-Caveat Lector-
Did Bush camp encourage military personnel to vote after
Election Day? In an excerpt from his new book, Jake Tapper
uncovers the down and dirty partisan scuffle to win the Florida
recount battle -- and the presidency.
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By Jake Tapper
March 5, 2001 | In the heat of last fall's historic post-
election presidential campaign, when advocates for Al Gore and
George W. Bush were navigating the swampy world of Florida
election law, some of the ugliest wrangling -- and some of the
most legally debatable maneuvering on both sides -- centered on
the counting of overseas absentee ballots.
According to a knowledgeable Republican operative, the Bush camp
even discussed a strategy that, if implemented, would have
broken the law: organizing a post-election get-out-the-vote
drive among overseas military personnel who had registered to
vote but had not cast ballots by Election Day.
Bush officials did not return calls seeking comment on the
report. But according to the knowledgeable GOP source, on
Saturday, Nov. 11, Bush's political team held a 60- to 90-minute
conference call for campaign operatives scattered throughout
Florida. In the course of the discussion, they discussed having
political operatives near overseas military bases encourage
soldiers who had registered to vote -- but never did -- to fill
out their ballots and send them in, more than four days after
the voting deadline.
Was this plan, a blatant act of voter fraud, ever carried out?
There's no concrete proof that it was, as of today -- and if it
was, whoever was involved isn't talking. (Neither South
Carolina-based strategist Warren Tompkins, who ran Bush's
absentee ballot monitoring operation, nor Bush political
director Ken Mehlman returned calls for comment.) What's not in
doubt is the crucial role the overseas military ballots -- and
the vicious, behind-the-scenes battle over whether to count them
-- played in the outcome of the Florida vote and, ultimately,
the election.
Before the election, 23,246 overseas ballots were mailed out
from the state of Florida, and more than half of them -- 14,415
-- had come in by Election Day. As of Nov. 13, Monday, Florida's
67 counties had received 446 military overseas ballots since
Nov. 8.
By Nov. 16, Thursday afternoon, that number had swelled to
2,575.
By the next day, it was 3,733.
There was certainly plenty of wrangling and duplicity on both
sides when it came to the issue of overseas absentee ballots. At
a time when the Gore team's mantra was "Count every vote," for
instance, its attorneys were trying to disqualify any ballot
cast by overseas military personnel that was even remotely
questionable. And the Bush team -- worried about whether it
would be hurt by the overseas absentee ballots, thanks to the
high numbers of voters in Israel who might be energized by Joe
Lieberman's presence on the ticket -- at first focused on trying
to scope out and prevent possible voter fraud by the absentees.
Gore-Lieberman garnered 80 percent of the Jewish vote Nov. 7,
and estimates held that about 4,000 Florida Jews might be
expected to cast absentee ballots from the land of milk and
honey.
It was clear to strategists on both sides, within days after
Nov. 7, that they needed to supplement their focus on hand
recounts with a side strategy on the overseas absentee ballots,
which were due Friday, Nov. 17. The Bush team turned to Warren
Tompkins -- who had helmed Bush's nasty South Carolina primary
campaign against Arizona Sen. John McCain -- to coordinate its
strategy. Days after the election, he put together a spreadsheet
on the overseas absentee ballots, what had come in already, what
had been counted, how many had been requested, how many were
still expected in and so on. The overseas absentee ballots were
likely to go their way, Tompkins told his colleagues, but he
anticipated that the Democrats wouldn't make it easy for them to
be accepted, and would challenge as many as possible.
"You're kidding me," spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said. "They can't
protest."
"We think they're going to," Tompkins responded.
Tucker wanted to let the press know about this at once, but she
was overruled. Let's wait, she was told.
It was on Nov. 11 that the Bush political team organized a
conference call to discuss its absentee ballot strategy. In
those first crazy days of the post-election battle, anywhere
from a dozen to 60 or so people could have been on the call.
Many matters were attended to. The group talked about finding
volunteers to be observers in counties doing recounts. They
talked about drumming up protesters. They talked about assigning
operatives to different clerks' offices to wait for the overseas
absentee ballots, and to report anything Democrats did to
challenge them. And, according to a knowledgeable Republican
source, in the course of this conversation the Bush team
discussed having political operatives abroad encourage certain
soldiers who had registered to vote -- but never did
