaker 6: and at that time, and for the equipment that we had,
Speaker 6: computerization to get it done in seventy two hours?
Speaker 1: Or was the remarkable feat? After the break the results
Speaker 1: of the machine recount, the new numbers came in on
Speaker 1: the Friday morning after the election.
Speaker 18: An unofficial Tallly of all Florida counties gives George W.
Speaker 18: Bush a minuscule three hundred and twenty seven vote lead
Speaker 18: over Al Gore out of six million votes cast.
Speaker 1: The margin between Bush and Gore shrank to just three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven votes, so five to one thousandths
Speaker 1: of one percent. Under normal circumstances, a fluctuation of fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred votes in a state wide race wouldn't sound like much,
Speaker 1: but Bush's lead had been cut by significantly more votes
Speaker 1: than the new margin separating him from Gore. It suggested
Speaker 1: that a third recount could produce a totally different result
Speaker 1: and maybe even put Gore ahead. The magnitude of the
Speaker 1: change in the vote total called into question the very
Speaker 1: idea that an objectively accurate vote count was possible.
Speaker 12: Many in this nation are getting anxious what many called
Speaker 12: the beginning of potentially a constitutional crisis in this nation.
Speaker 1: Neither campaign had time for such philosophical angst. From the
Speaker 1: moment they arrived in Florida. Bush's people were fighting to
Speaker 1: protect their lead.
Speaker 13: They want a quick, almost mechanical recount. How George W.
Speaker 13: Bush certified on the road to inauguration.
Speaker 1: While Gore's were trying to find enough votes to overcome it.
Speaker 13: The Gore campaign is trying to lengthen out the timeline,
Speaker 13: gather the facts for any irregularities in the Florida ballot,
Speaker 13: and then moved to a challenge.
Speaker 1: But what exactly was being challenged? What were the two
Speaker 1: campaigns fighting over. The guy brought in to answer these
Speaker 1: questions for the Gore campaign was Jack Young, a lawyer
Speaker 1: specializing in recount law. On the morning of November eighth,
Speaker 1: Young briefed Gore's top advisors in Nashville. Then he got
Speaker 1: on the recount one plane to Florida.
Speaker 19: The question that was asked of May was, how does
Speaker 19: a recount work? What do you need to do if
Speaker 19: we are to go through a recount in Florida.
Speaker 1: Young knew what he was talking about. He was the
Speaker 1: co author of a short book called The Recount Primer.
Speaker 19: The Recount Primer who was, in essence, a printed set
Speaker 19: of instructions as to how to deal with a recount,
Speaker 19: starting with election night and then going through the process.
Speaker 19: It's probably thirty pages at best.
Speaker 1: As Young explained to the Gore team, the big prize
Speaker 1: on the table between their guy and the other guy
Speaker 1: was a mountain of ballots cast across Florida that had
Speaker 1: either come up as invalid or didn't record any vote
Speaker 1: for president. These ballots could be divided into two categories,
Speaker 1: undervotes and overvotes. You can think of undervotes as the
Speaker 1: result of not voting enough, and overvotes as the result
Speaker 1: of voting too much.
Speaker 19: An undervote is an instance where the machine didn't pick
Speaker 19: up a vote, and overvotes what you're looking at is
Speaker 19: people having voted for two candidates when the selection is
Speaker 19: for only one.
Speaker 1: There were all kinds of reasons a machine might mistakenly
Speaker 1: classify a valid ballot as an undervote or an overvote.
Speaker 1: With punch card machines like the kind used in Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: people didn't always punch through the hole all the way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes voters just didn't follow instructions. Instead of punching through
Speaker 1: the hole, they'd circle their candidate's name or put a
Speaker 1: check mark next to it, or they'd write it out
Speaker 1: by hand in a random spot on the ballot. In
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases, a human being could look
Speaker 1: at the ballot and discern what the voter had intended,
Speaker 1: something a machine couldn't do. That was why, according to
Speaker 1: Jack Young and the Recount Primer, the Gore campaign's first
Speaker 1: step was to demand a hand recount in as many
Speaker 1: counties as they could. The more under votes and over
Speaker 1: votes were counted by hand, the more chances Gore had
Speaker 1: to eat away at the three hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 1: vote margins separating him from Bush.
Speaker 19: If you're behind, you want to expand the recount as
Speaker 19: much as you can. Now there's no guarantee, obviously with
Speaker 19: punch cards that it's going to come out your way,
Speaker 19: but it's going to be different, and if you're behind,
Speaker 19: different is good.
Speaker 1: Young urged the top lieutenants on the Gore legal team
Speaker 1: to ask for hand recounts in all sixty seven Florida counties.
Speaker 1: This would have been consistent with the Gore team's main
Speaker 1: talking point from the days after the election that all
Speaker 1: they wanted was to get every vote counted.
Speaker 19: We have consistently maintained that every volte must.
Speaker 1: Count, but Young was ultimately overruled. Instead, the Gore team
Speaker 1: decided to make a much narrower, more modest request, zero
Speaker 1: in on just four counties.
Speaker 12: Today, the appropriate Florida Democratic officials will be requesting a
Speaker 12: hand count of ballots in Palm Beach County, as well
Speaker 12: as three other counties.
Speaker 1: Miami Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Volusia. The request was
Speaker 1: actually less modest than it sounds. Miami Dade, Broward, Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: and Volusia were four of the biggest counties in Florida. Together,
Speaker 1: they represented thirty four percent of Florida's population, and between
Speaker 1: them they had received approximately one point nine million ballots. Still,
Speaker 1: why didn't Gore just request a hand recount across the
Speaker 1: entire state? Like Jack Young was imploring him to do.
Speaker 1: The practical answer is that at this stage in the process,
Speaker 1: there was no mechanism in Florida law allowing a candidate
Speaker 1: to ask for a statewide recount, and one fell swoop.
