[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> we're going to make this as realistic as possible for you. by that i mean we're going to track this from the ballot box through the florida supreme court and all the way up to the united states supreme court. one of the things we have here are persons who actually played in one way or audio -- another very pivotal roles in this particular event which, as you all know, hardly ever happens. but in any event let me start of -- off by telling you what my association with the bush-gore election actually turned out to be. when they discovered that we were going to have a long and drawn-out scenario as to who actually won this election, the news media as they usually do clapped their hands and say,

"boy, we've got spg going here for a long time." now all we have to do is get somebody on that vietnam supreme court who is willing to tell us how the court is going to rule. that's the florida supreme court. well, obviously they couldn't get that. the next thing was well, let's find somebody who is on the supreme court and maybe he or she can help us out. that's how they got to me and i appeared in about 75 to 80 interviews on tv and on the radio give them my opinions as to what i thought may happen next. and it might surprise you to know that i was on every major etwork, even on pbs, even on geraldo rivera -- what's his name again? >> rivera. >> anyhow, i was on his show,

which was an experience in and of itself the one night they had me standing by in a tv studio in miami and he was wherever he was conducting it, i think it was on cnbc at the time, and they had two fellows there. one representing the republican party, the other representing the democratic party. and they were arguing and screaming at each other and en he said so me, justice, what do you think of this? i said, before i'm going to say one word, you're going to have to get those two screamers off that show. well, i didn't go on that night. they called me the next morning and said, please appear tonight. i said there is no way i'm going to appear tonight at all because i see the way you carry on the program. and you learn a great deal about media coverage of stories

like this. and what did i basically learn? that is the major networks try the best they can to bring you the news in a true and forthright manner, as best they understand it. cnbs, r stations like msnbc and fox news, you learn pretty soon that those really aren't news shows, they're entertainment shows for people who are watching those each night and want to be entertained. that's what those stations are going to do for you. i found that the most intelligent program of all was m lehr's newshour on pbs because those are folks who had their staff seriously interview all of the speakers for an hour's time at least before they came on television and

they had intelligent discussions between intelligent peoples instead of people screaming at each other. and one very, very notable thing that happened, two things, the first one was i was on "chris matthews hardball" program one evening and the other person on the program was orrin hatch, who at that time was the chairman of the senate judiciary committee. and the florida supreme court had just ruled, and they ruled that there should be a recount in florida. the first thing out of the senator's mouth was, "judge, isn't that the worst opinion you ever heard of?" and i said, well, senator, you know, it's only been out about 20 minutes. i haven't even read it. he said, "but it's a terrible opinion." >> i -- he said, i'm assuming that you head -- read it. he said, "i didn't stro read it

to know it's a terrible peafpblet at which time i said to him, request, senator, you you you norings stop being a hypocrite. you don't tell the chairman of the senate judiciary committee "stop being a hypocrite" on national television, but i have never worried about that. i usually call it the way i see it. i said if you don't like something and don't care what the reason fering is behind it, you're just going to be opposed to it. that's what i mean when i say you're a hypocrite. if you fairly evaluated it and then came up with an opinion, that would be something he is. right there they cut off the program and switched to the follow-up guests, who were jerry falwell and the honorable rick santorum, the junior senator from the state of pennsylvania. and right away falwell starts

out and says, what do you expect from that kogan? that florida supreme court is the worst supreme court in the united states and it's known as that. well, actually, that wasn't true because actually the florida supreme court has been for many years one of the leading supreme courts in the united states. then rick santorum comes up and says, "thank god kogan's not on that court now because god knows what would have happened." the happiest day of my life was when he lost for re-election and only served one term as senator the [laughter] i won't make any comment about what he's been doing since that particular period of time. but the most sensible conversation i had on radio was when i got a call from a radio station in colombia and they were going to do a program and

i would be speaking in english and they'd be translating it for their audience in spanish and then i would answer it in english and they would translate my answer in spanish. do you know that that was one of the most sensible programs that i was on during that entire period of time? and i found out that the audience, who were colombians, not only knew more about our election, but understood what was happening better than the so-called experts that the tv stations were putting on. so what does that really tell you? it tells you that sometimes we really lose sight of what's really going on. so as i say, that was my connection to gore vs. bush. as i said, we're going to give you people, all four of them here are persons who have been

