Interesting article..."taped chads", "magic envelopes"...
worldnetdaily.com
ELECTION 2000, Day 25
'Coup behind
closed doors'
Republican observers in Miami-Dade
say Democrats attempted secret recount
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
© 2000 Western Journalism Center
Exhausted, disgusted, his voice still hoarse from
arguing with Democrat floor managers, Virginia
Republican Roger Morse has just returned from the
south Florida trenches, where he says he witnessed
an "attempted coup behind closed doors" to steal
the presidential election.
Morse was one of dozens of Republican observers
who took time off work for congressional
Republicans to travel down to Florida to take part
in what he felt was a historic event. Like many of
the volunteers who flocked to Florida, he thought
he was going to witness democracy at work.
Instead, what he saw at the Stephen P. Clark
Center in Miami-Dade County made him sick.
"After three days of changing the rules every time
we walked in the room, the Democrats finally
decided to conduct a partial recount behind closed
doors, and took the disputed ballots from the main
counting room to a small, private room up on the
19th floor without the press," Morse said. "They
barred the doors to Republican observers, and
refused to let us enter. That's when we realized we
had to do something to prevent them from stealing
the election."
Under Florida's "sunshine" laws, dozens of
television news teams had been allowed to film the
manual recount at county election offices in
Miami-Dade, West Palm Beach and other disputed
counties from behind a rope line. Scenes of election
judges holding up ballots as they tried to "discern
the intent" of the voters by the state of ballot chad
have become familiar to television viewers around
the country.
But last Wednesday -- the day before Thanksgiving
-- Democrat officials realized they were not going
to get through the full manual recount in time for
the Florida Supreme Court's deadline of 5 p.m. on
Sunday, and decided to accelerate the process.
"We were told that we were challenging too many
ballots and slowing things down," said Bryan
Wilkes, another Republican recount observer who
was accredited by Miami-Dade County.
And that's when head Judge Lawrence King, a
Democrat, ordered county workers to pack up the
ballots and take them to a smaller room upstairs far
from the cameras -- and from the Republican
volunteers.
Morse and Wilkes were concerned because the
procedures in the public room downstairs were
already bad enough.
"We saw Democrat election officials bending ballots
until the chads popped out," Wilkes said. "We saw
them knock whole stacks of Bush ballots onto the
floor. We saw them counting ballots like a deck of
cards. We saw ballots with chad taped back into
the Bush hole, making them votes for Gore. You tell
me: How many people go into the voting booth
with a roll of scotch tape in case they make a
mistake? This was very carefully done. Clearly, it
was a professional job."
When the Democrats disappeared into the elevators
with the ballots, Roger Morse and a few other
Republican volunteers rushed after them to the
19th floor.
"We knew they were going to steal the election
behind closed doors, and they wanted as few
witnesses as possible," Morse said. "We wanted the
press in there. We wanted them to videotape each
ballot before they made a decision. We wanted the
public to see there wasn't anything resembling a
vote on any of those ballots, so they could see for
themselves what the Democrats were doing."
Morse and other Republican volunteers milled
around in front of the glass door of the recount
room up on the 19th floor, when they realized they
had to do something. "It started out pretty weak.
We shouted things like 'Stop Stealing the Vote!' 'The
Fix is in.'"
Then, Morse admits, it got nasty. "We started
chanting: 'Let the press in!' I guess that's pretty
vicious, pretty unruly -- pretty unconstitutional."
That is indeed how the mainstream press has
portrayed the Republican demonstration. Taking
their cue from vice presidential candidate Joe
Lieberman, who accused the demonstrators of
using "intimidation and violence" and called them a
"disservice to our democracy," Time magazine
called the demonstration a "GOP melee." U.S. News
& World Report publisher Mortimer Zuckerman
accused the Republicans of starting a "mini-riot."
Magic envelopes
Beyond the glass door of the counting room, Morse
and the other Republican volunteers could see the
Democrats stuffing ballots into "magic envelopes."
