Down & Dirty Read Free Page B

at Evans Elementary School will not register a vote
     for president. This is a precinct that Gore will win with 98.81 percent to Bush’s .66 percent—of the votes that register.
    Six of the ten machines at Dunbar miss punches as well in their morning tests. At Dunbar Elementary, 105 out of the 820 ballots
     won’t register a vote for president. This is a precinct that Gore will win with 98.74 percent of the vote to Bush’s 1.12 percent.
    These rates of discarded ballots—roughly 13 percent for both precincts—will be the highest rate of unread ballots in the county.

    Liz Hyman, thirty-four, sits outside the Delray Beach Gore HQ. She’s a lawyer at Akin Gump in Washington, D.C., but she’s
     also worked for the Justice Department, Gore’s office, and for the U.S. trade representative for the Clinton administration,
     and she’s taken some vacation time to help volunteer with the Gore campaign. A friend has a house in Palm Beach, so that just
     happened to be where she chose to do her volunteering.
    Since 7 A.M. , Hyman’s been sitting at a table outside the building where she’s trying to snag volunteers for various “Get Out the Vote”
     activities. Shekeeps hearing something weird about the ballot. Volunteers who have voted already complain that it’s difficult to understand;
     many are upset. Word gets out: it’s a problem elsewhere in the county, too. Conspiracy theories start cropping up: it makes
     it look like you’re voting for Buchanan; maybe someone tampered with it!
    At around 8 A.M. , Hyman busts out her cell phone and calls her dad, Lester Hyman, another D.C. attorney. “You’re not going to believe what’s going
     on down here,” she says. It’s something that maybe people at Gore HQ in Nashville should know about. At the Justice Department,
     Hyman was once deputy to Ron Klain, a hotshot Democratic attorney and Gore guy. Maybe call him?
    Klain’s on his way to work that morning when he gets the call. Lester Hyman doesn’t really understand the problem—something
     about people accidentally voting for Buchanan?—but says Liz is upset.
    Klain knows that Liz does not upset easily. When he arrives, he goes into the “boiler room,” where Gore’s main on-the-ground
     political adviser, Michael Whouley, is working away. Klain gives Whouley Liz’s name and number, vouches for her credibility.
    Seconds later, Liz Hyman’s cell phone rings. It’s Joe Sandler, general counsel of the Democratic National Committee.
    “I hear there’s a problem with the ballot?” he asks.

    There is a problem with Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot. People are confused. Many are angry. At a Greenacres condominium
     clubhouse John Lazet, sixty-six, votes the right way after a proctor gives him a second ballot. But he decides to take matters
     into his own hands.
    He calls the supervisor’s office but finds the man who answers the phone less than sympathetic. So he and two buddies drive
     to LePore’s office. There they find her outside in the middle of a TV interview. Lazet starts verbally coming at her, but
     that quickly ends when LePore says that she doesn’t have time to talk to him. She thinks it’s just a few cranky old men. Nothing
     to worry about.

    Assistant poll clerk Ethel Brownstein, seventy-one, arrives at the Lucerne Point Club from her home in Lake Worth at around
     5:45 A.M . By seven, there’s already a long line of voters, mostly seniors. She starts directing traffic: “You go here, you go here,
     you go here.”
    At around 8 A.M. , a woman comes to Brownstein and tells her she’s having a problem.
    “I put this thing in, but it doesn’t go in,” she says.
    Brownstein enters the voting booth to see what she’s talking about. The rectangular ballot has gone in straight, in the slot
     underneath the ballot, but for some reason the stylus to punch the hole isn’t going through.
    “I want to vote for Mr. Gore,” she says.
    Brownstein looks at the ballot. “This is