Down & Dirty (41 page)

“With all due respect,” Lehr says, “that’s only his opinion. You know? Then he can have his puppets sitting here, too. You
know what I’m saying? I’m not needed, then. That’s
his
opinion.”

Geller scrambles, assesses the situation. Focus, Myriam, focus, Geller thinks. That’s not what I’m talking about. We’re not
addressing standards. We’ll get to standards if we actually start counting.“All I’m saying is that—”

“You know, if he wants to look at them his way, that’s his prerogative,” Lehr says. “You know, I have my standards. And, and
you have all been behind us and watching us for the last two days, and—”

“OK,” King interrupts.“So, Judge, do you or do you not wish to grant the hearing tomorrow? I know Mr. Leahy does not.”

“I’m not opposed to, against granting a hearing, but maybe we should first listen to Mr. Martinez and see what he has to say,”
Lehr says.

I’m not prepared to argue this dumb thing, Martinez thinks.

He’s very upset.

“I’m going to count to ten first,” Martinez says. “I was taught as a child before responding—”

“You don’t have to be mad,” King snaps. “If you feel that you are emotionally involved in this case or this matter and you
are counting to ten because you are irate over the issues raised by Mr. Geller, then maybe you should have someone else stand
in for you. I don’t like the look in your eyes, and I don’t like you looking at me with the idea that you’re mad.”

Good, Geller thinks. Martinez is being an asshole. Rolling his eyes and sighing and being melodramatic, like Gore in the first
debate.

“If you’re counting to ten—and I’ll let you explain what you just said on the record—but I really don’t appreciate that,”
King goes on. “You’ve been given absolutely your fair share. And to be upset or to be upset about that in a manner which might
upset you with respect to this panel, I’ll be happy to take a few minutes, let you sit down and compose yourself, and come
back to the panel. Would you like to do that?”

“No,” Martinez says, chastened, but also somewhat embarrassed for King, who he thinks is making an ass out of himself. He
wasn’t upset at the board when he made his “counting to ten” comment! He was upset at Geller and the Democrats!

“Thank you,”
King says pointedly.

Martinez speaks briefly.“There is no provision in the Florida statutes… that deals with the request that Mr. Geller is making.
Judge King, I hope that you would keep an open mind. I hope I can convince you, but I think frankly you have to understand
that I’m focusing my attention at this time to your distinguished colleagues.”

He makes his pitch.

Calmly, rationally.

King shows a bit of contrition. “I now understand, Mr. Martinez, why you stated what you did. And I apologize to you if I
seemed a little distemperate with respect to the matter…. I’m sorry if I’ve gotten off on a soapbox.”

In an attempt to put an additional obstacle in their way, Martinez suggests that they hold a session to determine whether
or not there should be a hearing on the motion for reconsideration.

That idea goes nowhere. But, perhaps feeling guilty about his disproportionate eruption at Martinez, King suggests that they
table everything until two days hence, Friday, at 3
P.M.

Speechwriter Attie comes over to NavObs Wednesday with a speech he’s been working on since Saturday in which Gore calls for
a statewide machine recount of all the ballots and a hand recount of those that the machine can’t read. But Gore scraps this,
relegates it to a sentence in his speech, a call for a statewide recount if Bush wants one. The media elite are hammering
Gore for dragging this out, for the comments Lehane made about Harris, and he wants to show that he can raise the tone of
it all, and that he sees a way toward completion, a reasonable plan with parameters.

But when Gore comes forward today to give the speech he’d proposed giving Saturday, it feels late, and it’s delivered in typical
Gore fashion—which is to say that no matter how sincere it may be, it feels oily.

“The campaign is over, but a test of our democracy is now under way,” he says. “It is a test we must pass, and it is a test
we will pass with flying colors. All we need is a common agreement that what is at stake here is not who wins and who loses
in a contest for the presidency but how we honor our Constitution and make sure that our democracy works as our founders intended
it to work.”

Gore proposes “a resolution that is fair and final.” The hand recounts in Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach Counties will be allowed
to finish. “I am also prepared, if Governor Bush prefers, to include in this recount all the counties in the entire state
of Florida. I would also be willing to abide by that result and agree not to take any legal action to challenge that result.”

As Fabiani watches this, he knows that this proposal might have meant something last week, when the butterfly ballot lawsuit
seemed a tad more promising. But now its litigative potential is weak, and the story’s old. He shakes his head.

Gore also suggests that he and Bush meet “personally, one on one, as soon as possible… to improve the tone of our dialogue
in America.”

A few hours later, Bush goes on TV to respond. To the recount proposal—No. To the offer to meet personally to improve the
tone of our dialogue in America, that would be—No.

