Florida Elections

JEB BUSH: Florida governor and younger brother of Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush. Republican Jeb Bush is his brother's Florida campaign manager. He withdrew from the state Elections Canvassing Commission, the panel that will ultimately certify Florida's election results, to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. He is a former real estate developer. * * BILL DALEY: Al Gore's campaign chairman, who is in Florida giving most of the news conferences on Gore's behalf.

It took two weeks, but Florida Rep. Allen West conceded defeat Tuesday by Democrat Patrick Murphy, deciding not to further contest the close race. “For two weeks since Election Day, we have been working to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly. We have made progress towards that goal, thanks to the dedication of our supporters and their unrelenting efforts to protect the integrity of the democratic process. While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election,” West said in a statement.

An unlikely Republican army of well-heeled protesters took to the streets anew Friday, adding an angry, unpredictable element to the recount drama in South Florida. Carrying homemade signs and wearing T-shirts reading "Bush Recount Team," hundreds of button-down rebels from Miami's suburbs--and from as far away as Oregon and Rhode Island--shouted down Democrats. Overnight, someone hurled a brick through the front window of a local Democratic Party headquarters.

WASHINGTON - Election officials in at least 11 Florida counties have uncovered potentially fraudulent voter registration forms submitted on behalf of the state GOP, a debacle that has punctured a hole in the Republican National Committee's get-out-the-vote operation less than six weeks before election day. By Friday, elections supervisors had found dozens of forms turned in by the party that had wrong birthdays or spellings of names that didn't match...

A Havana-born Republican state senator rode heavy support from Miami's Hispanic community Tuesday to become the first Cuban-American elected to Congress, winning the seat held by the late Claude Pepper for nearly three decades. In an ethnically divisive race, state Sen. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, 37, received 49,638 votes, or 53%, to 43,759, or 47%, for Brooklyn-born Democrat Gerald Richman, 48, who was making his first run for elective office.

Although she oversees Florida elections, Secretary of State Katherine Harris on Friday told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that she had little knowledge of the election department operations and learned of widespread problems in presidential balloting only from news reports. Harris said she delegated authority and was unable to respond to a series of questions about election day complaints, voter education and the state's efforts to purge felons from voter rolls.

The federal judge who will decide whether to stop the hand recounts of disputed presidential ballots in Florida was appointed by President Clinton but drew effusive bipartisan praise three years ago from the state's two U.S. senators. The record on U.S. District Judge Donald M.

Beneath a 30-foot banner proclaiming "Election Day Irregularities," emotional if unverified charges poured forth from a community center stage here Saturday like a sordid list of Third World abuses. Just how bad was Florida's now infamous presidential election? In Plantation, an elementary school polling place was demolished three weeks before election day, but many voters weren't told of the new polling site, angry witnesses claimed.

When Democratic candidate Al Gore challenged the results of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, attention focused on the state's problem-plagued punch-card ballots with their hanging and pregnant chads. But another voting system was even less reliable than the punch cards, the Orlando Sentinel found: an optical scanning system used in 15 of Florida's 67 counties. That system, in which ovals on paper ballots are filled in by pencil and scanned at a central county office, resulted in 5.

WASHINGTON - Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant. The controversy in Florida -- which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County --  has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million -- routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations.

WASHINGTON - Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant. The controversy in Florida -- which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County --  has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million -- routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations.

A suspicious package that appeared to vibrate forced the temporary closure of Florida's election headquarters Monday, but it turned out to be a harmless bundle of documents shaken by air flowing from the ventilation system. A security guard found the package in the Division of Elections building about 6:30 a.m., and employees were kept out while the building was searched. They were allowed back into the building just before noon.

Mayor Jimmy Weekley, popular owner of grocery stores immortalized by singer Jimmy Buffett, has defeated a dive captain, a real estate agent, a homeless man and a woman who rescues chickens in the lively mayoral race to govern the wacky Florida Keys tourist town of Key West. "It's fun. This is the town that raised me, and it's my way of giving back," said the Democratic Weekley, 56, a native Key Wester who spent about $21,000 in campaign funds to win his third two-year mayoral term.

When it came to winning votes, Miriam McKinzie Oliphant was a natural. "What an amazing campaign personality. My constituents just wanted to hug her," remembered state Rep. Stacy J. Ritter. For Oliphant, who was elected Broward County's election supervisor by a landslide two years ago, the problems came in handling other people's ballots. Widely blamed for bungling the last primary election, she is now the target of a criminal investigation into the stewardship of her office.

MIAMI -- An unusual thing happened Tuesday in Florida, land of the perplexingly designed ballot and dragged-out vote tally. They held an election again, and it came off smoothly. There was even a winner before people went to bed. "No voter was turned away if they were at the correct precinct and they were eligible voters," boasted Miriam M. Oliphant, elections supervisor in Broward County, who was criticized for the glitches last time around.

When former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno fainted on an auditorium stage in upstate New York, her hopes to become Florida's next governor may have been seriously damaged. For the 63-year-old Democrat, her public malaise Wednesday evening may prove to be the defining, dooming campaign moment, like former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie's apparent weeping during the 1972 presidential campaign.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Per Curiam GEORGE W. BUSH, et al., PETITIONERS v. ALBERT GORE, Jr., et al. on writ of certiorari to the florida supreme court (December 12, 2000) ------ Per Curiam. I On Dec. 8, 2000, the Supreme Court of Florida ordered that the Circuit Court of Leon County tabulate by hand 9,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed Florida's elections reform package Wednesday in the county that was ground zero in the disputed presidential election eventually won by his brother. The measure drew praise from Democrat Al Gore, who was in Florida for the first time since losing both the state and the presidency in November.

Former Vietnam ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson dropped out of the Democratic primary race for Florida governor, saying the terrorist attacks had a profound effect on him and he felt he could not participate in a partisan race. At a news conference, the former three-term congressman said that he believes, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that he may have more to offer the country with his international diplomacy background. Former U.S. Atty. Gen.

Voters in this small town on Tuesday became the first in Florida to use touch-screen voting machines, which many counties are considering as the state rids itself of the punch-card ballots that hung up the 2000 presidential election. "No more hanging, dimpled or pregnant chads," Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan said after getting a demonstration of the machines in the town in northern Florida's Nassau County. "It's very impressive."