Full Of Holes
There are two lessons from the confounding election of 2000: Every vote counts, and not every vote is counted.
That is clearly the case in Florida where the state's punch card voting system is at the heart of this national impasse. The problem is much more widespread than one might think. More than one third of all voters nationwide used a punch card ballot during the recent presidential election.
Usually the system works pretty well. But Correspondent Scott Pelley found out what election officials across the country have known for years: When an election is close, the punch card method is full of holes.
In Palm Beach County, Fla., it is as if Election Day never ended. But all the voting is now in the streets. A week after the vote totals were expected to be known, there is frustration instead of certainty. There's nothing Americans hate quite as much as a tie.
The presidential photo finish exposes a weakness in the punch card system. It turns out, in every election, a small percentage of the cards don't count. That's because some ballots contain too many votes for president. Others don't appear to have any presidential vote at all.
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The whole recount debate is about those ballots that appear to be blank and whether county officials should try to look for any hint of a perforation.
"You're seeing an attempt to try to determine the intent of the voter with this particular voting system, and it's not easy," said Richard Smolka, referring to the people hand counting the Palm Beach County ballots. "They're making a judgment," added Smolka, a leading authority on elections for 30 years who writes a widely respected newsletter for election administrators.
That judgment is based on the examination of "chad" - a new word in the American political dictionary. A chad is the little bit of paper to be punched out that sometimes sticks to a ballot and blocks the voter's choice.
In late night briefings, Palm Beach officials introduced this arcane election gremlin in endless variety.
"There's (a) hanging chad, because it's hanging by one corner but the rest of it is out," explained Palm Beach County spokesman Bob Nichols. "There's (a) swinging door chad, (it) obviously looks like a swinging door," he said. "Then there is the tri; that's the one that is hanging on by three corners but one corner is detached."
In most elections the faulty ballots are just dropped from the total. Some election officials using the punch card system think nothing of throwing out up to 5 percent of all ballots.
Joe Campbell, the election supervisor of Highlands County, Fla., had 1,000 ballots in his county that it couldn't count in this election. "In our county, our motto is 'Let the chips fall where they may.' How are you going to determine the voters' intent?"
About 37 percent of the voters in the country use the punch card system, but will the system have any credibility after this election? "It's going be tough," said Campbell. "I mean, I'm sure there's always going to be the question in the candidate's mind and rightly so."
In fact, experieced candidates know all about the problems with punch cards, and in tight races they often demand recounts. It happens all over the country, in all kinds of races. And it's been happening for years.
In Massachusetts, William Delahunt lost a 1996 primary race for Congress. But there was something suspicious: The tally showed 20 percent of the ballots were blank, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin.
"It didn't make any sense that 20 percent or more of the people would come out to vote on a rainy day with that being the only race on the ballot and not vote," said Galvin. "If we were to believe what the machines told us in reading these cards, that's what they were saying."
Delahunt demanded a hand recount, and he won by 119 votes. "This was a system utilizing machines that were archaic, that counted wrong, that almost count(ed) me out. But because we pursued it, I ended up in Congress," said Delahunt.
The kind of machines he described as "archaic" were first introduced in 1964. And most counties are simply content to dust them off every two years.
According to Smolka, replacing the machines is a low priority for many counties: "I think it is treated as the lowest item in the county budget; and it's one of the real problems that we have with elections."
In most states this election, the discarded ballots aren't enough to make a difference. But in Florida, the margin of victory is within the voting machine's margin of error. And many believe the system is just not accurate enough to deal with an election in which every vote truly counts.
Will the nation ever get a clear answer to who was elected president of the United States on Election Day?
Smolka believes we may never know. "I don't think we are going to have an answer that people will believe with certainty. I think that each side will believe that they won regardless."