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American Morning

Interview with David Cardwell

Aired November 07, 2001 - 11:24   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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Other political news now. A year ago, now, that America faced a presidential election that seemed to have no clear end and no clear winner. You might remember this from a year ago.

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HEMMER: Back here in Tallahassee, though. I want to bring David Cardwell, our elections analyst, we've dubbed him the John Madden of Election 2000. Good morning once again to you.

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HEMMER: Here he is again. A year later. David Cardwell, election law analyst. He's not John Madden. Good morning, David, good to see you.

DAVID CARDWELL, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Good seeing you again, Bill.

HEMMER: I was thinking of you yesterday. I went to the polling station here in Fulton County, and I voted on a punch card ballot.

CARDWELL: Hope you didn't leave a hanging chad.

HEMMER: Actually, when I went to drop the ballot into the box, there were signs indicating and instructing people to watch out for that chad.

CARDWELL: Well, here in Florida yesterday we had municipal elections in South Florida and in Miami-Dade County to avoid chads, they had what I call "chad checkers" to make sure there were no hanging chads, and we got through the elections with no problems.

HEMMER: Were people holding things up to light?

CARDWELL: I don't think they were doing that.

HEMMER: Hey, listen. What's changed in a year's time? The interest certainly was high. There was a major push in terms of financial money going into changing things in Florida, and for that matter, the rest of the country. We'll talk about the rest of America first. But your state, in Florida, the changes of significance, where have you seen them? CARDWELL: The legislature passed a very comprehensive election reform act which eliminates punch card voting as of next year. It also provided funds to the counties to purchase new voting equipment. And many of the larger counties are purchasing touch-screen voting. It's kind of like voting at an ATM machine, so we won't have punch cards and probably paper ballots in the future. But still, a lot of interest in making sure the elections are run correctly, and yesterday we had sort of the biggest test since a year ago, and everything seemed to go just fine.

HEMMER: You mentioned the interest. Is it waning at all, David?

CARDWELL: Well, I think the interest now of the public is more focused on the economy. Florida's taken a big hit with our tourism economy really hurting. And that's the primary political issue. But certainly still a lot of attention, a lot of interest in politics and the political parties, and other organizations have really stepped up to make sure that the voters are educated about the voting process, as well as about the candidates.

HEMMER: And tell us, in that state over the past year, certainly it has gotten a massive amount of attention. Did that steer people toward the booth this year? Or can you tell that?

CARDWELL: I don't know that we really can tell at this point. Turnout was fairly moderate yesterday. Probably a little bit higher than normal, for municipal elections. Of course, in South Florida, we just missed by one day having hurricane coming through. So, we always play it on the edge. But there does seem to be a lot more interest in the political system than I think we found before last year's election.

HEMMER: And there was certainly was a lot of interest in Florida to make sure that they were not the embarrassment once again during this election. And it appears, anyway, that they have taken that to heart. Other parts of the country, been able to gauge any difficulties or problems elsewhere?

CARDWELL: Well, it appears that the, sort of the movement for election reform is starting to wane a bit. In fact, there was a poll published yesterday a USA-CNN Gallup poll which showed that interest in election reform was now down to about 40 percent from being up in the 60 percent range. Florida is the only state so far that has passed comprehensive reform package and funded it. Two other states passed election reforms, but didn't fund them. There have been many bills introduced. Many task forces have been formed. There have been a couple of commissions, one that was headed by former Presidents Ford and Carter, that recommended reforms, but so far it doesn't seem to be working its way through the state legislatures.

HEMMER: Well, we will continue to track that. Quite interesting a year later. We all remember where we were about a year ago. Quickly, politics in Florida. Jeb Bush is going to run next year. Is he challenged at this point?

CARDWELL: Yes, he has already announced running for reelection. There are four Democratic candidates that have announced that they are running against him. Of course, the best known being Janet Reno, But also Bill McBride, Lois Frankel, who you may remember from last year in -- the house Democratic leader. And Senator Darryl Jones from Miami. At this point, that's sort of a wide-open race, though. Reno certainly has the name recognition. And I'm sure that that race will tighten as we get closer to election day 2002.

HEMMER: Also Florida's former Secretary of State, Catherine Harris, she's going to be running down the Sarasota area.

CARDWELL: Yeah, she's going to be running for congress. There is an open congressional seat in her home area of Sarasota, and she already announced that she'll be running for that office.

HEMMER: Hey David, good to see you again.

CARDWELL: Good to see you, Bill.

HEMMER: No more hanging chad, all right, pal? Thank you much, David, best of luck, ok? All right.

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