Speaker 1: If Gore wanted hand recounts in all sixty seven counties,
Speaker 1: his lawyers would have to make the case in each
Speaker 1: county individually, and that would be a logistical nightmare. Some
Speaker 1: of Gore's advisors also thought it would be risky. Even
Speaker 1: if Gore could somehow get all all sixty seven recompetitions filed,
Speaker 1: the Bush lawyers could just selectively fight the ones most
Speaker 1: likely to favor Democrats while letting the ones in Republican
Speaker 1: counties go forward. At a press conference, the head of
Speaker 1: Gore's recount team, Warren Christopher, explained that Miami Dade, Broward, Felucia,
Speaker 1: and Palm Beach had been selected because each one experienced
Speaker 1: some weirdness on election day.
Speaker 15: The only four counties in which and counts were requested
Speaker 15: were counties where there was real anomalies that showed up
Speaker 15: real irregularities.
Speaker 1: Basically, it was a grab bag. Palm Beach was in
Speaker 1: there because of the butterfly ballot Belusia was in there
Speaker 1: because there had been glitches in their vote count on
Speaker 1: election night. As for Miami Dade and Broward, those two
Speaker 1: got thrown in because it looked like there was a
Speaker 1: disproportionate number of under votes there. But irregularities were not
Speaker 1: the only thing these four counties had in common, as
Speaker 1: Republicans and the media quickly pointed out, they were also
Speaker 1: full of Democratic voters.
Speaker 8: Certainly, all of this.
Speaker 20: Is them asking for things and then crossing their fingers
Speaker 20: that they're going to get the votes there. They don't
Speaker 20: have any hard evidence count of.
Speaker 9: These cherry picked counties that are designed to help Al Gore.
Speaker 1: Gore's decision to only ask for recounts in four Democratic
Speaker 1: counties was a pr disaster. It also alienated the Florida
Speaker 1: Secretary of State's office, where the perception among staff was
Speaker 1: that the Democrats were trying to pull ahead in the
Speaker 1: vote count in a fundamentally unfair way.
Speaker 21: It was unsettling to me that a candidate would cherry
Speaker 21: pick four counties out of sixty seven to recount.
Speaker 1: This is Kerry Carpenter. She was a lawyer and Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Catherine Harris's office.
Speaker 21: I believe all of us on our side were of
Speaker 21: the mindset that it didn't seem right to all the
Speaker 21: other counties. Everybody's vote has to have equal weight.
Speaker 1: The Secretary of State's office did not have the power
Speaker 1: to turn down Gore's recount requests. That authority rested with
Speaker 1: election officials at the county level, who were organized into
Speaker 1: three person panels called canvassing boards. Each county had its
Speaker 1: own canvassing board, and each one was made up of
Speaker 1: the local election supervisor, a local judge, and a local
Speaker 1: county commissioner. In typical election years, the boards played a quiet,
Speaker 1: largely administrative role. At the end of every election, it
Speaker 1: was their job to count up the ballots from every
Speaker 1: voting precinct in the county and transmit the total to
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State's office. Technically, it was the canvassing
Speaker 1: boards in Palm Beach, Broward, Velusia, and Miami Dade that
Speaker 1: Gore's team had to convince that manual recounts were necessary.
Speaker 1: But as Gore's lawyers agitated for the recounts to start
Speaker 1: in the days after the election, it was the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State's office that emerged as the single biggest obstacle
Speaker 1: in their way.
Speaker 12: We're standing by in Tallahassee, Florida for a news conference
Speaker 12: by the Secretary of State of the State of Florida.
Speaker 1: On November ninth, Catherine Harris announced that a press conference
Speaker 1: in Tallahassee that in accordance with Florida law, all counties
Speaker 1: had to have their final vote hollies into her office
Speaker 1: by November fourteenth, seven days after election day Florida.
Speaker 22: We are still awaiting the results from the super elections
Speaker 22: in fourteenth Florida counties, which by law have until Tuesday,
Speaker 22: November fourteenth, to submit those returns to the office of
Speaker 22: the Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: The official position of the Secretary of State's office was
Speaker 1: that the November fourteenth deadline was non negotiable. Harris would
Speaker 1: not be able to accept any late vote tallies, even
Speaker 1: if some counties decided to conduct manual recounts and weren't
Speaker 1: done with them when the deadline came. That was the law,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing Harris could do about it.
Speaker 6: I had no idea to whose benefit it would accrue.
Speaker 6: I just know I had had to follow the law.
Speaker 6: There would be those who would disagree, and they're entitled
Speaker 6: to their opinion. But I don't know what I could
Speaker 6: have done differently in terms of following the law.
Speaker 1: Harris became a media sensation in the weeks after the election,
Speaker 1: and after giving one particularly stilted press conference, she also
Speaker 1: became a targeted ridicule from seeing.
Speaker 19: Her, it's clear why Republicans are not normally caught up
Speaker 19: in the sex scan.
Speaker 11: Is there?
Speaker 1: I think that's when you're drunk. Sure, But then in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, fashion critic Robin Given described Harris's lips
Speaker 1: as overdrawn with berry red lipstick. Her skin is plastered
Speaker 1: and powdered to the texture of pre war walls, and
Speaker 1: her eyes is rimmed and liner and frosted with blue shadow.
Speaker 15: I had race down there in Florida is tighter than
Speaker 15: Catherine Harris's face.
Speaker 8: The ladies been on.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere. She was depicted as a ditz who had been
Speaker 1: born into a rich family and was in way over
Speaker 1: her head. Here's on a gaest tire impersonating Harris on
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 23: I am a public servant. I serve the people of
Speaker 23: Florida and will abide by their directives. Bush one, and
Speaker 23: when he's president, he's going to make me an ambassador
Speaker 23: and not ambassador to some sad country where everyone's poor
Speaker 23: and sick all the time.
