page pages and feed all the pages through. it s going to take awhile. expect long lines. and what has the republican government done for a year when the ballot is a monster? the longest one some election clerks can remember? florida republicans cut early voting in half. good luck getting through those ten pages and through the line to vote. bring some water. maybe a chair. joining us for the interview is rick hassen. he s the author of the voting wars. he s one of the nation s most highl highly-cited experts on election law. in the election, florida confronted some voters with a difficult butterfly ballot where you konlt be sure which candidate you were picking. now we re hearing about a ballot that will be ten pages in some of the most populated parts of the state and they have cut early voting. is there any way around the idea
state in charge of certifying the route of 2000. nobody will ever forget the hanging chads and the confusion in the days after the election. then there was this ballot. the butterfly ballot. used in palm beach county. the source of major confusion. the top part was easy. if you wanted george bush, you punched the top circle. but if you wanted al gore, you had to punch the third circle. it turns out, over 6,000 who wanted gore punched that second circle and accidentally voted for pat buchanan. after all of that, it boiled down to 537 votes. we all know how that turned out. i hereby declare governor george w. bush the winner of the
565, he s almost halfway there. santorum 263. gingrich and paul remain unchanged. it turns out the ballots were the wrong size at one polling place. your job is to come up with ballots and they do not fit in the ballot box. poll workers said they have never even anything like it. this morning just that much that curled up on the edges of the ballot box. martha: remember the hanging chads. the problem was quickly fixed and the new paper ballots were issues. bill: but there was no evidence of a butterfly ballot in cook county. voters in minnesota may soon need a photo i.d. to cast their
in florida, voting by absentee ballot. it could play a key role. phil keating is live in miami. he has a butterfly ballot. reporter: those are long gone. there is a lot of energy among florida republicans this year, as evidence the record number of absentee ballot requests. tallahassee has sent out more than 400,000 of them and more than 50,000 have already been filled out and returned, so as of right now florida voters are already voting in the january 31st primary. the campaigns we sreutse visited tam path. we stopped by the romney calm paper campaign, saw their offices. we stopped by the paul campaign, the gingrich campaign. they ve organized in most of
supervisor in palm beach that wouldn t answer the phone. we literally had to knock down the doors when we found out what was going on behind butterfly ballot. bob: more trouble was brewing at the television news net boxer. they said once the polls are cloud you can call the election but we wouldn t want you to unduly influence voters that are still waiting to vote. the consortium that tald tarl i had the votes showed gore ahead of bush. it said that based on their projection, gore was going to win florida. john moody was in charge of the decision desk that night. florida is one of those rare states that has two closing times, it was 7:00 and 8:00 local time. the call was made 11 minutes