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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (93484)	11/29/2000 2:57:56 AM
From: zonkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Here's something more to the point but it doesn't sound near as damning as what I heard on TV. ______ news-journalonline.com A sleeper case in Seminole County News-Journal wire services SANFORD - Nearly a month before Election Day, the elections supervisor in Seminole County allowed a fellow Republican to spend more than a week correcting thousands of absentee ballot applications she had set aside because of a computer error. The decision by Supervisor Sandra Goard and the unsupervised work done by Michael Leach of the Florida Republican Party are at the heart of a lawsuit that would, if successful, give Democrat Al Gore nearly 4,800 additional votes - more than enough to claim Florida and the presidency. During a hearing Tuesday in Tallahassee, Circuit Court Judge Nikki Clark refused to consolidate the case with an overall election contest, and instead set up a fast-paced schedule scheduled to begin Wednesday. Gore attorneys have kept their distance from the lawsuit because they are arguing in other cases that every vote should count. The suit in this wealthy, fast-growing suburban county northeast of Orlando instead asks that thousands of ballots be thrown out. Behind the problem are the thousands of absentee ballot applications mailed out statewide by Florida's political parties. A printing glitch in a printer used by Republicans stripped the required voter-identification number from about 80 percent of the ballot applications the party mailed out in Seminole County. According to the lawsuit, Goard's staffers set aside the applications missing voter IDs so they could destroyed later. But sometime in October, a GOP official called and asked if someone could come in and add the voter IDs to the applications. Goard agreed. Leach showed up at her office shortly afterward with a laptop computer, added the numbers and turned them in. The applications were processed and absentee ballots were mailed out. Democrats are outraged, saying Goard had never before allowed anyone outside her office to add voter IDs. A state law passed after Miami's fraudulent 1997 mayoral race says only the voter, an immediate family member or legal guardian may fill out an absentee ballot request. Democrats also say they were never notified about the arrangement and weren't given the same opportunity. There was no indication any ballot applications sent out by Democrats were missing voter ID numbers. "The Republicans call this a hypertechnicality," said Bob Poe, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "This is not a hypertechnicality. This is about any party of Republicans or Democrats going into an election supervisor's office, which is supposed to be a neutral zone, and tampering with the files." The lawsuit asks that all 15,000 absentee ballots cast in Seminole County be thrown out because there is no way to tell which ones involved applications handled by Leach. GOP candidate George W. Bush received 4,797 more absentee ballots than Gore in the predominantly Republican county. If the lawsuit is successful, the vice president would easily surpass Bush's 537-vote margin in the overall state tally. Republicans and Goard's attorneys say they didn't break the law. "Any person can assist the voter in filling it out and can present the application to the supervisor's office," said Barry Richard, an attorney for Seminole County. Goard's office referred calls to her attorney. Her assistant supervisor, Dennis Joyner, said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the case but denied any wrongdoing. "We were in the position of trying to make sure as many people as possible received a ballot," Joyner said. In a deposition, Goard said Leach provided no identification to prove who he was and neither did a second worker, identified in the lawsuit as Ryan Mitchell. Reached at his office at state GOP headquarters in Tallahassee, Leach declined to comment. Mitchell could not be located. The room where the work was done contained 18 computers linked to a database containing voter registration records, boxes containing materials from previous elections and the desk and computer of Michael Masciani, the elections equipment technician. Goard said it would have been impossible for the GOP workers to access the database without a password, so there was no need for a worker from her office to keep an eye on them. "We provided them with a chair. They sat at a table with their laptop computer. They took the card and placed the voter registration number on that document," she said in a deposition. "I did not station an individual to be there at every moment that he was there." In Martin County, election supervisor Peggy Robbins acknowledged Tuesday she also gave permission for a Republican Party official to remove "several hundred" incomplete absentee ballot applications sent from Republican voters from her office. The official returned them filled out with corrected voter identification numbers and other information, said Robbins, a Republican. In another development Tuesday, state officials confirmed that Judge Clark, was among eight judges nominated in September for a vacancy on the 1st District Court of Appeal. Gov. Jeb Bush selected Joseph Lewis, Jr. Clark and Lewis were the only blacks nominated for the vacancy in the only appeals court in the state without a minority judge.