The Florida election process was the topic of many conversations this week, and students at The University of Memphis' law school quenched their thirst for knowledge Thursday, when Professor Steven Mulroy and Shelby County Election Commissioner David Lillard explained legalities and answered questions about the subject.
"Every single moment of this case gets 'curiouser and curiouser,' as they said in Alice in Wonderland," said Mulroy, a past attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice who specialized in civil rights.
Mulroy, who did his undergraduate work at Cornell and received his Juris Doctor from William and Mary in 1989, began the forum by giving an overview of the pieces of litigation going on in Florida.
He said the cases range from county battles, like the one over hand counts, to the Florida Supreme Court deciding whether the hand counts are legal since the mistakes were mechanical.
The case most on the mind of those who attended the forum was the one Palm Beach County.
"The problem lies within the statutes set for the state of Florida," said Mulroy who is currently working with private attorneys in Palm Beach County.
He said there are different statutes for paper, electronic and punch card ballots. The statutes detail the acceptable and legal layout of the ballots, and the Palm Beach punch card ballot was not laid out according to the specifications in the statute.
"If (it was just that) people got confused, that would be a much tougher case," Mulroy said.
He said the 19,000 votes that were thrown out because of double voting were caused by this violation of the statute, because the ballots were non-conforming.
The other factor in this case, said Mulroy, is that out of 67 counties, Palm Beach was the only one with such a high vote for Buchanan. Mulroy said citizens filed this complaint, and they would like to see a re-vote.
One of the supports for the case is a Palm Beach County citizen's complaint that when they told the poll workers they needed a new ballot they were denied -- which some poll workers have admitted to doing, said Lillard.
Lillard, a graduate of Cecil C. Humphrey's School of Law, shared the process the punch card votes go through in Tennessee, and most likely in Florida.
First, the voter punches the card and stubs are separated, then put in a sealed box, then delivered to a central location and finally put through a tabulation machine.
Lillard said the tabulation machines will push ballots out with chad, or pieces of paper, attached to them, as well as ballots with other errors.
"In Tennessee, the ballots are not counted again," said Lillard. But Florida has different rules, and there can be a hand recount of paper and punch card ballots that involves Republican and Democratic representative on teams.
However, Lillard told the audience, this re-counting often has a large margin of error.
Lillard said trying to decide whether the voter wants to vote for the smudged bubble or the one with the slash through it is hard enough on a paper ballot in some Tennessee counties.
He said the people determining whether chad is hanging off a punch hole is even harder.
Mulroy said disputes between Democratic and Republican team members will be settled by the Canvassing Board.
"If hand counts do not provide a substantial solvent, then a re-vote with the people who voted before will take place," Mulroy said.
Another alternative may be a statistical re-vote, which could determine the outcome without putting people back in the voting booths.
"There are problems with any of these remedies," Mulroy said. He said the problem lies with the results of the rest of the country's votes, which may sway some Florida voters if they vote a second time.
"If courts cannot afford a complete remedy, then they should not have a remedy at all," Lillard said.
Some of the audience members asked the panelists why Florida waited so late to realize the ballots were not conforming, since they had been published in several newspapers.
Mulroy said under the statutes, it is the responsibility of the ballot to inform the voter rather than the media. He also said the ballot directions said to punch on the right, because that is one of the guidelines in the statute -- but some of the punch holes were on the left.
"Election officials are no different than anyone else in this world. We learn from the school of hard knocks," said Lillard, when the audience asked why Palm Beach County did not have electronic voting. Lillard said he thinks Palm Beach County will switch to electronic voting after this.
Another subject the audience brought up at the forum was absentee ballots.
Mulroy said the deadline for the votes is midnight Friday. According to a voting act, uniformed overseas citizens have the same deadline to vote as citizens in the country.
Mulroy said if Florida does not have their electoral votes determined by Dec. 17, then the Electoral College can vote without them. However, Florida has laws to keep from having no representation in the Electoral College's vote. Those laws allow Florida's legislative branch to select the state's electors if no electors have been determined by five days before the Electoral College votes.
Mulroy said both houses of Florida's legislature are controlled by Republicans, which will most likely result in Bush winning the presidency.
"If Gore wins, all of this will no longer be an issue," said Mulroy.
