Dem hypocrisy-a primer
gopbi.com.
Gore's point man
argued against
dimples in 1996
By Joel Engelhardt, Palm Beach
Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 22, 2000
Amid the swarm of the world
press outside the county
Emergency Operations Center,
Dennis Newman leads the charge
to find new votes for Al Gore in
the dimples of the Palm Beach
County ballot.
In his distinctive Boston
accent, the slightly rumpled man
in the slightly rumpled suit
recites erudite arguments to
explain over and over to the
breathless media why a tiny
indentation on a paper ballot
could determine the leader of
the world's most powerful
nation.
His argument, put simply, is
that dimples show the true
intent of the voter. Voters
caused those dimples. Dimples
should count.
Four years ago, in a similar
election spat, Newman took a much different stand.
Employing his best legal tactics on behalf of a
Democrat holding a slight lead in a primary race
for Congress, Newman scoffed at the idea of
counting the tiny indentations as votes.
Like the Republicans watching now, Newman wondered
out loud how ballots that had been handled over
and over, in recount after recount, could still be
impartially judged. Couldn't the ballots -- and
therefore the votes -- be affected by all that
touching and grabbing?
"I don't think they are handled with kid gloves,"
he said in The Boston Globe.
A pregnant bulge on a computer card falls far
short of the proof needed to show a voter's
intent, he said then.
He even embraced the position forged last week by
the Palm Beach County canvassing board: To
determine a voter's intent, the entire ballot must
be taken into account. In other words, if a ballot
doesn't have dimples in several different races --
not just the presidential race -- the voter
probably didn't intend for that presidential
dimple to be a vote.
In 1996, Newman argued that the congressional
race, while heated, wasn't the most important
thing on the minds of all 50,000 voters in the
district and many may have purposefully skipped
it. Now, he insists, Palm Beach County voters
didn't stand in line on Election Day only to skip
the most important race on the ballot.
Four years ago, he pointed to confusion on the
ballot -- two men by the same name ran for
different offices -- and said it may have forced
voters to stop, press, then pull away without
casting a vote.
Now, he seriously doubts the indentations could
have been made by someone pausing over the name --
and then choosing to skip the race for president.
Newman and at least three other Boston-area
attorneys -- all with election law experience --
have been here or in Broward County fighting for
every presidential vote. Among them is Haskell
Kassler, one of the lawyers on the other side in
Newman's Massachusetts case.
They've heard the opposition to dimples before. In
Newman's case, he's even spouted it. But no
longer. He lost.
He represented Philip Johnston, the hardluck
candidate who won the Election Day count in
September 1996 by 266 votes but lost the judicial
review less than a month later by 108.
"The court has ruled and I've seen the light --
through the chad," Newman said in an interview
Tuesday.
Newman, 50, ran Gore's campaign in Massachusetts.
He flew to West Palm Beach just two days after
Election Day turned into topsy-turvy Election
Night and Florida went up for grabs.
Even before chad became a household word, Newman
knew it could come down to dimples.
Nestled among Palm Beach County's 462,000
presidential ballots were 10,300 on which no vote
was cast for a presidential candidate. In past
national elections, when millions of votes are
cast, 10,000 lost votes in Palm Beach County would
have been of no consequence. But not this time.
Machines, Newman knew, wouldn't count the votes if
the voter didn't press hard enough to sever the
chad, allowing light to shine through. But judges
-- some judges, at least -- would.
He knew.
He watched four years ago as Massachusetts
Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Donovan counted 956
ballots the machine couldn't count. She awarded
177 to Johnston and 469 votes to his opponent,
William Delahunt.
Newman waited while the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court affirmed her decision.
He was there two years later when the state banned
the use of punch-card ballots, the same voting
system that Palm Beach County voters have been
using since the 1970s.
So dimples aren't something new to Newman. He
bristles when he hears Republicans say the
Democrats are trying to change the rules midway
through the game.
On Nov. 11, the morning of Palm Beach County's
sample hand count of four precincts, the Democrats
turned in a memorandum of law explaining why
dimples should be counted.
Two days later they filed suit.
At the time, Newman was a silent observer, working
behind Miami lawyer Ben Kuehne, who earned his
election law stripes in helping to throw out
Miami's 1997 mayoral election.
But Kuehne has gone behind the scenes, working on
the legal challenges and leaving Newman in the
network glare.
When Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga ruled last
week that dimples must be considered, Democrats
believed they had won.
But days later, without an explosion of anger,
there was Newman, patiently explaining that no,
the dimples still weren't being counted. The
canvassing board, he said, failed to follow the
judge's direction. And no, the Democrats were not
changing the rules in the middle of the game and
really all they wanted was a fair and accurate
count.
And Monday night, Newman found comfort deep within
a Florida Supreme Court ruling extending the
deadline for the hand counts. The court cited a
case that held voters should not be
disenfranchised because the chad they punched did
not completely dislodge from the ballot.
Now Newman's appearance outside the counting
center is an excuse for cameramen and reporters to
swarm. He does live shots for Fox News. He is not
stylish. He is part lawyer, part lifelong
political operative who back in 1992 helped run
the late Sen. Paul Tsongas' White House bid.
He's an advocate and he's working for his client,
the vice president of the United States.
He closes with a tale, a cautionary fable about
lawyering. Abe Lincoln is arguing as an attorney
before a judge. The judge points out that Lincoln
argued one way in the morning and took the
opposite tack in the afternoon. "Were you right
this morning?" the judge wants to know.
"Your honor, this morning I'm not sure. But I'm
sure I'm right now," Lincoln replies.
Staff researchers Geni Guseila and Monica Martinez
contributed to this story.
joel_engelhardt@pbpost.com |
