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American Morning

Bush Would Have Won Florida Using Common Election Standards

Aired May 11, 2001 - 09:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the Florida vote. It's hard to believe ballots are still being recounted more than 100 days after President Bush took office. The official recounts went on from November 7 to December 13, and President Bush, of course, squeezed out a win with 537 votes over Al Gore.

For the numbers from the latest recount, we go to CNN's Jeanne Meserve in our Washington bureau.

Jeanne, good morning.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

"USA Today," "The Miami Herald" and five other newspapers took a look at the overvotes and the undervotes in the Florida election, and this is what they found: There were 171,908 disputed ballots. Under a strict interpretation, George W. Bush won Florida by 152 votes. But under a lenient interpretation, Al Gore won by 332 votes.

This leads to some interesting questions, and here to answer those questions for us: Dennis Cauchon, who's a national report for "USA Today."

Thanks a lot for coming in today. First explain what "strict interpretation" is and what is "lenient interpretation."

DENNIS CAUCHON, "USA TODAY": The strict interpretation is what George Bush wanted: only clean punches and other certain votes count as votes. And under that interpretation he wins. Under Al Gore's interpretation, the lenient one, every dimple, every mark on the ballot should count as a vote for that candidate. Under that one, he wins. Under the one that most states use, George Bush -- George W. Bush does win.

MESERVE: So if Al Gore had gotten what he wanted and gotten the recounts in four counties in Florida, what would the outcome have been?

CAUCHON: He would have lost. What it shows is that -- we looked at all the ballots in all the states, but in 63 counties he never asked for recounts; and the truth was, that's where most of his votes were. They were in Republican-leaning counties that didn't use punch- card equipment, and he never asked for those votes. Had he asked, though, he may have won. MESERVE: OK, and if the Supreme Court had not stopped the recount of undervotes, what would the result have been?

CAUCHON: George W. Bush would have won, again.

MESERVE: Your newspaper makes a very interesting comment -- this -- it says that "errors speak louder than the voters in Florida." Explain what that means.

CAUCHON: Well, there were 170,000 errors, which is more than the entire voting population of Orlando, and these people did not have their vote counted.

MESERVE: And your count of the votes indicates that more voters intended to vote for Al Gore, is that right?

CAUCHON: Exactly. Most of these votes can never be recovered as legal votes. But if you look at how they voted on the whole ballot, most of them voted for Al Gore, in some way or another, and voted Democrat across the rest of ticket; but they spoiled their ballot.

MESERVE: Was the problem with the ballot design, or did you find there was a significant problem, also, with ballot instruction?

CAUCHON: Ballot instruction and ballot design. It wasn't that the voters didn't understand, because we found they voted correctly everywhere else on the ballot. It was just the presidential race that had some weird wording on describing -- it says, vote for a group. State law requires that it means, vote for the president and vice president, but people think, oh, vote more than once.

MESERVE: Now, Florida has just overhauled its voting system. Are those reforms going to be enough to fix these problems?

CAUCHON: They will fix some of the problems, but they still haven't developed a firm standard on how you count the votes. They've assigned that to Kathleen Harris, the secretary of state.

MESERVE: And still most other states have done nothing to overhaul their systems. Similar problems elsewhere, you suspect?

CAUCHON: Yes.

MESERVE: OK. Dennis Cauchon, "USA Today," thanks so much for joining us today.

And a second consortium of news organizations, including CNN, is also examining the votes. It will be interesting to see, Leon, how those results mesh with these.

Back to you.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Definitely; definitely. All right, thanks Jeanne; we'll see you in a bit.

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