The Election Heist

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

  “Are you telling us, Governor, that you are ordering a state-wide recount on the basis of reports from two Republican county election supervisors?”

  There were grunts of approval from the crowd of reporters.

  “No, Dean. That’s not what I’m saying. I am saying that we are ordering a state-wide recount because we have credible evidence that the election night results were wrong.”

  NBC News had sent its national political correspondent to Tallahassee to cover the recount. She stood up without being called on.

  “Governor Norton, don’t you see the optics here? Nine days ago, the people of the United States voted to elect Governor Tomlinson the next president. She won your state by two percent, way beyond the margin of error. Way beyond the legal requirement for a recount, too, which is half a percent. So how can you stand up here, in front of a national audience, and tell us that you have the right to change the outcome of the presidential election?”

  Norton covered his mouth to stifle a chuckle. “Thank you, Laura, for what I guess is a question. I am responsible to the people of Florida, not to the people of New York, or California, or Hawaii. It is my duty to certify the results of last Tuesday’s election after ensuring that all legal votes were counted accurately as they were cast. I don’t know what the result will be. Neither do you. Or do you, Laura?”

  “But why else would you be having this press conference? It’s crystal clear what your motive is here. You are trying to prepare the American people for a different result.”

  “That might be your opinion, Laura. But those are not the facts.”

  A reporter from the Miami Herald asked about the out-of-state tabulators.

  “I understand that Governor Tomlinson’s legal team has filed an injunction to prevent you from bringing in this equipment from out of state. Why did you decide to do this?” she asked.

  “The legal issues involved should be clarified within the hour, if they haven’t been already,” Norton said. “Election officials—and here I am speaking for Secretary of State Shelley Hughes and our elections director, Lula Rowe—have been very careful to identify equipment that is identical to that used in the overwhelming majority of Florida counties, fifty-one of our sixty-seven counties, to be exact. Lula, would you care to address that?”

  The elections director looked down at her clipboard and read from what appeared to be a prepared script about the model and make of the scanners and tabulators the state was bringing in for the recount. The fifty-one counties the governor mentioned would be able to begin the recount by 6:00 PM today, she said. Her office expected to have found sources for the equipment in the other sixteen counties shortly.

  Norton took another couple of questions, all of them hostile, then asked if someone had a question for anyone else on the podium.

  Clyde Norris, a reporter from BuzzFeed, raised his hand.

  “Sure, Governor. My question is for Secretary of State Shelley Hughes-Jackson.”

  Florida’s secretary of state was the official with overall responsibility for running the elections, although she delegated most of the operational duties to the director of elections. Hughes-Jackson had been appointed by Governor Norton shortly after he took office two years earlier. She was a political neophyte who had previously worked as a Florida mermaid after graduating from college. (Yes, the state of Florida actually hired young women dressed as mermaids to promote the state’s spectacular beach fronts and communities.) She also had a law degree from Florida Atlantic University and had served as a campaign lawyer for Norton.

  “Go ahead, Clyde,” Norton said.

  “Ms. Hughes-Jackson, are you aware that your husband, Charles Aloysius Jackson, who represents numerous—uh—transportation—uh—interests in South Florida, has been cited in a rape complaint that was turned over to the FBI earlier today by the office of Congressman Alcee Hastings?”

  “Oh, my, my,” Granger said out loud as he watched her response on live television. That is absolutely precious. The proverbial deer in the headlights. No. Blonde deer in the headlights. Good for you, boy.

  56

  The state-wide recount began promptly at 6:00 PM that afternoon. Election officials had just two and a half days to complete the tabulation of the paper ballots to meet the statutory deadline of 9:00 AM on Sunday, twelve days after the election. The previously sleepy scenes at county election buildings in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties were quickly replaced by swarms of election officials who seemingly emerged out of thin air. Hundreds of badged workers stacked numbered and sealed boxes of ballots before the 486 tabulators, with election judges and party officials checking them off on clipboards and iPads. There were hundreds of boxes at each location, massive walls of boxes, like blocks of furniture stacked for auction. It was hard to see how they would ever finish on time.

  Making the process even more confusing were the campaign lawyers who occupied two rows of folding chairs directly in front of the tabulators, and the national media who had set up their TV cameras behind them. Chuck Myers, chief counsel for Governor Tomlinson, instructed his lawyers to demand that officials verify the seal and number on every ballot box in front of witnesses before the ballots were removed and fed into the tabulator. Every time one of the tabulators spit out a ballot as unreadable, they demanded that officials stop the count to examine it. Clearly, they were stalling for time.

  At 6:14 PM, President Trump tweeted out:

  @realDonaldTrump: Thanks to Gov. Norton, Florida is now counting the paper ballots filled out by voters. The American people will know the truth—unless Democrat election lawyers succeed in running out the clock. The future of our country is at stake. It should not be a race against time!

