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>Subject: A washingtonpost.com article from [log in to unmask]
>Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 01:26:28 -0500 (EST)
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>Judges Deliver Loss to Gore on Absentee Ballots
>By Charles Babington and Peter Slevin
>Washington Post Staff Writers
>December 08, 2000
>
>
Two Florida judges today rejected Democratic requests to invalidate
thousands of absentee ballots, dealing another setback to Vice President
Gore's hopes of overtaking Gov. George W. Bush's certified lead of 537
votes.
>
The two Circuit Court judges ruled that Republican election officials in
Seminole and Martin counties might have erred slightly when they allowed GOP
operatives to supply missing voter-identification information on absentee
ballot request forms. But the judges said such "irregularities" did not
justify the remedy sought by Democrats who filed the lawsuits: Throwing out
thousands of absentee ballots from the two counties.
>
"The trial courts in both the Seminole County case and the Martin County
case have determined that despite irregularities in the request for absentee
ballots, neither the sanctity of the ballots, nor the integrity of the
election, has been compromised, and that the election results reflect a full
and fair expression of the will of the voters," a Leon County Circuit Court
spokeswoman said. The announcement was made in Tallahassee shortly after
2:15 p.m. – nearly 90 minutes before the state Supreme Court
announced that it was ordering the manual recount of ballots that had not
recorded a vote for president. The Supreme Court also ordered restored 383
votes for Gore that had not been certified by the secretary of state.
>
If either of the judges – Nikki Clark in the Seminole case, Terry
Lewis in the Martin case – had agreed to invalidate ballots as
requested, Gore would have overtaken Bush's lead in Florida, the state that
will decide the next president.
>
Gore was not a party to either lawsuit, but his backers quietly hoped they
might keep his presidential ambitions alive. Democratic voters who filed the
Seminole and Martin lawsuits were seeking to throw out thousands of ballots,
a strategy antithetical to Gore's post-election mantra of "count every
vote." Attorneys in both cases vowed to appeal.
>
In these cases, Democrats charged that Bush benefited from favored
treatment by Republican election supervisors. Before the election, the
Florida GOP sent pre-printed cards to registered Republicans, allowing them
to request an absentee ballot. Some of the cards contained a misprint that
omitted the required voter identification number.
>
In Seminole County, testimony showed that Republican Party staff member
Michael A. Leach was permitted to use Election Supervisor Sandra Goard's
offices for about 15 days to correct the application forms. In Martin
County, GOP workers were permitted to retrieve incorrect forms, fix them and
return them to the election offices.
>
Democrats charged that Florida law requires certain details to be supplied
on the forms and considers invalid any forms that do not contain the proper
information. They contended that the Republican elections officials gave an
unfair advantage to their own party by bending or breaking the rules.
>
Lawyers for Bush and the two counties countered that the changes were a mere
scrivener's task that did nothing to threaten the integrity of the ballots
later cast. They pointed out that Democrats did not need help because their
party's application forms were free of errors.
>
Gore's chief lawyer, David Boies, learned of the Seminole and Martin rulings
as he walked from lunch back to his office. "Neither of these cases were
cases we were involved in," he told The Post's James V. Grimaldi in
Tallahassee. "We've said from the beginning, the issue was going to be the
issue of our [post-certification] contest. Our contest is going to be
decided by the Florida Supreme Court, maybe sometime today."
>
<em>Staff writer Roberto Suro contributed to this report. Babington reported
from Washington, Slevin from Tallahassee.</em>
>
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