Speaker 6: It didn't matter appearance intellect, never mind that I did
Speaker 6: my master's at Harvard and they were acting like I
Speaker 6: was some dilettante. They said, she's the Brahmin of the
Speaker 6: highest order. She's just saying that I was so wealthy
Speaker 6: to be discredited.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, the negative media
Speaker 1: coverage could not take away Harris's power as Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: and that meant she was going to collect vote tallies
Speaker 1: on November fourteenth, just like the law said she had to.
Speaker 6: You know, none of those things are pleasant, but I
Speaker 6: was elected as Warren oath and I was going to
Speaker 6: do it.
Speaker 1: As the deadline approached, all eyes turned to the canvassing
Speaker 1: boards and the four counties where Gore had requested manual recounts,
Speaker 1: and none of them got more attention than Palm Beach.
Speaker 1: The canvassing board in Palm Beach County was made up
Speaker 1: of Election Supervisor Teresa Lapour, County Commissioner Carol Roberts, and
Speaker 1: Circuit Judge Charles Burton.
Speaker 17: They are the members of the Palm Beach County Election
Speaker 17: Canvassing Board. The three of the potential the shape who
Speaker 17: becomes the next president of the United States.
Speaker 20: So here we go into ground zero of the Florida recount.
Speaker 1: This is journalist Jake Tapper. He covered the Palm Beach
Speaker 1: recount for Salon dot com and wrote book about the
Speaker 1: two thousand election called Down and Dirty.
Speaker 20: And there are three individuals there who are in charge
Speaker 20: of everything, and nobody outside of Palm Beach, or even
Speaker 20: most people in Palm Beach probably has ever heard of
Speaker 20: any of them.
Speaker 1: According to Florida law, the way for the canvassing board
Speaker 1: to decide whether or not to order a county wide
Speaker 1: manual recount was to take a sample of the overall
Speaker 1: vote at least one percent in Palm Beach. That translated
Speaker 1: to about forty six hundred ballots. The idea was to
Speaker 1: see how much the margin between the two candidates changed
Speaker 1: once those ballots were recounted by hand. If the difference
Speaker 1: was big enough, the canvassing Board would undertake the laborious
Speaker 1: work of counting all four hundred and sixty two thousand
Speaker 1: votes in the county.
Speaker 11: All right, good morning everyone, We could have quiet in here.
Speaker 11: We can get through this meeting as quickly as possible.
Speaker 11: And get through the matter at hand.
Speaker 1: The one percent test played out in public view at
Speaker 1: the Palm Beach County Government Center, and thanks to Florida's
Speaker 1: expansive transparency laws, the entire proceeding was captured on video
Speaker 1: for posterity. Volunteers from both political parties were dispatched to
Speaker 1: serve as partisan observers. Their job was to watch the
Speaker 1: votes get counted and register formal objections when they disagreed
Speaker 1: with the canvassing Board's judgment that most of the ballots
Speaker 1: being recounted were no brainers. They'd been cast by voters
Speaker 1: who had successfully punched a clean whole next to their
Speaker 1: preferred candidate's name. These ballots did not call out for interpretation.
Speaker 1: And then there were the under votes. These turned out
Speaker 1: to be devilishly tricky for the canvassing Board to evaluate.
Speaker 20: These three people, Carol Roberts, Teresa Lapoor and Judge Charles
Speaker 20: Burton now have to go through four thousand or so
Speaker 20: ballots and assess for the ones in which it was
Speaker 20: not clear whether or not the person voted for Bush
Speaker 20: or Gore, whether that person meant to vote for Bush
Speaker 20: or Gore, but because it was a punch card, it
Speaker 20: didn't necessarily register. And this is where Chad comes into
Speaker 20: the scene.
Speaker 1: Remember earlier when I said Catherine Harris was the closest
Speaker 1: thing to a household name to come out of the
Speaker 1: Florida recount, I take that back. Chad definitely takes the cake.
Speaker 19: Chad's the munchkin of the electoral donut, as it were.
Speaker 16: There's been a lot of discussion about the hanging chad
Speaker 16: and the dimple chad.
Speaker 11: Right now, the name.
Speaker 15: Of the next president hangs on those tiny chads and
Speaker 15: the people trying to the vine.
Speaker 1: Chad refers to the tiny pieces of paper they get
Speaker 1: poked out of a ballot when a voter uses a
Speaker 1: punch card machine successfully. When a voter uses a punch
Speaker 1: card machine unsuccessfully, either because they didn't press hard enough
Speaker 1: through the ballot with their stylus or because the machine malfunctioned,
Speaker 1: the chad can stay attached to the ballot, resulting in
Speaker 1: an undervote. And yes, as Jake Tapper notes in his book,
Speaker 1: the plural of chad is chad.
Speaker 20: And then there are different kinds of chad. There is
Speaker 20: a hanging chad that's attached to the ballot, hanging on
Speaker 20: just by one corner there's a swinging door chad that's
Speaker 20: hanging on by two of the corners. There's a pregnant chad,
Speaker 20: there's a bulge, and there's a dimpled chadge where there's
Speaker 20: like a little poke.
Speaker 1: The question facing the Canvassing Board in Palm Beach County
Speaker 1: came down to this, did a chad need to be
Speaker 1: partially detached to a ballot order to count as a vote,
Speaker 1: or was it enough for it to be indented, dimpled, or,
Speaker 1: in the unofficial parlance, pregnant. The Palm Beach County Canvassing
Speaker 1: Board started out by applying a relatively strict standard, one
Speaker 1: based on a precedent set in nineteen ninety, back when
Speaker 1: Jackie Winchester was the Supervisor of Elections. According to that
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety standard, a mere indentation was not evidence of
Speaker 1: voter intent, so a ballot with a dimpled or pregnant
Speaker 1: chad could not be considered a valid vote.
