Re: dempled chads
Illinois Court Did NOT Accept Dimpled Ballots
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 23, 2000
The Chicago Tribune reports in today's Thanksgiving edition that a critical
Illinois court ruling cited by the Florida Supreme Court may not have set
the precedent Al Gore's lawyers claimed.
During arguments before the Florida Supreme Court, Al Gore's attorneys
claimed that an Illinois Supreme Court ruling "was a sweeping directive to
count controversial 'dimpled' ballots, in which ballots were indented but
not punched through," the paper reported.
But the Tribune reported that the "Illinois case should not give Democrats
any confidence that dented ballots will be counted in Gore's favor. That's
because the Illinois court actually affirmed a trial judge's order to
exclude dented ballots, since he had decided he could not reasonably
determine the voters' will by examining the ballots."
The Illinois case was referenced in Tuesday night's opinion offered by the
Supreme Court, and has been trumpeted by the Gore team as a model for
Florida counties engaged in the manual recount.
Attorney Burton Odelson, who represented one of the candidates in the 1990
Illinois case, told the Tribune, "The judge did not count ballots that were
indented because he could not determine the voters' intent.
"From the beginning, I knew everybody [in Florida] was interpreting this
case wrong and reading into it what they wanted to read into it."
The Gore team had a lawyer in the Illinois case present an affavadit to the
Florida Supreme Court stating that the Illinois court had agreed dented
ballots should be included.
The Tribune said the attorney's affadavit "apparently was mistaken in its
assertion that such ballots were counted."
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