personally active in that particular moment in time. first speaker you are going to hear from is joe klock, a member of the florida bar. he was the attorney for kathryn hair, who was our secretary of state, handled the case for her all the way through the united states supreme court. who was ave ben kunic, an attorney for al gore during the same period of time. then norman ostrow, who was at different times a member of the state elections commission, chairman of the state ethics commission, a member of the state legislature, and at the time that all this was going on was an assistant state attorney in broward county in charge of looking into what was happening

in the year 2,000th during this particular campaign. and then, as i said, we got -- get to the ballot box and we're very, very honored to have with theresa lepore. she was the person in charge of a elections department for -- the county of palm beach here in dade county and that's where a lot of people said all this started from. so she's here today, and what we're going to do is i'm going to have each of our guests get up and speak for seven minutes each and no questions until all of them have finished. then we will open it up for your questions.

so, joe, why don't you start out for us? >> thank you, appreciate it. o ahead. >> it's excellent to see theresa lepore here because that is where it really all started as far as kathryn harris was concerned. when i was 33 i represented a guy who is still around. he is in his 70's, flies his own jerkts the c.e.o. of a large public company and he was involved for -- in a fight for his company's life with victor pozner, one of the most disgusting human beings ever to draw breath in the state of florida. one thing i learned from this man is he said the worst thing that can ever happen to you as a lawyer is to end up in a case where there's more than one lawyer and he said each time you add another lawyer to the mix, it becomes worse. and i always remembered that

and it was true in that case. there were like 20 lawyers representing this, that, and the other thing. when i walked into the courtroom in palm beach county, sat in the back because we had a bit role and watched the craziness that went on before now justice of the supreme court bruce rogo, probably one of the finest constitutional scholars in the united states, introduce there making a presentation and you would think everyone would be interested in what bruce had to say, but they really were only interested in what they had to say. it was crazy. so when kathryn harris called on us to represent her, harris who has been vilified by a whole bunch of people and is one of the most intelligent clients i ever had, one of the things we went over was do we want to have more than one law firm working on the trial and

appellate, da, da, da, da, da? we recommended no. it turned out you could have better control of the case. on al gore's side there were lawyers all over the place, very, very fine lawyers, but they had the disadvantage of working for mr. gore, who was smarter than all of them and had to review every single document. ben will remember one time we were in front of the judge and the gore people were trying to arrange a sort of aggressive schedule as far as going fashed with the trial. we had to say, we can't be in front of the supreme court and here at the same time. when we started out the case, the first discussion we had was it -- we thought it made sense to have a statewide recount. the team that worked for the secretary was half democrat, half republicans. i'm a lifetime democrat. most of the people in the key

roles were democrats and our view it had nothing to do with party but -- but our idea was it made sense rather than just two four counties, do the whole state. ben will remember it ended up being very cold that year. very cold. he -- we had a friehling deadline of 3:30 in the morning to file certain petitions. almost at the last minute we made a decision to amend our petition to ask for a statewide restrictor, which we had asked for but we asked for a stay while that took place. and they went berserk on the other side and that is what started the tone. from that point on we decide we're going to do everything by the book. the secretary nade -- made a decision as well that she was not going to appear in front of press unless there was a reason for her to do it. because as chief justice kogan

pointed out, it was a circus in a lot of plays -- ways the we handled everything with the same team of 20 or 21 lawyers, which involved a case in the united states district court in pensacola, we had a case in tallahassee, two appeals for -- before the supreme court of florida, en banc appeal, and various and sundry other activities going on around the state. we had the same 20 or 21 people working on it. didn't get a lot of sleep, but that's what was going on. the secretary would sit and whenever we had any kind of position we wanted to take, we would present the arguments, she would reas -- read the case and make a decision the but the key was controlling the process as best we could do. the supreme court of florida, which i have a high regard for as well, every time we had everything that was ruled in

