By Sean Holton and Jeff Kunerth
                of the Sentinel Staff

                Published in The Orlando Sentinel on November 19, 2000

                Machines are neither Republican nor Democrat.

                But on Election Day in Florida, the best vote-counting
                machines may have turned out to be a secret weapon for
                Republicans. And those machines may make the crucial
                difference that puts George W. Bush in the White
                House.

                Counties with the pen-marked, precinct-tabulated voting
                system that consistently produced the most complete
                results also usually favored Bush, an Orlando Sentinel
                analysis of results from 67 counties shows. That meant
                Bush was able to squeeze just about every available
                vote out of more-friendly territory.

                Al Gore, meanwhile, started out behind because his
                strongholds also happened to be in a few big counties
                still equipped with outdated, punch-card systems with an
                overall rate of unrecorded votes nearly five times higher
                overall, the newspaper found.

                One way of looking at the numbers suggests this: If all
                67 counties had been using the same type of system with
                an identical overall reliability rate, Gore might have gone
                ahead of Bush in the totals for Nov. 7, by a margin of
                more than 1,700 votes. This scenario emerges whether
               voters used the most reliable system or the least reliable
                -- as long as it was used uniformly statewide.

                The analysis also indicates that two strongly pro-Bush
                counties that only recently upgraded from punch-cards
                to the more reliable system may have helped tip the
                balance in Florida to the Texas governor.

                "I don`t think it`s inherently unfair for a candidate. Who
                it`s unfair for are the voters," Poe said. "After all I`ve
                been through this week, there is one prediction I`m
                willing to make. And that is that Florida will have the
                most sophisticated ballot system on the planet by the
                year 2002."

                About 180,000 of the 6.1 million ballots cast statewide
                Nov. 7 had no presidential vote recorded. That amounts
                to about 2.9 percent, slightly higher than the so-called
                "drop-off`" rate in Florida`s previous two presidential
                elections.

                How many of those voters had their ballots ultimately
                recorded may have hinged simply on which of these
                three types of systems was used:

                » Pen-marked, precinct-tabulated ballots: Producing by
                far the most complete results, this vote-counting system
                recorded votes for more than 99 percent of ballots cast.
                Because problematic ballots are kicked back from
                machines to voters immediately, they can be corrected
                or re-done on the spot. Most of the 17,537 ballots with
                no votes in these counties were uncorrectable absentee
                ballots or those deliberately left blank, officials said. The
                25 counties with this system favored Bush by 52.9
                percent to 44.6 percent for Gore.

                » Punch cards: Counties using these systems recorded
                no votes for 3.9 percent of ballots cast, accounting for
                144,985 of the unrecorded presidential votes. Problem
                ballots are not discovered until they`re run through
                tabulation machines at a central location. The 25
                counties with this system included Gore`s biggest
                strongholds, and favored him overall by 51.8 percent to
                46 percent for Bush.

                » Pen-marked, centrally tabulated ballots: Counties with
                this system recorded no votes for 5.7 percent of ballots.
                But because these 15 counties tended to be smaller, that
                percentage accounted for just 15,958 unrecorded votes,
                favoring Bush by 54.6 percent to Gore`s 43 percent.