Down & Dirty (103 page)

When I asked David Leahy about the voting machines that failed that Election Day morning test at Dunbar and Evans Elementary
schools (mentioned in
chapter 1
), he said that he wasn’t concerned, since the machines had worked fine in the warehouse. This
seemed a rather flippant comment to make about the precincts with the highest percentage of unread ballots in the county.
But while African-American activists in Miami-Dade are fired up and trying to get the caucasian Leahy replaced, they should
remember one thing: a lot of the elections workers—like Evans Elementary precinct clerk Donna Rogers—are African-American.
And Rogers, when I interviewed her, not only didn’t accept any responsibility for what happened in her precinct, she refused
to even believe that it happened. Undervotes, overvotes, and hanging chad have been around for a long time. Where were Congressmen
Deutsch and Wexler—or Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger, for that matter—when Broward County supervisor of elections Jane Carroll,
a Republican, was trying to secure funds to buy Opti-scan machines for the county? How could Iowa governor Tom Vil-sack rail
against undervotes in Florida when his own state had its share as well?

That said, when elections supervisors complained to Katherine Harris and Clay Roberts about poorly functioning machines, or
about the horribly inaccurate ChoicePoint felons list, many were greeted with what they felt to be complete and utter disregard.
Did the fact that these problems hurt black, Hispanic, and underclass voters disproportionately play a factor in their indifference?
I don’t know. But it’s probably safe to say that if these problems had been causing a stir among Sarasota Republicans—or if
election reform had been a pet cause of state senate president John McKay—then Harris would have been a bit more attuned to
it, committed to working on it. Who knows? Maybe she would have even allocated some of the funds she spent jetting off to
Australia to set up the Florida pavilion at the Olympic Games.

But while we’re looking for people to blame, let’s not forget how Harris and Roberts got to their positions of power. Clay
Roberts was appointed by Jeb Bush who, along with Harris, was elected by the good citizens of Florida on November 3, 1998.
Many of the same good citizens whose votes didn’t count because they didn’t bother to check the instructions on the ballot
box and who now are looking for a scapegoat.

Which is the point: We, as Americans, are to blame for what happened in Florida. Whomever you think the subtitle of the book
applies to, we are the ones who let him try to steal a presidency. We are the ones who haven’t cared about hanging chad in
the past, who didn’t inform new voters of how to make sure their votes are read by the machine, who elected legislators who
passed vague and conflicting laws, who nominated Gore and Bush to begin with. Gore, whose advocates bullied various Florida
elections officials, who was willing to stake a presidential victory on dimpled ballots that not even Bob Kerrey considered
votes in three Democratic counties. Gore, who said “count all the votes,” but made no true move to have that done. Gore, who
couldn’t even win his home state, who had to struggle to win an election against a candidate as weak as Bush at a time of
unprecedented peace and prosperity. Gore, the self-proclaimed champion of environmental and consumer causes, whose lusty capitulation
on such issues propelled the candidacy of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader—who garnered roughly 97,000 votes in Florida alone.
Gore, who was, at the very bottom of it all, a rather unappealing candidate who seemed to have not only no sense of vision
but no sense of himself.

And then, of course, you have the winner, George W. Bush, who let General Baker run it all for him, who thought what happened
in Miami-Dade
was funny, who let Hughes, Fleischer, Eskew, Rove, Bartlett, Racicot, Baker, go out and say things on his behalf that just
simply were not true, things that bashed judges and justices who were—however imperfectly—trying to make sense in an insane
world.

The man in charge of the overseas absentee ballots for Bush was Warren Tompkins, who we all know was also in charge of the
ugliest primary contest in modern history—the battle for South Carolina, fought against Sen. John McCain. How was it that
Bush was allowed to walk out of South Carolina without the media or the Gore campaign reminding him of the disgraceful, disgusting,
loathsome way he and his campaign secured a victory? How is it that our president is on a first-name basis with a man like
Warren Tompkins to begin with? Or does the mere fact that Bush has been preceded by characters like Clinton and Nixon make
that question asked and answered?

We have set up a world where great men do not get nominated for the presidency—only ruthless, power-mad pols with hollow centers,
surrounded by political mercenaries. We have set up a world where the candidate with the more effective liars and more cutthroat
scoundrels wins. Perhaps our displeasure with the products of this machinery is the reason we got into this mess in the first
place.