our favor, within two hours it was reversed, stayed, dumped, something happened to it. so we had a procedure where we would celebrate immediately, no mar -- more than a har hour after we won because we knew it would be taken away from us the but the fact of matter is if you looked at the opinions of the supreme court they hand down, the key to it is the concurring opinion of the chief justice, thomas and scalia. really as word has leaked out on the court, the decision was 5-4, not 7-2 but they didn't want to hand down a 5-4 decision, so they backed into the equal protection argument. what won was a little-known statute passed in 19 -- 1874 or 1875. that year there had been a ness electing a president because the -- they were changing the

rules as to how you selected the electricors and it was a mess and lasted for months and months. if you recall at that time, they had the election in november but the president didn't take office until march, so it was plenty of time fora mess. congress passed a statute that says -- said the law in effect on election day controlled the selection of electricors they -- electors. they could change anything they wanted to after but in terms of counting the votes they had to use the law that was in effect on election day. there was a very recent case then in florida where they interpreted the common law with respect to elections and were able to make the argument that that's all great, fine, but that wasn't the law in effect on elections day. the law in effect was this law. a couple comments about the whole process. he -- i see there are several lawyers in here of mature age.

actually ben is, too. he looks 25 but he's. the most important thing for everyone in the room, as a trial lawyer, is to tell you if someone brings you you the case, the most important question is who is the judge? ok. who is the judge is sometimes 50% of the case, even before you look at any of the pleat -- pleadings or anything else. so when we were sitting up there before the supreme court, we knew that court because that was the court we knew. the 11th circuit is fascinating. but i've only been before the supreme court of the united states twice and the supreme court of the united states is a trip. we were in a room that had 750 people in it and they took the counsel table and slid them up against the bench. if you have seen pictures of the supreme court, the bench is in a sort of semicircle. so where i sat, justice ginsberg was no more than three

feet away, just sitting there. p and usually when you are in front of an appellate court you don't worry about having all of them - some -- all of hot. some are deceased. but the supreme court of the united states, the only respite you have in the supreme court of the ut is when either justice brey remplet -- breyer or sumplet ter asked questions because they asked long, detailed questions. but the rest of them were just rat tat tat all the way through. the lawyers on the other side - i've doan ben, and david boies, we've had some of the finest lawyers in the country working on this case. i had mentioned to the chief justice i thought it would be

more interesting to talk about some of the strategic decisions made rather than rehatch what went before but the fact is his is titled, bush vs. gore in retrospect, could it happen again? to which i respond, i hope to god it is not the it is ok maybe to have that kind of test of our system once in 200 years but the idea of having nine individuals on a regular basis decide who is going fob the president say very, very hairy thing. i remember thinking to myself on december 12, look at this country we have. gore is the vice president. he has all kinds of power. the supreme court speaks, he shuts it down like that. where else in the world would that happen? where else? i guess my response is it was an exciting opportunity to be engaged in and i hope it's an exciting opportunity that no one else ever has. [applause]

>> consider it's election night 2,000th. -- 2000. i'm in the fontaine bleau hilton, celebrating the election of the person who is now known and will forever be known as the next president of the united states, al gore and never getting to uphold that title and the news media has is in ounced florida the al gore blue column. you see, remember that map and the colors, red and blow -- blue? florida. that was for all of us in the rook -- room the signature moment. al gore was the next president of the united states. and then all of a sudden the tv screen changed. and they take the map off and they say oh, premature.

and we've been following the reports, there's nothing premature about this. and then the report comes in saying there are problems with the florida vote. and there is no color on florida. and this seemed remarkable. for those of us who had been toiling in florida for this campaign season. and the news gets worse. then the commentators talked about well, it seems that it's going to be called for bush. and then the commentary about the governor, who had previously said florida was going to carry bush to the white house. eu i am at the fontainebl with kendall coffey and the two of us say something's going on.

