On Nov. 14, when it was time to open Monroe County's military absentee ballots, there were— because of the closeness of the presidential race in Florida— more observers in Supervisor of Election Harry Sawyer's office than ballots to count.
Sawyer said that there were more than a dozen observers from both parties. "A couple of the Republicans had even flown in from Washington."
But there were only 11 ballots to count.
"I think they thought that we had more ballots than we did," Sawyer said. "We did have a total of 192 military ballots come in, but 181 of those had arrived in time to be included in the original count on election day. On Nov. 14, we only had 11 ballots to look at."
He explained that a federal mandate extends the deadline for military and other absentee ballots from overseas to be counted up to seven days after the general election.
How did those 11 military votes sort out?
Three were rejected— one because the signature didn't match the one on file and two because of registration irregularities.
Of the remaining ballots, four votes went to Al Gore and four went to George Bush.
Of the 34, 095 votes cast for President of the United States in Monroe County, 97 were rejected because more than one candidate was marked. Election officials call this an "overvote." On the other hand, 83 voters didn't vote for any candidate for President.
But there was no controversy here over pregnant, dimpled or hanging chad. Voting machines in Monroe County use a simple optical-scanning system, not hole-punching.
Most of the overvotes were on absentee ballots.
"Very few overvotes occur when the voter goes in person to a precinct in Monroe County," Sawyer said, "because the machine will kick that ballot out before the voter leaves the room. The voter than may choose to void the original ballot and vote again."
Sawyer emphasized that when a voter does overvote, however, only the race in which the overvote occurred is not counted. The rest of the ballot is counted.