LAUDERHILL, FLA. (WSVN) - As Broward County sorts out ballots during a recount, many are remembering the 2000 presidential election and a judge who inspected the ballots during that recount. 7News spoke with that judge about the election mess.
The current uncertainty in Broward recalls the ballot recount that happened during the presidential election 18 years ago.
Judge Robert Rosenberg, who headed the 2000 recount, told 7News the situation currently happening is not exactly the same.
“The 2000 election is entirely different, I think, than the current situation,” Rosenberg said.
However, the 2000 election is a comparison we’ve heard over and over. It’s said that Broward County’s election drama of today is deja vu of what happened in 2000.
Rosenberg said the uncertainty that hung over the Al Gore vs George Bush race stemmed from a punch card system that left behind the notorious hanging chads.
“We looked at the chads and said, ‘Well, is it clear what that vote was?'” Rosenberg said. “Sometimes it wasn’t clear, sometimes it was clear.”
Sometimes the punch did not go through, and because of that, the little pieces of paper left behind held the fate of the presidential race.
“I’m simply here to do the best job I can do and try and do it well,” Rosenberg said to the media in 2000.
He oversaw the checks of those ballots. In the close Gore vs. Bush race, like the Bill Nelson vs. Rick Scott race, a thin margin means every vote is crucial.
“They put their ballot in. Not everybody put it in that way,” Rosenberg said as he showed a ballot placed straight in. “Some people put it in cross ways. They had angles, and we couldn’t figure it out. Sometimes you’d see a chad there and sometimes you’d say, ‘I can’t decide it.'”
Ultimately, Florida’s high court declared Bush the winner by 300 votes.
Gore sued, but in the end, the Supreme Court made Bush the 43rd president of the United States.
A ballot design issue may be partially to blame in 2018 with the choices for U.S. senator tucked under a long list of instructions.
There were 25,000 more people who voted for governor but did not vote for a U.S. senator and left it blank.
The other issue is recounting all the ballots, and the pressure is on.
“Your job is to count ballots. That’s what I was doing,” Rosenberg said. “I was counting ballots.”
He also said it is important to make sure those ballots are legal ballots.
The system we have today is really an outgrowth of what we saw in 2000. New laws were passed, new deadlines and automatic recounts were incorporated into today’s system because of what we experienced in 2000.
When asked if we should have confidence in the system, Rosenberg said that we should. However, mistakes are made when human beings who run the system are incorporated.
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