Speaker 3: The first being of the nineteen ninety standard I tend
Speaker 3: to agree with.
Speaker 5: Because it is.
Speaker 1: A few hours into the count Judge Burton noticed that
Speaker 1: without really meaning to, the Canvassing Board had gradually adopted
Speaker 1: a more lenient standard than the one that's started with.
Speaker 1: The thinking seemed to be that a chad doesn't just
Speaker 1: dimple itself. If it showed visible signs of struggle, it
Speaker 1: probably meant someone had tried to vote. The application of
Speaker 1: this forgiving and according to the Republicans highly subjective standard
Speaker 1: was advantageous to Al Gore.
Speaker 20: As they're doing this one percent hand recount using this
Speaker 20: very generous standard, more and more Gore votes are being found,
Speaker 20: and the news in Goreland is good.
Speaker 1: Before long, Gore had picked up fifty new votes. It
Speaker 1: seemed possible that at this rate he could make up
Speaker 1: the margin separating him from Bush by the time Lapour, Roberts,
Speaker 1: and Burton were done with the one percent test, never
Speaker 1: mind the rest of the county. But then something happened.
Speaker 1: At around five pm, Judge Burton returned from a cigarette
Speaker 1: break and interrupted the count. It's hard to hear him
Speaker 1: on this recording, but essentially he wanted to start the
Speaker 1: one percent over this time, sticking to the nineteen ninety standard.
Speaker 11: Conservius, have you voted on this?
Speaker 24: I want to do?
Speaker 1: Was over objections from Gore's lawyers. Teresa Lapour and Carol
Speaker 1: Roberts both agreed with Burton. And so the count began again.
Speaker 1: I guess my bothers what prompted Judge Burton to stop
Speaker 1: the one percent test and restarted under a stricter standard.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, he had received some persuasive advice
Speaker 1: from the Secretary of State's office.
Speaker 21: I wasn't aware at the time that there were all
Speaker 21: these eyes on me. I later learned afterward that people
Speaker 21: were very suspicious about the fact that I had gone
Speaker 21: into a conference room with Judge Burton. But I was
Speaker 21: just simply following him into this room because he had
Speaker 21: asked me to.
Speaker 1: That's Kerry Carpenter. She's the lawyer from Catherin Harris's office
Speaker 1: we heard from earlier, the one who said it didn't
Speaker 1: seem right that Gore had only requested recounts and Democratic strongholds.
Speaker 1: When it was announced that Palm Beach would be conducting
Speaker 1: a one percent test, Carpenter was sent down to monitor
Speaker 1: the situation and offer explanations of Florida election law to
Speaker 1: the canvassing board members. That Carpenter says is exactly what
Speaker 1: Judge Burton was after when he asked her to step
Speaker 1: into that conference room.
Speaker 21: His concern was that they had started out using the
Speaker 21: nineteen ninety standards to do the sample recount, and over
Speaker 21: time the standard was evolving into a different standard that
Speaker 21: he believed was counting votes as votes that he didn't
Speaker 21: think were really votes. And he wanted my advice on this.
Speaker 21: What should he do? Basically he didn't know.
Speaker 14: He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Carpenter advised Burton to go back to the stricter nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety standard.
Speaker 21: And I said, when this ends, and most likely we'll
Speaker 21: be contested, will probably be a hearing in Tallahassee, and
Speaker 21: you're likely to be a witness, and I don't think
Speaker 21: you want to have to testify in front of the
Speaker 21: entire nation that you counted things as votes that weren't
Speaker 21: really votes. And he agreed with that not be good
Speaker 21: for him.
Speaker 1: When the count got going again, it became clear that
Speaker 1: many of the votes that had gone to Gore under
Speaker 1: the looser standard were now going to be thrown out
Speaker 1: under the new standard. The number of gore votes was
Speaker 1: still going up, but by much less.
Speaker 21: It was enough that had they not gone back and
Speaker 21: redid that pile using the nineteen ninety standards, there would
Speaker 21: have been enough gore votes to have certified the election
Speaker 21: for Gore and then Bush would have been challenging the election.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 21: I think we did the right thing regardless of the result.
Speaker 21: My job was to focus on doing the right thing,
Speaker 21: and I believed it then and I believe it today
Speaker 21: that we did the right thing.
Speaker 11: By good evening, everyone, I should say good morning.
Speaker 1: Lapoor, Roberts, and Burton finished the one percent count just
Speaker 1: before two am. They had discovered thirty three Gore votes
Speaker 1: and fourteen Bush votes, for a net gain of nineteen
Speaker 1: in Gore's favor. Now, the question was whether that was
Speaker 1: enough to justify a county wide recount carry. Carpenter's position
Speaker 1: was no. She told the canvassing board that according to
Speaker 1: Florida law, the only circumstance in which a manual recount
Speaker 1: is justified is if there's been a malfunction with the
Speaker 1: vote counting machines.
Speaker 25: When a manual recount where the entire county is done,
Speaker 25: it is because the manual recount of the one percent
Speaker 25: demonstrated some type of error in the equipment and the
Speaker 25: machines that were used.
Speaker 1: Carpenter said that since the one percent test hadn't revealed
Speaker 1: any problems with the machines, there was no reason to
Speaker 1: have a full recount.
Speaker 25: Well, that would not be a vote tabulation error that
Speaker 25: would affect the outcount. It would be a voter error
Speaker 25: that may affect the outpower.
Speaker 1: Judge Burton, who declined to be interviewed for this podcast,
Speaker 1: moved to put off any decision about the county wide
Speaker 1: recount until the Secretary of State's office could issue a
Speaker 1: formal advisory opinion on what the canvassing Board should do.
