Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  Finally, at 7:35 P.M. she walks in—dress, lipstick, and pumps all precisely coordinated to the same regal maroon hue.

  Harris has taken her share of hits in the last few days, receiving gator-size rhetorical chomps from Dems up and down the peninsula. That said, Harris seems calm and collected as she walks in to tell the world that all sixty-seven counties have filed their returns as of Tuesday at 5 P.M., and according to those returns, Bush leads Gore by 300 votes—2,910,492 to 2,910,192.

  Harris acknowledges Lewis’s decision and leaves open the possibility that she might, in fact, accept later hand-recount totals if they come—though she offers no guarantee. “Within the past hour, the director of the Division of Elections”—Clay Roberts—“faxed a memorandum to the supervisors of elections in these three Florida counties,” she continues. “In accordance with today’s court ruling confirming my discretion in these matters, I am requiring a written statement of the facts and circumstances that would cause these counties to believe that a change should be made before final certification of the statewide vote.”

  This is bullshit, of course. She didn’t even want to give this extra day, but attorneys Klock and Kearney seriously recommended that she do so. An open mind cannot be mandated by law—though the pretense of one can, I suppose.

  The final certification will come Saturday, after the midnight Friday deadline for overseas absentee ballots. The deadline for the excuse letter from the three counties is 2 P.M. Wednesday, Harris says. “On advice of counsel, I will not take questions because of pending litigation,” she says.

  And the litigation does indeed pend. Running alongside the Democrats’ legitimate arguments in favor of a full and accurate manual recount lurk the darker impulses of trial lawyers, who envision even more possible lawsuits beyond an extended deadline for hand recounts. So Tuesday I ask Klain what other lawsuits there might be. Will the Gore campaign sue Palm Beach County for its confusing butterfly ballots? Will the Gorebies claim that the ballots were illegal, thus necessitating a revote in the county? “Our options are under review there,” Klain says.“Our first option is trying to get these votes counted.”

  I try again. What would he say to the American people who, according to polls, think there should be a full recount, by hand if necessary, but aren’t prepared to go beyond that?

  “I would just say to the American people that the ballots would be counted in Florida today if not for the legal and political issues to stop the count, the responsibility for which lies at the feet of the Republican Party,” Klain says.

  OK, fair enough, but what about beyond that? What if you get that, and Gore still doesn’t win? Are you prepared to call it a day?

  “Let’s get the votes counted and see where we go from there,” Klain says to me.

  But which votes do they want counted?

  Jack Young calls Gorebies Charlie Baker and Jill Alper in Tallahassee to talk about what to do, where his team of roughly forty should go next.

  There’s talk of going to Broward, to help out Sautter’s team. It’s pretty much a given that he won’t go to Palm Beach County, where the Boston Boys—with whom Young has butted heads—are running things.

  Let me take these people and send them out to other Opti-scan counties, Young says. Let’s tell other canvassing boards about the Volusia experience. Judge McDermott—a Republican—has gotten a lot of good press, let’s capitalize on it.

  Clearly there are votes in the overvotes, Young says. People fill in the circle for Bush and then write in Cheney and the vote is discarded, unread by the machine. Lake and Duval Counties have a ton of overvotes, for instance.

  But Baker and Alper are skeptical. Lake and Duval Counties are overwhelmingly Republican, they say. The plan is to count in places where Gore won.

  Young reiterates the point—the one he and Sautter made in The Recount Primer—that if you’re behind, you just increase the pool of possible votes as much as possible. (Not to mention the idea that if you actually want to count all the votes, you don’t shrug off doing so in some counties because they tilt GOP.)

  If you go into those counties can you assure us that Gore will pick up votes there? Young is asked by the people he calls “the politicos.”

  “No,” he says, “I can’t.”

  His team is sent south, to Broward and then eventually Miami-Dade. * So much for “count all the votes.”

  As the sun rises Wednesday morning, Palm Beach is set to do its recount, and Broward isn’t.

  That switches.

  The Broward County canvassing-board members seek legal guidance on what they’re permitted to do. They find that, since Elections Supervisor Jane Carroll was the one who received Harris’s binding opinion—and not Judge Lee, the chairman of the board—they’re not bound by it. So, impressed by Butterworth’s opinion, Lee switches his vote.

  A GOP attorney says that they gotta listen to Harris. “Then let her go get her mandamus to make us stop,” Lee says, referring to the Latin word for “we command” and the legal order from a superior court. And in the meantime, they plunge away—twelve teams of counters, 609 precincts, 588,000 ballots. Two corners of the chad gotta be off in order for it to count.

  From Austin, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, based on nothing, tells reporters that Lee’s change of mind is evidence that “officials involved in the recount are succumbing to political pressure.” Lee finds this ridiculous. The other night, he had heard that Democrats were saying that Jeb was promising him treats; now word on the street is that Gore had pledged to him a federal judgeship. Both sides are going crazy, Lee thinks. He’s bent over backward to avoid contact with anyone.

  “Scott,” he said earlier in the week to his partner of five years, “until this is over, let the machine pick up all the calls.” He wouldn’t return any having to do with any of this. He told his secretary, Olga, to tell folks that he wasn’t returning any calls until the storm had subsided.

  Speaking of political pressure, the same Republican lawyer that Lee snapped at a few nights ago—Fort Lauderdale barrister James Carroll—is today sharing the love in Palm Beach, where on behalf of the GOP he’s trying to get Carol Roberts disqualified from the canvassing board. He says she’s been counting ballots as Gore votes that have “no hanging chads. She’s been observed picking up numerous ballots from questionable ballot piles and interspersing [them] with the Gore ballot pile. She has been observed bending, twisting, poking, and purposely manipulating ballots in a manner that compromised their integrity. Ms. Roberts has been observed bending individual ballots approximately ninety degrees to determine whether the vote was valid.”