we immediately get on the phone with somebody all of us know, the attorney general of the state of florida, who happened to be active in the gore tampe and we said, we've got a battle. eight hours later kendall and i are flying up to tallahassee to meet with the secretary of state, warren christopher, bill daley, the campaign chair and bob butterworth, to talk about what is happening in the state of florida because we knew, we believed as lawyers, miss chief -- mischief was at hand. and 37 days later we still don't know if it was mischief or not but that's the nature be something that captivated america -- no, no, captivated america for -- the world, for 36 days. and justice kogan is right about people in colombia and elsewhere taking attention of

this. as a side note, i spent time during the president nixon resignation year in ghana and nigeria, doing research. and the issue at that time was, well, of course the president of the united states would never be forced from office. he's got the army at his disposal. their view was of course, leaders take the army and you can't be forced out. and i was teaching a college class at the time in the university of lagos and i the ted the -- posited view that we're a constitutional system and the rule of law plies. -- applies. the same discussion was going on at that time. of course the vice president is not going to lose the election. we learned that like in other places in the world, we are

controlled by an army, but it turned out an army of lawyers, not of guns and that army of lawyers became very handy from practicing lawyers to judges and justices and everybody had their role. but the fascinating part of this is you may not remember 2000, but we didn't travel at the speed of light. we didn't travel at the speed of cell phones with instantaneous information. there are things back then, maybe newspaper of you have heard of it, called beepers where you got a phone number and that's about all, or the really elite had blackberries that could text them some information. not a whole lot, but some. consider that in the course of 2 -- 36 days, our team, team gore-lieberman, we called ourselves team recount, we have the t-shirt and hats to prove

it, put together a virtual law firm when there was no such word add -- as virtual law firm. we understand the bush people did it as well. their theme was different. but we put together literal a -- literally a pring army of resources throughout florida and beyond the state of oxygen, people we would call at a moment's notice to fight a battle in what became an effort to count votes in every county of the state of florida. not an ease -- easy task. there are some, as we know, counties that can't even count their ballots the first time without taking a i -- couple of days and here we wanted, it seemed, to count all the ballots again, this recount. sitting in tallahassee with these three geniuses, warern christopher, bill daley and bob butterworth, who, by the way, had never been through an

election battle that involved counting the votes. bill daley had but his kind of election battles were a little bit different, making sure the votes were there as opposed to afterwards counting the vote, or so the stories are told. we proceeded to give these three people a primer on florida election law. and, man, was it complicated. it the -- at a time when you probably couldn't put 10 people in a room together in pedro: who knew or dealt with election law enforcement now i've tried to get election law be a board certification. lawyers need to know this area. and we explained to them what the law was and then had to fend off a lot of questions about how do we do that? how do we do recounts? how do we figure out what stads ply? all issues that courts had to deal with, not a hypothetical

on a court reviewing after the fact, all because it mattered. why? because there was no elected president of the united states for a day after the election. what was the last time that happened? joe is right. in the early days where they didn't know who the president was until the electoral congress con veeped, that was expected. in the modern day we knew in a day or two. never happened before that we really didn't know. and who was going to help us do that? so there begot two competing themes. one, how do we figure out what the real voting is? because somebody had not counted the votes correctly or we said not counted the votes completely, with the recognition that, man, if this thing takes too long, there could be a constitutional crisis. this sense of unease. i'll flip forward saying that we now know back then in 2000,

36 days is way too long for america to have to be focused on an election. if, by the way. the matter got to the supreme court for final decision, 10 days earlier, 11 days, you know what? america was still interested. by 36 days. read the newspapers. america was getting tired of this issue and that matters a lot. it may not matter in the courtroom, we think. it certainly matters on the street but in this particular case it mattered. so lightning speed was something we recognized. nobody knew how might -- lightning it was going to have to be the and a playing field that is the state of florida, recognizing although much debate about this that we might be playing out an -- on a larger stage, this might become a national issue, although lots of the discussion was of course, we know that this is a

state of florida matter controlled by the state of florida. it's not controlled by federal judges, not controlled by the supreme court. florida will be the definitive spokesperson or court for this, although we recognize that the reality is this is, after all, the presidential election, it was likely that there was going to be an effort to go higher. and we learned very early, at least we believed, and joe can ill us in, was the issue let's count the votes or let's not count the votes? and frankly, even in the gore team, the debate was about do we count all the vote or do we just cherry-pick? and interestingly for people who get involved in recounts, there had always been a big debate. when you have an election hat's close, do you pick