Speaker 11: Said, I would like to be more fully informed before
Speaker 11: this board makes such a serious decision that can affect
Speaker 11: this entire.
Speaker 1: Concrete It's worth mentioning for the record that all three
Speaker 1: members of the Palm Beach Canvassing Board were Democrats, though
Speaker 1: Judge Burton had been appointed by Jeb Bush. Between the
Speaker 1: three of them, Carol Roberts was considered to be the
Speaker 1: most sympathetic toward Gore, and no one was surprised when
Speaker 1: she came out strongly in favor of a manual recount.
Speaker 10: And I decided that with nineteen vote out of one
Speaker 10: percent and maybe there'd be nineteen hundred votes, was a
Speaker 10: full recount.
Speaker 1: Teresa Lapour sided with Carol Roberts. That made it two
Speaker 1: against one. The recount in Palm Beach County was on.
Speaker 10: Prime move. That this board conductor manual recount of all
Speaker 10: the ballots for the presidential elections.
Speaker 3: For the year two county, Palm Beach County, center of
Speaker 3: the political universe.
Speaker 15: Fifty teams working seven our shifts will start to handcount.
Speaker 1: More than four hundred and sixty thousand ballots.
Speaker 3: Who wins The White House could hang literally on what's
Speaker 3: called a chat.
Speaker 1: All that planning was still ahead. The vote to proceed
Speaker 1: with the manual recount had happened in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, so for the moment, the members of the
Speaker 1: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board headed out to get some sleep.
Speaker 1: Carol Roberts drove home that night by.
Speaker 10: Yourself, And when I got home, like one thirty or two,
Speaker 10: my answering machine was lit up all over the place.
Speaker 10: So I decided to see what kind of messages I got,
Speaker 10: and I was horrified with all of the death threats.
Speaker 1: Roberts's name and face had been on the news all day.
Speaker 1: The country was transfixed by what was going on in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach, and tensions were running high.
Speaker 10: And there were messages that said you better watch out
Speaker 10: how you cross the street. You might not make it across.
Speaker 10: You better watch your back. I have a gun. Things
Speaker 10: like that. And they came from all over the United States.
Speaker 1: What were they I mean, what were they mad at
Speaker 1: you about?
Speaker 10: I'm not sure what they were mad at me about.
Speaker 10: I just know that there were an awful lot of
Speaker 10: people all of the United States that seemed to be
Speaker 10: very displeased that we were going to recount.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back that weekend. As Teresa Lapour, Carol Roberts,
Speaker 1: and Charles Burton braced themselves for the start of the
Speaker 1: full recount, Katherine Harris and her team looked to November fourteenth,
Speaker 1: the deadline that Harris had set for the canvassing boards
Speaker 1: to submit their final vote totals.
Speaker 4: The overall idea that fundamental framework, strategic framework was to
Speaker 4: hold the line on the dates and slow walk the county.
Speaker 1: This is Max Dapanovitch. He's a Republican lobbyist who was
Speaker 1: recruited by a Bush campaign official to advise Catherine Harris
Speaker 1: during the recount.
Speaker 4: I was very partisan and known for it. There was
Speaker 4: no doubt about who I was, how I felt, or
Speaker 4: why I was summoned as Mary Madaline once said, I
Speaker 4: am a bush Leech at bush Lett l I E g. E.
Speaker 4: Bush Leech got a vassal.
Speaker 1: Stepanovitch's role in the Secretary of State's Office during the
Speaker 1: recount is a matter of some dispute. He says he
Speaker 1: was there to work behind the scenes and make sure
Speaker 1: that Katherin Harris brought the election in for a landing.
Speaker 4: I told her at the time, you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of people run for public office and they believe that
Speaker 4: when that moment comes, when that you know, John Kennedy
Speaker 4: profile encourage moment arise, that they will rise to the occasion.
Speaker 11: I told her.
Speaker 4: That this is that moment. If you're going to do something,
Speaker 4: do it today.
Speaker 1: But Harris plays down Stapanovitch's contributions.
Speaker 6: I don't want to discredit Mac, but that's he wants
Speaker 6: to insert himself as important, and I understand, and I
Speaker 6: value his I valued his friendship.
Speaker 1: Whatever level of influence Tapanovitch had, it does sound like
Speaker 1: he provided a kind of moral clarity to what the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State's office was doing. As he saw it,
Speaker 1: the Gore people were trying to cheat their way into
Speaker 1: the White House, and they were doing it by dragging
Speaker 1: things out until the vote came out in their favor.
Speaker 4: I think their perspective was what this entire exercise was
Speaker 4: about was divining in some fashion the will of the
Speaker 4: electorate and taking as much time as it was necessary
Speaker 4: to do so. We thought maybe a good idea, just
Speaker 4: to comply.
Speaker 7: With the law.
Speaker 1: The thing is, election law in Florida was not totally clear. Yes,
Speaker 1: there was a statute on the books that said the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State's office shall ignore any vote totals that
Speaker 1: come in more than seven days after the election. But
Speaker 1: there was another statute, a more recent one, that seemed
Speaker 1: to conflict with the first one. This law said that
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State may ignore laid vote totals, but
Speaker 1: that she didn't have to.
Speaker 2: The Republicans who are trying to stop the recount cite
Speaker 2: one statute. The Democrats relied on the very next statute,
Speaker 2: shall or may, little words that could make a big difference.
Speaker 1: Like so many disputes that flared up during the two
Speaker 1: thousand recount, this one was decided in a court room.
Speaker 1: After hearing arguments from both sides, a circuit court judge
Speaker 1: ruled that may trumped shall, meaning Catherine Harris could reject
Speaker 1: laid vote totals that she wasn't required to by law.
