Thousands of ballots miscounted in Palm Beach County

In a bizarre twist, the election that cost Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore her job became mired Wednesday in a major vote-counting problem when thousands of absentee ballots were counted twice.

Palm Beach County voters cast 31,138 absentee ballots on Tuesday. But when the counting was done early Wednesday morning, the totals showed 37,839 absentee ballots -- an extra 6,701.

With LePore skipping work the day after her narrow loss to Arthur Anderson, the discrepancy was disclosed during a Wednesday morning meeting of the elections Canvassing Board.

The recount, which entailed resending the ballots through optical scanning machines, started at 11 a.m. and finished late Wednesday. Determining the exact number of absentee ballots proved challenging: early Wednesday the total was 31,095. By day's end it was 31,138.

more…
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pabsentee02xsep02,0,335091,print.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Here we go again!!!!!!

:scared:

Dems or Repubs?

She is the Supervisor of elections after all. She is an Independent now, having changed from a Dem after the 2000 butterfly ballot fiasco.

more than jenna cleans her bong.

LePore was GOP then Dem now Indy.

Originally she had registered to vote as a Republican, like her dad, a disabled Korean War veteran who never told her just how he injured his left arm. But he never really was about partisan politics, and in 1979 LePore reregistered as an independent. When a third-party formally registered as "Independent," she changed her registration to "no party."

http://www.chron.com/cgi-bin/auth/story/content/chronicle/ae/books/01/04
/01/tapperch1.html

Is Terry a Democrat? It depends on what the definition of "Democrat" is. She was a registered Republican in her youth, switched to Independent, then entered politics as a Democrat. You might say that Terry was a Democrat in the same way that Bill O'Reilly is an Independent. She has since changed registration back to Independent.

(Terry ran for office the first time as a Democrat, and the first listed elective office she held was in 2000)

"When I ran, I chose Democrat because the incumbent was Democrat and the county registration is predominantly Democrat."

http://www.geocities.com/francis_uy/palmbeachvote.html
(kinda interesting site)

so the impression I got is that she started out as a Republican, changed to an Independent, and then had to register in a party when she ran for County Election Supervisor. Sometime after that (I'm hearing 2001 or 2 whispering in my brain) she switched back to Independent (no party) Did she have to re register as Dem recently for the run against Anderson in the Dem primary? Seems to make sense.

better chronology (snip)
"This is not the first time LePore has changed parties. She first registered as a Republican in 1973 but switched to non-party in 1978. She has since said she followed her parents in registering with the GOP but changed when she increasingly was working with political candidates and campaigns in the elections office. Before running for office in 1996, she became a Democrat, in
part because her predecessor was a Democrat. Brad Hahn can be reached
at bhahn@s... or 561-832-2905.
http://radiobergen.org/terrorism/binladen_8.htm

BY all acounts she is either basically non-political or somewhat to dim to really have a concept of what party she might be. She also spent time in the 80s as a "private stewardess" for Adnan Khashoggi! This site implies she was put in place throught the Reagan-Khashoggi connection simply in order to mess up the FL election process. Strange duck to be a lifetime election worker.

nt

it would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous.

was once upon a time the girlfriend of Adnan Kashoggi? Just thought I'd toss that little factoid out there. Small world, isn't it?

got links? my search engine is siezed ;)

i thought she was a hostess on one of his planes, or something like that.

yeah, like a girlfriend.

I found his report.


saywhat (1000+ posts) Sun Aug-29-04 07:58 PM
Original message
E-mail from Greg Palast: FL will be rigged again.

Edited on Sun Aug-29-04 08:02 PM by saywhat
Madame Butterfly Flies Off with Ballots
Florida Fixed Again? Absentee Ballots Go Absent
by Greg Palast

Sunday, August 29, 2004.

On Friday, Theresa LePore, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, candidate for
re-election as Supervisor of Elections, chose to supervise her own election, no one
allowed. This Tuesday, Florida votes for these nominally non-partisan posts.

You remember Theresa, "Madame Butterfly," the one whose ballots brought in the big
vote for Pat Buchanan in the Jewish precincts in November 2000. Then she failed to
do the hand count that would have changed the White House from Blue to Red.

