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Politics : Why is Gore Trying to Steal the Presidency? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cola Can who wrote (2194)	11/25/2000 12:57:56 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 3887

Certification may spark new battles By Nancy Cook Lauer DEMOCRAT CAPITOL BUREAU CHIEF The certification of Florida's election Sunday won't be the end of the story. In fact, it may be the beginning of another long chapter. As Secretary of State Katherine Harris prepares to have Florida's votes officially certified by a three-member canvassing board by 7 p.m. Sunday, attorneys for both Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush are readying papers to contest the election once the results are certified. The contest of the election would go to Leon Circuit Court. A contest requires a higher standard of proof than the protests now under way, but the task is not insurmountable. A Miami mayor, a Wakulla County judge and a Polk County commissioner have all won on election night, were sworn in and began their terms but were forced by judges to turn over the office to opponents months or even years later. "The election contests have to be filed on Monday," said David Boies, an attorney for the Gore campaign. "The Republicans have already gotten theirs in." A Bush spokeswoman said the overseas-absentee ballot challenge under way in Leon Circuit Court is not an election contest, nor could she verify the Republicans would file one if Sunday night's results don't come out in their favor. But Boies seemed to think the battle of what he called "dueling contests" will continue. "I don't think either side is going to withdraw their contests just because on Sunday at 5 p.m. one side or the other is a few votes ahead," Boies said. Legal experts say the contest procedure is well-recognized and could move into the circuit court by Tuesday, with witnesses being called and affidavits being filed. Nat Stern, a law professor at Florida State University, said the issues raised in a contest would not collide with the U.S. Supreme Court action. "Florida can proceed independently," he said, citing the state contest statute which is triggered once an election is certified. The high court set a Tuesday deadline for briefs and will hear 90 minutes of oral arguments on Friday, Dec. 1. Proof hard to meet Bruce Rogow, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who was involved in the fight over Palm Beach's controversial butterfly ballot, said the proof required to contest certified election results is often hard to meet. "You must prove substantial noncompliance with statutory election procedures," said Rogow, who is a professor at Nova University Law School. The other challenge, he said, is to prove the will of the voters has been thwarted. The Democrats started practicing along those lines on Friday, bringing to an afternoon press conference witnesses who could testify that the 1960s-era Votomatic punch-card machines could malfunction, frustrating the voters' intent. Among them were the machine's designer, 83-year-old William S. Rouverol, former Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Jackie Winchester and Yale statistician Nicolas Hengartner. Rouverol said that once the patent expired on the Votomatic, companies started using inferior materials that made it harder to dislodge the chad from the punch-card ballot. Winchester said the voting machines were so faulty in Palm Beach County while she was supervisor of elections from 1973 to 1997, that her office, when it was feasible, did not use the first column at all, but skipped to the second column to record votes. Hengartner noted that three of every 1,000 voters in Florida using the newer optical scanners did not vote for president, compared with 15 of every 1,000 using the Votomatic elsewhere and 22 of every 1,000 using the Votomatics in Palm Beach County. For Gore, the political risks are higher because even within his own party, there are those who believe that whatever the results are Sunday, the vice president should accept them. Gore campaign manager William Daley said that Gore's attitude is "that the process should move forward . . . and the contest process is the time for these actions to be brought." Boies blames some of the delays on the Bush campaign's efforts to stop the hand-counting of ballots. The Gore campaign was stung Thursday when the Florida Supreme Court rejected its request to force Miami-Dade's canvassing board to resume its aborted hand recount. Boies said the Gore campaign would concede only if all of the ballots the campaign asked for have been recounted and Bush has a clear victory. "That vote isn't done yet," Boies said. "And we've said repeatedly nobody can predict what that result is going to be. If that result shows Gov. Bush the winner, we will accept that." Contact Nancy Cook Lauer at nlauer@taldem.com or (850) 222-6729. Tallahassee Democrat wire services contributed to this report.