Did Bush camp encourage military personnel to vote after Election Day?

Behind closed doors, vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., had been the most aggressive proponent of using the law any way that the Gore team could. That's what made his capitulation on the overseas absentee ballot issue, when Tim Russert grilled him about it on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Nov. 19, so astonishing.

On the show, Russert brandished the Herron memo and browbeat Lieberman with it. "Many controversies swirling in Florida," Russert said, before leaning in for the kill. "How can a campaign who insists on the intent of the voter, the will of the people, not disenfranchising anybody accept knocking out the votes of people of armed services?"

Lieberman weakly replied that he hadn't read Herron's memo, that Russert's copy of it was the first he'd actually seen of it.

"Let me just say that the vice president and I would never authorize, and would not tolerate, a campaign that was aimed specifically at invalidating absentee ballots from members of our armed services," Lieberman said.

Russert read from more Bush propaganda, a letter the Bushies secured from the deputy director of the military postal services who "says that if a sailor is on a ship, it's hard to get a postmark." He pressed Lieberman. "Will you today, as a representative of the Gore campaign, ask every county to re-look at those ballots that came from armed services people and waive any so-called irregularities or technicalities which would disqualify them?"

Lieberman folded. "We ought to do everything we can to count the votes of our military personnel overseas. I would give the benefit of the doubt to ballots coming in from military personnel generally, but particularly in light of the letter and the kind of statements we've heard about that."

Among those watching "Meet the Press" Sunday morning was Herron, who was stunned to see Joe Lieberman sell him down the river. All his memo did was detail Florida law. He had written it, for God's sake, at the direction of the Gore-Lieberman team! He'd already lost his job so he could help the effort, and here was the vice presidential nominee distancing himself from the memo when all it did was explain Florida law!

Gore politico Nick Baldick's reaction was a little less measured. "Fuck Joe Lieberman!" he yelled to several colleagues. He swore that should Lieberman ever run for president he would do everything he could to defeat him in the states in which he had worked so hard on behalf of Gore: New Hampshire and Florida.

Meanwhile, the Bush team was lining up its heaviest legal hitters for the military ballot brawl. Fred Bartlit had been a young Kirkland & Ellis attorney in 1960 when the GOP hired him to investigate vote fraud in Texas. On Saturday, Nov. 18, he was at his daughter's wedding at the Drake Hotel in Chicago when he got a call from an associate at his firm, Bartlit, Beck, Herman, Palenchar & Scott in Denver. The Bush team wanted Bartlit to leave the wedding ASAP, fly down to Florida and argue for the inclusion of overseas military absentee ballots, he was told.

Bartlit, 68, agreed to do it the next morning.

A West Point grad and former Army Ranger, Bartlit's a tough-talking guy who constantly derides the world's overwhelming amount of "bullshit." He arrived in Tallahassee the morning of Sunday, Nov. 19 -- the same morning Tim Russert was beating up Joe Lieberman -- and he got to work on the overseas military absentee ballot case. The Bushies were suing 15 different counties to reconsider overseas ballots they'd disqualified.

Accompanied by Glenn Summers, an attorney at Bartlit's firm, and Unger, Bartlit presented his case on Friday, Nov. 24, before Judge Ralph "Bubba" Smith. Bartlit knew that however strong the overseas military absentee ballot case was politically, it had limited potential legally.

Given the law, so well outlined by their own Jim Smith, no one would say they had a great case. There were serious questions about venue -- whether they should be dragging 15 counties to a Tallahassee courtroom instead of filing in 15 different county seats throughout the state. But something had to be done, Bartlit and Bush attorney Kirk Van Tine had decided. Although the Democrats had apparently retreated from the Herron memo, the Bush campaign estimated that about 500 ballots had been rejected for technicalities -- and they thought they had a chance to get them included.

They zeroed in on legal confusion over whether an absentee ballot had to have a postmark -- or whether it was enough, if it was sent from a ship or some military location where it couldn't be postmarked, that it was signed and dated -- and tried to shake out every single absentee ballot they could. Some Bush pols repeated arguments to reporters that they wouldn't make in the courtroom: that they wanted military ballots given every possible benefit of the doubt.

They wanted ballots to count that bore unreadable postmarks. They also wanted post-Election Day postmarks to count.

How much if any of this emphasis on including ballots that weren't postmarked was rooted in the conference call from a week before is impossible to say.

Next Page: The full-court press

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