pediatriccinctses? districts where -- precincts, districts where you won and try to patrol through those votes to try to find more like-minded people who probably voted for you but their ballots didn't count? or do you do the opts, go into districts where you lost by a little and try to disqualify or counter the votes? raging debate. the gore the gore team took the idea of furtherance of democracy. we want every vote to be counted for everybody. if you remember that mantra, count all the votes. count all the votes. it had some sense of democracy about it. that's what we do. and the political pitch was trying to paint the bush side as not being interested to count all the votes.

you must remember, that's the underlying dynamic. a dynamic that was not necessarily created by the lawyers, but the lawyers became really the spokespeople for the campaign. lawyers doing their lawyering but this was not the case where teams were represented by the media person who went out there and gave the speech. the lawyers after every proceeding did a presentation and that's really what we saw. lawyers standing up being the public spokesperson as well as in the courtroom. so those who say, i try my cases in the courtroom, that's a great -- it's a great platitude in reality as the cases bear more importance, t's only part of the battle. so the early days, the early tage, and ultimately playing a battle across the state

required technology boost. and i'm going to close with one item that i think is kind of fun. i mentioned about blackberries. let me tell you a role of technology. steve zach, one of our technology lawyers, had a blackberry at the time etcht has on exam one of the expert witnesses who designed one of these things, remember the hanging chad? and we have research going on in the office and somebody finds the patent application from that expert for this machine. and you know what's buried in that patent application? the reality that after a machine is used for several elections, chads happen because the machine doesn't punch through. and the republican theory was it was all voter error. well, we emailed steve zach, not emailed, texted him, saying, go slow.

so that our law clerk had a chance to run in with the pages and sure enough that expert denied machine error and it was in his own report. so that combination of technology and speed helped us do that and ultimately we live with the results of bush vs. gore. thank you. [applause] >> that's from all the legal size. but the next two of us are going to be in the trenches. excuse me. i was the deputy county attorney at the time in broward county and i represented the canvasing board. so when we got into that situation, it came to the canvasing board for the

recount. then we had to make all these decisions. well, in a prior life, i was in the state legislature. and i was chair of the ethics elections committee in 1989. there was no 89 recount provision. there was no recount provision. we were all -- the statutes dealt with the leaver machines primarily. so in 1989 they brought forth some amendments to deal with manual recounts or recounts. and all the testimony that came about then was that what we're . oking at is mechanical error are the counting machines, are the counting machines counting correctly?

or is there an error in how the counting machines work? from 1989 to 1999 there were no amendments. 1999 there was a small amendment talk about the time frame. but during all that time frame, everything was -- revolved around the mechanical thing. everybody knew, everybody knew that these hanging chads were there. everybody knew that. and nobody looked at saying, what are we going to do and how are we going to count it? because the way the 199 mendment said, you may request a recount and if you do, we go through a process where we go through the machines first. if there's a discrepancy, you can request a manual recount.

if you request a manual recount and if you did that, the canvasing board would look at several things, they would look at -- correct an error if there was something in the machine and run things back through the machines. they could verify the tabulation thing. see if there's anything wrong with the tabulation software. or they could do a manual recount. and it was discretionary. so now we're sitting there with at statute that herb thought -- everybody thought when we passed it in 199, that it dealt with a mechanical problem, that the machines were not counting properly. never that these hanging chads were going to be anything like that. o now we're stuck with it.

