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Here we go again. Four years after the 2000 election fiasco, Palm Beach County's three-member canvassing board will meet Monday to determine the intent of about 300 absentee voters who incorrectly filled out their broken-arrow primary election ballots. The canvassing board also will look at about 180 absentee ballots where voters either failed to sign ballot envelopes or whose signature differed from the one on file with the Supervisor of Elections Office. In total, the questionable ballots make up about 2 percent of the 23,395 absentee ballots the elections office had received by Saturday, three days before Tuesday's primary election....

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A state rule barring the 15 Florida counties with touchscreen voting from conducting manual recounts is at odds with state law, which requires hand recounts in some close elections, a judge ruled Friday. A coalition including a labor union, government watchdogs and other interest groups sued the state, arguing the law requires provisions for hand recounts in every county, no matter what voting technology is used. Administrative Law Judge Susan Kirkland agreed, writing that state law clearly contemplates "that manual recounts will be done on each certified voting system, including the touchscreen voting systems." With a primary...

Camera rolls as sandbar visitors hang from hooks BY STEVE GIBBS Upper Keys Staff Writer ISLAMORADA — Now they're hanging themselves by meat hooks at the sandbar. On July 12, officers from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, two Islamorada paramedics and the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a call at the Whale Harbor sandbar, a popular party hangout with a reputation for sometimes over-the-top behavior. What they saw shocked them. Five young people had erected a bamboo tripod, consisting of 15-foot-long poles with a block and tackle attached to the apex. A line extended...

A growing number of federal and state legislators are expressing doubts about the integrity of the ATM-like electronic voting machines that at least 50 million Americans will use to cast their ballots in November. Computer scientists have long criticized the so-called touchscreen machines as not being much more reliable than home computers, which can crash, malfunction and fall prey to hackers and viruses. Now, a series of failures in primaries across the nation has shaken confidence in the technology installed at thousands of precincts. Despite reassurances from the machines' makers, at least 20 states have introduced legislation requiring a paper...

Professor Joseph Olson of HamlineUniversitySchool of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election: Population of counties won by: Gore=127 million Bush=143 million Square miles of land won by: Gore=580,000 Bush=22,427,000 States won by: Gore=19 Bush=29 Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore=13.2 Bush=2.1 Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..." Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001847694_satrdr31.htmlThe never-ending storyBy Max AlbertSpecial to The TimesIt seems some Democrats are these days blinded by fury, steering off the leftward cliff. "Gore Won in Florida!" bellows the Democratic National Committee's Terry McAuliffe; Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wonders aloud if the president knew about 9-11 beforehand; and the mob clamors to burn (oil services provider) Halliburton at the stake for the unforgivable sin of charging for its services. Good grief, what ails these people? Never mind all the ballot reviews proving Gore would've lost whatever the decision of the courts to which he went running. Surely, they can't...

<p>MAHOPAC — Dennis Ullman likes to get close enough to history that he can touch and feel it. Once he found some 19th-century Bibles with gold-leaf pages in a Kingston junkyard and had them restored.</p> <p>After some purchases from an online auction site and a trip to a surplus center in Miami-Dade County, Fla., the psychologist now has about 500 pounds of that state's past at his fingertips. They come in the form of the infamous voting machines used in the 2000 presidential elections.</p>

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<p>SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- At least one in 10 voters nationwide cast ballots in the last presidential election on electronic voting machines, whose popularity is growing as counties replace the antiquated systems blamed for Florida's hanging chad debacle.</p> <p>But in Silicon Valley, computer scientists want to halt the trend -- at least until voting machines are redesigned to produce a paper record of every vote. They say paper backups offer more protection against hackers -- or political hacks -- who might tamper with electronic results.</p>

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W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 26 — Democrat Al Gore, criticizing President Bush as he tests the waters for another possible presidential bid, accused the administration Thursday of an "attack on civil liberties" and ignoring signs that Osama bin Laden had been planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It was the former vice president's second scathing attack on Bush in a week.Speaking at a Democratic fund-raising breakfast in Wilmington, Del., Gore took issue with the administration's handling of intelligence information prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and for its treatment of some terrorism...

So, it's the Florida election redux. But, unlike the Sore-Loser-Man, at least it didn't take Janet Reno weeks and a few court challenges to concede. Reno only kept people waiting a couple days. Remembering 2000, first the Democrats in Florida designed the "butterfly ballot." That style ballot worked fine in other states, just not in the Democratic strongholds of Florida. So they whined, cried and kicked up a big fuss because the very same punch card ballots used many places throughout the nation were somehow "unfair" for the people populating a few Florida counties. They got "hanging chads," and the...

<p>SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN, D-Conn., is worried about former Vice President Al Gore. Lieberman thinks that Gore came across as too anti-rich when they ran for the White House in 2000. And he thinks Gore is overly hostile toward business now, as they're eyeing each other and a new bid for the White House in 2004.</p>

Statement of Carol RobertsFebruary 19, 2001  A little more than a year ago, I found myself in the eye of a storm.  The whole country ? actually the whole world ? was watching Palm BeachCounty and the drama that was the aftermath of the election of 2000.  As I look back on that experience, I realize that there were lessons to learn beyond the need for election reform.  I was reminded in this dramatic way that democracy requires that we protect the involvement of every citizen and that the failure of government practices and policies can change the course...