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But the real vote fraud is ignored and this stuff below is widely reported and comdemned.

Calls prompt charge of dirty tactics

BY PETER WALLSTEN AND LESLEY CLARK

pwallsten@herald.com

Posted on Tue, Nov. 05, 2002

Thousands of likely Democratic and independent voters received election-eve phone calls from a Republican firm claiming that Gov. Jeb Bush is the only candidate for governor who supports ''traditional'' families, suggesting that Democratic challenger Bill McBride supports gay marriages.

The calls -- one of which was recorded Monday on the home answering machine of a Palm Beach County legislator -- prompted immediate charges from McBride of dirty tactics by the Bush campaign.

''It's just such a wrong thing to do to drive wedges between people,'' McBride said.

Bush, flying around the state Monday aboard the private Boeing 737 owned by South Florida billionaire Wayne Huizenga to lead get-out-the-vote rallies, heard about the calls from reporters and immediately ordered that the calls cease.

Soon after McBride held a press conference Monday to denounce the calls, the GOP realized that Orlando political consultant John Dowless, former executive director of the state Christian Coalition, had initiated the calls without clearing the script with party officials.

= [100.0] = [100.0] ---calls -- hearing the voice of former national Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed -- before they were stopped.

''I didn't know about the calls, and I don't support them at all,'' Bush told reporters during a break from making personal calls to likely GOP voters during a stop in suburban Tampa. ``It's not true that there's only one candidate who supports the traditional family. That's outrageous. I know that Mr. McBride does as well.''

The calls soured what was otherwise a positive day for Republican strategists -- who believe they have set the stage for a GOP sweep in today's elections, from the Governor's Mansion to the state Cabinet and big wins in the Legislature -- and handed McBride one final weapon to motivate his core supporters against Bush.

It marked an unusual goof for a party that has raised about $50 million for the 2002 elections -- at least twice as much as the Democrats -- and gave a rare glimpse into a side of political strategy rarely exposed to view.

Both parties have spent millions in recent weeks placing similar recorded calls to voters, targeting them with precision based on gender, race, ethnicity, age and geography.

Others making recorded calls for Bush include golfer Jack Nicklaus, football quarterback Bernie Kosar and America's Most Wanted host John Walsh.

SCRIPT NOT CLEARED

Dowless said Monday that he had spoken in a general way with Republican strategists about a message to appeal to Christian conservatives, but that he had forgotten to clear the script before letting the calls begin.

''They came to me because they wanted to address those social conservative voters,'' Dowless said. ``The bottom line is I screwed up.''

SIMILAR TACTIC

The calls were similar to a mail piece sent last week by Dowless' firm -- and paid for by the state GOP -- touting Bush's anti-abortion stance and noting an old McBride quote saying he would consider looking at Vermont's law of allowing civil unions for gays.

McBride, who has campaigned with his wife, Adelaide ''Alex'' Sink, and their children, said Monday he opposes gay marriage and civil unions.

State GOP Chairman Al Cárdenas said Monday that the script was ''not the message we're looking for,'' but said it was a minor mistake.

''We're making millions and millions of calls with dozens of vendors, so this script happening once is a pretty good track record,'' he said.

The calls cap a campaign that, at least on the surface, steered clear of social issues, with both candidates focusing instead on education and taxes -- until now.

The two men differed during a radio debate last month on gay adoption, when Bush supported Florida's ban and McBride called it ``discrimination.''

On Sunday, Bush drew a standing ovation at a Tampa evangelical church when he spoke of his support for protecting life, even that of the ``unborn.''

Two days earlier, in Panama City, Bush told a crowd that he prays every day -- and was serenaded by church choirs chanting, ``Come, Jeb, Come, Jeb.''

Both candidates have moved to their party's core issues in recent days, however, with strategists convinced that the race could be close and the outcome dependent upon the party with the best Election Day strategy to turn out their base.

BUSH IN PENSACOLA

Bush used a three-day bus tour and his Monday fly-around to underscore that point, telling a crowd in conservative Pensacola that, ``You're looking at the first Republican governor [in Florida] to win reelection in modern times.''

He was introduced by U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Panhandle Republican, who warned the faithful that ''South Florida liberals'' will be doing all they can to oust the incumbent governor.

Bush held airport rallies in Pensacola, Jacksonville and Orlando, and appeared in Tampa before finishing his day with a glitzy rally in Coconut Grove.

He flew across the state in style aboard Huizenga's jet, which is furnished with plush, baby-blue seats and couches in three rooms, decorated in Art Deco style. The plane cost the campaign $16,000 for fuel and landing fees.

Bush, traveling with Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, first lady Columba Bush and their son, George P. Bush, stopped at a suburban Tampa headquarters to call some voters.

At one point, Brogan brought levity by calling McBride campaign Communications Director Alan Stonecipher -- not known among reporters for a friendly demeanor -- to ask for his vote. Stonecipher replied that he had already voted absentee.

McBride, who has appeared in recent days with Bill Clinton and Al Gore to rally the Democratic Party's strongest supporters -- most notably blacks -- toured key media markets Monday with singer Jimmy Buffett.

The Democratic nominee served as the self-described ''warm-up'' act for Buffett in airport tarmac concerts in West Palm Beach and Orlando.

The bitterness of the final day served as a fitting metaphor for a campaign that grew increasingly nasty as each candidate carved out a message designed to appeal to their base of voters.

GORE IN MIAMI

Gore, appearing Monday morning in Miami with McBride, reached back to his 2000 themes of casting the campaign as a battle between the haves and the have-nots.

