Down & Dirty (48 page)

FSU beats Florida 30 to 7.

Strep Throat
^*
calls me back. I haven’t written anything about Harris and Jeb for a bunch of reasons, primarily because I think there is
nothing to write. But I also think that it’s disgusting that Strep Throat would even
pitch the story to me, a story that, as far as I know, Strep Throat invented out of whole cloth.

Strep Throat never bestowed upon me this much attention during the campaign, which I resent. And frankly, I’m insulted that
he would think I would spread such filth.
^*

Strep Throat tells me that he has a lead for me. The name of a guy willing to talk. He’s on the faculty of the University
of Miami Law School, I’m told. I don’t call. A few hours later, Strep Throat calls me back and tells me that the guy is actually
on the faculty of the University of Miami
Medical
School. Apparently, he was heard on talk radio saying that everyone knew about the affair.

At this point, I do call. I’m like the eleventh person to call him, the professor says. ABC,
Newsweek,
the
New York Daily News,
a ton of major media outlets have phoned before me. It’s not him, the Miami guy says. There’s someone else with the same
name in Tallahassee or something.

This is how a senior Gore adviser is spending his time, peddling this filth. Filth that isn’t even remotely true. A few weeks
from now, the
New York Observer
and others will allude suggestively to “the rumor” about Jeb and Harris that the media had put a lid on. Die-hard Democrats
will send e-mail after e-mail, begging us to tell the American people the truth.

True to his word, Bobby Martinez doesn’t go back to the Miami-Dade canvassing board to try to get the count shanked and, more
specifically, to get a judge to order the elections-board employees to stop sorting out the 10,750 undervotes.

Instead, on Saturday, Martinez tracks down circuit judge Margarita Esquiroz at a wedding in the Keys. She’s the duty judge
this weekend, and Martinez wants her to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the countywide count from commencing.
He argues, in particular, that sorting out the undervotes will degrade the ballots.

Really, do we have to do it today? Esquiroz asks him. I’m in the Keys.

I’m sorry, Judge, Martinez says. But they’re going to sort out the undervotes tomorrow, so I really do need to do this today.

Have you told the other side yet? she asks.

Not yet, he admits. I haven’t filed the brief yet. I wanted to talk to you first to see how you think we should do it.

OK, well, after you tell them, then beep me, she says.

Martinez arranges hand deliveries of the emergency motion for a temporary injunction—Esquiroz gets one in the Keys, Zack gets
one at home, Coffey at Berger’s law firm, and Murray Greenberg gets one, too, since the canvassing board, technically, is
the one Martinez is seeking the injunction against.

They agree to hold the hearing Sunday morning by telephone.

During the hearing, Martinez tells Esquiroz that “the prudent thing is the very reasonable request that we’re asking for,
a very temporary pause of this matter until this afternoon, perhaps, or tomorrow morning.”

Greenberg says that Leahy, a twenty-six-year expert, has already testified that he does “not believe that running ballots
through the card reader will further degrade the ballots.” In his experience, Leahy has already testified, any chad that falls
off is one “hanging on by two corners, or one corner, [and] we have unanimously determined those to be clear votes. There
may be instances where a clear hanging chad, either through manual handling or through this operation of putting them through
the reader one more time, may fall off. I’m not concerned about that as a canvassing-board member. That is a clear vote. And
we’ve already determined those to be clear votes.”

Martinez pipes in. “Your Honor, when we were before the canvassing board last week, Mr. Zack… said, quoting from the motto
on the seal of the Supreme Court of Florida, he read a quote in Latin, and he translated it for the benefit of all of us…. ‘Soon
enough, if done rightly.’… The right thing for you to do is to put a pause to these matters and get some guidance from the
Supreme Court of Florida,” which will be meeting tomorrow.

Esquiroz denies the motion.

Martinez and De Grandy will file the motion before another judge when the work week begins, but that will be denied, too.

Ed Pozzuoli is fired up.

