What Stopped Gore Won't Stop LePore

Palm Beach County's embattled supervisor of elections said in an interview televised Thursday that she has no intention of resigning and plans to seek re-election in 2004.

Theresa LePore, who says she has lost 22 pounds since the Nov. 7 election, told ABC she has received threats "horrible things," but did not go into details.

LePore designed the county's infamous butterfly ballot, which some voters said left them confused and may have caused them to cast their ballots for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Vice President Al Gore. Some Democrats say that cost Gore Florida's 25 electoral votes and allowed Texas Gov. George W.Bush to win the presidency.

"Who's to say? You don't know?" LePore said of those accusations. "You can't go back."

LePore said she approved putting the names of the presidential candidates on opposing pages of the ballot so the print could be larger and, she thought, easier for the elderly and vision-impaired to read. But that may have caused some to vote for the candidate on the opposite page from their actual choice or for two candidates.

Palm Beach County Ballot (AP)SIZE>

LePore is a lifetime elections worker, starting in the Palm Beach office in 1971 at the age of 16. A die-hard Democrat and daughter of a former West Palm Beach commissioner, she slowly moved up the ladder until she was elected to her current post in 1996.

LePore said the hardest part of the last seven weeks has been people she thought were friends demanding her resignation, calling her a "closet Republican" and accusing her of being "paid off" as part of a conspiracy to elect Bush.

"If I was paid off, why am I here instead of the Bahamas?" she said.

She said that because of some of the comments by Democrats, she has thought about switching her party affiliation to unaffiliated.

She said she has received numerous letters from elections officials across the country saying "there but for the grace of God go I."