NO. 619 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2000 WWW.SPTIMES.RU CENTRAL BANK RATE Of Nudity and Smirnov Versus Plagued by the 27.65 27.72 27.70 Severed Heads Smirnov ... Sanctions Curse 27.75 27.80 Mariinsky gets new version Rival brothers in feud for Irap sees an alarming rise in 27.85 27.90 of Strauss opera. Page 10. vodka company. Page 6. fatal diseases. Page 18. 11/01 11/02 11/03 11/09 11/10 U.S. Caught in Electoral Quagmire By David Royse tally by The Associated Press. The orig- In response to the Gore campaign’s risk doing so at the expense of our Buchanan said “ineptitude” in ballot THE ASSOCIATED PRESS inal “final” margin had been reported request for a manual recount, Palm democracy.” design may have caused many TALLAHASSEE, Florida — George at 1,784. Beach County agreed to hand-count More than a thousand Gore sup- Democrats to vote for him inadver- W. Bush’s lead over Al Gore in crucial The recount, required under state ballots in three precincts Saturday. porters demonstrated outside a govern- tently. Florida shrank to fewer than 400 votes law because of the close result, was still With the outcome of the presidential ment building in downtown West Palm James A. Baker III, the former sec- on Thursday, with allegations of irregu- in progress late Thursday, some 48 race in the balance, allegations on both Beach, demanding another election in retary of state brought in by Bush to larities swirling and several thousand hours after polls closed. sides became increasingly heated. the county. They said the confusing con- represent his interests in Florida, said, ballots from overseas residents still to Election officials said results Gore campaign manager William figuration of their ballot had cost the “That ballot was posted, as required by be counted. wouldn’t be certified until Nov. 17 or Daley said courts may find the Florida vice president votes. Florida law, in newspapers and public Recount results from 64 of the later — after at least 2,900 overseas result “an injustice unparalleled in our “Gore got more,” they chanted. places all over the state of Florida. And state’s 67 counties gave Republican ballots can be counted. Those ballots history.” Bush chairman Don Evans The Gore campaign contended the we haven’t heard one gripe about that Bush a lead of 362 votes out of nearly 6 had to be postmarked by Election Day countered, “The Democrats who are ballots in Palm Beach County were ille- ballot until after the voting took place.” million cast, according to an unofficial to count. politicizing and distorting these events gal. Reform Party candidate Pat See ELECTIONS, Page 2 Absentee Votes May Decide Florida By Sarah Karush and Irina Titova STAFF WRITERS In one of the most bizarre turns in U.S. electoral history, a vote counted in St. Petersburg, Russia could now seem to be more significant than a vote cast in St. Petersburg, Florida. That’s because a now-underway re- count in Florida — now the decisive state for the election — has George W. Bush leading Vice President Al Gore by a mere 941 votes. A recount was manda- tory under state law because the margin was less than one-half of 1 percentage point of the total number of votes cast in Florida, the Associated Press said. This therefore means that the deci- sive votes will be coming in from over- seas — cast as absentee ballots — and Florida reckons it will be counting 2,000 of those over the next ten days, officials there said. In the 1996 presidential election, Florida counted 2,300 overseas ballots. Many U.S. expatriates forego voting SERGEY GRACHEV/SPT because obtaining an absentee ballot Three Orthodox priests, who were protesting communist demonstrations on Palace Square on Tuesday — the Day of Harmony and On a Crusade Reconciliation — being led away by police. About 8,000 people gathered and shouted anti-government slogans.See Story, Page 3. can be a hassle and because they feel it is a futile exercise. After all, their votes often don’t arrive until well after the polls have closed and the votes have been tallied. Gulag Memories Live On in a Siberian Museum But Tuesday’s soon-to-be photo fin- ish race proved that every vote counts. REUTERS that would embrace all sides of tourism M-1247, recalls climbing the camp’s Quilted jackets, numbered caps, In some cases, the vote could threaten DOLINA KANYONA, Eastern Sibe- — nature, history, ethnic themes, ex- wooden stairs every morning to work, tarpaulin boots and tins litter the floor lives. “I’m from Florida,” said one ria — Josef Stalin sent millions of So- treme tourism, sport,” Alabushev said. whipped by a piercing wind and gnawed of the barracks and workshops. Florida