Salon: Seeing red in Florida (more dirty tricks suspected)

[kskiska]

Four years after the biggest voting debacle in U.S. history, many suspect that GOP officials in the crucial state are planning dirty tricks again.

By Farhad Manjoo

MIAMI -- "I'll tell you an interesting story about lawyer recruitment," says Stephen Zack, the smooth-talking Miami attorney leading John Kerry's army of election lawyers in Florida. "When I first started to do this a few months ago, I sent out an e-mail to 50 lawyers I'd worked with around the state asking for help," he said. "I got 65 yes answers, from 50 e-mails. They'd sent it on to friends saying, 'I got this e-mail. You ought to get involved.'" With a typical pro-bono query, Zack estimates, he might get a 10 percent reply rate. But this isn't just any pro-bono job. Zack needs smart attorneys to work on the thorny legal questions that could arise on Election Day, amidst the tight election returns everyone expects in this state. Zack won't say exactly how many lawyers he's recruited to work for Kerry on Nov. 2, but local media have reported the number at around 2,000. "There isn't a day that I don't walk down the street here in downtown Miami that I don't have a lawyer come up to me and volunteer," he says.

Lawyers are lining up to help Kerry in Florida for the same reason Kerry hired Zack before Election Day rather than after. Memories of the 2000 recount disaster and of widespread voting irregularities persist, as do fears that something similar could happen, or is already happening, again. Zack himself works daily amid reminders of his last brush with Florida election law. He decorated his office at the Miami branch of Boies, Schiller and Flexner with what he calls "scars" from the 2000 legal battles. In one corner, there's a courtroom sketch artist's representation of Zack cross-examining a witness during one of the many courtroom battles that occurred in that 36-day national drama. Below that, there are framed front-page articles from the New York Times and from Florida newspapers recounting his legal deftness. In another corner sits a note from Al Gore, thanking Zack for his work.

Zack is cagey about what his team is preparing for in the case of a defeat on Nov. 2 and says he fondly hopes that "everything will go very smoothly and there will be no need for lawyers." But if Zack goes looking for problems on Nov. 2, there will certainly be no shortage of voting irregularities in the state that he might contest, and many here see a legal fight heading this way that could be just as nasty as the last one.

(snip)

At the eye of the storm is Glenda Hood, Florida's secretary of state and the chief official responsible for running elections. Hood, a Republican who was mayor of Orlando in the 1990s and whom Gov. Jeb Bush appointed in 2003, has been criticized not only by Democrats but also by independent observers for her exceedingly partisan approach to managing elections. Her critics note that politically, Hood is firmly in George W. Bush's camp; she was a Bush-Cheney elector in 2000. Jimmy Carter has urged Jeb Bush to replace her. The New York Times has called her Katherine Harris II. Hood's critics point to a string of decisions that favor Republicans or, at the very least, undermine voters' confidence in the fairness of Florida elections. Even though Florida law requires a manual recount of ballots in close elections, Hood has issued election rules barring such a count for electronic machines. After a judge ruled in early September that Ralph Nader's name should not appear on the Florida ballot, Hood ordered local officials to add him to absentee ballots anyway (the courts later reinstated Nader).

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/15/florida_voters/index.html

[dogtag]

1. I remember in 2000 feeling a cold chill when I saw

the total, utter confidence Shrub had that he would 'win' Florida. It was uncanny because he and his minions had not the slightest flicker of doubt. We soon learned why.

[CrispyQ]

2. I remember seeing that on F 9/11.

"Oh we'll win Florida," he said with such confidence. Makes me want to smack the little prick.

I think 2000 was a precursor to 2004. It's gonna be ugly & not just in Florida. Got my Hightower Lowdown today & he said it's not the October surprise we have to worry about, it's the November one!

[kskiska]

3. I was struck with that, too.

Another offputting thing was the way that Al Gore just wanted to get at the truth of who won the most votes. If he lost, he'd concede. The Bush people never said any such thing. They were not going to give it up, no matter what.

* holed up at his ranch and grew a boil on his face, and was rarely seen, except to pose blatantly with his chosen "cabinet," before the votes were even counted.

[Rhiannon12866]

6. He knew what was going on and that the fix was in

I cannot explain his behavior any other way.:grr:

[Rhiannon12866]

4. I saw news coverage of this, tonight

It's already really bad. You'd think that, after the debacle of 2000, they would have remedied this, but look who's in charge.:shrug:

I also heard that in Hamilton County, Ohio, John Kerry's name was left off the ballot. This is really bad.:scared:

[teryang]

5. I'm not sanguine about the prospects

And Boies firm doesn't impress me. I think Gore was poorly served by this group in 2000. The fact they waited this long to get prepared for lawsuits shows they don't understand the nature or depth of the problem. They should have started BBV lawsuits two years ago.

Boise on television the other night actually said they he believed Bush was honestly misled by intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This reinforces my distrust of him because he is certainly not stupid.