  The state elections director, Lula Rowe, had called on Milford Gaines to apply some of his military skills to ensure that the larger counties had enough tabulators to meet the deadline. Gaines devised a rule of thumb: If each tabulator could rip through 300 ballots per minute, they could process 144,000 ballots in an eight-hour day. He rounded that off to 100,000 to account for set-up time and the lawyers. That meant that the overwhelming majority of Florida counties—forty-two by his count—could finish the recount by 7:00 PM on Friday with just one machine each.

  He gave Brevard, Lee, and Polk counties, each with between 300,000 and 400,000 votes cast, three machines each. Duval, with its 500,000 votes cast, got five. So did Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas, although they were closer to 600,000. But as always, it came down to the Big Three—Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward. This was where the campaign lawyers were focusing. This was where the media had set up camp. This was where they would have the most problems. He gave them six each but held a half dozen machines in reserve. He was especially worried about Miami-Dade, where more than a million people had cast ballots. With six machines, he estimated it should take around nine hours of run-time to process the ballots. But that was not counting for the lawyers.

  He knew it was going to be close.

  At 7:00 PM on Thursday, just one hour after the recount began, lawyers for Governor Tomlinson obtained an injunction from the circuit court to halt the canvassing so they could examine “out-stacked” ballots. These were under-votes, which seemingly contained no choice for president, and over-votes, which contained more than one. The tabulators spit them out of the queue on a separate off-ramp, along with ballots that had been mutilated or marked in ways that prevented them from being electronically counted. The court order required the counties to halt the automatic count each time a ballot was out-stacked so that lawyers and election officials could determine the intent of the voter.

  Attorneys for the president filed an appeal and requested an immediate hearing, which the chief judge agreed to convene at 9:00 PM. By that time, election offices across the state had shut down.

  Secretary of State Shelley Hughes-Jackson left her office just before the injunction went into effect. By
that point, fifteen of the smaller counties had already finished the recount. All of those using the 486 tabulators showed an increase in votes for the president, sometimes eight or nine percent, sometimes just one percent. But all of them showed different results from the election night count. Those using other equipment had the same count they had reported on election night.

  Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Kaylee, was chatting with a friend over Messenger when she got home at 7:30 PM.

  “How am I ever going to school tomorrow?” she said before even saying hello.

  “You, young lady, are going to hold your head up high. And thank God for all your blessings. You know very well that your father has done nothing wrong.”

  “That’s not what they are saying,” she said, nodding at the TV.

  Shelley sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you, don’t ever believe what they say. Not ever. About anything.”

  Her teenage daughter suddenly smiled and gave her a hug, her enormous head of dark, tightly curled hair slapping against her cheeks.

  “I bet Dad was quite the thing back then,” she said.

  “Kay-lee!” her mother said.

  Then they both laughed. “I guess he was,” Shelley admitted.

  Later, after dinner and a couple of glasses of wine, she called him over Facetime. He was still at the computer in his Miami office. He looked wrung-out, old sweat congealing on his forehead, his eyes bloodshot from anxiety or drink.

  “Have you been drinking?” she said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you are still the most handsome, most desirable man I have ever met.”

  “You’re a good liar, Shelley. Always were.”

  “You know I thank God every day for bringing us together. You know I do.”

  “I know that, baby.”

  “How serious is this?”

  “Are you joking? This is a career-killer. This is like an atom bomb going off in my kitchen.”

  “Do you recognize the woman?”

  “Hell, no. And nobody I’ve called does either.”

  “So what is this all about?”

  “You haven’t figured that out yet? They want you to pull the plug on the recount, that’s what.”

  “And saying that I can, which I don’t think is the case. Then what?”

  “Then this all goes away. Alcee Hastings says he forwarded it to the FBI. They say they investigated and decline to prosecute.”

  “And if I don’t? Or if I can’t?”

  “That’s it, baby. No more Beemers, no more bubbly. No more Sandals holidays. Maybe you go back to being a mermaid.”

  “Charles Jackson!”

  “What?”

  She gave him a look that made him chuckle despite himself.

  “I thought you rather liked me as a mermaid.”

  57

  Shelley Hughes-Jackson was pleasantly surprised when she drove past her office at 8:00 AM on Friday morning. Several hundred pro-Trump supporters were standing outside, without saying a word, holding up hand-written signs that said, “Count My Vote.” They were surrounded by a sleepy mob of anti-Trump protesters; but with the early hour, and the lingering effects of whatever substances they had ingested the night before, they didn’t fully grasp what was happening. She went around the corner to park in the guarded lot.

  Upstairs, she saw on the TV in the reception area that similar crowds of pro-Trump supporters had gathered outside the canvassing centers in Doral, Lauderhill, and Riviera Beach. And then she saw her husband’s face on the screen, bleary-eyed, drunk, twenty years ago, just after they’d graduated from law school. The dog-whistle was clear: Here is the black man who raped the white woman. It didn’t matter what they said on air. That was the conclusion anyone could be expected to draw from the images and the chyron explaining that the FBI had taken over the investigation of Miami attorney Charles Jackson for allegedly raping a fellow student twenty years ago at Florida Atlantic University.

