Uncounted may have the last word in presidential race

WASHINGTON - Their ranks include soldiers and seniors, younger voters, too, and minorities and poor people. There are no names attached to the Florida voters whose ballots have gone uncounted, but they may yet have the last word on America's next president.

All eyes are on the uncounted now that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that state officials must consider additional ballots before certifying state election returns, which now narrowly favor George W. Bush.

Although research is scant on which voters are most likely to have their ballots thrown out, some experts believe that America's underclass may be over-represented.

''A good part of them are at the lowest rung of the economic ladder,'' said Lance deHaven-Smith, associate director of the Florida Institute of Government. ''They're the least attached part of the electorate. Lacking experience and familiarity with these kinds of ballots, they would be more likely to make a mistake.''

DeHaven-Smith said minorities, immigrants, poor people and younger voters all are more likely to be among these inexperienced voters. The elderly - among the most experienced of voters - also may have had trouble with the ballots, particularly the confusing design in Palm Beach County, due to vision problems, he added.

Most of the focus is on uncounted ballots from two Democratic counties in South Florida, where hand recounts are under way after nearly 73,000 ballots were rejected by machines. So far, the recounts are turning up more votes for Gore than for Bush.

In addition, there is ongoing controversy over whether to take another look at an undetermined number of military ballots from overseas that were thrown out.

A look at three groups thought to be among the uncounted:

ELDERLY

The counties where recounts are under way have large elderly populations, and older voters tend to turn out to vote in higher numbers. In Palm Beach County, for example, 25 percent of the population is 65 or older. It's probable, therefore, that the elderly represent a disproportionate share of the uncounted. But don't blame the elderly for messing up their ballots, says AARP, an advocacy group for the elderly. ''We don't see this as necessarily an older voters' problem,'' said AARP spokesman Steve Hahn. ''Undisputedly, there are some ballot design problems.''

MINORITIES

Some academics believe minorities are over-represented in the uncounted ballots. ''There's a risk that minority voters might end up being the most disenfranchised by a poor ballot design, just because they are more likely to be first-time voters and some of them are clustered in low-income categories,'' said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University. In Duval County, for example, of the 27,000 ballots that were not counted, nearly 42 percent of them came from predominantly black areas. Democrats worried that the party's local get-out-the-vote workers had provided ballot guidance that was confusing to inexperienced voters.

SOLDIERS

More than 1,500 overseas absentee ballots were rejected by county election officials, including an undisclosed number of military ballots that had not been postmarked by Election Day. Their rejection drew a protest on behalf of the Bush campaign from retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who said soldiers ''must depend upon a system that takes their ballot directly from their front-line positions on a circuitous route to the ballot box.'' So far, overseas ballots have been favoring Bush. Florida's attorney general, Democrat Bob Butterworth, belatedly urged county election officials to count the spurned military ballots, but the overseas results already have been certified by the state.

The uncounted also most likely include some voters who are just too smart for their own good.

''They think they don't have to read and follow a set of instructions,'' said Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, an independent clearinghouse that works with election authorities throughout the country. ''We have had people who do not or will not or cannot follow a set of instructions from virtually every economic strata and educational strata in life.''

Richard Scher, a professor of American politics at the University of Florida, cautioned against assuming that the uncounted are made up of society's neediest, arguing that many of those people still don't vote.

Scher said a study of those who registered to vote under Florida's ''motor voter'' law found that ''a lot of the new folks aren't really the down-and-outs ... they're solid, middle-class types who hadn't bothered to register and feel only a marginal attachment to the electoral process.''