It has been 80 degrees in Palm Beach over the last few weeks, but white flakes are falling. Photographs and sworn statements show that chads are falling off of ballots in the three counties that are still counting votes. Republican observers have documented at least 800 fallen chads in the first days of the third count, but they say that county officials are unconcerned with the phenomenon and have no interest in detailing where the chads came from.
Chads are the small paper rectangles that voters punch out with styluses to indicate their votes.
Voters in Volusia County, which completed its manual recount before the October 14 deadline, fill in blank circles next to the candidates' names, and so there were no chads that could fall out of the ballot and change its status during the recounting process. In Broward County, Republicans asked a deputy from the county sheriff's office to collect and count the fallen chads in the counting rooms. On Wednesday, November 15, the deputy counted 78 chads and sealed them in an evidence envelope. The next day, the deputies from the sheriff's office refused to collect the chads. Broward County Republican observer Jim Rowland has filed an affidavit swearing that a Democratic observer removed fallen chads from a table and put them in his pocket as Rowland was trying to collect them.