  What investigation? she thought. It was all a hoax. Fake news.

  The whole phony story was aimed at one person: herself.

  And they—whoever they were—wanted her to shut down the recount and then all of this would go away. Really?

  Did they really think she was as dumb as that?

  They could never undo that photo or that headline. They might have the power to make the FBI go away, but they could never undo the damage they had already done to her and her family.

  She was going to make sure the recount proceeded even faster than before. She had an idea she thought the Governor would approve.

  Gordon Utz, released on bail from the Montgomery County Detention Center, arrived at the courthouse in Rockville that Friday morning at 10:00 AM, accompanied by Stan Erins, his criminal defense lawyer. Erins, a short, stocky man with a shock of sandy blonde hair, did his best to button his suit jacket as they made their way up the steps. He had come to Gordon through the Republican Lawyers Association, the same group that provided pro-bono campaign lawyers to candidates around the country and had mobilized some two hundred lawyers for the Florida recount, just as they had during Bush-Gore in 2000. In his day job, he handled white collar crime for the DC firm of Norton, Diaz, Gutierrez, and Knight.

  They were meeting with Grant Maldonado, the state’s attorney for Montgomery County, to make a proffer. He ushered them into a tiny interview room, not his office. That was a bad sign.

  “Under Section 104.30 of the election law, your client is looking at a felony of the third degree,” he said.

  “And we’re going to argue that you are prosecuting under the wrong statute,” Erins said.

  They went back and forth arguing the law, with Erins making a series of arguments why Gordon could not be prosecuted for tampering with voting equipment or interfering with the election process or its results, as 104.30 required.

  “Besides, if you really think you’re going to trial on that, we’re going to demand discovery. And then you’ll have to open up the voting machines and everyone will see that they were hacked. And you’re going to look like an old fish that’s been left in the sun for three days. My client should receive a commendation from the Governor, not prosecution.”

  Maldonado was not impressed.

  “Who do you think is going to grant you discovery?” he said.

  “The judge, of course.”

  “And I’m going to oppose. And I will win.”

  “What about Judge Alvarez?”

  “What about him? He can’t do it alone. There are two other judges on that panel, and they will agree with me. So. No discovery, no facts. No facts, no defense. My side will be controlling the facts. And don’t think you’re going to the media, either. I’ve just obtained a gag order until we finalize your client’s proffer.”

  Gordon was lost in all the legal speak, but he understood enough to sense this discussion was not going well.

  “We’re going to ask for five years jail time.”

  “What?” Gordon said. “I just saved all of you from perpetuating a fraud!”

  “What my client is trying to say,” Erins interjected, laying a hand on Gordon’s wrist, “is that you may have obtained a gag order against us, but there are plenty of other parties who witnessed the risk-limiting audit he conducted and who are aware of the results. You’re not going to be able to keep this out of the press.”

  Again, Maldonado was not impressed. “We’ll be arguing that his actions constituted an aggravated felony, because of premeditated intent.”

  “You have no proof of intent.”

  “He disobeyed a direct order from his superior not to do this.”

  “I never asked her,” Gordon interjected.

  “That’s not what she tells us,” Maldonado said.

  Erins decrypted the coded language as they drove to Wheato
n, where they planned to brief Aguilar and his team.

  “They’re playing hardball,” Erins said. “They apparently have deposed Lisa Rasmussen, and she has told them that she ordered you not to conduct the audit.”

  “But that’s not true,” Gordon insisted.

  “It’s going to be your word against hers. So now let’s take a close look at how much they know, how much they know we know, and figure out what we know that they don’t so we can get that information out. Got that?”

  “I do,” Gordon said. “And I’ve got the answer, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Eric Figueroa,” he said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’ll explain,” he said.

  58

  Annie burst into tears when Gordon came through the door. It was the first time she had seen him since his arrest.

  “This is all my fault,” she sobbed, throwing her arms around him, all pretense of their “non-relationship” gone.

  “No, it’s not,” Gordon said.

  They had kept him three nights in the Montgomery County Detention Center. The first night he had shared a cell with a homeless man infested with lice; the second with a pair of drunks. The third day had been the longest, with no one coming or going, and no one to talk to. Despite all the efforts by Erins to get him out on bail and public calls by Aguilar, the judge refused to bring him up for arraignment until that morning.

  “It’s good to meet you, sir,” he said to Aguilar, offering his hand. “And thank you for all you did. But with all due respect, I didn’t do this for you, or for Annie, or for any political reason. I did it because it was right.”

  “It’s because of people like you that this country is still great,” Aguilar said. “Bless you, and thank you. Do you mind if I say a prayer?”

  “No, please,” Gordon said.

  They joined hands and formed a circle in front of his desk.

  “Father God, you are our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer. We thank you for releasing your servant, Gordon, from the snares of his oppressors. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, and your people pass by in safety. Give us wisdom, Lord, as we deliberate on the path we must take today. In your name we pray, amen.”