TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 22 (UPI) - Attorneys for Texas Gov. George W. Bush
filed suit Wednesday in a state court asking that the court reinstate
hundreds of overseas military ballots rejected by county election officials.
Republicans have for several days been attacking Democrats for challenging
the legitimacy of ballots from overseas military personnel. According to GOP
sources, of 3,733 ballots cast in Florida by overseas military personnel,
1,527 were rejected by county commissioners.
On the initial Florida vote count, Bush leads Vice President Al Gore by 930
votes, but both sides are scrambling to pick up every vote they can.
Gore has closed the gap by more than 250 votes in hand counts, but a
decision Wednesday by the Miami-Dade Election Canvassing Board to cancel its
hand count appears to have ruled out more than 10,000 improperly marked
ballots that Gore partisans were hoping would generate thousands of
additional votes for their candidate.
The Gore campaign said it would sue to force the county to do the manual
recount.
Many of the rejected military ballots lacked the postmark or signature that
they are supposed to carry for the ballots to be valid, but Republican
spokesman Mindy Tucker argued that Democrats waged an "orchestrated
statewide campaign" to have these ballots - presumably overwhelmingly Bush
voters - rejected.
The Democrat party had prepared a legal memo for Democrat observers on what
elements would allow an overseas ballot to be challenged, and Republicans
issued a counter-memo explaining the defense for these challenged ballots.
According to the motion filed by the Republicans Wednesday, the canvassing
boards in 13 Florida counties "have wrongfully rejected many overseas
military ballots cast" because the ballot lacked a postmark or a date or
other purported technical requirements.
The motion argues that the boards disqualified the ballots based on a
misunderstanding of the law, and that the ballots do not in fact require a
postmark or date on the envelope.
The Republicans are asking for emergency intervention by the court to have
these votes reinstated and tallied by the Sunday deadline set by the Florida
Supreme Court for counties to submit amended vote tallies.
Republican attorney Fred H. Bartlit Jr. said the lawsuit targeted only 13
counties because the GOP "wanted to move fast" and wanted to limit the
compliant to the degree possible to those counties that have the greatest
number of military ballots.
Bartlit said the petition did not ask the court to rewrite the law for
overseas ballots, but asked only "that they apply the law" as written.
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