Speaker 1: The judge also ruled that Harris could not refuse to
Speaker 1: grant extensions arbitrarily, she had to have real reasons for
Speaker 1: doing so. After conferring with her staff and Max Dpanovich,
Speaker 1: Harris addressed the ruling by asking the county canvassing boards
Speaker 1: to explain why they couldn't make the November fourteenth deadline.
Speaker 1: The next day, the secretary of State's office received memos
Speaker 1: from Palm Beach, Miami Dade, and Broward in which they
Speaker 1: cited legal confusion and logistical issues as reasons for needing
Speaker 1: more time. After reviewing memos, Harris swiftly concluded that extensions
Speaker 1: were not warranted. She would be sticking to her original position.
Speaker 16: Florida's Secretary of State, Catherine Harris has announced that she
Speaker 16: is rejecting any further efforts to recount ballots from the
Speaker 16: election by hand.
Speaker 3: The Secretary of State said that she will not consider
Speaker 3: any extension of the votes the vote she has now influenced.
Speaker 1: In a press conference, Harris announced that she would be
Speaker 1: certifying the election on the following Saturday, November eighteenth, Once
Speaker 1: all overseas absentee ballots have been received.
Speaker 9: The reasons given in their requests are insufficient to warrant
Speaker 9: waiver of the unambiguous filing deadline imposed by the Florida Legislature.
Speaker 2: The Gore team characterizing the Secretary's approach as kaf guys.
Speaker 19: We are very sorry that the Secretary of State has
Speaker 19: taken such a rash and a precipitous action.
Speaker 1: By this point, only Belusia County had finished their manual recount.
Speaker 1: The other counties were taking longer, and now it's like
Speaker 1: their efforts were going to come to nothing. But the
Speaker 1: Palm Beach Canvassing Board was not convinced that Harris's word
Speaker 1: was final, so they filed an emergency petition with the
Speaker 1: Florida Supreme Court asking whether they could still proceed with
Speaker 1: their manual recount.
Speaker 26: They are still hoping that the State Supreme Court will
Speaker 26: give them guidance about this particular county's recount. That is
Speaker 26: why there is a sense of some limbo here in
Speaker 26: Palm Beach County.
Speaker 2: All of this puts the focus on the Florida State
Speaker 2: Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The Florida Supreme Court issued a response the next day,
Speaker 1: though the seven justices weren't prepared to say whether Harris
Speaker 1: had to accept late counts. It was their position that
Speaker 1: in the interim palm Beach was allowed to keep counting.
Speaker 1: With that, the Florida Supreme Court opened a new chapter
Speaker 1: in the recount saga. Once again, an ostensibly apolitical Florida
Speaker 1: institution was faced with an impossible mission to remain nonpartisan
Speaker 1: while making decisions that had unavoidably political ramifications. Before we continue,
Speaker 1: I want to acknowledge that it's been quite a while
Speaker 1: since we heard anything about the butterfly ballot. You might
Speaker 1: be wondering did we just forget about that storyline or
Speaker 1: what That would be a fair question, except it wasn't
Speaker 1: really our decision to drop the butterfly ballot. It was
Speaker 1: the Gore campaigns. Because for all the attention the butterfly
Speaker 1: ballot got in the days after the election, it turned
Speaker 1: out not to be a viable issue for Gore. It
Speaker 1: was just a mistake that no one could plausibly fix.
Speaker 24: We determined that the butterfly ballot was a very difficult
Speaker 24: issue because the remedy is hard to figure.
Speaker 1: That's Benedict Cuney. He's a Florida lawyer who worked for
Speaker 1: Gore during the recount and led the team in Palm Beach.
Speaker 1: Cuney told me that even though the butterfly ballot didn't
Speaker 1: end up being a winning legal issue for Gore, it
Speaker 1: was incredibly important as a galvanizing symbol.
Speaker 24: The butterfly ballot was one way of signifying that something
Speaker 24: had gone horribly wrong with this election, and I think
Speaker 24: that did Bowy people. It didn't have the same kind
Speaker 24: of legal vitality that evaluating under votes or over votes,
Speaker 24: but nonetheless it had a lot of oomph and pizazz.
Speaker 1: In addition to being visual and concrete, the butterfly ballot
Speaker 1: made the Democrats feel like their fight was justified. It
Speaker 1: was the flip side of the Bush team's belief that
Speaker 1: Gore was trying to cheat to win. Here again is
Speaker 1: Max Tapanovitch, the Republican lobbyist who advised Catherine Harris during
Speaker 1: the recount.
Speaker 4: You know, the whole hanging chad thing, the determination of intent.
Speaker 4: The longer that torture went on, the more likely it
Speaker 4: was that they would manufacture votes. And the more pressure built,
Speaker 4: either whether it was the media or whether it was
Speaker 4: in the courts or otherwise, the more likely that the
Speaker 4: dam would give way, and you would say, well, they're
Speaker 4: registered in a heavy Democrat precinct, Well just assume their
Speaker 4: Democrats and would have voted for out Gore. Let's count
Speaker 4: that one for him. So you know, frequently people who
Speaker 4: won't to give me a hard time, we'll talk about
Speaker 4: us having stolen the election. And it is my belief
Speaker 4: and I believe it sincerely, that we prevented the election
Speaker 4: from being stolen.
Speaker 1: Stepanovitch, by the way, agrees that most of the Buchanan
Speaker 1: votes in Palm Beach were supposed to go to Gore.
Speaker 1: He just doesn't think it matters.
Speaker 24: I believe.
Speaker 4: That on that day, Election Day two thousand, that a
Speaker 4: majority of the people who went to the polls and
Speaker 4: intended to vote intended to vote for Al Gore. But
Speaker 4: we can't know that because they failed to vote properly.
Speaker 16: We're now going to take you to Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 16: In Palm Beach tonight, the voter recount is just beginning,
Speaker 16: and we just thought we would listen in as they
Speaker 16: begin their process.
