If anyone still thinks the dems have the moral high ground, here is just another example of the lengths they will go to get their boy in office.
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Saturday November 18 5:47 PM ET
Christopher Said To Influence Tally
By KARIN MEADOWS, Associated Press Writer
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher called the Democratic lawyer for Palm Beach County's elections supervisor to try to get the attorney to use his influence to assure a manual recount would be conducted there, the lawyer says.
Christopher, who is leading the Gore campaign's recount effort in Florida, made the phone call Thursday morning to Bruce Rogow, who represents elections supervisor Theresa LePore.
``It was an effort to have me persuade my client to vote in favor of starting the manual recount on Thursday. I told him no. I told him we'd have to wait,'' Rogow said.
``I thought everyone got the message that the best thing to do was let me be a lawyer and not a politician,'' he said.
Hours later, the Florida Supreme Court cleared the way for workers to begin hand counting the county's 462,350 ballots.
Rogow, a registered Democrat and a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in neighboring Broward County, said he was on the way to a meeting with LePore and the other two members of the Palm Beach canvassing board when he was called by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor representing a group of voters in Palm Beach County.
While he talked to Dershowitz, Christopher's call came in.
Rogow said he didn't consider it appropriate for Christopher or Dershowitz to try to ``persuade me to give certain advice to my client.''
``The irony is that within a couple of hours, the Supreme Court entered an interim order allowing the hand count to continue,'' Rogow said. ``The Democrats were delighted that evening.''
Calls to the Democratic National Committee, the Gore campaign and George W. Bush's campaign seeking comment on Christopher's call were not immediately returned.
Denise Dytrych, the county attorney for Palm Beach, said she has received faxes from a number of people to press her in one way or another as she prepared a letter to Secretary of State Katherine Harris about why she should accept totals from a hand recount.
``Everybody is giving their input and it is from all sides, all parties,'' she said.
Republicans charge Democrats also may have influenced election officials in Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, where the canvassing board reversed itself and ordered a hand recount of 654,000 punch-card ballots that is to begin Monday morning.
The canvassing board first voted Tuesday not to conduct a countywide recount after an initial hand tally of 5,871 ballots in three overwhelmingly Democratic precincts gave Gore only six more votes. Then, at a meeting Friday, the board decided to go ahead with the recount.
Before the meeting, Republican attorney Bob Martinez asked board members to ``stick to your convictions.''
Judge Myriam Lehr, who changed her vote on the three-member panel and forced the manual recount, bristled at suggestions she was influenced.
``Nobody has pushed me,'' she said. ``I was not pushed by anyone. I've done my job.''
Martinez would not comment Saturday on whether he thought Lehr was pressured to change her vote. But he wondered why she did.
``No new facts were presented, the law remained the same and yet the outcome changed. Why?'' Martinez said. ``I don't want to question anyone unfairly, but I think the public has a right to question what happened between Tuesday and Friday.'' |
