Down & Dirty (44 page)

It’s as if he’s talking about Cuba itself.

In Palm Beach, the counters grow weary. This is mind-numbingly boring work.

“I had a lot of practice for this,” a sheriff’s deputy says. “I was an altar boy.”

“We’ve been going about two hours, haven’t we?” one asks. “What time did we start?”

“Can we take a break in the middle of it?” one asks Denise Dytrych.

“Are you pretty close?” the county attorney asks.

“We’ve got another hour and a half.”

“We need to protect the ballots,” Dytrych says, and while the group takes a coffee break, a sheriff’s deputy stands at the
table and guards the ballots.

Tucker Eskew walks in and talks to a Bush observer. The observer tells him that in the past hour, he has seen five Bush ballots
put into the wrong piles, sometimes the Gore pile. The observer also tells Eskew that the mistake was corrected after it was
pointed out.

A little later, deputy county attorney Gordon Selfridge tells some counters to treat the ballots gingerly. “You’re not supposed
to be tapping it down,” Selfridge says to one of the men. The man keeps tapping it down. Selfridge complains to Burton. The
judge gets up and goes to the microphone. “People want to handle them like playing cards, and people are banging them and
straightening them,” he says. “You need to handle these very gently. Be sure the part you touch is down at the bottom, not
in the middle.”

At around 4:20, the canvassing board starts looking at the county’s fiftytwo absentee ballots received since Election Day.
Before they open them up to count the vote, the board members need to determine whether the envelope carrying the ballot is
legal. Does it have a postmark? Is the postmark from November 7 or sooner?

One from Japan—accept. One from Israel—reject. And on and on. Seventeen will be rejected.

Eskew points out to a reporter that the ballot boxes are lying around, and some people are propping their elbows on top.

The postmark on a military ballot is unreadable. The Democratic attorney says that it should be rejected.

“I cannot believe that our service boys fighting hard overseas, that their ballots would be disqualified, and I ask the board
to reconsider their opinion,” says GOP attorney Brigham McCown.

“All right, we will file a protest and arrange for a violin,” says Burton.

Onward and downward.

D
uring that first weekend, in Tallahassee’s Camps Bush and Gore, strategists realized that they needed to supplement their
focus on hand recounts with a side-dish campaign relating to overseas absentee ballots, due Friday, November 17. Of course,
there are the military ballots, which are expected to come in heavily for Bush, but there are also rumors swirling that American
Jews in Israel—energized by Lieberman’s presence on the ticket—have turned out in droves as well.

Fabiani points out that “no one knows” if huge packages of ballots are coming from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but he and others
sure talk about the possibility a lot, as if those ballots will come in packed in pita or with a shmear of cream cheese. Gore
garnered 80 percent of the Jewish vote a few days ago, and estimates have about four thousand Florida Jews in the land of
milk and honey. Lieberman, for one, is convinced that tons of ballots are coming from the Jewish homeland. And who knows what
the military voters will do; while Dole beat Clinton in 1996’s Florida overseas ballots—54 percent to 46 percent—Dole was
a war hero, Clinton a draft dodger, which is not quite the dynamic here.

The Bushies had been a little spooked by an obscure news item about a Democratic lawyer trying to drum up post-election absentee
ballots. It wasn’t exactly a story full of facts; no one seemed to pick up on it. But it was enough for the Bushies to worry,
so former secretary of state Jim Smith
was instructed to go out there and lay down the strict law of the land as it pertained to overseas absentee ballots.

“The Florida law is simple, straightforward, and reason-based,” Smith said. “Let me go over some of the controlling rules.
First, overseas ballots must be either postmarked by November seventh, signed and dated no later than November seventh. Overseas
ballots may not be completed after November seventh. With respect to this election, the time to complete an absentee ballot
ended on the day of the election. Any overseas ballot completed after November seventh is invalid, invalid, and cannot be
counted.

“Next, for voters mailing overseas absentee ballots, only those ballots mailed with an APO (army post office), FPO (fleet
post office), or foreign postmark shall be considered valid. Ballots that are not mailed with these postmarks are invalid
and cannot be counted.”

Smith went on to outline seven additional laws for absentee ballots. There are a lot of requirements absentee ballots must
meet, he insisted. They must be completed by the voter, have the signature and address of a witness, a witness can’t verify
“more than five ballots in an election unless he or she is legally authorized to administer oaths or is an absentee-ballot
coordinator designated before the election,” and on and on.

