-Caveat Lector-
(Typical. --SW)
GOP Pushed To Register
Flawed Overseas Ballots
By David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr.
New York Times News Service
7-15-1
On the morning after Election Day, George W. Bush held
an unofficial lead of 1,784 votes in Florida, but to his
campaign strategists, the margin felt perilously slim. They
were right to worry. Within a week, recounts would erode
Bush's unofficial lead to just 300 votes.
With the presidency hanging on the outcome in Florida,
the Bush team quickly grasped that their best hope of
ensuring victory was the trove of ballots still arriving in
the
mail from Florida voters living abroad. Over the next 18
days, the Republicans mounted a legal and public
relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in
Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws when
counting overseas absentee ballots.
Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of
overseas ballots in counties won by Bush, particularly
those with a high concentration of military voters, while
seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by
Vice President Al Gore.
A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this
chapter in the closest presidential election in American
history shows that the Republican effort had a decided
impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans,
Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee
ballots that failed to comply with state election laws.
In an analysis of the 2,490 ballots from Americans living
abroad that were counted as legal votes after Election
Day, the newspaper found 680 questionable votes.
Although it is not known for whom the flawed ballots were
cast, four out of five were accepted in counties carried by
Bush, the newspaper found. Bush's final margin in the
official total was 537 votes.
The flawed votes included ballots without postmarks,
ballots postmarked after the election, ballots without
witness signatures, ballots mailed from towns and cities
within the United States and even ballots from voters who
voted twice. All would have been disqualified had the
state's election laws been strictly enforced.
The Republican push on absentee ballots became an
effective counterweight to the Gore campaign's push for
manual recounts in mainly Democratic counties in
southern Florida.
In its investigation, The Times found that these overseas
ballots -- the only votes that could legally be received and
counted after Election Day -- were judged by markedly
different standards, depending on where they were
counted.
The unequal treatment of these ballots is at odds with
statements by Bush campaign leaders and by the Florida
secretary of state, Katherine Harris, that rules should be
applied uniformly and certainly not changed in the middle
of a contested election. It also conflicts with the equal
protection guarantee that the U.S. Supreme Court
invoked in December when it halted a statewide manual
recount and effectively handed Florida to Bush.
After being told of The Times' findings, Ari Fleischer, the
White House spokesman, said: "This election was
decided by the voters of Florida a long time ago. And the
nation, the president and all but the most partisan
Americans have moved on."
The Times study found no evidence of vote fraud by
either party. In particular, while some voters admitted in
interviews that they had cast illegal ballots after Election
Day, the investigation found no support for the suspicions
of Democrats that the Bush campaign had organized an
effort to solicit late votes.
Rather, the Republicans poured their energy into the
speedy delivery and liberal treatment of likely Bush ballots
from abroad. In a Tallahassee "war room" within the
offices of Harris, veteran Republican political consultants
helped shape the postelection instructions to county
canvassing boards.
In Washington, senior Bush campaign officials urged the
Pentagon to accelerate the collection and delivery of
military ballots, and indeed ballots arrived more quickly
than in previous elections. Republicans on the House
Armed Services Committee helped the Bush campaign
obtain private contact information for military voters.
Republicans provided their lawyers with a detailed
playbook that included instructions on how to challenge
likely Gore votes while fighting for the inclusion of likely
Bush votes.
The effectiveness of the Republican effort is
demonstrated by striking disparities in how different
counties treated ballots with similar defects. For instance,
counties carried by Gore accepted two in 10 ballots that
had no evidence they were mailed on or before Election
Day. Counties carried by Bush accepted six in 10 of the
same kinds of ballots. The Bush counties were four times
as likely as the Gore counties to count ballots that lacked
witness signatures and addresses.
The Times collected copies of virtually all the overseas
ballot envelopes that arrived after Election Day and built a
comprehensive database for statistical analysis. The
Times also examined thousands of pages of election
documents and canvassing board meeting transcripts and
interviewed more than 300 voters in 43 countries.
Because the ballots themselves are separated from the
envelopes containing voter information, it is impossible to
know whether the outcome of the election would have
been different had the flawed ballot envelopes been
treated consistently.
The Times asked Dr. Gary King, a Harvard expert on
voting patterns and statistical models, what would have
happened had the flawed ballots been discarded. He
replied that there was no way to declare a winner with
mathematical certainty under those circumstances. His
best estimate, he said, was that Bush's margin would
have been reduced to 245 votes. King estimated that
there was only a slight chance that discarding the
questionable ballots would have made Gore the winner.
Many of the 680 flawed ballots in the analysis of the
overseas envelopes had multiple defects, so the total
number of flaws exceeds the number of defective ballots.
The following questionable ballots were found:
344 ballots with no evidence that they were cast on or
before Election Day. They had late, illegible or missing
postmarks.
183 ballots with U.S. postmarks.
96 ballots lacking the required signature or address of a
witness.
169 ballots from voters who were not registered, who
failed to sign the envelope or who had not requested a
ballot. A request is required by federal law.
19 voters cast two ballots, both of which counted.
Five ballots received after the Nov. 17 deadline.
Canvassing board members struggled to strike a balance
between counting as many votes as possible and
safeguarding against fraud. Decisions were difficult,
particularly with ballots that appeared to be from
legitimate voters yet did not comply with the rules.
In some cases, board members said they had used
common sense and cited a Florida court decision that
gave them some "latitude of judgment." For example, the
boards accepted 87 overseas ballots that arrived without
a postmark a day or two after Election Day, judging that
they most likely had been cast before Nov. 7.
Still, this benefit of the doubt was given to such ballots
more than three times as often in counties carried by
Bush, according to The Times database.
While parties quickly recognized the importance to Bush
of the uncounted overseas ballots, especially those from
military installations, the Democrats were preoccupied
elsewhere, particularly with their pursuit of manual
recounts in several heavily Democratic counties.
The Republican effort on the absentees, by comparison,
was methodical and unrelenting.
Florida's certified election results, listed on the Florida
Department of State's Web site, show that the
Republicans' sense of urgency was justified. Although
Bush appeared to hold a fluctuating lead throughout the
36 days of recounts, the Web site shows that without the
overseas absentee ballots counted after Election Day,
Gore would have won Florida by 202 votes, and thus the
White House.
But no one knew that until the 36 days were over; by
then, it was a historical footnote.
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