Just as Gore seems to ooze insincerity, Bush seems nervous, twitchy, in hopelessly over his head. Neither of these guys’ public
appearances seems to do much to reassure anyone; in fact, they explain why this was a tie.

“As we work to conclude this election, we should be guided by three principles: this process must be fair, this process must
be accurate, and this process must be final,” Bush says. Fairness means no more counting. Accuracy means that hand counts
can’t be used. Final means Friday at midnight, when the overseas absentee ballots are due. He also offers the obligatory whack
at hand recounts. “As Americans have watched on television, they have seen for themselves that manual counting, with individuals
making subjective decisions about voter intent, introduces human error and politics into the vote-counting process.”

Throughout the election, Gore got called on his various fibs and demagogueries, as he should have. Some of the things he said
were outrageous—hinting that there was something benignly racist about Bill Bradley’s health-care proposal immediately comes
to mind. But Bush seems to get away with his rank hypocrisies. I have no idea why. How can he keep slamming the very notion
of hand recounts when Texas has one of the most liberal hand-recount laws in the nation, thanks in no small part to him?

Then there’s the complete disingenuousness of the Democrats’ “count every vote” call. Which to some doesn’t even make sense.
Michael Carvin, down in Florida at Ginsberg’s request, is confused about the Democrats’ strategy.

He sees Gore speak, hears him talk about a statewide recount. As a strategy, that makes sense to Carvin. There’s no way the
Democrats can be under the impression that they’ll be able to pursue undervotes in four Democratic-leaning counties, have
those votes propel Gore to a victory, without the Bushies arguing that the
entire state’s
undervotes need to be looked at. Is there?

Then he watches Christopher and Boies on TV, talking about how they are going to ask the Florida supreme court to set a standard
for the whole state. This, too, makes some sense. There needs to be a statewide standard
or—as the Bushies argued in the Middlebrooks brief on Monday—there might be some equal-protection arguments they could utilize
against them in the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a rather sophisticated approach, Carvin thinks, but it’s reasonable. They
realize that if they want four counties’ undervotes looked at, they’ll have to accept a statewide count, which will take some
time. So they’re going to take the PR hit, allow Bush to be certified the winner after the absentee ballots are counted, and
they’re setting the stage for the contest provision, which will obviously take some time.

But then the Democrats don’t file anything.

What are they doing? Carvin thinks.

The Dems’ calculation isn’t all that complicated, actually. They’re aware of a few harsh realities: for Bush to be certified
the winner will be a PR disaster; privately Democrats on the Hill are already starting to peel off. When will this end? they
ask. Gore’s poll numbers are starting to erode. Additionally, the legal burden in a contest is much greater. One has to argue
against a certified result, the burden of proof is much tougher, and the fight takes place in courtrooms instead of before
canvassing boards. So the Gorebies decide to ride the protest phase as far as it can get them, so they can enter the contest
phase in the strongest possible position. Let’s keep the hand recounts going, they’ve decided, and then we’ll see what happens.
The hope, of course, is that there will be enough Gore votes in Broward, Miami, and Palm Beach to dispense with Bush’s 300-vote
margin of victory. Then the onus becomes
Bush’s
. Then
Bush
has to contest the election. Then
Bush
has to explain to the world why he’s being such a crybaby.

Yep, the Gorebies figure, the better thing to do is put off the certification, get the votes counted, and take it from there.

LePore calls the Palm Beach field office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to let the fuzz know about an item for
sale on eBay that she will not stand for. The wife of her computer guy buys antiques on eBay, and she noticed that someone
calling himself Mark Bruce is selling a Votomatic, complete with butterfly ballot, for two grand.

She prints it out, and her husband gives it to LePore, who calls the cops.

Special Agent John Marinello e-mails “Bruce,” who now says he wants $20,000. Marinello agrees, and at about 5
P.M.
, some undercover Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers go to the corner of Lantana Road and Military Trail to meet
the millennial Butch and Sundance and talk turkey. They finally agree to $4,000; the cuffs come out.

“Mark Bruce” turns out to be Mark Bruce Richter, forty, a Lake Worth, Florida, schemer. It’s a brilliant alias, as befitting
the man who came up with the perfect crime. His partner is Steven Solomon. Under interrogation, the two reveal that the Votomatic
was left behind at the Winston Trails Club House. They’re booked for dealing in stolen property and unlawful possession of
a voting machine—the latter of which is a felony. Solomon also gets the nice added charge of possession of a firearm in the
commission of a felony, since he had a .40-caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic pistol in his fannypack.

It’s a tough competition, but even after another month of this chaos, no one will beat Richter and Solomon for the title of
Sorriest Losers in this whole grim affair.