Down & Dirty (24 page)

“Larry in particular is going to talk about the markets, and Condi is going to bring us up-to-date on a lot of matters. There’s
issues in Israel right now that I’m looking forward to hearing about.”

Bush refers all questions about Florida to Baker. Reporters don’t ask him any tough ones, and the cameras go
CLICK-CLICK-CLICK
.

Shortly after 1
P.M
., the Democratic big guns walk into the Florida Senate hearing room to assert a few points of their own. As the Bushies have
had their volume turned up to a shrill decibel level, the Gorebies by necessity continue low-tempo, low-key. They’ve gone
through further legal discussions and are off the butterfly ballot deal, at least for now, though Berger is still working
with Whouley and Fowler in Palm Beach to secure as many voter affidavits as his team is able for possible future use, maybe
in a contest. They’re trying to separate the wheat from the chaff; the thousands of complaints Gore staffers have recorded
from phone interviews range from the serious to whiny to the just plain silly:

“Confused by 2 holes,” reads the complaint of Fedora Horowitz of Boynton Beach. “Thought 1 for Gore and 1 for Lieberman, so
accidentally voted for Buchanan. No one would help her because there were too many people in line.”

“Not enough staff. Small print. Many, many people were very upset. Lines were very long, seniors on walkers, etc., were waiting
in long lines,” reads the phone complaint of John and Shirley Birk of Coconut Creek.

“Rumored that Bush would win w/absentee ballots,” reports Maldine Bush of Miami. “Overheard 2 men talking outside a bank a
few days prior to election.”

“Marine in Vietnam, PSYCHO!! Hates Cubans, ANSCESTORS on
Mayflower.
If we don’t follow on Cuban Corruption, he will ‘have to get [his] automatic weapons and take care of us!!…’”writes another
Democratic phone interviewer.

Bob Bauer, a D.C. election lawyer, has been brought in to check it out. A Bradley supporter (he even played the role of Gore
in Bradley debate prep) who is married to Bradley’s former communications director, Anita Dunn, Bauer quickly comes to the
conclusion that the butterfly ballot case lacks legal merit. It will be kept on the table until Thanksgiving, but by Wednesday,
November 15, Klain will consider that flying insect to have been swatted.

Now they have new talking points, off the litigation-a-go-go from yesterday. One, they say, this isn’t about them, it’s about
the people of Florida. Two, they say serenely, everything’s fine, everything’s good, this is a perfectly normal situation,
no big deal. Three, they say, it’s the other side that’s behaving like crazed banshees. And four, they say that they want
to get this over with as soon as possible, too—even though their actions speak otherwise.

At the press conference they’re led by Daley, who today kind of reminds me of The Thing from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four.
Behind him strolls a lovely-double-breasted-suit-wearing Warren Christopher.

The recount has shown, so far, “a considerable narrowing of the margin between Vice President Gore and Governor Bush,” Daley
says. “When one considers the number of ballots yet to arrive from Americans overseas, and presumably mostly men and women
in the military, then it seems very clear that the outcome here in Florida remains in doubt, as it will for several more days.”

Daley says that in the last day, three of Florida’s sixty-seven counties have agreed to hand-count their ballots, as opposed
to machine-counting them, “at least on a sample basis.” The hand-count request was made “because of oddities in the computer
vote totals. I hope all Americans agree that the will of the people, not a computer glitch, should select our next president.”

Daley puts on a happy face, acknowledging that this whole mess—particularly its wait—is “frustrating” not only to the world,
but “to all of us in both campaigns.” He says he hopes “that our friends in the Bush campaign would join us in our efforts
to get the fairest and most accurate vote count here in Florida.”

But Daley also slams these “friends.” “Calls for a declaration of a victor before all the votes are accurately tabulated are
inappropriate,” he says. “Waiting is unpleasant for all of us. But suggesting that the outcome of a vote is known before all
the votes are properly tabulated”—as the Bush campaign repeatedly has done, most notably just minutes before in the same exact
place by Baker—“is inappropriate.” He says that everyone should “carefully measure all of our words, recognizing the high
stakes involved in these deliberations.”

But it’s doubtful that the words will stay measured, especially since Daley makes it clear that the Gore campaign’s take on
“all the votes” being “accurately tabulated” would include the tens of thousands of nullified or mistakenly cast ballots in
Palm Beach County. “Our legal team has
concluded that the ballot in Palm Beach County was unlawful, it was complained about on Election Day, a complaint that was
implicitly acknowledged by the elections supervisor who put out a flier on Election Day warning about the problems.”

AAARGH! LePore put out this flier only because the Democrats asked for it.

When will this all be over?

“As soon as the proper procedures would allow it,” Daley says, elliptically. “All of us want this as quick as possible to
be over, there’s no question about that.”