Speaker 1: Canvassing board in Palm Beach started it's manual recount on Thursday,
Speaker 1: November sixteenth. It was going to be a much larger
Speaker 1: undertaking than the one percent test. To accommodate the extra
Speaker 1: volunteers and partisan observers that were needed to staff the effort,
Speaker 1: the recount was housed in the Emergency Operations Center in
Speaker 1: West Palm Beach, a cavernous space typically used as a
Speaker 1: command center for government operations during hurricanes. Outside the Emergency
Speaker 1: Operations Center, about four hundred Republican protesters gathered to voice
Speaker 1: their opposition to the recount. They held signs shouting out
Speaker 1: Katherine Harris, go cat go, and Harris we trust. Inside,
Speaker 1: volunteers and county employees took their seats and got ready
Speaker 1: to count. Over the course of the day, they would
Speaker 1: be joined by a team of lawyers representing Gore and Bush,
Speaker 1: a group that included John Bolton, the future National security
Speaker 1: advisor to Donald Trump. Among the local volunteers who showed
Speaker 1: up to help count ballots was John Winchester, the son
Speaker 1: of former election supervisor Jackie Winchester.
Speaker 14: It was a crazy time. We had to get in
Speaker 14: line early in the morning, and there were all these
Speaker 14: protesters out there. A lot of people in the election's
Speaker 14: office were just kind of, you know, we're nervous about it.
Speaker 1: John Winchester was no stranger to election administration. In addition
Speaker 1: to hanging around the election's office when his mom ran
Speaker 1: the show there, he also created the software that Palm
Speaker 1: Beach County used to register voters. Just like with the
Speaker 1: one percent count, most of the ballots that were being
Speaker 1: recounted were no brainers. You could tell right away who
Speaker 1: they were four. But not long after the counting started,
Speaker 1: Winchester noticed that the Republican observers standing over his shoulder
Speaker 1: were doing something strange.
Speaker 14: They were objecting to every ballot, Every ballot that wasn't
Speaker 14: punched out for Bush they were objecting to. I remember
Speaker 14: sitting at the table looking at a ballot, going, really, really,
Speaker 14: what are you objecting to? This ballot is clearly a
Speaker 14: vote for one candidate. There's one hole the next clear
Speaker 14: But I object they would so they were totally They
Speaker 14: were objecting without reason.
Speaker 7: These aren't pound and hanging and swinging on all pronounce
Speaker 7: but there we.
Speaker 10: Don't have time to argue.
Speaker 1: According to recount procedure, every ballot that got objected to
Speaker 1: was passed up to the three members of the canvassing board,
Speaker 1: who would look over it together and decide whether it
Speaker 1: bore any clear sign of voter intent. The problem was
Speaker 1: that the board was getting so many ballots passed up
Speaker 1: to them they couldn't get through them all.
Speaker 11: All right, your objections loaded, I say that, just it's
Speaker 11: markedly different than the other ones.
Speaker 1: Whatever. When Jackie Winchester's son told her what was happening
Speaker 1: at the emergency center, she could barely contain her anger.
Speaker 7: The Republican observers very quickly figured out that if they
Speaker 7: objected to ballots, even though there was obviously no reason
Speaker 7: to object, that they could slow down the whole thing.
Speaker 7: And it were certainly worked because the canvassing Board was
Speaker 7: getting all of these ballots if they had to look
Speaker 7: at when there was really no reason for them to
Speaker 7: look at them.
Speaker 1: Jackie Winchester felt that Teresa Lapour had made a big
Speaker 1: mistake in having every single ballot counted individually. What Lapour
Speaker 1: should have done, Winchester thought, was separate out the ballots
Speaker 1: with undervotes, and how the canvassing board prioritize those. The
Speaker 1: no brainers, meanwhile, could be assessed in bulk, thereby minimizing
Speaker 1: the opportunity for partisan observers to slow down the process.
Speaker 1: That was how Winchester had done recounts in the past
Speaker 1: when she was election supervisor, and it had made for
Speaker 1: a much more efficient process.
Speaker 7: I was very upset because I felt that she was
Speaker 7: messing up the recount. I knew that she was aware
Speaker 7: of the instructions for the way we normally did it,
Speaker 7: and that the way she was ignoring that was just chaos.
Speaker 1: So I felt that it was wrong. Winchester tried to
Speaker 1: get word to the canvassing board and to La Poor
Speaker 1: in particular, but she couldn't get through. In her frustration,
Speaker 1: Winchester later decided to go public with her complaints, telling
Speaker 1: reporters that her long serving Ormer assistant had failed her constituents.
Speaker 1: Winchester even attacked Lapour for the butterfly ballot, which she
Speaker 1: had previously regarded as an innocent lapse in judgment.
Speaker 7: Had we not had the butterfly ballot, had people not
Speaker 7: voted for your count and instead of Gore, I think
Speaker 7: there probably would not even have been a recount in
Speaker 7: Palm Beach County. The election probably would have been over
Speaker 7: an election night. It is amazing if the consequences of
Speaker 7: what seems at first like a fairly small mistake, did.
Speaker 1: You ever talk to Teresa about that? No, did you
Speaker 1: ever talk to again after all this?
Speaker 12: No?
Speaker 11: I did not.
Speaker 7: I was pretty disgusted, I have to say.
Speaker 1: On the second day of the Palm Beach recount, Friday,
Speaker 1: November seventeenth, there was an unexpected development out of Callahassee.
Speaker 17: Another day of hairpin turns in the court.
Speaker 2: Like a political Lazarus, Al Gore came back from the
Speaker 2: brink today the Supreme Court of Florida, breathing new life
Speaker 2: into his crusade to count every vote.
Speaker 1: The Florida Supreme Court had handed down an injunction forbidding
Speaker 1: Catherine Harris from certifying the election results until the Court
Speaker 1: could review the case.
