EXAMINING THE VOTE
July 15, 2001
From The New York Times
How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote
By DAVID BARSTOW and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
(Continuing from first article............)
Clouding the Matter Of the Postmark
As secretary of state, Katherine Harris wields considerable influence over the
conduct of elections in Florida. Her office, which includes the Division of Elections,
writes election rules, issues binding interpretations of election law and offers informal
advice to election supervisors. But given her role as co-chairwoman of the Bush
campaign in Florida, her statements and legal positions during the South Florida
recount battles drew inevitable and scathing criticism from Democrats.
On the day after the election, Division of Elections staff members drafted a press
release titled ``Secretary Explains Overseas Ballot Procedures.'' It was meant to be
a simple reminder from Ms. Harris, similar to those her predecessors had routinely
sent out, that state election rules required overseas ballots to have been
``postmarked or signed and dated'' by Election Day.
By early that evening, the draft statement had been sent to Ms. Harris's e-mail
basket for approval. It was never released.
Instead, Ms. Harris said nothing about the absentee ballots until Nov. 13, when she
touched on them at the end of a televised statement that focused mainly on trying to
bring an end to the South Florida recounts. In her statement, she said that the
overseas ballots had to be ``executed'' - a vague word that could have meant either
signed or both signed and dated - by Election Day and that they had to bear a
foreign postmark. Then she added, ``They are not required, however, to be
postmarked on or prior to'' Election Day.
Democratic strategists reacted with immediate suspicion, viewing that last line as a
gift from Ms. Harris to her fellow Republicans.
``In our opinion, it was an effort by Katherine Harris to blur the rules,'' said Nick
Baldick, a senior Gore strategist in Florida. ``And confusion about the rules would
only help the Republicans get as many suspect ballots counted as possible.''
Two top Republican strategists, working as volunteers, were deeply involved in
drafting the Nov. 13 statement, as well as other major pronouncements Ms. Harris
made during the recounts.
One of the strategists, J.M. Stipanovich, a lawyer who had managed Jeb Bush's
failed campaign for governor in 1994, said in an interview that he served as Ms.
Harris's ``personal attorney'' in the three weeks after the election, guiding her
through major decisions.
Although Mr. Stipanovich declined to say whether he had had any contacts with the
Bush campaign, Mr. Ginsberg said he spoke with Mr. Stipanovich ``three or four
times'' during the recounts. ``At the time it was never clear if he was asking me
something in his role as working for Katherine Harris, which was certainly well
known at the time, or just out of curiosity,'' Mr. Ginsberg said.
The other strategist assisting Ms. Harris was Adam Goodman, a media consultant
who had helped chart Ms. Harris's rapid ascension in the state Republican Party.
Typically, when it came to writing Ms. Harris's public statements, Mr. Stipanovich
recalled, Mr. Goodman would start by gathering information from Ms. Harris's chief
aides, like Clay Roberts, the director of the Division of Elections.
``Adam would knock off a draft, and I would comment on it,'' Mr. Stipanovich said.
``Clay would put in his two cents. Katherine would tell us what she thought. And we
would do it all over again.''
Mr. Goodman added that their aim was always to ``give it to people straight'' and
that usually ``every word was parsed over.''
Most of this work was done on computers in a conference room just off Ms.
Harris's office. Her lawyers now say that many of the records from these computers
have been erased, a potential violation of Florida's public records laws, and they
refused a request from The Times to examine the computers' hard drives.
But they did release two versions of the Nov. 13 statement, which show that the
sentence that upset the Democrats - and seemed to make it easier to accept ballots
with late postmarks - was not inserted until the final draft.
A spokesman for Ms. Harris said she was unavailable for comment. The Times
began seeking an interview with Ms. Harris two weeks ago, but her spokesman,
David Host, said that Ms. Harris would prefer to comment in a written opinion
article after she returns from a trip to Argentina this month.
Mr. Stipanovich and Mr. Goodman said they could not recall how the wording on
Florida's overseas ballot rules was drafted, and both said there were never any
discussions in Ms. Harris's office about changing the rules. Mr. Roberts said the
statement was just an effort to paraphrase the traditional rules. ``In retrospect,'' he
said, ``sticking to the strict statutory language might have been more clear.''
Lawyers for Mr. Bush now say they too were unhappy with the statement. It had,
after all, said explicitly that postmarks were required, calling only their dating into
question. Mr. Aufhauser said he feared the statement would make it harder for the
Republicans to push their argument that under federal law, postmarks were not
required at all on military ballots.
• CONTINUED: How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Ballots
nytimes.com |
