And I'm not elderly. She must know that the Palm Beach ballot was prepared by a Democratic Party official, approved by the state bureaucracy in Tallahassee, published in local newspapers, and mailed in advance to her and all registered voters. All voters were told they could ask for help if confused, and they could request a second ballot if they felt that had mismarked the first one. Yes, in retrospect the ballot might have been better designed, but this was the one drawn up and agreed upon with no noticeable protest on any side. No ballot is perfectly clear, but the state seems to have followed the law and gone to a lot of trouble to explain things to Ms. Ide and to offer help.
Voters make mistakes.
Older voters make more mistakes than younger ones, which may account for the fact that 10,000 Palm Beach presidential ballots were left totally blank. William Daley virtually declared that the presidential election will be illegitimate if Gore doesn't win. It's a poisonous thing to say in these extraordinary and unsettling circumstances. That record is profoundly anti-democratic, essentially inviting elites to interpret what the common people believe and want. In litigious modern America, that would be a judicial elite telling us how we meant to vote or should have voted.