Sure there is. There are
plenty
of questions about that.

For the Gorebies, “as quick as possible” means as soon as every Democratic Floridian has gotten the chance to vote, and vote
accurately, even if he screwed up his vote because of a confusing ballot. But for the Bushies, “as soon as possible” means
yesterday. Final recount, final shmecount.

As the briefing winds on, Christopher calls the Bush campaign’s bluff that they might challenge Iowa or Wisconsin or New Mexico.
Bring it on, the old man says. “The team of Governor Bush has every right to consider challenges in other states if they think
they have an obligation to do so, and perhaps they have an obligation to do so if they regard the count as inaccurate,” offers
the former secretary of state.

“What we are seeing here is democracy in action,” Daley says.

Is it? Yuck.

A
ll right,” says Judge Charles Burton. “Good morning, everyone. If we could have quiet in here, we can get through this meeting
as quickly as possible and get to the matter at hand. Today is November 11th, 2000.”

With LePore and Democratic commissioner Carol Roberts, Burton is supervising both a second machine recount of the county’s
462,657 ballots upon request of the Bush team, and a 1 percent hand recount upon request of the Democrats. Not surprisingly,
the Democrats—or, more specifically, Nick Baldick—picked three patches of land that couldn’t be more Democratic if they were
located in Hyannis Port—precincts 193 and 193-E in Boca Raton and 162-E of Delray Beach.

As stacked with Gore votes as the three precincts are, they still don’t add up to 1 percent of the county; vote-wise, they’re
still 300 or so votes shy of 4,620. So the canvassing board itself picks the first county with a vote total—349—roughly the
size of the debt, precinct 6-B in suburban Palm Beach Gardens.

The word goes forth, and the ballots are ordered in. Teams of three counters apiece, with two observers—one D, one R—per table,
set up. Some of the observers want to be able to handle the ballots.

“There’s no one at any time who is going to touch the ballots,” Burton says, all business. “There’s going to be law enforcement
in here, and they are going to be instructed as to that. We’ve got the hand slappers here.”

Burton’s already seen enough from the Democrat and Republican attorneys to know that this is not a courtroom where he is the
king. This is something far more bizarre and chaotic, something from the messy world of politics. For that reason he wants
the observers to keep their traps shut.
“Their job is to observe, period. If they participate in the process, we will be here until God knows when.

“We are not going to be here until three weeks from Sunday to decide,” he says in words that will prove awfully prophetic.
Yes, the counters won’t be here three weeks from Sunday. Instead, the counters will actually be here
two
weeks from Sunday. But of course, nobody knows that right now. Right now they think it might all be over soon.

So fearful are the Bushies of what a hand recount might bring, they actually seek a temporary restraining order against the
four Florida canvassing boards, as if Bush were an abused ex-girlfriend and the canvassing boards drunk and deranged stalkers.

In a brief put together by Olson, Michael Carvin, and the Bush crew, the Florida “voters”—real-estate tycoon Ned Siegel, et
al.—on Saturday, November 11, ask Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida to
stop the hand recounts. The brief gets relatively little notice from the media, since even conservative legal scholars wonder
where there could possibly be a federal issue in all of this. But in terms of what will eventually happen in the whole grim
saga, it’s as if the brief were written by Nostradamus, with a possible assist from Machiavelli.

Olson argues that the federal government needs to stop the hand recount because of violations to the 1st and 14th Amendments
to the U.S. Constitution. Any such hand recount, without a showing of fraud, corruption, or coercion, would “impermissibly
impede the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to have their votes certified in a uniform and even-handed manner.

“The votes of citizens across the State of Florida will be unconstitutionally diluted if the Defendants conduct a manual
recount of only selected ballots in portions of four heavily Democratic counties,” the brief goes on. “Under Florida’s scheme
for discretionary manual recounts, the question whether a vote is subject to a recount and how it is counted is left to the
unfettered discretion of the county canvassing boards and will vary throughout the state.

“Simply stated,” Olson’s brief continues,“under Florida’s scheme,
identical
ballots in two different counties will be treated differently. For example, where there is a partial punch for one candidate,
a ballot may be counted where the county board has decided to conduct a manual recount and, pursuant to wholly subjective
perceptions, has determined that the voter ‘intended’ to vote for the candidate. An identical ballot in another county
will not be counted for that candidate in a county that has refused to engage in the manual recount.”

This, Olson argues, violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution since Florida’s county-by-county recount laws—which
vary due to “the arbitrary and unfettered discretion of government officials”—violate the right of voters to be treated equally.

Olson includes other arguments that will not fare so well with the test of time. Having government officials implementing
recount procedures that are “pervasively arbitrary” violates due process, he says. Even giving the government officials such
discretion is a violation of the 1st Amendment, he goes on.