It was the same procedure that had been underway
for several days in the glare of the cameras
downstairs. Only this time, it was being done with
none of the volunteer GOP recount observers in the
room, and no cameras in a position to view the
ballots.
Each "magic envelope" contained the disputed
ballots of one Miami-Dade county precinct. After
the 3-member county canvassing board reviewed
the disputed ballots, they sealed them in the
envelopes and wrote the count by hand on the
front.
No Republican sits on the canvassing board.
Wilkes, Morse and Republican lawyers familiar
with the Miami-Dade recount said the board
systematically ruled against Bush in judging the
votes.
"We were seeing an average two to five vote
pick-up per precinct for Gore," said Bryan Wilkes.
"We never got to see those ballots. Someone would
just drop a sealed envelope on the table and we'd
be allowed to observe the final count -- so many for
Bush, so many for Gore, so many blank."
Upstairs on the 19th floor, the Democrat election
judges were racing through the disputed ballots,
stuffing them into "magic envelopes," sealing them,
and writing the new count on the back. Outside,
the numbers of Republican protesters grew, and
television crews began to arrive.
At one point, an individual identifying himself as a
Democrat lawyer emerged from the room. Film
crews caught him stuffing a ballot into his suit
pocket and the Republicans out in the hallway
cried foul.
"He was immediately surrounded by Sheriff's
deputies and was eventually taken away," Morse
said.
The "lawyer" was subsequently identified as
Miami-Dade County Democratic Party Chairman
Joe Geller. He claimed he had required a police
escort to escape the "mob," an allegation picked up
by Time, U.S. News and Joe Lieberman. In fact,
Morse says that Geller was escorted down to the
18th floor for questioning by county sheriff's
deputies.
Several hours later, county election officials
emerged to report that Geller had been handling a
"training" ballot, and that these were common and
available to all accredited election watchers.
"That's simply not true," said Morse. "We'd been
trying to get access to these training ballots for
days, but all our requests to see them were denied."
County election officials said training ballots could
be distinguished from valid ballots because they did
not bear the date of the election, but otherwise they
were identical.
Not only had film crews videotaped the entire
altercation with Geller, but as of early this week no
police reports had been filed.
"The sheriff's deputies were thoroughly
unconcerned by us," Morse said. "They had one
deputy posted at each door, and never called for
back-up. And the only person taken into custody
was Joe Geller."
By one o'clock that afternoon, county canvassing
commissioners called a halt to the recount. Gore
campaign officials blamed it on the protesters. But
in its news coverage, U.S. News & World Report
quoted canvassing board member David Leahy as
saying: "These were people in ties and jackets. This
was not a mob." Leahy explained that the board
had decided to call off the recount because
members felt they still would not be able to meet
the Sunday deadline.
Despite the lack of police complaints, Democrats in
Congress led by Florida Rep. Peter Deutsch wrote
Assistant Attorney General Billy Lann Lee on Nov.
24, demanding an official investigation of the
demonstrators for "voter intimidation."
"According to many published reports, unruly and
violent protesters managed to create a climate of
fear and intimidation, with the intent of preventing
the canvassing board from completing its difficult
task," Deutsch wrote. "The actions cited in these
news reports is chilling."
Despite videotaped evidence that proves no such
acts of violence occurred, a Justice Department
investigation for voter intimidation remains a
serious threat for volunteers such as Wilkes, Morse
and others who have been identified as working for
Republican members of Congress, believes Barbara
Olson, a lawyer who recently authored a biography
of Hillary Clinton, "Hell to Pay."
"This is another attempt at intimidation," Olson
said. "Given the record of the Clinton-Gore
administration, no one should take it lightly. It's the
same tactics they used against Linda Tripp. The
threat of prosecution is intimidating to young
people who can't battle the power of the United
States government and who can't afford to hire
expensive lawyers. And that's just what this
administration is counting on."
Kenneth Timmerman, a veteran foreign correspondent
whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Time, the Wall
Street Journal and the New York Times, is currently
developing a special series of investigative reports for
the Western Journalism Center on vote fraud. |