Speaker 15: The Court on its own motion and joins the respondent
Speaker 15: Secretary of State from certifying the results of the November seventh,
Speaker 15: two thousand presidential election until further order of this Court.
Speaker 17: Well the full range of emotions in the Bush campaign,
Speaker 17: putting any plans for celebration on hold.
Speaker 1: The injunction was a major victory for Team Gore. Finally,
Speaker 1: the shot clock had been halted, and the possibility that
Speaker 1: Gore could still make up enough votes before the election
Speaker 1: results were certified was once again alive.
Speaker 12: Today's court decisions have given Gore the most precious commodity
Speaker 12: he could hope for time.
Speaker 1: Oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court were scheduled for Monday,
Speaker 1: November twentieth, But first, the State of Florida had to
Speaker 1: deal with something more important, an annual ritual that briefly
Speaker 1: put the recount out of everyone's minds.
Speaker 4: This contest is not for politicians.
Speaker 17: Lawyers are hanging chads. Welcome to Florida versus Florida State.
Speaker 1: That Saturday, tens of thousands of people from around the
Speaker 1: state descended on Tallahassee to watch the Florida State Seminoles
Speaker 1: play football against the Florida Gators. Even as the recount
Speaker 1: saga crept towards its third week, politicians and local businessmen
Speaker 1: crowded into luxury boxes to rub elbows with their fellow
Speaker 1: power brokers.
Speaker 17: Not a chilling northern of Florida.
Speaker 19: Evening the Florida State Seminoles post their rivals from.
Speaker 1: Days A number of key participants in the recount watched
Speaker 1: the game from a private box belonging to the President
Speaker 1: of FSU. Guests included two justices from the Florida Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The Bush team's top lawyer, Ben Ginsburg, Florida Governor Jeb Bush,
Speaker 1: and Secretary of State Catherine Harris. If things had gone
Speaker 1: according to plan, Harris would have been allowed to certify
Speaker 1: the election for Bush earlier that day. Instead, she had
Speaker 1: to wait for the Florida Supreme Court to weigh in.
Speaker 1: I would have assumed this was a stressful weekend for Harris,
Speaker 1: but when I asked her about it, she said, the
Speaker 1: Florida Supreme Court ruling just felt like another step in
Speaker 1: the legal process.
Speaker 6: You know, that's what they ruled. They're entitled to that,
Speaker 6: so we just follow the next step that the law required.
Speaker 1: I should mention Harris gave me kind of a hard
Speaker 1: time for the name of this podcast.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a fiasco, it wasn't a constitutional crisis. It
Speaker 6: was a close election, and what was fiasco esque was
Speaker 6: the way the media handled it.
Speaker 1: But other than that, she sounded surprisingly sanguine.
Speaker 6: Because I don't have one single solitary regret.
Speaker 24: I could do it over.
Speaker 6: Many people say, boy, if you could wave a wand
Speaker 6: and it never had to happen to you, would you
Speaker 6: do it. But I'm so grateful that I had a
Speaker 6: chance to be honorable in my actions, and so if
Speaker 6: someone could wave a match you wand take.
Speaker 1: It away, I wouldn't let them. Why are you grateful
Speaker 1: for it?
Speaker 6: I'm just grateful that I was, you know, in a
Speaker 6: spiritual sense, because I'm Christian. You know that maybe in
Speaker 6: all the earth thought I got chosen to handle that.
Speaker 6: I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I feel like I was
Speaker 6: found worthy.
Speaker 1: At the football game, Harris spoke to a group of
Speaker 1: boosters and a couple of reporters. You know what I
Speaker 1: dreamed of today, she told them. I dreamed that I
Speaker 1: would ride into this stadium on a horse, carrying the
Speaker 1: FSU flag in one hand and the certification in the other,
Speaker 1: while everyone around me cheered. As it happened. The game
Speaker 1: could not have played out more perfectly for the occasion.
Speaker 1: While the clock ran down, the two teams were separated
Speaker 1: by a single point and a potential game winning field goal,
Speaker 1: and the final play of regulation time had to be
Speaker 1: reviewed by the refs, and the.
Speaker 12: Two officials talked to each other. Crowd's going crazy.
Speaker 4: I mean the balls on the other side of walking.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Florida State actually won that game easily,
Speaker 1: thirty to seven.
Speaker 17: That is Florida's worst loss.
Speaker 1: It was a landslide, it.
Speaker 11: Was a round, and let's go quickly out of jack a.
Speaker 1: Roof outside the stadium. The game was only just approaching halftime,
Speaker 1: and though it wasn't exactly a tie, it really didn't
Speaker 1: feel like anyone was winning. On the next episode of Fiasco,
Speaker 1: how the confrontation in Florida went from a tangle of
Speaker 1: courtroom proceedings to an extra legal street fight.
Speaker 3: Why don't we do what democrats do?
Speaker 4: I said, Let's do some civil disobedience.
Speaker 3: Let's have a sit in, Let's create a ruckus.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects, and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons,
Speaker 1: madelin kaplan Ula Culpa, and me Leon Nafock. Our script
Speaker 1: editor was Daniel Riley. Our editorial consultant was Camilla Hammer,
Speaker 1: and we received additional editorial support from Lisa Chase. Our
Speaker 1: music and score are by Nick Silvester of god Mode,
Speaker 1: with additional music from Alexis Quadrado. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Speaker 1: Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans of Final Final V two Special
Speaker 1: Thanks to Luminary for a list of books, articles, and
Speaker 1: documentaries that we relied on in our research. Click the
Speaker 1: link in the show notes. Thanks to c SPAN, NBC
Speaker 1: News Archive, CNN, and Channel twenty in Palm Beach for
Speaker 1: the archival material you heard in today's show. Thanks for listening.