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M: Well, that sounds like a typical Republican response. I would like to state on the
 record [that] I am a registered Republican, and I was then. And I think that
 probably helped somewhat with the Republicans because they said, well he is
 one of us. But I've always voted for the candidate that I consider to be the best
 candidate, and I've never voted a party line. And let me say this too, one of the
 phone calls my secretary got one day was, somebody called in to complain.
 They said, Judge McDermott is a Republican, but he's not acting like a
 Republican. And my response to that was, you're exactly right, I'm acting like a
 judge.

P: Which you're supposed to do.

M: That's right, that's my job.

P: Were you offended, and I've heard this from just about everybody, they assumed
 that because Judge Lewis and Judge Clark were Democrats they'd vote for
 Gore, they assumed since Teresa LePore was for Gore that she would do certain
 things. It's rather interesting that the public perception of public servants and
 judges would be that they would vote on the basis of their political affiliation. Is
 that offensive to you? That's probably the wrong word.

M: I've got a pretty thick skin, and I've been called a lot of things over the years, and
 I've long since learned to just let things go by. Perhaps offensive is not the right
 word, but my view is that I'm a judge, I'm required to follow the law, even where I
 myself might disagree with the law. My duty under the law is to follow the law.
 Everything that we did was under very close scrutiny because, for example at the
 table when we'd have the meeting of the canvassing board, there was at least
 one representative of the Republican Party there to observe everything we did,
 and there was at least one representative of the Democratic Party to observe
 everything we did. We allowed them to be heard on individual ballots. At first we
 would discuss, well it looks like this is a vote for Gore. What does the
 Republican say? Oh, I don't think so Judge. In fact, it got actually funny for
 awhile because you'd have a ballot that would be creatively mis-marked where
 we would determine that the voter wanted to vote for Gore and the Republican
 would object, in fact they even took photographs with a digital camera of any
 ballot that they weren't happy with. Yet, we would get another ballot that would
 be just as mis-marked, it's actually the same way, and we'd say, well it's obvious
 to us that this is a vote for Bush. I'd turn around and say, are there any
 objections by Republicans? And they'd say, no, no objection. I'd say, are you
 absolutely sure about that? Because it seems to me two ballots ago we had one
 where we concluded that the intent of the voter was to vote for Gore and you
 objected vociferously, and here we are with the same kind of mis-marked ballot
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