Down & Dirty (14 page)

After Clinton’s poll numbers went down the shitter in the wake of the Arkansan’s draft-avoidance-letter revelation and the
bottle-blond cabaret-singer scandal, Whouley came up with the idea to drop off a seven-minute videotape of Clinton talking
to voters at the homes of 20,000 likely voters. Clinton came in second—at that point exceeding expectations—and Whouley moved
to Little Rock to serve as Clinton’s national field director.

In 1996, he managed Gore’s slice of the reelection campaign. This time, Gore asked Whouley to serve as campaign manager soon
after, but neither Whouley nor his wife was in any mood for another move, this one to Nashville, so he declined. Three times.
Gore really wanted him there. Whouley remained in D.C., serving as one of Gore’s senior strategists. He played a leading role
in picking the states Gore needed to win, working with strategist Tad Devine on how much money would be channeled to Democratic
efforts in each one, planning the Democrats’ “Get Out the Vote” activities.

In the end, Whouley’s end of the campaign was the one thing that worked well. So it was no wonder that Gore called on him
today.

“How do you think it’s going down there?” Gore asks.

“I think they’re doing a great job,” he replies, praising Baldick and Alper in particular.

“When are you heading down?” Gore asks, smiling.

“I think I should be in Nashville tomorrah, and I’ll be down theah on Friday,” Whouley says, recognizing a nudge for what
it was.

“Excellent,” Gore says.

To get to the Gore campaign’s last best place of hope, you head down Apalachee Parkway (U.S. 27 South), turn left on Crosscreek
Road near the Sonny’s Barbecue, and there’s a mall there, a nondescript strip mall that houses a couple veterinarians and
a CPA.

Gore attorneys Klain, Sandler, and Young are here.

The place is a dump. Dingy, with wires all over. Klain says he’s going to pick up Daley and Christopher.

They meet Mark Herron. Herron’s a local lawyer, an elections and campaign law expert who was working to get former governor
Lawton Chiles off the hook for some free hunting trips he’d taken, when Chiles died. An FSU, FSU Law guy, Herron starts briefing
them on Florida law and what they can do now.

Just last session, the legislature rewrote a lot of the statutes about challenging an election. The real meat of the coconut
happened in the revisions to the protest/contest/recount statutes. A candidate can request a hand recount of the ballots,
but if Gore wants to do it, a decision has to be made within twenty-four hours, Herron says. The statute gives seventy-two
hours, but Friday is a holiday, and you can’t count on government offices being open.

We need big swings, Young thinks. We’re 1,700 votes down. We should go after those four counties where we know there were
problems yesterday—Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Volusia. We probably won statewide; by hitting those counties we can maybe
pick up the difference.

When Klain returns, around 8:30, Sandler’s embarrassed. Here’s the dapper Christopher, former diplomat, in his famous tailored,
elegant suit, and here’s Sandler, sitting in this dump, wearing stained khakis, not having showered in forty hours. “This
is not how you want to meet Warren Christopher with the presidency at stake,” Sandler thinks.

As the counties’ machine recounts continue, Bush’s lead has shrunk from 1,784 to less than 400 votes by sunset, according
to press accounts.

On
Larry King Live
that night, LePore sees Democrat Wexler and Republican Foley square off against one another. Ironically, even though a former
Foley staffer ran against her in 1996, Foley’s the one defending her today.

“If there was confusion,… the Democrats should have objected before this sample ballot was printed and published and distributed,”
Foley says.

“Good point,” King says. “Congressman Wexler, you signed off on it.” “Well, that’s not exactly so, Larry,” Wexler says. “Many
people did complain to the supervisor of elections when they saw the sample ballot.”

That’s not true! LePore thinks. In October, LePore mailed out 655,000 sample ballots. Even before the sample ballots had gone
out, she’d sent them to all 150-some candidates, faxed and mailed them to Friedkin and Friedkin’s counterpart at the Republican
Executive Committee of Palm Beach County. The
Palm Beach Post
and the
Sun-Sentinel
printed copies in their papers. And not one complaint. Not one! Not a peep! What the hell was Wexler talking about?!

“… the Palm Beach County supervisor herself, Larry, yesterday, sent out an urgent message to poll workers late in the afternoon,
which I’ve never seen done, which said, ‘Advise the people how to vote, because there’s mass confusion,’” Wexler goes on.

“Ah, OK,” says King.