so, we ask for an opinion from the department of elections, they give us one opinion. then we come back and the secretary -- the attorney general comes in and gives another thing. so we're there and every time we make -- try to make a decision on what to do on a manual recount, first we said we weren't going to do a manual. in broward county we weren't going to do a manual recount. we just weren't going to do it. then they came back and there was a lot of lobbying, a lot of lobbying at the time that we would ultimately do a manual recount. now, how are we going to do that? the first thing we're going to do and under the statutes is pick some precincts and determine whether or not there's any -- whether or not that would affect elections and then come back and do the whole recount. but then what were we going to o to look at these balanced as

at that -- ballads at that time? how were you going to define what the voter intent was? we had one suggestion that it was a two-corner rule. you know, if there were two corners there, then it was one way or if there's two corners the other way, you count it. so if it's only one corner punched out, were you going to count that? so we're sitting with all these things that determine how we're going to do these recounts and i don't know, you certainly remember -- just go back historically, during this time our supervisor of elections wasn't feeling well. was not going to sit on the canvasing board. so there was a judge, another judge appointed. the canvasing board had a judge

and supervisor of elections and a county commissioner. there was another judge selected. judge rosenburg. and i know that you remember the offense and the thing that's in the smithsonian now. i had given him the magnifying glass from the office so that he could look at the ballots to see whether or not it would be punched out. but you've got to make that -- here you had three people, three people looking at this ballot and one with a magnifying glass and looking at the ballot and saying, gore vote, bush vote. gore vote, bush vote. it was just an amazing process. because we had no definitive way of determining that. it was just a very, very difficult situation.

and i would constantly call pauchbeam -- palm beach county, how they were doing it. ultimately we got through -- and again, we had counting teams because of statute required us to have counting teams, trying to find people of opposite parties to sit down and do this. we had -- we took over our whole emergency operations center at one time to have all the counting teams do the initial counting and then the statute said, if they can't make the determination as to voter intent, then give it to the van cass -- canvasing board and the canvasing board would sit there and make that determination, but you got three people looking at that on a and pretty much political standpoint, from what

party they might be, one would say that's a gore vote, that was a bush vote. it was just extremely, extremely difficult and i was just talking to teresa. i don't know whether reliving would be any good. it's a very difficult situation. now, when it went to the courts, it was all legal arguments. but when we were in the trenches and we were trying to determine what a manual recount would look like, because we really had never done anything in such a great scale, and how you are going to make that determination of what those votes were like, it was very, very, very difficult. ultimately broward county finished, we had -- it ultimately ended up in the courthouse because we had

ousands of people had restricted access as we came. we had an accounting firm. volunteered their time and came n there and every time the canvasing board would take a ballot and say, this was for one candidate or nothing, the accounting firm would sit there in a room with a computer and they did a software and they had republican and a democrat observer with them and ultimately they came out with the -- with a certified recount of the vote and we ultimately got that in to the secretary of state. we were one of the ones that got that in right on the time frame and it was just a very difficult time, sitting there, as the attorney for the canvasing board, and trying to

make those decisions. when you had no basis for those decisions. i'm going to turn it now, the real player in this is theresa and she -- i've got to tell you. i was doing this for a lot of years. she is one of the finest supervisors of elections that ever were in the state of florida. fine, fine person. [applause] >> thank you, norm. wow, 14 years ago. just to give you a little bit of background, i actually started in the elections office in 1971. when i was about 6 years old. [laughter] we had leaver machines back then. and i can remember opening up the lever machines and they ere all mechanical and the

counters hadn't been turning during the day. so there were some that would have zero or just not as many. the k in 1973, 1974, current supervisors, we started getting too many of these, plus our county was growing. we decided to go to another system which is the new up and coming modern way to vote was the punch card system. so we went to punch card first in a partial part of the county went and i believe the 1974 election, the entire county in 1976. so that was the way we were voting. our county was growing by leaps and bounds. when i started in 1971, we had about 250,000 registered voters . we're up to over 800,000 now -- 850,000-some now. so it just mushroomed.

i was elected in 1996 when the currency -- current supervisor decided to retire from office. and not too long after i was elected, i had been going to a lot of conferences, state conferences, federal conferences, i was asked to sit on a federal task force for voters with disabilities, for access for voters with disabilities. which being that our county had a large retirement population was something that i felt i needed to do. so one of the things i was really cognizant of was the size of the type print. here comes the 2000 election and we have, you know, -- i don't even remember now how many presidential candidates we had. if i would have put them all on one side, on one sheet, the print would have been -- the minimum print, which would have been like eight-point, it would have been small. being that i had this