resident in St. Petersburg who viet citizens down Siberia’s so-called “Dolina Kanyona fits ideally into by temperatures plummeting to minus At the top of a steep slope looms a didn’t vote. “I received a call from my “Road of Bones” to the misery and this idea. This place is unique; it has 50 degrees Celsius. huge refinery surrounded by heaps of ex-wife who lives there who said ‘If death of the gulag labor camps. mountains, lakes, cascading waterfalls, “Nature itself served as a guard cobalt ore, which the Cold War-era So- Gore wins I’ll kill you!’” Now tourists are being invited to the glaciers, rare animals. Here you can sat- here,” said Svertelov. viet military needed to make armor. That notwithstanding, many expats remote Kolyma track to Dolina Kany- isfy the most demanding tourist.” Since the camp closed in 1954, rivers Svertelov was banished to Dolina in St. Petersburg did their patriotic ona, a labor camp crumbling into the Snow-capped mountains overlook have washed away the wooden bridges Kanyona for the “crime” of having duty. Braving the process of red tape tundra nearly 50 years after its last in- Dolina Kanyona and the expanse of built by prisoners on the road that led been captured by Nazis while a soldier and postmarks, many St. Petersburg mate was released. Siberian taiga, whose autumnal reds, to it. But Dolina Kanyona’s isolation during World War II. expats of Floridian persuasion, how- Forty-six-year-old Alexei Alabushev, yellows and greens fan out around the and forbidding elements have helped it German prison was bad, but being ever, blew it. born the year the labor camp closed, crystal clear Verina river. remain one of the best preserved of treated as a traitor upon returning was One Floridian, who declined to be swapped a teaching career for an un- But some 2,000 Dolina Kanyona in- Kolyma’s 500 or so camps. worse. identified said he didn’t vote because he likely tourist dream amid the taiga and mates saw a different picture half a cen- Barbed wire still twists around the The only survivor of Dolina Kany- didn’t like the choices on offer. He tumbling rivers of Russia’s far northeast. tury ago. camp and metal bars criss-cross the tiny ona left in the regional center, Maga- See ABROAD, Page 2 “I wanted to come up with a project Vladimir Svertelov, prisoner number square windows of the prison barracks. See GULAG, Page 2 2 ❖ Friday, November 10, 2000 NEWS The St. Petersburg Times porter Don Liftman said. “Three thou- ELECTIONS sand Buchanan supporters in a county Continued from page 1 full of Jewish condo residents? I don’t think so.” All across the state, other allegations A few Republicans also attended the of voting improprieties ranged from rally, among them was George Ford, missing ballots to problems with tabula- who waved a large Bush-Cheney sign. tions and intimidation of black voters. “To think this is going to be decided In Tallahassee, several hundred student by a bunch of lawyers,” he said, “is just protesters from Florida A&M Univer- a tragedy.” sity marched to the Capitol and held a ❑ silent sit-in in the rotunda. Republican activist Don Weidner PORTLAND — In the “other” unde- said that he didn’t expect a judge to cided state of Oregon, Democrat Al order a new election based on the Gore on Thursday edged ahead of Re- complaints. publican George W. Bush in balloting “Absent a clear demonstration of for U.S. president as election workers fraud, I think it’s highly unlikely the counted the last handfuls of ballots cast. court will throw it out,” he said. While the nation focused on the Republicans were unhappy that dramatic recount of votes in Florida, Gore gained 478 votes in the recount in where the 25 electoral votes will de- GOP-heavy Pinellas County, partly be- termine the next president, Oregon cause of an additional 1,100 absentee was still unable to award its seven ballots overlooked on election night. electoral votes even with 96 percent of “Obviously it’s a very strange ballots counted. event,” said John Dowd, a Washington Vice President Gore with 666,997 attorney working for Bush. “How do votes, or 47.43 percent, led Texas Gov. you miss 1,100 or so ballots?” Bush, with 664,805, or 47.27 percent. The Gore campaign requested that Green Party candidate Ralph Nader 1.78 million ballots be hand-counted in AP tallied 68,812 votes, or 4.89 percent. Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward and Mi- A copy of the controversial ballot distributed in Palm Beach County, which Democrat representatives say confused many voters. “It is intense,” said Lynn Rosik, ami-Dade counties. But Democrats said plaintiff, said that he had received with two other people.