"There were two or three loud Cubans but most of the people I talked to were white, mostly men, from Oklahoma, Texas, mostly Southern states," says Sunday Times correspondent Rhodes. "They were talking on cellphones, probably to people nearby, telling them to get in there right away and bring as many people as they could."

One of the main targets of the demonstrators was Democratic County Chairman Joe Geller. Geller, who had gone to the elections office to request an unused sample ballot, was mobbed by the protesters as he left those offices. They accused him of stealing a ballot.

"I requested it, which I'm entitled to do," says Geller. "It was clearly marked 'sample ballot for use by Democratic Party.' The whole transaction was out in the open and all very calmly done. This Republican observer -- a woman with blond hair, a suit and clipboard -- was watching the whole thing. But the moment I started to walk away, she sicced the crowd on me. She said I was stealing a ballot and they surrounded me. It was all orchestrated," he alleges.

Television cameras captured those frantic scenes and broadcast them to a riveted global audience.

"Suddenly, I was surrounded by a screaming, shoving, insane crowd, shouting that I had done something I hadn't done," Geller says. "People grabbing at me and my clothes and there was almost no security. I couldn't believe those people weren't arrested."

Geller was unhurt, but he raised the question of the lack of security in County Hall and criticized Democratic Cuban-American Mayor Alex Penelas, who basically broke with the party after the Elian affair and did not campaign for Gore in the city. In fact, some two weeks before the election, he led a trade delegation from the county to Spain, and did not return until just before the balloting took place. Penelas has said publicly that he chose to "stay above the fray." A spokesman for the mayor said Monday that he had done everything possible to facilitate the recount.

But rumors abound in Miami that Penelas may soon switch parties.

Geller, who himself wants to gain support for his party in the exile community, mentions more than once that there were few Cubans in the rowdy crowd.

"This was not a Miami moment. It was outsiders, Hitler youth, sent in by the Republicans to intimidate the election officials," he says.

Only a few hours after the protest, the board members did exactly what that mob was asking: They halted the count. The move left the indelible impression on many in Miami, especially Democrats, that they had caved to the protesters.

But members of the commission deny such charged allegations. David Leahy, the county's supervisor of elections and a member of the canvassing board, denies that the protest had any effect on the decision to end the recount.

"At no moment was I intimidated," he said earlier this week in a televised interview. The denial came after the New York Times story reported that the protests had been a factor in the board's decision to end the recount.

The board has maintained that the state Supreme Court deadline, not GOP pressure, drove the canvassing board's decision to abandon the count. But the Democratic Party says the protests did cause the halt, and the Gore team has made the alleged intimidation a major prong in its legal strategy.

The board is composed of Leahy and two county judges, Lawrence King and Myriam Lehr. King is a registered Democrat and the other two are independents. They are all appointees.

King and Lehr are both clients of controversial political consultant Armando Gutierrez, who was spokesman for Lazaro and Marisleysis Gonzalez during the Elian telenovela earlier this year. Successful candidates for Miami-Dade County and circuit court judgeships routinely turn to Gutierrez for help. In exchange for his $15,000 consulting fee, Gutierrez assures the support of the Cuban community, which means the judges will almost certainly run unopposed. According to the Miami Herald, as of mid-October Gutierrez had collected $351,750 in consulting fees for representing those judges in this election cycle alone, including King and Lehr.

Tony Alfieri, a professor of law at the University of Miami and a commentator on legal ethics, said Monday there were no allegations of corruption against the judges, but he decried the way in which they had been pulled into the political process and how that created "the appearance of corruption. And that appearance affects not only this election result, but public participation in the process."

In a telephone interview, Gutierrez says he was in Toronto the day of the protest and didn't play a role in it. "Those judges don't run again for six years," he said. "I won't see them until then."

For many, the melee at County Hall was a vivid reminder of the rhubarbs outside the Miami home of Elian last spring. As with almost everything in Miami these days, it's not hard to find symbolic connections between the election recount, Elian and also to the political climate of the 1990s, which was rife with corruption.

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