  One of Gore’s Boston Boys, Dennis Newman, steps up.

  “This motion is the most ridiculous, frivolous attempt that I’ve ever seen. Everyone in this room, this area, and all this media have told you of every action that every member of the board made on Saturday. There are thousands of videotapes of that. To say that one of the commissioners handled the ballots and looked at them in an unfair way is just a desperate attempt, another desperate attempt, of the Republicans to delay the fair and accurate counting of the ballots of Palm Beach County.”

  But it’s not just Republicans like the delightful James Carroll who are playing politics; political pressure comes from the Democrats, too. Palm Beach County Democratic chair Monte Friedkin, pissed off at Burton, tells reporters that “he’ll never get elected in this county. Not if I’m chairman.”

  “It’s a political nightmare,” Burton will think when he hears of Friedkin’s comments.“Sure, there isn’t any direct pressure, but I can read the papers, I can read quotes. Friedkin, shooting his mouth off, let him do what he wants—that’s fine. But these things shouldn’t be on the judge’s mind.” He needs to focus on the law.

  As if the world isn’t bass-ackward enough, Judge LaBarga rules in favor of the Dems on the standard by which the ballots are to be assessed. The 1990 standard goes against Florida law, he says. “No vote is to be declared invalid or void if th
ere is a clear indication of the intent of the voter.” The 1990 standard “restricts the canvassing board’s ability to determine the intent of the voter.” But it’s a confusing, vague order, as befitting everything in this mess. While LaBarga rules that “the Palm Beach County Commission has the discretion to utilize whatever methodology it deems proper to determine the true intention of the voter,” he also says that the board doesn’t have the discretion to use the 1990 standard.“The present policy of a per se exclusion of any ballot that does not have a partially punched or hanging chad is not in compliance with the law,” he rules.“The canvassing board has the discretion to consider those ballots and accept them or reject them.”

  Right. Well. OK. Thanks for clearing that up.

  Harris receives the canvassing board’s requests for extensions of the certification deadline. She rejects them. The Steel Hector & Davis attorneys have told her that the only excuses for late tallies are broken machines or acts of God. And though there’s reason to believe that something’s really wrong with the Votomatics—whether it’s the fault of the machines or the voters, who can say—none of the members of the canvassing board claim that their machines were broken. Not that Harris or her legal staff gave them a heads-up that such would be an acceptable excuse.

  Burton will later say about their excuse letter that he didn’t think she even read it.

  Former Clinton adviser Paul Begala is on NBC’s Today show Wednesday morning. “She oughta recuse herself,” he says of Harris. “She hasn’t done so, which suggests to me she’s impervious to public opinion. I mean, everybody who appears in public like she did yesterday, looking like Cruella De Vil coming to steal the puppies, is not very interested in what other people think of her.”

  Al Gore thinks this is hilarious. “Cruella De Vil!” he says. “Did you hear what Paul called her?”

  Harris, of course, doesn’t find the remark all that funny. She likes Dalmatians. And how come no one makes fun of any of the males in all of this and the way they look? Why aren’t they mocked on Saturday Night Live? Her staffers try to comfort her—Hey! You really have to make it big to be made fun of on SNL! But it hurts. Still, she’s addicted to it in a way. She stays up late, watching Letterman and Leno, to see what they have to say about her.

  Bobby Martinez is pissed off.

  He just got a call to head to the Miami-Dade canvassing-board hearing. Martinez thought this shit was over with, but shortly after he arrives, Miami Democratic chair Joe Geller offers the motion to reconsider yesterday’s decision. Without giving the other side any notice. Without anything having changed.

  After Geller springs his surprise motion on the board—after a different hearing on a recount involving a local race—King asks Martinez if he wants to say anything.

  Martinez doesn’t even want to concede that what Geller’s doing is even remotely appropriate.

  Perhaps more important, Martinez is worried about the Cuban-American community, which has been exemplary so far in its behavior during this incendiary mess, he thinks. But he knows that Miami-Dade, and its Cubano community, has the potential for chaos. If you want to set off a series of events to cause tensions to explode, you can do it if you set out to do it, he thinks. And this reconsideration has the potential to do that.

  Geller steps up to the mike. He tells the board that Broward County canvassing-board members have decided to go ahead with the countywide hand recount, that they changed their minds, that they decided that the results after the 1 percent recount indicate maybe enough to affect the outcome of the election.

  “Why did they consider a full manual recount?” Lehr asks. “What prompted them to do such a thing?”

  A judge told them they could go ahead with it and ignore Harris’s certification deadline, Geller says. He wants to reconvene tomorrow at 9 A.M., so the board can reconsider.

  “How much time do you anticipate,” King asks, “the presentation of at least—”

  Geller’s cell phone starts ringing.

  “Please turn your phone off, sir,” King says.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, frantically punching the appropriate button. “Sorry.”

  “How much time do you anticipate you’ll need?”

  Geller says an hour.

  Leahy says that the fact that Broward changed its mind isn’t enough. “I would need more than that to vote for a re-hearing,” he says.

  Geller reaches into his bag of justifications. Judge LaBarga ruled against Harris’s deadline, too, he says. And in addition, he “issued an order striking down the Palm Beach County standards used by the canvassing board—the one-corner, two-corner rule.”

  “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.