Down & Dirty (29 page)

Mehlman’s feeling so much better.

Democratic attorney Jack Young is happy. In DeLand, the Volusia County canvassing board changed its mind on Friday and decided
to go ahead with a full hand recount. Judge Michael McDermott and the two county council members—Republican Ann McFall and
Democrat Patricia Northey—ruled on Friday that too much was at stake not to do a full hand recount, especially considering
all the Election Night problems they had. Since the county uses Opti-scan ballots, the task will be much easier than it will
be at the other three counties, which use punch-card ballots.

Which isn’t to say that they’re taking the task lightly. No siree. Especially not after the brouhaha surrounding the “heist”
of ballots by Deborah Allen and her younger brother Mark Bornmann. So what if all they had were toiletries—McDermott has ordered
the ballots moved across the street from the elections board office to the Thomas C. Kelly Administration Center, where the
counting will take place. McDermott, who’s retiring at the end of the year after twenty-four years on the bench, doesn’t screw
around.

And frankly, the Republican judge hasn’t much liked the attitude of the Republican observers. They’ve been blowing smoke,
dragging their feet. And McDermott’s not going to put up with it. As chairman of the canvassing board, he has broad discretion
to crack the whip. On November 9, he told David Brown, the finance chairman for the central Florida Bush-Cheney campaign that
he was out of order.

“
You’re
out of order!” Brown replied.

McDermott turned to the sheriff’s deputy behind his shoulder.

“Remove him,” McDermott said.
“Now.”
Brown was escorted out.

McDermott thinks the behavior of these guys is an embarrassment. He’s embarrassed for himself as a fellow Republican. McDermott’s
secretary
tells him of a phone message he received. “Judge McDermott’s a Republican, but he’s not acting like a Republican,” it said.
Exactly right, McDermott thinks. I’m acting like a judge.

McDermott has a much more pleasant experience with Young, with whom he chats during breaks about the
Canterbury Tales
and other works of English literature.

For his part, when he wasn’t schmoozing McDermott, Young spent Saturday carefully observing the write-ins and other ballots
the canvassing board is inspecting. That night, Young developed twenty-two rules of how to count a ballot, what he calls “certain
principled approaches to getting votes.”Young’s whole plan is to get the yield rate up. When do you hit more home runs, he
asks, if you’re pitched two hundred balls or twenty thousand? We’ll give Bush some votes, setting certain standards, so as
to get more ballots allowed—which will then mean greater votes for Gore. So today, having carefully studied the ballots, Young
has some ideas about how the 448 undervotes should be assessed. There are 184,019 ballots to review, and Young wants to get
this right.

What if someone fills in a bubble for Bush but writes in McCain? Is that not an overvote, two candidates selected? No, Young
says, that should count. McCain is not a qualified candidate for president, there are no electors slated for him.

Any mark circling the name—instead of shading in the bubble, as instructed? A vote. If someone wrote an X close to a name
but not in the bubble? A vote. Random marks on the side of the ballot should be disregarded. These rules should count regardless
of which candidate they benefit.

Sunday, Young and two other Democratic observers—Kathy Bowler, executive director of the California Democratic Party, and
Floridian Sharon Liggett—give the Democratic observers a long list of instructions far exceeding what Volusia’s Republican
observers are being told to do.

Young and his team are ready—really ready. You can tell by their green felt-tip pens. Green because at the start of the day
it had been announced that observers weren’t permitted to take notes with pencils or blue or black pens, since such writing
implements could be used to fill in Volusia’s Opti-scan ballots, creating new fraudulent votes.

The Republican observers have to scramble to get multicolored pens. Since stores are closed, sheriff’s deputies open a supply
closet and give them three boxes of red pens. Score it a draw, barely.

