IAMI - One way or another, their votes will get to Tallahassee.
Meant to represent voters shut out of the presidential election, a bus carrying close to 11,000 sample ballots will leave Miami-Dade County for Palm Beach County today and continue on to the state capitol. It is also intended to convey the anger roiling among local Democrats.
They're angry at an elections canvassing board that refused to complete a hand recount of 10,750 ballots on which tabulating machines detected no choice for president.
They're angry at out-of-state Republicans who, they say, poured into town in an effort to intimidate the board, which said it would be unfair to count some but not all questionable ballots.
And they're angry at a court system that failed to order the canvassing board to go back to work. They're even angry at some Democrats who they say botched the election and the postelection process. Canvassing board chairman Lawrence King, a county judge, is a Democrat who was appointed by a Democratic governor.
Luis Rosero, spokesman for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, said, ''The bottom line is people are angry.''
As the deadline for recount results in Tallahassee on Sunday neared, more than 200 people, from churches, community groups and union locals, rallied outside County Hall. They lighted candles. They prayed. They criticized local officials.
They did not, however, make threats, issue insults or chase anyone - as Republican protesters did in County Hall shortly before the canvassing board shut the recount down last Wednesday. Locals are perhaps angriest that out-of-towners may have cost them their voice in the election.
''It's unconscionable that the Miami board chose not to count so many ballots that were not even counted the first time,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the Miami-based Florida American Civil Liberties Union. ''There's something unseemly about this election, with the haste to get it over so quickly. Accuracy is more important than speed.''
Like the Democratic and Republican parties, the state chapter of the ACLU was rushing yesterday to meet the deadline set by the US Supreme Court for briefs and other background in the case being pressed by Governor George W. Bush of Texas. Although Simon emphasized the group's political neutrality, its stance favors Vice President Al Gore.
Gore, in fact, carried Miami-Dade by 39,000 votes - a huge drop from President Clinton's 117,000 margin in the 1996 election but enough to best Bush locally. But it was not enough to give Gore the state's 25 electoral votes, at least not without a recount.
Before halting the recount, the canvassing board added some 150 ballots to the Gore column - votes they took away when the recount was abandoned incomplete. Democrats, who formally contested the county election returns in a Tallahassee courtroom yesterday, have repeatedly contended that enough votes for a victory were in the still-uncounted pile.
''It's beyond bizarre what happened in Miami-Dade,'' said US Representative Peter Deutsch, Democrat of Fort Lauderdale. ''I think Al Gore could very well be president.''
Local Democrats are still holding out hope that a state court or the nation's highest court could order yet another recount, this one complete. To ensure they are heard this time, more vigils are expected. A town meeting is planned. One way or another, they insist they will be heard.