“The Gore campaign now wants to lower the bar because it needs more votes!” the Broward County GOP chairman rants. With Palm
Beach and Miami-Dade Counties utilizing looser standards, Broward decides to do so
as well on Sunday, November 19. County attorney Ed Dion, a Republican, and assistant county attorney Andrew Meyers, whose
wife is helping the Gore legal team, conclude that the two-corner rule is too stringent. Meyers comes armed with the Texas
standard, raising the eyebrows of Republican observers who wonder if maybe his wife gave him a copy of it.

The timing, at least, is a bit suspect. With counting in 390 of the county’s 609 precincts completed, Gore has picked up 105
net votes, which will not be enough. For Judge Lee, however, the more significant timing issue comes from the fact that they
all just reviewed about 50 dimpled ballots from a precinct where clearly something was wrong with the voting machines.

“Any semblance of a standard of fairness in the hand-counting process in Broward County has been abandoned,” says Bush spokesman
Ray Sullivan.

Dion, of course, says that’s nonsense. He’s a Republican, for Godsakes! It’s just that judges in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade
Counties have ruled against a per se exclusion of any ballots. “My only job is to represent the canvassing board,” Dion says.
“This is an evolving situation. What we believed to be accurate legal advice on Monday is now changed.”

The Palm Beach group is only a few hours into their Saturday chore when a Republican counter, a woman, angrily leaves table
nine. She is enraged.“I’ve had it,” she whispers to a reporter. “I’m not coming back. There are some real games going on here.”
The problem isn’t the Democrats, however. It’s the Republicans. The GOP observer at her table is objecting to every sixth
Gore vote, a pattern that is repeating itself at other tables. These are not dimples or otherwise disputable ballots, these
are clear Gore votes, punched through. The Republicans’ strategy is now offending even Republicans.
^*

Burton realizes this, of course, and before the count began today he approached each counting team to tell them how the canvassing
board was inspecting the “questionables.” One precinct had 440 “questionables,” he says, but at the canvassing-board table,
he anticipated that Republican
lawyers like Wallace and John Bolton, a newly arrived senior Bush aide, would object to “about four of them.”

In fact, Bolton doesn’t even wait for the ballots before he starts launching objections. He says that counters shouldn’t be
intimidated into not putting ballots in the questionable pile. Burton says he’s just trying to “educate” the counters. Bolton
disagrees.

It’s the Republican strategy: gum it up. They don’t like the fact that the counts are going on, so they want to ruin them.
It’s rather immature, not to mention vaguely anti-democratic. But it’s working.

Early afternoon, a new GOP observer comes in and begins raising hell at Team Five. Everything had been going fine with Team
Five until this young punk arrives. The Democratic counter—an older African-American woman—has had a routine: she picks a
ballot from the stack, holds it up for everyone to look at, flips it front and back, then places it in the appropriate pile—for
Bush or Gore or whomever. While she’s putting it in the stack, she takes another ballot with her other hand. Young Punk has
a problem with her routine, though.

“Wait until you put it in the stack before you pick up another one,” he says.

“We’ll be here all day,” she says under her breath.

“You’re doing it again,” he says. “One at a time.”

He raises his hand: a formal objection. Lawyers swarm.

“She’s picking up two ballots at a time, calling them out like it’s only one,” he says, falsely.

“You know that’s not the truth,” she says. “You are not truthful. That’s a lie.”

This offends Bolton. “I don’t think you have to say that at all,” he says.

“Who are you?” the Democratic observer, an older white man, says to Bolton, clearly annoyed.

The cavalry—Burton, sheriff’s deputies, county officials, lawyers—arrives.

“If you see something going on you don’t like, you don’t talk to her,” Burton tells Young Punk. “You talk to your lawyer.”

Burton orders Young Punk to another table. Bolton complains that this makes it look like Young Punk did something wrong. The
Democratic woman agrees to change teams instead.

“Thank you very much,” Burton says. “You are a lady. I think tomorrow morning we’re going to have to make some changes.”

Later Burton makes a plea to the observers. “I want to assure you, if you’re an observer, by all means put aside a ballot
if it’s questionable. But if you’re objecting simply to object, the board is going to have to discuss it. When we go through
four hundred and fourteen objections and only six are objected to when the lawyers go through them…”He trails off. “I’m begging
you all to be reasonable,” he says.