But Young and his team had more than the right colored ink. They have special forms for each precinct, on which they diligently
record how many
votes for each candidate there are, what ballots might be controversial, and why. They have pictograms for any ballot that
they or the GOP observers challenge. On each pictogram, which is basically a Xerox of a ballot, the Democratic observers record
why the ballot is considered controversial. After each precinct form is completed, the form is run to a local law office down
the street, where a computer spreadsheet is being constructed. Young wants to keep close tabs on all the challenges so that
when disputed ballots come up for discussion at the canvassing board, he knows what the disputed ballots are, and he knows
what to say.

When the hand recount starts today, Young very early professes to the canvassing board his desire to have certain controversial
Bush votes be counted. In the end he knows allowing those ballots will mean more Gore votes than Bush votes. Plus, he establishes
some credibility by appearing fair-minded.

He’s done this before. He wants the board to have confidence in him. He wants them to partner with him so the correct—and
most generous—standard is applied. People forget, Young thinks, these are little administrative agencies. Be deferential but
helpful. Treat them right, give them information so they look smart. Develop principled decision making so your guy gets more
votes.

Twenty-two tables of counters and observers. The canvassing board in the corner, checking out the disputed ballots. Young
on hand to share his thoughts. Go.

Burton drives from West Boca to his West Palm Beach judicial office to do some more research on when a countywide hand recount
is legally allowed. He’s still mad at Roberts, still upset about the partisan tone from last night.

“We need to at least talk about how to do this,” he thinks. “Somebody oughta have a plan. If you’re gonna start a business
you don’t know anything about, you don’t just start it. You go work at a restaurant before you open one up.”

A judge friend comes into the office to help him do research.

There are clearly conflicting statutes in the law. One provision allows for manual recounts. The other says that the election
has to be certified by Tuesday. The secretary of state has discretion to postpone the certification if she so chooses, and
it doesn’t say anything about how that will only be at times of emergency—like during hurricanes—as Kerey Carpenter has been
telling him. Hmm.

On his own, Burton faxes a letter to division of elections director Clay Roberts, asking if they can extend the certification
deadline. If they do the hand recount and sent them the tally after Tuesday at 5
P.M.
, will their hard work—and any new votes they find—be ignored? Will they just be screwed? Are the voters whose ballots weren’t
recorded by the machine just shit out of luck?

He gets back a fax from Roberts. It says: Yes.

Clay Roberts also receives a phone call from Frank Jimenez today. Jimenez wants to know why Roberts hasn’t yet issued forth
an opinion on why counties can’t conduct hand recounts. No one’s yet requested one, Roberts says. Sunday night, state GOP
chair, Al Cardenas, asks Roberts for the opinion. Roberts gladly issues it, and it is distributed to the world. Like turn-of-the-century
Chicago Cubs infield double players Tinkers to Evers to Chance, the Jimenez to Cardenas to Roberts maneuver is but one example
of how the Gorebies are at a distinct away-game disadvantage.

David Leahy, the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections, would never understand why the Palm Beach County canvassing board is
going through such angst. Of course they have the discretion to do whatever they want, he thinks, and though he interprets
the statute to mean an error in the vote-tabulation machines, and nothing else, he doesn’t think there’s any big rush to finish
by Tuesday at 7
P.M.

Certainly that’s part of the reason why the board decided to put off their hearing until Tuesday. Leahy is sure that if the
board wants to amend its returns after November 7, it can. If it votes to complete a full countywide hand recount, it has
some time. December 12 is the “safe harbor” date, by which the Legislature can step in if no electors have yet been assigned
to a candidate; Leahy figures they have until December 1 to complete the count, if they want. Plenty of time.

Outside the Palm Beach County Governmental Center, protesters for both sides are takin’ it to the streets.

“THEY! HAVE! NO CLASS!” cheers a Floridian woman with a face like Karl Malden whose rather generous dimensions have been impressively
wedged into a tight floral pantsuit.

She’s offended by a Gore backer who’s carrying around an effigy of “King George II.” It consists of a George W. Bush Halloween
mask covered in Band-Aids wrapped around the head of an inflatable doll and dressed in
an ensemble of K Mart’s finest polyester. The whole rig hangs from a six-foot-long two-by-four.