REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Railroad
Gore hopes the White House will be the last stop on the "no controlling legal authority" express.
"Seek and ye shall find," says the Good Book. No one puts more faith in this proposition than the Vice President's lawyers: Given the time, they know, Democratic counters in Democratic counties seeking more votes for the Democratic candidate for President will find them. Indeed, Time.com already reports that when helpful election officials in Pinellas County, which went for Al Gore, "removed the chaff from ballots before they were submitted for recount by the machines, Gore-Lieberman picked up an additional 417 votes."
It is hard not to admit the obvious: The Gore campaign is trying to railroad a victory. Nothing captures the true intentions behind this strategy better than the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board's announcement of its 2-1 decision to proceed with a hand count. They held this press conference at 2 a.m. Sunday, in the middle of the night. Canvassing board member Carol Roberts walked everyone through her math--there could be 1,900 more votes for Mr. Gore out there!--and then voted to go ahead with a full hand count. Ms. Roberts was joined in this 2-1 decision by Theresa LePore, a Democrat, and arguably the 2000 election's single most controversial person: She is the designer of the now infamous Palm Beach butterfly ballot.
Unlike Governor Jeb Bush, who recused himself from the state canvassing board, Ms. LePore refused to do so. Given Ms. LePore's standing among Democrats as the person who cost them the White House, by what reasonable standard was she permitted to serve on this board?
Even more telling is the exchange before the vote, in which the board chairman, Judge Charles Burton, also a Democrat, asked for an advisory opinion from the state. At a time when the Gore camp rests its case on the letter of Florida's election law on recounts, what does it say that the two Democratic members of the board were so determined not to hear the state's reading of that law? Click here to read a transcript of Ms. Roberts's frantic efforts to ram through her desired result.
Then when Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced yesterday morning she intended to adhere to the firm deadline mandated by Florida law, the Gore campaign communications director Mark Fabiani leapt immediately to the ad hominem, labeling her decision to follow Florida law the "naked political act" of a "crony." Campaign spokesman Chris Lehane took it further, likening her to a "Soviet commissar."
There's more. Mr. Gore's lawyers in Palm Beach County rest their legal moral case on what they insist is every citizen's sacred right to vote be honored. Meanwhile in largely Republican Seminole County these same Gore lawyers argue that 4,700 absentee ballot requests be thrown out because GOP officials had (before the election) been allowed to correct a printer's error.
The team of lawyers around Mr. Gore obviously understand the law and its ramifications all too well. In particular they understand that it provides for an Electoral College, sets a deadline for recounts, and does not entertain after-the-fact changes of the rules, whether it be over the counting of ballot "chads" or the tallying of a vote. And so the Gore strategy is staked not on persuading the American public that the Vice President is right, but in casting sufficient public doubt on the system to make the election appear illegitimate, which somehow gives them carte blanche to put every aspect into (legal) play.
There is a certain unavoidable irony in having this spectacle of legal jujitsu created by lawyers for the public official who claimed the defense of no controlling legal authority. It sounded like a strange concept at the time, but it's now clear that Mr. Gore clearly understands its meaning and its uses. Its clear purpose in Florida now is to railroad an outcome.
