Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee complained twice in writing to Theresa LePore, the election supervisor who designed the ballot.
It is they who set the rules, who design the ballot papers and decide the order of the candidates (there is no uniform ballot).
Some put the numbers on the wrong ballot.Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary and the man responsible for designing the ballot paper, has asked the Electoral Commission to investigate.
Al Gore's strategists, challenging George W. Bush's narrow lead, chose to demand a recount, where chads would be decisive, rather than appeal for a revote of the muddled election in Palm Beach County, home of the improperly designed butterfly ballot.
Estes designed a ballot measure named Initiative Thirteen that would overturn the existing gay rights ordinance, but also allowed the mere accusation of homosexuality to be the basis for dismissal from a job or eviction from a residence.
To cast a vote, they were required to show identification, a measure that in this case was designed to prevent ballot stuffing and other forms of cheating.
But Democrats complain that a badly designed ballot in Palm Beach County caused thousands of voters to have their ballots discarded when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore.
In Gadsden County, as in Palm Beach and Duval, the root problem was a confusing, badly designed ballot -- not a butterfly, as Palm Beach's winged disaster was called, but a "caterpillar ballot" that spread the presidential candidates among two columns, so that many voters mistakenly marked two names.
The luncheon featured a program designed like a ballot and red-white-and-blue buttons reading "Miller-Nguyen 2012".
But so, arguably, is a decision that disenfranchises or effectively distorts the choices of thousands of citizens, like those in Palm Beach County whose votes were seemingly nullified by an improperly and even illegally designed ballot.
