WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Theresa LePore, brushing away tears as she sat for an interview on a hectic morning in the Palm Beach County elections office, wanted to be clear: her contact lens was bothering her, nothing more.
"I'm not crying, you know," she said with a faint smile.
Ms. LePore is clearly intent on showing that she is holding things together. Four years after her county became the red-hot center of the 2000 presidential election standoff, she is under just about as much stress and scrutiny as she was back then, when camera crews from as far away as Japan camped at her office and she surrendered to emotional exhaustion and teared up in public. She designed the infamous "butterfly ballot," and so in this county that bears the most scar tissue from 2000, her name figures prominently in the rallying cries leading up to Tuesday's state primary and the far bigger test in November.
"She is the problem, my dear!" said Donald Kronfeld, a retiree in Lake Worth who said he, like thousands of other county residents, accidentally voted for Patrick J. Buchanan in 2000 instead of Al Gore because of the confusing ballot design. Other votes were invalidated because paper tabs called chads did not properly detach from ballot cards. In all, about 29,000 ballots in Palm Beach County were thrown out because they included votes for more than one presidential candidate or appeared to have no names punched.
"She is exactly what everyone wants in a civil servant!" said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, which has practically granted Ms. LePore folk hero status.
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http://nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/campaign/28votersx.html?hp