Down & Dirty (77 page)

“We’re really thrilled that Colin and Alma took time out of their lives to come down,” Bush says. “We’re going to spend the
afternoon talking about our transition, and in particular we’re going to talk about national-security matters and foreign-policy
matters, and no better person to talk about that with than Colin Powell. He has a great deal of experience. Dick and I trust
his judgment, so I look forward to a really good afternoon…. Colin, thanks for coming.”

“Thank
you,
governor,” Powell says.“I look forward to our conversations this afternoon on matters of international affairs and foreign
policy and also transition issues. So thanks for having me, and congratulations on your success in the election.” When asked
if he’s officially been anointed secretary of state, Powell says, “I have not yet been asked, and if that question should
be posed to me, I think I should answer it directly to the governor at that time before answering anyone else.”

Asked if he’s concerned about the legislature’s stepping in, and whether that might be seen as a power play, Bush says, “As
far as the legal hassling and wrangling and posturing in Florida, I would suggest you talk to our team in Florida, led by
Jim Baker.”

Asks another reporter, “With Gore all over the airwaves, are you having this press availability to respond to criticism that
you’ve appeared out of touch, out of mind, out of touch the last few days?”

Bush laughs. “That’s a pretty good one. Thank you all for coming.”

All day Thursday and Friday, airtime is taken from Powell and given to the ballot-filled trucks from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach
as they make their way to Tallahassee.

From West Palm, the ballots come in a yellow Ryder truck driven by Tony Enos, the actual designer of that fucking butterfly
ballot. He probably
owes the citizens a little more hard labor than just an extended road trip, but this is the task he’s been given. From Miami,
the ballots come in two white vans that leave Leahy’s watch at 6
A.M.
Friday. Behind them, in a silver Pontiac, rides a Gore observer named Chad. Chad Clanton.

The five-hundred-odd-mile, eight-hour trip proceeds up the Florida Turnpike north, past Disney World to I-75 North, to I-10
West to Tallahassee. The truck and vans are followed by news choppers, so CNN and MSNBC and all the rest can periodically
give images of the caravans. Clever and original newscasters and reporters all note the similarity with the coverage of O.
J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco ride. An AP reporter even tracks him down to see what he thinks.“Boring,” says the Heisman trophy–winner
and acquitted double murderer, now a Florida resident.“In my case, it may have been a little more intriguing, because people
didn’t know what was going to happen. Here, they know the ballots are going to get to Tallahassee.”

The Gorebies’ point man on minority voters’ irregularity complaints, Henry Latimer, learns that in Duval County, 27,000 undervotes
and overvotes were tossed—disproportionately from black precincts in downtown Jacksonville. In some black precincts, 1 in
3 ballots was discarded, about four times more than in white precincts.

Latimer learns this after certification, and he’s pissed. Now it’s too late to do anything about it. He’ll work with the Congressional
Black Caucus and the NAACP in urging the Justice Department to look into the problems, to hold hearings, to try to get to
the bottom of what happened, so that it never happens again.

But what did happen? What was the reason for the 27,000 trashed ballots? Latimer wonders. Was it the confusing “caterpillar
ballot”? Was it all the new black voters? Did someone intentionally double-punch the ballots?

In a way, it almost serves the Gorebies right. Duval Democrats had been trying to get members of the Gore team to listen to
them for weeks. There were votes in the overvotes, they insisted. African-American voters who had been confused by the caterpillar
ballot had written Gore’s name in. There was clear intent there. But few were then taking the notion of overvotes seriously.
Well—some were. Young and Sautter. And African-American Democrats in Duval. But no one was listening.

“If anyone’s wondering,” one member of the Gore legal team jokes, “Steve Zack’s available for
Nightline
tonight.”

Quite a few on the Gore legal team don’t understand why Boies spends so much time with Steve Zack, who seems to some to be
something of a self-aggrandizing bullshit artist. Maybe this was just jealousy. Everyone wanted to be close to Boies, but
it was Zack who would have dinner every night at the Silver Slipper, billed as “a place for Florida’s movers and shakers,”
with the Microsoft killer, and some didn’t quite get why Boies liked him.