experience with voters with disabilities and trying to make it so everybody could work -- to read it easily, we developed what was called the facing page ballot. the media nicknamed it the butterfly ballot. we called it the facing page ballot. which we had used before. and interestingly mayor daily in chicago really railed against -- daley in chicago really railed against it and chicago was one of the first jurisdictions to use the facing page bament. we thought that was rather interesting. a lot of things were said, a lot of things were done during that time that were very interesting. but anyway, we did the facing page ballot, we sent it out to everybody that needed to see it. nobody said a word. it was sent out to all registered voters in the county. nobody said a word. everybody approved it. both sides, up, down, in the middle. nobody said a word until election morning and i truly believe part of the problem is

we have a very large retirement population in our county that we're used to, from the northeast, that were used to what's called palm cards. if anybody knows what palm cards are, they're little cards that you hold in the palm of your hand when you vote, they're cheat sheet, and the different condo commandos would pass out their particular palm cards and a lot of times they would just put the ballot -- because on the ballot, on the punch cards each position had a number. they would either just put numbers or punch the third hole from the top or whatever the case may be. that was part of the problem. because the palm cards that were distributed, and in my storage unit i actually had one much those somewhere, that was incorrect. it had buchanan's number for mr. gore. anyway, that's part of the problem. one of the myths ben brought up

about the chads in the machine that we purposely, and i'm only talking about palm beach county, but we purposely picked t specific precincts that we sent bad equipment to or we sent machines that weren't cleaned out or whatever the case may be, if any of you have ever worked in an elections office during election time, even working for a candidate, you know how crazy it is for the six months before an election. in my county, because we're so large, we start preparing for an election in july 1 and whenever we hire anybody we tell them, ok, evened numbered years, between july and november, you're not going to take a vacation, you're frot going to take time off. you're not going to get married or pregnant, you're not going to do anything because you've got to work. no time off and that's just the way it is. we're running 10, 12-hour days, six, seven days a week, for six months prior to the election.

all the way through. we don't have time to sit there and say, ok, precinct 52, we want to send bad equipment to that one. or precinct 38, with he want to send bad equipment to that one. that is not the case. i can honestly say in my 35 years in the elections office that i don't believe any supervisor in the 67 counties in the state of florida would ever do that. so having said that, equipment went out, people started voting broke loose that morning. i can remember, i try not to -- i like to -- my defense mechanism is to block out bad memories so i'm trying to unlock those file drawers up there. i just remember midmorning on election day, a congressman, a senator and a county -- now legislator, congressman, a state senator, state legislator and some other hangers-on walked in and said, we've got a problem. whole through the

there was a problem, we tried to send information out to all the precincts, make sure everybody understands that you can only vote for one person for president. for any race. it says vote for one. you can't vote for more than one. pay attention, read the ballot and all. by that time everything just imploded or exploded and you all know the rest of the story there. i firmly believe that, and the gentlemen at the table may disagree with me, but i firmly believe that one of the camps had said that if it was close for my candidate, for our candidate, that you go into these three counties in southeast florida and just tart finding what you can. before the polls even closed we had had toshes in my office -- we had attorneys in my office from all over the country.

you don't call an attorney up in california and say, get here right now because we've got a problem and they get there that quick. went on thing just from there. we didn't know -- one of the reasons it took us so long to get done, because every time you turned around we were having lawsuits against us. i had 57 lawsuits filed against me. the office and me personally. le one of every sing them. [laughter] [applause] we were getting our information from cnn. we would be working and all of a sudden a thing would come up, oh, this judge says stop. this judge says start. this judge says do this. we didn't know what we were doing. we were trying to do the best we could. and just a little about palm beach county. we had a little over 462,000

ballots cast in that election. we had to hire and train over 5,000 poll workers for that one day. those of you that have businesseses, you know how easy it is to get good help. ok? this is the only job in the world where your reputation, your life, your career is dependent on those 5,000 volunteers. to do their job and to do what they were trained for. one of them does something wrong, does it the way they think it should be done, and you get a complaint filed and it's over. because it's all your fault. no matter what. the majority of the poll workers did what they were supposed to do. some of them didn't. but again, it's human nature not to do what you were -- they were supposed to do. 37 days it dragged on. now, mind you, myself and my staff had been working since

