'The Campaign Continues': Gore in Florida, step by awful step - Albert Gore, Jr.; disputed election results in Florida

National Review, Dec 18, 2000 by John J. Miller

Democratic officials tainted the manual-recount process from the beginning by pressuring election-board officials. Bob Butterworth didn't simply issue his opinion; he picked up the phone to urge the canvassing board in Volusia County to conduct a hand recount. The members seemed to resent this-they complained about it to the media-but two hours later, they voted the way Butterworth wanted. Warren Christopher also worked the phones. He called Bruce Rogow, a Democratic lawyer for Palm Beach elections supervisor Theresa LePore, and asked him to do what he could to ensure a hand count. "It was an effort to have me persuade my client to vote in favor of starting the manual recount," said Rogow, according to the Associated Press. "I told [Mr. Christopher] no. I told him we'd have to wait." But the Gore campaign didn't have to wait long: Palm Beach did agree to a hand recount.

For all their meddling, Butterworth and Christopher escaped the treatment heaped on Bush backer (and statewide elected official) Katherine Harris. When she was pinpointed as a potential headache for Gore, Democrats distributed a three-page memo on her background. Gore spokesman Chris Lehane accused her of "acting in the finest tradition of a Soviet commissar." Paul Begala labeled her "Cruella De Vil coming to steal the puppies." Shortly after these comments were made, Gore called on Bush "to improve the tone of our dialogue in America" and asked both sides "to refrain from using inflammatory language." Apparently his own side wasn't listening, because the next day, MSNBC's Chip Reid reported on Gore aides who "said that if George Bush does get into office with [Harris's] help, the investigation into her role in this entire situation will make Whitewater look like a picnic."

The most disgraceful example of this scorched-earth strategy was the effort to disqualify overseas ballots, mainly cast by men and women serving in the military. These traditionally have tilted heavily toward the GOP; this year, in fact, they ran about 2-to-1 in Bush's favor. The Democrats did all they could to invalidate them. On November 15, Democratic lawyer Mark Herron sent out a five-page memo on how to disqualify military ballots. In Duval County, Gore lawyers objected to signatures that literally didn't dot i's or cross t's. Throughout the state, overseas ballots were rejected at a rate of 40 percent-almost double the rate from four years earlier, according to the Miami Herald. Some counties seemed to have a special passion for disqualifying them. In those carried by Gore, the rate of rejection was 60 percent; elsewhere, it was 29 percent. Broward County received 396 overseas ballots and invalidated 304 of them.

The controversies emanating from Florida seemed to have no end. The canvassing board in Gadsden County, controlled by Democrats, reexamined a stack of ballots behind closed doors; they found 170 extra votes for Gore. Time magazine reported that Gore gained 417 votes when election officers in Pinellas County, which went for Gore, tinkered with ballots before submitting them for a machine recount. There was old-fashioned vote fraud, too. The Miami Herald revealed that at least 39 felons-most of them Democrats-cast illegal absentee ballots in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.