By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Palm Beach County’s elections canvassing panel had reviewed thousands of votes by Thursday evening when Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore shielded her face with a provisional ballot and whispered to an assistant and the other board members.

Was a conspiratorial plot twist about to be unleashed upon the county’s unsuspecting voters? Precisely what nature of electoral machination took place behind that ballot?

Dinner plans, actually. Consensus: Italian subs.

Four years after the international spotlight focused on Palm Beach County’s three-person voting board, public interest in this once little-noticed process apparently has receded to its pre-chad state of none.

But late into Thursday night, three days after this year’s election and with all but a handful of local races comfortably decided, the ballots were still coming.

National and international news crews hoping for a 2000 redux packed it up days ago, and even local media still dutifully watchdogging the proceedings could barely be bothered to look up from their notebook doodles.

But just as the going got boring, the weirdness got going. The strain of reviewing thousands of absentee and provisional ballots had left LePore, County Commission Chairwoman Karen Marcus and, in particular, County Judge Barry Cohen a little punch-drunk.

Presented with a provisional ballot from a voter with the last name of Griswald, Cohen remarked that the name reminded him of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1965 case Griswold vs. Connecticut. The precise details of the case eluded him, however, so Cohen invited “any bored jurists” watching the elections panel on the county’s public-access Channel 20 to call his wife’s cellphone to fill him in because he didn’t remember his own number.

He then read his wife’s phone number on live television.

(The Griswold case, for the record, established certain privacy rights that paved the way for the decision in Roe vs. Wade.)

Prompted by the verbal peculiarities of voters’ names or precinct numbers, Cohen also initiated brief on-air discussions of, among other topics, obscure New York Yankees pitchers of the 1950s and the television show Beverly Hills 90210.

Upon returning from a dinner break, Cohen looked into the camera and announced: “My name is Chuck Burton, and I’m reporting for duty,” a reference to both his judicial predecessor on the 2000 canvassing board and the opening line of John Kerry’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

After Cohen read out the name Marino from a provisional ballot and commented “as in Dan Marino,” Marcus added: “The best quarterback ever.”

Cohen countered: “The ballot is accepted, but the characterization of Dan Marino as the best quarterback ever is rejected.”

Copyright 2004 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
November 6, 2004 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 458 words