Tiger,
This is why Republicans don't trust the democrat controlled recount....among other reasons.
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." |
