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Thursday, Dec 4, 2008
Gore: Demcracy at stake; Bush camp: Gore breaks the law.
Nov 13, 2000 | The fight over the presidency continued to simmer in Florida Monday, with both candidates raising the ante from salvos to legal battles. The day started off with an unexpected bang when Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris met with representatives of Al Gore's campaign and informed them she would be holding the state's 67 counties to a strict Tuesday evening deadline to certify their ballots. Harris, a supporter of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, cautioned counties that if they failed to certify their votes in time, their ballots wouldn't count. Two counties -- Volusia and Palm Beach -- sued the state Monday for an extension.
The pressure-cooker atmosphere threatened to boil over later in the day as a Federal District Judge in Miami rejected a Bush campaign motion for a preliminary injunction halting the hand counts and the Gore campaign announced it would join the Volusia and Palm Beach County suits.
A sidewalk rhetorical rampage
Speaking defiantly at a press conference broadcast, odd as it may seem, on the sidewalk of a busy street, Texas Gov. George W. Bush inner-circle advisor and communications director Karen Hughes excoriated Vice President Al Gore Monday afternoon.
"The vice president basically said we should ignore the law so he can overturn the results of this election," Hughes quipped, her hair swept by the wind and passing traffic.
Gore had just signed on to a lawsuit filed by Volusia and Palm Beach counties seeking an extension of the 5:30 p.m. Tuesday deadline for ballot certification that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Bush supporter, said she would strictly enforce.
"The hand count which is now underway in heavily Democratic, hand-selected counties," she said, "cannot produce that fair and accurate result. "
Because there are no uniform standards for ballot recounts in Florida, Hughes argued, the votes are being counted "selectively and subjectively." Hughes also admonished the Gore campaign to accept the results of the recount and the overseas ballots when they are certified this Saturday.
Gore: Our democracy's at stake
Hughes' rhetorical rampage came shortly after Gore appeared, with a Chesire grin, at a White House photo op. Gore offered reporters several deep thoughts, but little in the way of red meat in his first public remarks since Saturday. Though the veep said he would not comment on Monday's legal proceedings, he did offer a rose-colored view of the crisis in Florida. "What's at stake is our democracy," Gore mused, grinning and trying to look as relaxed as any man whose presidential campaign has been in purgatory for a week could possibly look.
"While time is important, it is even more important that every vote is counted and counted accurately," Gore cautioned. "There's something very special about our process that depends totally on the American people having the chance to express their will without any interference."
"I would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error or misinterpreted or not counted. I don't think Gov. Bush wants that either," he said.
But Gore also found a silver lining in the ballot brawl: American school kids are "learning a lot about our democracy. And families are able to make the point, without fear of ever again being disputed, that it matters whether you vote."
Rapp's bad rap
State Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp recused himself from a handful of cases brought against Florida by voters in Palm Beach County. Rapp, a Republican, had been accused of saying on Election Day that he would "do my part" to see that Vice President Al Gore was defeated. He is also said to have made unsavory comments about New York Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton and to have called voters who marked the wrong candidate on the county's butterfly ballot "stupid." After recusing himself, Rapp vociferously denied the allegations.
Gore joins lawsuit against Florida
The Gore campaign launched its first legal action against Florida Monday by joining a lawsuit brought against the state by Volusia County. The county is seeking an extension to the Tuesday afternoon deadline for ballot certification that threatens to derail hand-count efforts in four contested counties. Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the Florida election controversy, also joined the suit.
"The citizens of Florida deserve an accurate and speedy count," Gore communications director Mark Fabiani told Reuters. "The secretary of state, a crony of the Bush brothers, is trying to steal this election away and no one is going to stand for such a naked political act," Fabiani said, referring to Katherine Harris' mandate that counties adhere to Tuesday's 5:30 p.m. EST deadline to certify all election results or risk losing their votes.
In a midafternoon press conference, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher did little to hide his contempt for Harris' decision. "It's hard to understand why, under these circumstances, [Harris] would move to deny thousands and perhaps more votes that Floridians have asked to be considered," Christopher said. "Her plan, I'm afraid, has the look of an effort to produce a particular result in the election rather than to ensure that the voice of all the citizens in the state be heard. It also looks like a move toward partisan politics."
Gore's man in Tallahassee also claimed that under Florida law, the secretary of state has the discretion to postpone the certification deadline. He confirmed that the Gore camp was now a party in the Volusia suit and plead for "all counties who have begun hand counts to continue" them.
Federal judge rejects motion
Just before 1 p.m. EST, U.S. District Judge Don Middlebrooks rejected a motion by the Bush campaign for a preliminary injunction to halt the hand recounts underway in four Florida counties. "In a close statewide election, a federal court has a limited role," Middlebrooks said. "Only where there is a constitutional violation," he argued, should the federal courts intervene. "I do not believe that an intervention is called for."
The Miami judge said he shared the Bush camp's concern that the selective recount in Democratic-majority counties would have the effect of skewing the race toward Gore.
The Bush campaign is expected to appeal the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Speaking on the steps of the courthouse, Harvard professor and constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe, who helped the Gore campaign argue its case, said, "If there's an inequality, it's of their own making.
"The basic principle is that states should do their best to make sure that the actual will of their people is expressed in the vote for president," he said. "That is done in a different way in different states. But one way is to recount manually when it's terribly close and there's a reason to believe the machines screwed up."
Ted Olson, who is representing George W. Bush, confirmed the obvious: "Yes we're disappointed, but it's not a surprise." But he offered a different spin on Middlebrook's decision: "He felt that a preliminary injunction was not an appropriate remedy that he was ready to grant at this time. He knew that it would probably be considered in a higher court, and he wanted to make sure he did his job quickly and effectively so that that remedy could be pursued," Olson said.
Harvard's most famous professor also made an appearance at the U.S. District Court. "We won, and that means the count goes on," said Alan Dershowitz, who is leading a case brought by seven Palm Beach County voters. "It's in nobody's interest to stop the count." Dershowitz also took a stab at Bush for committing "hypocrisy squared" for signing a hand-count law in Texas and then suing to halt a hand count called for by the vice president in Florida.
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