There has been much debate within the Gore legal team as to how to proceed. Berger thinks that the only evidence needed is
the un-recounted ballots from Miami-Dade, and the 3,300 disputed ones from Palm Beach. Coffey, meanwhile, wants a litany of
experts to show that there was something wrong with the machines, as well as to establish that the Miami-Dade GOP protesters
intimidated the canvassing board. Another consideration—not to mention evidence, in the Gorebies’ mind, of the Bush delay-and-draw-out
strategy—is the fact the Bushies have compiled a list of almost one hundred witnesses. If this is a race against time, maybe
less evidence would be better.

In the end, Boies and Klain decide to introduce a ton of evidence but not a lot of testimony. Zack will prepare two witnesses
to establish two matters: that there were uncounted votes that need to be inspected, and that there was something wrong with
those Votomatics that caused the problem to begin with. This will show that there were legal votes that hadn’t been counted,
the counting of which could likely change the outcome of the election.

While Zack and his elections expert examine the machines in Miami-Dade, the assistant director for the supervisor of elections,
John Clouser, tells them that some of the Votomatics haven’t been cleaned in eight years.

Other questions are raised, too. Why do some people have problems punching holes? And why does it just happen on column one,
on the left? The left side is used most often, which, some theorize, increases the rigidity of the rubber. Could that be it?

Zack’s no expert on any of this. The first time he heard the word “chad” was when he was sitting in Middlebrooks’s courtroom,
Monday, November 13. But he has a theory. Most people are right-handed. So when they put the machines down on the voting table,
they must bring them in from the right side, and inside the Votomatic the chads migrate to the left side as that corner is
put down first.

Yes, that must be it, Zack thinks.

Bartlit, meanwhile, is preparing what he feels is an excellent case on Broward, compiling odd quotes from Gunzburger and Lee,
preparing to
call in Judge Rosenberg himself to hammer the canvassing board on its liberal standards. Gunzburger and Lee argue that they
agreed around 80 percent of the time, but Bartlit is under the impression that Rosenberg will slam them on the stand.

Another bomb Bartlit plans to drop involves Michael Lavelle, despite the fact that Lee has said that the Lavelle affidavit
did not affect the board’s decision one way or the other.

Moreover, Lavelle has since reviewed the September 1990 transcript and has concluded that Judge Barth did, in fact, allow
two dimples to count as votes. His original recollection
was
correct, he thinks. And Mihalopoulos’s phone call to him, in which he read partial excerpts from the transcript, was misleading,
if unintentionally so.

The
Tribune,
of course, is reporting the opposite. “Mistake in Citing Illinois Case Gives Bush Ammo,” Jan Crawford Greenburg writes on
Friday, December 1. Her story still doesn’t mention the role that Mihalopoulos played either in bringing Lavelle to Berger
and Boies’s attention to begin with or in convincing him that his original memory was wrong. Plus she’s still making assertions
like “the judge in fact ultimately excluded those [dimpled] ballots,” which Lavelle, at least, believes not to be true. Far
be it from the
Chicago Tribune
to point out its own sloppy reporting has fed into the mess it now is writing about.

Deposed by the Bush lawyers in Illinois on December 1, Lavelle reads from the September 1990 hearing transcript, reciting
Barth’s comments that “the light standard is not the litmus test, in my view. If there is a dent, a voter’s intent may be
established from other considerations of the ballot itself.” He also testifies that neither Berger nor Boies ever pressured
him “to include information in that affidavit that was not true and correct as [he] understood it to be,” thus countering
an ethics complaint against Berger and Boies filed by the conservative National Legal and Policy Center in McLean, Virginia.

Boies is aware that Lavelle’s videotaped deposition is better for his team than the Bushies would have it. Both he and Berger
are under the impression that there is little more going on here than an attempt to paint them as liars, when in actuality,
the biggest liars about the
Pullen
case have been Baker and the Bushies for arguing that the case had to do with hanging chad only. The big mistake was assuming
that the
Tribune
stories were accurate; but since then, it’s pretty clear that in the
Pullen
case dimples were in fact considered, and were even counted on at least one occasion. Late one night, Sean Gallagher faxes
Berger notice that the Bushies intend to show Sauls the videotape of Lavelle’s deposition.

“Tell Bartlit that not only are we going to cross-designate” the videotape, Boies tells Berger, “but if he wants to drop any
parts that he thinks are bad for us, we want them in.” They
want
Lavelle to become part of the record, they
want
the Bushies to run the video.

The Bushies decide not to.