This time, Theresa's in a hurry to get to the counting. She began tallying absentee
ballots on Friday in her own re-election race. Not to worry: the law requires the
Supervisor of Elections in each county to certify poll-watchers to observe the
count.

But Theresa has a better idea. She refused to certify a single poll-watcher from
opponents' organizations despite the legal requirement she do so by last week.
She'll count her own votes herself, thank you very much!

And so far, she's doing quite well. Although 37,000 citizens have requested
absentee ballots, she says she'd only received 22,000 when she began the count.
Where are the others? Don't ask: though she posts the names of requesters, she
won't release the list of those who have voted, an eyebrow-raising deviation from
standard procedure.


And she has no intention of counting all the ballots received. She has reserved for
herself the right to determine which ballots have acceptable signatures. Her
opponent, Democrat Art Anderson, had asked Theresa to use certified hand-writing
experts, instead of her hand-picked hacks, to check the signatures.

Unfortunately, while Federal law requires Theresa to allow a voter to correct a
signature rejection when registering, the Feds don't require her to permit
challenges to absentee ballot rejections.

I know what you're thinking. How could Madame Butterfly know how people are voting?
Well, she's printed PARTY AFFILIATION on the OUTSIDE of each return envelope. That
certainly makes it easier to figure out which ballot is valid, don't it?

And dear Reader, please take note of the implications of this story for the big vote
in November. Millions have sought refuge in absentee ballots as a method to avoid
the dangers of the digitizing of democracy. Florida and other states are reporting
400%-plus increases in absentee ballot requests due to fear of the new computer
voting machinery. Some refuge. LePore is giving us an early taste of how the Bush
Leaguers intend to care for your absentee ballot.

If there's no safety in the absentee ballot, how about the computerized machines?
The LePores of America have that one figured out too.

On Friday, the day on which Theresa began her Kremlim-style vote count, the New York
Times ran a puff piece on Jeb's Palm Beach political pet. Cub reporter Amy
Goodnough derided fears of Democrats who painted "dark scenarios" about the computer
voting machines Madame Butterfly installed over the objections of the state's
official voting technology task force.

If you're wondering why the experts told her not to use the machines, I'll tell you
-- because the New York Times won't. It's not because the voting specialists are
anti-technology Luddites. The fact is that Florida counties using touch-screens
have reported a known error rate 600% greater than the alternative, paper ballots
read by optical scanners. And those errors have occurred -- surprise! --
overwhelmingly in African-American precincts.

First Brother Jeb has teamed with LePore to keep the vote clean and white.
Together they have refused the Democrats request for the more-reliable paper ballots
as an option for voters.

In Leon County, by contrast, Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho insisted on paper
ballots and did not lose a single vote to error in the March presidential primary.
Sancho told me it's a slam-dunk certainty that the computer screens will snatch away
several thousand Palm Beach votes.

Theresa and the Jebster have been quite close since LePore came out of the closet.
The Republican-turned-Democrat, nominally independent, this year accepted the sticky
embrace of the Republican Party. One really has to wonder if she ever truly left
the Blues in the first place.

It's a shame that Supervisor LePore was too busy counting her votes and rejecting
ballots to respond to my phone calls. I wanted to be the first to congratulate her
on her election victory -- two days before the election. Or maybe she fears I might
be the early birddog who catches the butterfly as she turns back into a worm.

**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy. His article on vote manipulation in Florida for Harper's Magazine, was
nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award.

On September 28, Disinfo/Ryko will release on DVD his film, "Bush Family Fortunes,"
based on Palast's investigative reports for BBC Television -- described as
"courageous reporting." (Michael Moore) and "twisted and maniacal" (Katherine
Harris). View a 2-minute preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

Sign up for Greg Palast's elections investigation reports at
http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

a little computer glitch?

were scanned twice.
Does, 6000 "extra" votes.

like Arthur Anderson :)

to vote absentee in Nov???? Maybe they really don't think they can get aways with altering the electronic machines and figured this would be the best way to win!

That's why they are asking for early absentee votes to be sent in.

that's just too wierd.