Dirty politics and hollow rhetoric are not new to America, but in recent decades, as money and television and mass marketing
have saturated the political process, the office of the presidency has been terribly tarnished. Nixon and Clinton certainly
did their damage, but they weren’t the only ones. We’re a coarser society, an angrier place, made all the more so by the billions
of dollars to be made in exploiting the worst in us. In 2000 we had two men running for the highest office in the land, and
many of us thought neither of them truly up to the task. So perhaps there really wasn’t a presidency left to steal. You can
look at dimpled ballots, questionable judicial decrees, lazy reporters, family ties, and too much money. You can scour the
Florida swamps in search of submerged Votomatics. You can file Freedom of Information Act requests to track down mash notes
between people who were supposed to be neutral and folks who were rabid partisans. You can look at Florida—or Iowa, or New
Mexico, or just about any state—and wonder how its residents feel, knowing so many votes are routinely misread and discarded.
You can look at sleazy political operatives and cutthroat lawyers and politicized judges. But if you really want to know who’s
responsible for what went down in the Sunshine State, you might want to take a look in the mirror.

Chapter 1

1
.
Tamala Edwards, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” Salon.com, Dec. 19, 2000.

2
. Maxine Jones, “The African-American Experience in Twentieth-Century Florida,” essay in
The New History of Florida,
Michael Gannon, ed. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996).

3
. Glenda Alice Rabby,
The Pain and the Promise: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Tallahassee, Florida
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999).

4
. Gregory Palast, “Florida’s ‘Disappeared Voters’: Disfranchised by the GOP,”
The Nation,
February 5, 2001.

5
. John Mintz and Dan Keating, “Minority Undercount Rate Higher,”
Washington Post,
Dec. 3, 2000.

6
. Paul Brinkley-Rogers, “County Had Highest Rate of Invalid Ballots,”
Miami Herald,
Dec. 3, 2000.

7
. Mintz and Keating.

8
. Frances Robles and Geoff Dougherty, “Ballot Errors Rate High in Some Black Precincts,”
Miami Herald,
Nov. 15, 2000.

9
. William Cooper, Jr., and Alexandra Clifton, “Glades Blacks’ Ballots Tossed More Than Average,”
Palm Beach Post,
Nov. 18, 2000.

Chapter 2

1
. John Ellis, Inside.com, Dec. 2000.

2
. Jane Mayer,
The New Yorker,
Nov. 20, 2000.

3
. Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, “The Truth Behind the Pillars,”
Newsweek,
Dec. 25, 2000.

4
. Alicia C. Shepard, “How They Blew It,”
American Journalism Review,
Jan. 2001.

5
. Seth Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,”
Brill’s Content,
Dec. 12, 2000.

6
. T. Trent Gegax,
Newsweek,
Nov. 20, 2000.

7
. Gegax.

Chapter 4

1
. Glen Simmons et al.,
Gladesmen, Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998).

Chapter 5

1
.
Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor,
American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation
(New York: Little, Brown, 2000).

2
. Edmund Kalina,
Courthouse over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960
(Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1988).

Chapter 10

1
. The Harris quotes from the Florida-FSU game come from the ABC News producers Chris Vlasto and Eric Avram, great Americans
both.

Chapter 12

1
. Clay Lambert and Bill Douthat, “Miami-Dade Ballot Recount,”
Palm Beach Post,
Jan. 14, 2000.

Chapter 20

1
. John Dickerson, “Home on the Range: The Bush Ranch Is the Way He Likes to See Himself—Rugged and Thoroughly Texan,”
Time,
Dec. 25, 2000.

2
. Much of this is common sense to anyone who delves into the opinions, but I’m indebted to the best Supreme Court reporter
in the country, Joan Biskupic of
USA Today,
for her Jan. 22, 2001, story, “Election Still Splits Court.”

The Unfiled Gore Brief of December 13, 2000

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

_______________________

CASE NO. SC00-2431

On Appeal from the Second Judicial Circuit

CASE NO. 1D00-4745

_______________________

ALBERT GORE, Jr., Nominee of the Democratic Party of the United States for President of the United States,
and JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Nominee of the Democratic Party of the United States for Vice President of the United States,

Appellants,

vs.

KATHERINE HARRIS, as SECRETARY OF STATE STATE OF FLORIDA, and SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE BOB CRAWFORD, SECRETARY
OF STATE KATHERINE HARRIS and L. CLAYTON ROBERTS, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF ELECTIONS, individually and as members of and as THE
FLORIDA ELECTIONS CANVASSING COMMISSION,

and

THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, LAWRENCE D. KING, MYRIAM LEHR and DAVID C. LEAHY,
as members of and as THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, and DAVID C. LEAHY, individually and as Supervisor of Elections,

and

THE NASSAU COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, ROBERT E. WILLIAMS, SHIRLEY N. KING, AND DAVID HOWARD (or, in the alternative,
MARIANNE P. MARSHALL), as members of and as the NASSAU COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, and SHIRLEY N. KING, individually and as Supervisor
of Elections,

and

THE PALM BEACH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, THERESA LEPORE, CHARLES E. BURTON AND CAROL ROBERTS, as members of
and as the PALM BEACH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD, and THERESA LEPORE, individually and as Supervisor of Elections,