july 1, 10, 12-hour days, six, seven days a week, all through then, and then election time comes, another 37 days, we didn't sleep, we didn't -- we were stuck doing what we needed to do to get it over with. personally i didn't care which one won. i was only there to do my job and to do what i thought was the right thing to do. i can argue very clearly for the position -- i can argue actually both sides but for an elected supervisor of elections versus an appointed supervisor of elections, appointed supervisor of elections is at the mercy of their boss which is the county commission and a perfect example of someone who tried to do the right thing and it wasn't what their boss -- his bosses wanted him to do was david leahy here, the supervisor of miami-dade county. because he was doing what he thought was the right thing, hey fired him.

i went through holy hell with my county commissioners, the democratic ones, because i was registered democrat at the time, want med to do what they wanted. the republican ones wanted me to do what they wanted but i didn't do either one. i did what i thought was the right thing to do and it cost me lot of friends and cost my job, 2004, that same congressman, state senator and state representative that walked in that day vowed to take me out and they did. they finally found somebody to run against me in 2004. i was unopposed in 2000. and i was retired. which -- things happen for a reason. i would not go back to doing what i was doing today for all the tea in china. because it has gotten very olitical, it's gotten very

adversarial, particularly in florida. every time there's an election everybody is focused on florida. no matter what. i always said, the only perfect election does not involve humans. you will never have a perfect election because there are humans involved no matter what. there are going to be mistakes made. there are going to be things happening that shouldn't happen. but i give them all a lot of credit to go home and hug your supervisor of elections. thank you. [applause] >> i don't know if we've got ime for questions. ope? >> all right.

bush vs. gore, another election case, there's a trend for judges to rule in accordance with their political philosophy . please comment on what this implies for judicial ethics. i'm going to answer that one, everybody. let me say this to you. people do not ascend to the bench at any level with an absolutely black -- blank mind. it just doesn't happen. from the day you are born, all your activities in society, in school, with your friends, forms a philosophy that you have as to literally everything in life. and that certainly includes issues that are constantly coming before the courts. if you expect judges to sit there and just wipe a slate clean and say, everything that i've learned all my life i'm

going to forget now, you're sadly mistaken. because judges are human beings. they are not machines. and because they are human beings, every judge comes to the bench with certain preconceived ideas as to what certain things ought to be. so in answer to that question, it's -- they are guided by what these beliefs are. that doesn't mean that they're deliberately doing something in order to give somebody the shaft so to speak. they're doing these things because all of their experience in life and their examination of what is taking place before them, when they're sitting on the bench, applied to that, tells them that this is the right thing to do. and that's what most of the judges do. so you can rest assured of that

. other question here is, do we have a uniform recount procedures in all florida counties? if not, aren't we susceptible to the same legal issue that decided bush vs. gore? i don't know. could you answer that? > the statute was changed to lay out a procedure for recounts. now, we're out of the hanging chad thing. we went through three generations of voting machines again. now we're back to paper ballots that are marked and you can look at them and make some determination on that. but there is a standard now for all accounts. >> ok. in any event, i want to tell you something that all four of our participants today i think emonstrate, what ethical

practitioners and public officials do to handle impossible situations and they're all to be commended for whatever they did during gore vs. bush. because that's the american way and you do the right thing and if you look at something and it doesn't look right or it doesn't sound right or if it it. s, it smells, don't do do what the right thing is and that's what ethics are all about. i want to thank our panel members here. we've enjoyed it. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> every >> every sunday night, you can learn from historians about

presidents and first ladies. to watch any of our programs or check our schedule, visit www.c-span.org/history. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. ,> next on american history tv we will hear about senator sam ervin's time as chair of the senate watergate to midi from rufus edmisten and his grandson judge sam ervin iv. they recall his character and how the self-proclaimed country lawyer relied on his knowledge of the law and personal convictions to guide the committee. this event was hosted by the north carolina museum of history. it is about an hour. >> good afternoon. . my name is michael scott. i do a lot of programming at the museum of history. we have dr. karl