November 24, 2000
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Burgher Rebellion: GOP
Turns Up Miami Heat
By PAUL A. GIGOT
MIAMI -- If it's possible to have a bourgeois riot, it happened here Wednesday. And it could end up saving the presidency for George W. Bush.
With both parties spinning, I thought I'd go south to see the Miami-Dade manual recount first hand. Surely it couldn't be as arbitrary as it sounded from Washington? And it wasn't. It was worse. Little did I know it'd be bad enough to inspire 50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones and Hermes ties to behave, well, like Democrats.
***
These normally placid burghers popped their corks after a week of watching a recount they felt was rigged for Al Gore. They kept mum but stewed for days as a three-member, Democratic-leaning canvassing board tried to divine the "intent" of the voter without any standards at all.
One of the canvassers, a career bureaucrat named David Leahy, had even declared the lack of any vote-counting standard a virtue. He needed "the flexibility," as his spokeswoman put it, to "look at the totality of the ballot to determine the intent of the voter."
Like other reporters, I had to watch from 10 feet away and strain to hear this subtle, epic search for "intent." Mr. Leahy would take a ballot and hunt not just for dimples but for any mark at all, even pregnant chads still in their first trimester. I saw him bend or twist several ballots, which can't be good for chads that have already been machine-counted three times.
Then he'd say, "that's a 6," meaning for Gore (who was sixth on the ballot) or a "no vote," or much more rarely, "a vote for 4" (Bush). He then handed the ballot to Lawrence King, a Democratic judge who looks like an older Charlie Sheen. Only once did I see him disagree with Mr. Leahy's declaration of a new Gore vote.
The challenge usually came, if it did at all, from the third board member, county judge and independent Myriam Lehr. She'd grimace and focus and turn the ballot over and over before saying she disagreed. But it didn't matter. A 2-to-1 vote -- and I witnessed six in about 30 minutes -- still counted for the veep.
Most of these ballots were clearly punched for a Senate candidate and other offices. Only the presidential mark was in doubt. So they weren't the ballots of seniors too confused or weak to punch through. They might have been those of voters who disliked both presidential candidates. But a partisan vote down the ballot was deemed to be one indication of intent.
Every Democrat described this guesswork recounting as "professional" or "fair." But every Republican was seething. "You should see what they're calling a dimple," said Neal Conolly, a mild-mannered New York lawyer who volunteered to spend his vacation here. "It's the most minor imperfection in the paper. I wouldn't even call it a crease."
In one instance, he says (and I witnessed his objection), a Gore chad was displaced but a smaller hole was also present in the Bush chad. They counted it for Mr. Gore. A reporter's reflex is to dismiss such complaints as "partisan." But having covered elections for 20 years, I hope I can distinguish real from synthetic protest. These folks were ready to blow.
The tipping point came Wednesday, after the Florida Supreme Court said manual counts must be included, but by a Sunday deadline. The three canvassers reacted first by dropping a complete recount, thus omitting pro-Bush Cuban precincts. They would only count the 10,750 ballots that machines had spit out for no presidential vote. These were mostly from Democratic precincts.
Then the Three Counting Sages repaired to semi-isolation, forcing TV cameras to watch through a window and keeping reporters 25 feet away. That did it. Street-smart New York Rep. John Sweeney, a visiting GOP monitor, told an aide to "Shut it down," and semi-spontaneous combustion took over.
The Republicans marched on the counting room en masse, chanting "Three Blind Mice" and "Fraud, Fraud, Fraud." True, it wasn't exactly Chicago 1968, but these are Republicans. Their normal idea of political protest is filling out the complaint card at a Marriot.
They also let it be known that 1,000 local Cuban Republicans were on the way -- not a happy prospect for Anglo judges who must run for re-election. Inside the room, GOP lawyers also pointed out that the law -- recall that quaint concept -- required that any recount include all ballots.
The canvassers then stunned everybody and caved. They cancelled any recount and certified the original Nov. 7 election vote, claiming that the Sunday deadline didn't allow enough time to recount everywhere. Republicans rejoiced and hugged like they'd just won the lottery.
***
All of this leaves the Gore campaign as frustrated as Republicans were after watching Democrats trash Katherine Harris. Mr. Gore was counting on Miami-Dade dimples to give him at least 600 more votes. Now he'll have to get them from Palm Beach and Broward counties, but there may not be enough.
So, true to form, Mr. Gore's lawyers are suing the Miami-Dade canvassers to restart the hand count. But this contradicts the Florida Supreme Court decision that the vice president had heralded only the night before as a victory for "democracy." The court said that the decision to recount is up the counties. A lower court rejected the Gore request late Wednesday, but his lawyers are now asking the Florida supremes to postpone their own deadline.
If Al Gore loses his brazen attempt to win on the dimples, one reason will be that he finally convinced enough Republicans to fight like Democrats. |
