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In this story: Voting machine expert testifies Bush adds to list of disputed counties RELATED STORIES, SITES

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Judge Charles Burton, head of the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, explained to a Florida court on Saturday how election officials decided if a ballot should be counted as a vote.

Attorneys for Texas Gov. George W. Bush asked Burton to explain his board's procedures as part of their opposition to Vice President Al Gore's attempt to have the certified election results in Palm Beach County -- as well as in Miami-Dade and Nassau counties -- overturned.

Burton said he and the other members of the board tried to be consistent when they evaluated the ballots. Looking at a number of ballots with dimpled chad or other marks, he explained how the board decided whether those marks should be counted as a vote.

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Gore's attorneys have asked Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sauls Sanders to order a hand count of more than 10,000 disputed ballots in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. The Gore legal team earlier this week asked the Florida Supreme Court to order that recount to start immediately, but that motion was rejected.

In his opening statements, Gore attorney David Boies said the votes from Palm Beach County's manual recount should be added to the county's total even though it was not completed before the deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court. He added that votes counted before Miami-Dade county stopped its hand count should also be included along with the results of a machine recount in Nassau County.

"The issue before the court is: Is there or are there legal votes that have been rejected," said Boies.

Voting machine expert testifies

Bush attorney Barry Richard said the state legislature clearly meant for the county canvassing boards to have discretion, and that their decisions should only be contested if they abused that discretion.

"Presumably, what Mr. Boies is saying is that the legislature intended to give the losing candidate three free shots at the basket. If he doesn't like the initial machine tabulation, he can have a manual recount by the canvassing board. And if he's dissatisfied with the canvassing board's manual recount, he files an election contest and he gets another one by the court," Richard said.

The Bush campaign leads the race for Florida's 25 electoral votes by 537 votes and opposes the recount. It argues that if there is a recount, then all of the ballots in the disputed counties should be counted.

Sauls had said he hoped the trial would only last about 12 hours Saturday, but after more than eight hours, only the first three witnesses had reached the stand.

The Gore team's first witness was Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, who was as an expert on voting machines.

Brace demonstrated how the machine worked and how dimpled chad could be created. He said that in some cases a voter could accidentally touch the ballot with their stylus or that chad could build up in the machine and clog up a hole under a ballot, making it more difficult to punch.

Under cross-examination Bush attorneys questioned whether a voter could make a dimple with their fingernail and challenged Brace's knowledge of the voting machine. They also got Brace to concede that the sample ballot he used during his testimony was slightly thicker and harder to punch than the actual ballots used by voters in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties.

Judge Charles Burton of the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board testifies Saturday

They also questioned Brace's objectivity, saying he had been a consultant to Democratic Congressional redistricting efforts.

The Gore campaign then called Nicolas Hengartner, a Yale statistician who said the number of non-votes was much higher in counties that used the punch-out ballots than in counties that used optical counters that read colored-in circles.

Hengartner testified that he was asked to conduct the study by the Democrats but was not affiliated with either political party. He added that he did not even vote in the election because he is not a U.S. citizen.

Attorney Joseph Klock was in court to represent Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, less than 24 hours after arguing her cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He rejected Boies argument that the counties should accept the results of partial recounts.

"I do not believe, your honor, that there is any basis whatsoever to have a pick-and-choose manual recount in the state of Florida in a statewide race," Klock said.

Bush adds to list of disputed counties

The complex legal challenge became more convoluted Saturday when the Bush campaign asked to add its own legal challenges to the election contest brought by the Gore campaign.

The Bush lawsuit makes allegations about the vote counts in Broward, Volusia and Seminole Counties.

It accuses Broward County election officials of tampering with and manipulating ballots during the hand count, as well as providing inadequate security. It also alleged that bias and fatigue among the canvassing board members affected their counts.

The lawsuit claims that Volusia County election officials used arbitrary standards in their manual recount and failed to reject ballots they should have been thrown out.

The third count of the lawsuit asks Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Saul to rule that election officials in Seminole County did not mishandle more than 4,000 absentee ballot request by letting GOP volunteers fill in missing information. A Democratic activist is suing in another court claiming that that violated election laws and that all of the absentee ballots cast in the county should be thrown out

The Bush lawsuit says that if Sauls decides to grant the Gore campaign's request for manual recounts in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties then he should order hand counts in Broward and Volusia counties as well.

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Florida State Courts
Florida Southern District Court
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Palm Beach County government

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