The former vice president, who lost the White House to Bush's brother by just 537 votes after Florida's disputed election, warned of four years of ''division'' that would pit ''one group of Floridians against another group of Floridians, the interests of the powerful against the interests of the state as a whole,'' if the governor is reelected.

Both campaigns ended the day bracing for what could be a messy election, between potential problems with new touch-screen voting systems and lines resulting from time-consuming ballots full of amendments and candidates from top to bottom.

Amendment 1 missing on ballots

Palm Beach Post

November 5 2002

http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/news/1105haverhill.html

The biggest voting glitch in Palm Beach County occurred at Haverhill Town Hall where three of the five voting machines didn't show a ballot for Amendment 1, the amendment authorizing the death penalty for capital crimes. Barbara Thompson, the poll station's veteran clerk, said the screens displayed Amendment 2 in Amendment 1's position.

Voters who didn't cast their ballot on those machines were allowed to cast a ballot on the other two machines or return to the polls later in the day, Thompson said. The faulty machines were replaced by 10:30 a.m.

Ballots cast on them will still have their votes recorded, she said. It was unclear whether anyone could have voted twice on Amendment 2 and if the elections supervisor could exclude those extra votes.

Many voters waited to cast their ballot on the two glitch-free machines.

"They're going to work very hard to not get knocked out," said Rusty Gordon, a precinct captain for the Democratic party who manned a table near the street outside town hall.

(READ THIS STORY BELOW VERY CAREFULLY):

Touchscreen Voting Suffers Setback

Scattered Problems Mar Debut of Touchscreens and Other High-Tech Voting Systems

The Associated Press

Nov. 5 —

Scattered problems, a few serious but most described as hiccups, marred the debut of touchscreens and other high-tech voting machines Tuesday, including in all of Georgia and in Florida's most election-challenged counties.

The most serious appeared in two Georgia counties where officials said they could result in contested elections and lawsuits. The state has the nation's largest deployment: 22,000 touchscreens.

In one county, ballots in at least three precincts listed the wrong county commission races. Officials shut down the polls at one point to fix the problem but didn't know how many wrong ballots were cast or how to correct errant votes. In another, a county commission race was omitted from a ballot.

Elsewhere, some machines froze up and others had to be rebooted. Dozens were misprogrammed, and cards voters need to access machines malfunctioned.

"They are locking up, and we have to turn them off and turn them on. The voting is taking a little longer," said Mary Cranford, election superintendent in Georgia's Coweta County.

But those troubles did not look to have the potential to cascade into the meltdown seen during the Sept. 10 primaries in Florida, where Democratic gubernatorial contest results were delayed for a week. Analysts said better planning and training of poll workers in operating the machines paid off, though some cautioned that the new systems' reliability can't be guaranteed.

"A lot of these products were rushed to market," said Rebecca Mercuri, a Bryn Mawr College computer science professor and expert on election technology.

The addition of more than 200 brings to 510 the number of counties nationwide with electronic voting systems, according to Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C., research company. That's 16 percent of counties representing one in five registered voters.

Analysts expect 75 percent of counties to have such systems within six years, boosted largely by a new $3.9 billion federal law to help states replace outdated equipment.

Election officials were anxious heading into Tuesday, given problems encountered with touchscreens during September primaries in Florida and Maryland. They stepped up poll-worker training to better cope with any machine failures.

"It was definitely an open question on September 10th whether the problem was the machines or the people running them. Now, it's leaning toward the explanation that it was the people," said Dan Seligson, spokesman for Electionline.org, a nonpartisan election-reform group.

In Montgomery County, Md., where results of a tight congressional primary race were delayed by faulty planning, a programming error caused machines at 30 precincts to display a ballot with a header reading "Democratic."

The header would normally be blank, but the glitch does not affect the tally, said Margie Roher, an elections administrator. In Florida's Miami-Dade County, one of two most troubled during the primaries, machines were misprogrammed at one precinct, meaning voters had to use substitute paper ballots for the first three hours.

Forty to 50 touchscreen machines scattered among more than 5,000 in Broward County had to be taken offline because of incorrectly loaded software or the wrong ballot, officials said. The glitches did not prevent anyone from casting votes, they added.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno, who during the primary had been delayed because machines weren't ready, voted on schedule Tuesday.

"They were prepared for me this time," she said.

Many voters offered good reviews in Georgia.

"It's almost too simple," Joe Penley of Barnesville raved. "My 4-year-old granddaughter could do it. It's hard to make errors if you just follow instructions."

Nonetheless, one touchscreen machine locked up and crashed as Mary Perdue, wife of Georgia's Republican gubernatorial candidate Sonny Perdue, was voting.Officials rebooted the computer, and she continued with ease.

"Any time you have that many new computers, you're going to have some problems, but the workers handled it well," she said.

No troubles were reported in the nation's largest county to go all-electronic: Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston. Harris' system uses a dial to highlight names rather than a touchscreen.

But in Tarrant County, Texas, which includes Fort Worth, officials said tallies may not be finalized until Wednesday night because of a programming error with older-style machines.

Mercuri warned that some problems with the new touchscreen systems may never be known because they lack paper backups for doublechecking ballots.

Diebold Election Systems, which supplied machines for Georgia and Maryland, said election officials never asked for such features, which worries Mercuri.

(Ofcourse not they want easy vote fraud!!!)

She said any misprogramming isn't always obvious, "so there's no way to prove that (a machine) didn't cast a vote for Candidate B when you cast for Candidate A."

AP Technology Editor Frank Bajak contributed to this report.