Exhausted, cross-eyed, Florida counters finally finish

By DAVID USBORNE

FORT LAUDERDALE - They were punch-drunk in the courtroom on the sixth floor of the County Court building in Fort Lauderdale.

Small jokes triggered ripples of exhausted laughter. Fingers massaged temples and occasionally grasped the paper cups of iced water from vacuum flasks.

It was in this room, where the accused normally stand before judge and jury, that the three-member canvassing board of Broward County ploughed through approximately 1500 disputed ballots, squinting at each of them to determine whether they held a previously undetected vote for one of the United States presidential candidates.

While there was a sober hush in the counting room, interrupted only as each board member pronounced on the status of each dimple and chad, on the street outside there was bedlam. A bellicose crowd of supporters of George W. Bush was assembled to yell their disdain for the handcount and to barrack any Democrat who ran their gauntlet.

Their main target was Peter Deutsch, a Democrat United States Congressman who represents Broward in Washington DC. He emerged from the court building to do interviews with the numerous television news stations encamped here. Mostly, however, his mission was a hopeless one. The protesters would not let him speak.

The crowd yelled insults, "Peter the cheater," and blew whistles. They were smartly dressed but this was no gentle disturbance. What faced Deutsch was mostly a Republican rent-a-mob, brought to court by party organisers. They did not show respect for the Congressman but something near hatred. "Shame on you," they screamed and jabbed their fingers towards him like striking union workers unloading bile on a scab.

Deutsch was evidently facing physical threat and quickly found himself inside a ring of burly police officers. Without them, the Congressman would quickly have been swallowed by the elbow-jabbing throng, which bore party-issued signs lampooning "Gore-Lieberman" placards of the campaign. They read, "Sore-Loserman."

Inside and out the atmosphere seemed almost comical. Bob Dole, the former Republican presidential candidate, appeared to bemoan to the cameras ballots that had been disqualified in several counties from military personnel abroard. The protesters surrounded him too, but they were silent. Until, that is, a lone Gore supporter penetrated their midst with a sign that read, "America will never accept Bush."

The woman, so nervous she seemed ready to pop, forced her sign into the forest of others and accidentally jabbed a man in the face. "She's attacking me with her sign. She's vicious, stop her," the man shouted, startling Dole, who stopped mid-sentence.

"We're trying to conduct a live interview here," a furious producer shouted, lunging at him.

The Gore campaign will target the Miami-Dade canvassing board, which abandoned its handcount last week only after a crowd such as the one at Fort Lauderdale invaded its county headquarters and almost lynched a Democrat lawyer whom they saw leaving the counting room with a ballot in his back pocket. Just one ballot, which was a dummy one for training. It is has subsequently become clear that the board members threw in the towel in part because of that protest.

With a small army of police officers on hand, minute by minute, the Broward canvassing board members worked undisturbed.

Even the sight of a fresh face entering the room caused one board member, County Commissioner Suzanne Gunzberger, to raise her eyes from the ballots and offer an almost amused smile. It seemed to say, yes, this is surreal, isn't it? But they worked on doggedly.

The disputed ballots were those that were not counted at all by the electronic tabulators, usually because the voter did not punch the hole all the way through. Gunzberger and her two colleagues, Judge Robert Lee and Judge Robert Rosenberg - the only Republican among them - took each ballot one by one and studied them intently. "That's a hanging chad," Lee pronounced after staring at one ballot for several moments. The other board members agreed. A new vote for Gore was noted. In the course of several minutes, 11 new votes went to Gore, 3 to Bush and one to Ralph Nader.

Finally, they reached a small milestone. "We are entering the City of Fort Lauderdale," Lee announced, reaching for a new box filled with the crucial ballots. Everyone in the room - the board members and 20-odd lawyers and observers from the two parties - emitted a resounding groan. Would their work ever come to an end?

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