He then attempted to put the fear of God in anyone who might be thinking about trying to skirt these rules. “It is a felony
to perpetrate, attempt, or aid in any fraud of any vote cast or attempted, such as backdating an absentee ballot,” he said.
He used the word “fraud” once, the word “felony” four times.

A reporter asked Smith: Why are you here?

“At the request of the Republican Party of Florida,” he replied, because of “news reports that there has been some encouragement
of some individuals overseas who may not have cast their ballot” but were erroneously told that “even though the November
seventh date has passed, they could still do that.” When pressed, however, Smith allowed that he didn’t know the specifics
of the story he was referring to.

Over at Democratic HQ, at the coordinated campaign center, attorney Mark Herron was working on the same project. Herron had
no knowledge of Smith’s press conference, though his understanding of the law was the same. But ironically, Smith had a lot
to do with why Herron was sitting there in Democratic HQ.

See, Herron and his law firm—Akerman, Senterfitt & Eidson—had just parted ways. The other partners didn’t want him to work
for Gore and told him that if he continued to do so, they would have to split. Given that
choice, Herron remembered a similar predicament back in ’86, when he was with a different firm, and he was asked to run the
gubernatorial campaign of former state representative Steve Pajcic. Herron listened to his law partners then and watched from
the sidelines as Pajcic beat Smith—then a Democrat—in the primary. But because of the ill will between Pajcic and Smith, Smith
ended up endorsing GOP nominee Bob Martinez in the general election and soon became a Republican himself. Herron was friends
with both men, and he was sure that if he had been running Pajcic’s campaign, none of the ugly fallout would have happened.

He swore to himself he’d never again opt out of such an opportunity. Which is what this was, he thought. So he was booted.

Over the weekend, the Gorebies had asked Herron to work on the overseas-absentee-ballot issue. What’s the process? he was
asked, over and over, by Nick Baldick, Ron Klain, Charlie Baker, Jack Corrigan. Herron walked them through it. Back in 1980,
it was clear that Florida had an inherent defect in its election system, arising from the fact that its primary elections
were so late—a September primary, then a runoff in October. How could they get the overseas ballots out when they didn’t even
know who was going to be on the ballot until October? The choice was either move the primaries back or give overseas folks
more time. So in 1984, the state of Florida and the federal government entered into a consent decree, Herron explained, which
allowed these ballots to come in up to ten days late—as long as they were postmarked by Election Day or, if they didn’t have
a postmark (some letters from overseas military bases aren’t postmarked), signed and dated by Election Day.

In 1989, despite the consent decree, the Florida legislature ruled that only ballots with postmarks would be considered valid,
and Republican Smith and Democrat Herron clearly read the conflict the same way—the 1989 law ruled supreme. Both were operating
out of political interest, of course—Smith trying to guard against invalid Gore votes, presumably from Jews in Israel, Herron
against invalid Bush votes, presumably from soldiers.

For once, there was something everyone agreed on. But not for long. Not after Herron, at Charlie Baker’s urging, writes a
memo detailing the many ways overseas ballots can be disqualified, “count every vote” be damned.

Toward the middle of the week, the Bush team’s Warren Tompkins puts together a spreadsheet on the overseas absentee ballots,
what had come in already, what had been counted, how many had been requested, how many were still expected in, and so on.
The overseas-absentee-ballot thing was likely
going to go their way, Tompkins tells people. He anticipates that the Democrats know this and are going to challenge as many
of them as possible.

“You’re kidding me,” spokeswoman Mindy Tucker says to him. “They can’t protest.”

“We think they’re going to,” Tompkins responds.

Tucker wants to let the press know about this at once; but she’s overruled. Let’s wait, she’s told.

Jason Unger, thirty-two, is but one of the attorneys hired by the state GOP to focus on the issue of military overseas absentee
ballots. Working with other attorneys at his firm, Gray, Harris & Robinson—one of the few Republican firms in Tallahassee—he
has prepared all week for deadline day, November 17.

Ed Fleming, a Republican attorney in Pensacola who represents Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., has been drafted by Unger to work
on the project. In one of their conversations, Unger tells Fleming of a rumor he’s heard that the Dems are going to go full-bore
in challenging overseas military absentee ballots. On Thursday, Fleming asks a local county attorney if he’s heard anything
about the rumor. Sure, the attorney tells him. Got a memo right here about it, written by the Democrats. He faxes Fleming
the memo, written by Herron, outlining the Gore strategy.