“Ah, OK”?! LePore thinks.
Wexler
was the one to request that “urgent message”! And now he’s citing it as evidence that there was something wrong with the
ballot?! Acting like he had nothing to do with it, this whole “which I’ve never seen done” thing?! What a liar!

Maybe I was naive to call him a friend, she thinks.

Whouley’s deputy on the Gore campaign, Donnie Fowler, has been amassing information all day. He’s jazzed as he steers his
rental car to a Palm Beach Denny’s shortly after midnight as Wednesday becomes Thursday. Over a Grand Slam breakfast at 12:20
A.M.
, Fowler writes a memo to Young, Sandler, Whouley, senior political adviser Monica Dixon, and Klain, which he faxes to them
in his chicken scratch.

• 19,000 ballots rejected by county because voters “double-voted” due to confusing and illegal ballot (voters punched Buchanan
  & Gore)
  
• rejected ballots equal 4% of total votes cast for president, but only 0.8% of ballots rejected in U.S. Senate race
  
• possible Voting Rights Act violation: although an average of
  4% of ballots were rejected
  for double-voting (or “overvoting”) county-wide, up to
  15– 16% of ballots rejected in African-American precincts;
  Cong. Robert Wexler highlights in press conference with 12 TV cameras
  
• Gore picks up net 650 votes in Palm Beach recount; certification expected Thursday by 5:00
  P.M
  .
  
• Judge Charles Burton in recount press conference
  admits that punch card system is faulty
  because little dots punched out can interfere with actual counting by machine
  
• Judge Burton also admits precinct 29-E originally registered 0 votes because of human error; actual count was 368 Gore to
  23 Bush
  
• Reports of voters in line at poll closing (7:00
  P.M
  .) turned away by election judges
  
• Local activist & attorney both criticize antiquated ballot-counting machinery
  
• Evidence that Republican county commissioner coerced Democratic election commissioner into holding recount test less than
  24 hours after polls closed
  
• 500 absentee ballots left at post office—un-picked up and undelivered on election day
  
• 3,000 complaints on file at county headquarters
  
• unable to get through to county election commission on election day via phone
  

In the wee hours, Fowler calls his ex-girlfriend on his cell phone, leaves a message on her voice mail: “We got something
here,” he says confidently. “This is where it’s going to happen, Palm Beach. This is where I think we’re gonna win the White
House.”

One thing becomes crystal clear very early on in the whole damn mess: Florida election law—especially as it pertains to recounts—is
chaos.

Statutes collide. Provisions are vague. Unlike in other states, those supervising the process are often the harshest of partisans.
And, most insanely, the standard by which ballots are assessed is vague, requiring that one assess the “intent of the voter,”
a gauge that can be interpreted differently in different counties. Especially if the counties use punch-card ballots.

When the Votomatic punch-card ballot machine was invented in 1962, elections officials were delighted. This was The Future!
This was based on the computers of IBM! But little by little, glitches in the system were revealed, especially since the machines
were created for speed, not accuracy. Over the years, wealthier counties began purchasing higher-technology voting machines.
And over the years, at times of close elections, the weaknesses of the Votomatic were apparent. In a 1977 Miami Beach city
council race, Robert “Big Daddy” Napp lost by 244 votes. But there were 710 overvotes unread by the machine, Napp said, though
no court would listen to him. After losing a 1991 Oakland Park city council race by 3 votes, Al Hogan, too, lost in court
when he tried to get a hand recount of the faulty punch-card ballots. In times of close elections, punch-card ballots provided
little assurance that the Election Night tally was correct.

The Recount Primer
had suggestions for what to do in times like this:

Some argue that punch card computerized voting is inherently unreliable (see Duggers, “The Analysis of Democracy,”
The New Yorker,
November 7, 1988). The Duggers thesis may be a bit overstated; however, it is true that recount totals in punch card jurisdictions
will inherently vary from election night totals: at least one relevant chad (the little bits of card that are punched out
when the voter punches the stylus through the card to record the vote) will randomly be removed as a result of the handling
of the cards. Punch cards also raise the issue of what determines a valid vote: a machine or the judgment of an election official.
Some of the most common problems experienced in punch card voting include:

• Putting the card in the frame backward so everything is out of alignment.
  
• Failing to fully punch out the perforated circle of paper (the chad), thus permitting the chad to slip back into place; when
  the computer reads the card, it detects no hole and records no vote).
  
• Mistakenly voting for two candidates for the same office.