The desperate and apparently mentally ill AlGore the Sore Loserman wants his non-Presidency to hang by:
December 6, 2000
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A Silly Suit in Seminole County
By James Lindgren, a professor of law at Northwestern University.
Today in a Florida courtroom Judge Nikki Clark is scheduled to hear arguments in the oddest of many cases brought by Gore partisans to overturn the Florida election results. Al Gore is not a party to this case; it has been brought by a Democratic attorney who wants to throw out thousands of absentee ballots in Seminole County -- more than enough, presumably, to throw the election to Mr. Gore.
The facts are still emerging, but it appears that in Seminole both Republicans and Democrats paid to print applications for absentee ballots. They both sent them out to party faithful, who filled in the blanks and submitted them to the Board of Elections. Both the Republicans and the Democrats entered the voter identification numbers on each application for the voters. The only difference is that the Republicans put the numbers on the applications after they were submitted, while the Democrats put them on before. That's it. That's the entire basis for the suit.
The case is not about election fraud or ballot tampering. No one is claiming that the ballots were filled out improperly. No one is claiming that anyone was illegally denied the right to vote, as the Republicans are about the striking of some overseas absentee ballots cast by military voters.
Rather, the Democrats claim that applications were altered by Republicans, that the latter used county offices to fill in the omissions, and that the election supervisor unfairly favored the Republicans. Although they may sound nefarious, the charges are easily answered.
- Using county offices: Every day in every active courthouse in America, lawyers fill out forms and draft orders, agreements, and stipulations using the rooms and furniture of the court and the clerk's office. There was nothing wrong with the Republicans using tables in the election board's offices to do their work, if that work was otherwise legal. When I was in active practice, several times clerks gave me and other lawyers working space to draft orders or to fill out subpoenas or other legal documents -- and helped us with them.
Although voter registration information is usually confidential, Florida law specifically exempts political party officials from these restrictions. Republicans had a right to the information in those applications and indeed had the ID numbers on their own laptop computers. They could reasonably expect to be accommodated by election officials.
- Adding the ID numbers: Was it proper for the Republicans to add ID numbers? Yes. The main Florida statute for requesting absentee ballots requires that electors submit applications (which was done) and "provide" their ID numbers, which was done by others on their behalf. It doesn't say that no one else can touch or fill out applications.
A copy of the complaint in the Seminole case that I have seen has a handwritten case number at the top of the first page. Who wrote that on the pleadings? Was it the clerk or a party to the case? In some courts, parties are required by law to put case numbers on their pleadings, but no reasonable judge would strike a pleading where a clerk or other friendly party had written in the number. Such issues are what lawyers call de minimis.
But even this gives too much credit to the Democrats' argument, because it implies that there was some trivial defect in the applications. There was no defect at all, as it was corrected by people cooperating with the voters. The Republicans arranged for and paid for the printing and mailing of the very applications they helped complete. Obviously, if the voters had not wanted the Republicans to supply words on their forms, they would not have filled out those forms and signed them. They were working together to apply for an absentee ballot. By returning the ballots properly, every single voter ratified the actions of those who filled in the ID number.
- Helping Republicans: The last major claim in the Seminole case is that by allowing Republicans to use her office, Supervisor Sandra Goard unfairly helped the Republicans. Perhaps morally she should have notified the Democrats that they could come in and fill in missing numbers on ballot applications as well. But Ms. Goard was never asked by the Democrats to let them add ID numbers.
In any case, there is a reason why Republican voters in Seminole needed more help this year. The printing firm discovered that the form it was using for Republican ballot applications omitted ID numbers. Unfortunately, the error was noticed after Republican applications were sent out. When the Republicans found out, they called the election office and asked if they could come in and remedy the omission, and the supervisor agreed.
It should be emphasized that there was nothing illegal about the applications for ballots in Seminole, which means that the actual absentee ballots were entirely licit. (Unlike these legal ballots, those of convicted felons are actually illegal, and should be excluded if they can be identified -- which they can't.) Since the voters could have stayed in town and voted in person had they not voted absentee, it would be particularly cruel to punish them after they relied on the representation by Florida authorities that they could legally vote by absentee ballot.
Both Democratic and Republican voters submitted their own applications and both political parties supplied the voter ID numbers on those applications. Florida law is extremely clear in saying that defects on applications from legal voters do not invalidate actually cast ballots, and even ballots that have been altered by writing on them are not excludable if there is no fraud. No court, acting in fidelity to Florida law, could strike out 4,700 to 15,000 absentee ballots when not a single one is illegal.
The only claim worth arguing about is the moral one: Was Ms. Goard, the Republican elections official, sufficiently even-handed? Anyone who has ever worked on contested campaigns knows that to criticize a public official for not volunteering to help the other party (especially when they haven't asked for help) is to complain about business as usual.
The Seminole case is particularly ironic in light of the main litigation the Democrats are pursuing. In Seminole, unlike the vagaries of Palm Beach or Miami-Dade, voter intent does not need to be discerned: It is staring us straight in the face.
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