Luckily for Republicans, the controversial ballot design was approved prior to the election by a Democrat, Palm Beach County supervisor of elections Theresa LePore. It featured the names of six presidential candidates on one page and four on the facing page. The names were staggered so that the holes to be punched would not be directly next to each other, but one atop the other. Arrows pointed at which hole should be used. But according to Democrats, the design still made it unclear which hole to punch if you wanted to vote for Gore and which to punch for Buchanan. Although Gore's name was the second on the left-hand side of the ballot, the hole that corresponded to his name was third.

According to the Democrats, Florida law specifies that voters mark an X in the blank space to the right of the name of the candidate they want to vote for and therefore the design used in Palm Beach violated the law.

"Right means right, doesn't it?" said Jeff Liggio, a lawyer for the county Democrats. "The state law says right; it doesn't mean left." But GOP officials said that since Democrats had accepted the ballot prior to the election, it was legal.

LePore defended her work Wednesday. She said the two-page layout allowed larger print to be used.

"I was trying to make the print bigger so elderly people in Palm Beach County can read it," she said. "We sent out sample ballots to all registered voters and no one said a word."

But some voters voiced their complaints Tuesday and Wednesday. "I was confused so I asked for help," said John Lazet, 66, a retiree who lives in the town of Lake Worth. "I asked which hole do I punch for Gore. The woman working at the polling place told me to punch the second hole. Then she came back and told me she had made a mistake and that it was the third hole. She didn't even know, but she brought me a new ballot. I complained that it was too confusing and that others wouldn't know what to do."

Lazet said he went to LePore's office to complain and got into an argument with the elections supervisor, who defended her work.

Anita Rizzo, who runs a preschool in the town of Loxahatchee, said she also found the ballot difficult.

"'This is a little confusing,' that's what I said to my husband," said Rizzo, 57. "If Gore is the second name, then you figure you punch the second hole, but, no, it wasn't like that. Then I heard another person, an older lady, two booths down, yell out that she needed help. She said she was trying to vote for Al Gore. She was obviously having a problem. I didn't think more about it. Since then I've spoken to at least two other people who had problems, including one woman who punched the wrong hole and had to ask for another ballot. Why did this county have a ballot different than other counties'? I called the [state] attorney general to complain, but the more I hear about it the more frustrating it is."

According to Democrats, the design of the ballots hurt Gore, but not his Republican opponent.

"If you voted Republican you had no problem because the first name was Bush and the first hole corresponded to him," said Eileen Klasfeld, 50, a psychologist from Boca Raton. "But if you were voting Democrat, you could have trouble. I have a doctorate and I had trouble."

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