Reno lawyer: no recount suit

The Reno campaign lawyer says the gubernatorial candidate won't take the election to court, unless her vote tally somehow surpasses Bill McBride's.

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 16, 2002

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For nearly a week, anxious Bill McBride campaign staffers wondered whether Janet Reno would sue.

On Sunday, as new South Florida vote totals showed Reno increasingly unlikely to overtake McBride, the Reno campaign put the concern to rest.

Reno won't sue to force a recount, even if ongoing vote-tallying in South Florida brings her just shy of overtaking McBride, her campaign lawyer said. Nor will she sue to extend the deadline for South Florida vote reviews, or to contest the final result of the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

"Absent Janet being ahead in the vote total Tuesday, and the (state) elections canvassing board refusing to recognize that fact, we're not going to court," said Alan Greer, Reno's campaign lawyer. "At some point there has to be some finality."

Until Sunday, McBride led Reno by 8,196 votes. But on Sunday, Reno gained about 2,500 votes after Miami-Dade reviewed 88 precincts the Reno camp wanted reviewed, according to both campaigns.

Miami-Dade continues to review voting machines, as does Broward County. But even with McBride's lead unofficially cut to about 5,680 votes, Reno's prospects appear to be dimming.

Broward County's voting machine problems were less severe than Miami-Dade's and most observers believe Reno, at best, might pick up hundreds of additional Broward votes. Miami-Dade officials are still checking about 265 machines, but Miami-Dade Elections supervisor David Leahy downplayed the likelihood of turning up many more votes.

"It doesn't mean there are votes on them," he said. "A lot (of machines) ... weren't used."

McBride campaign spokesman Alan Stonecipher said the updated numbers bolster his confidence. "We think the result is going to hold up, and we'll have closure Tuesday," he said.

Had those newly found Miami-Dade votes been counted last week, the state would have ordered an automatic statewide recount because McBride and Reno would have been less than one half of 1 percent apart. In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore were within that threshold, triggering an automatic recount.

But Secretary of State Jim Smith said Friday that under Florida's revised elections law, the deadline has already passed for a recount. The canvassing board rejected Reno's request for a statewide manual recount, and Smith said state law won't allow a recount even if thousands of new votes create a razor-thin lead for Reno or McBride.

Greer called that interpretation "absolutely wrong and ridiculous," but said a court fight could tie up the candidates for weeks at a time the nominee needs to be focused on beating Gov. Jeb Bush.

His comments Sunday marked a distinct backtracking from his position last week. On Friday he predicted an "almost bloody revolution" if the all-Republican canvassing board refused a recount if Reno wound up within the one half of 1 percent threshold. He told the Washington Post that while the Reno campaign would not contest the election in court, it might sue to force a recount.

On Sunday, Stonecipher said McBride also rules out any court challenge.

"We've done nothing except say continually we want all the votes counted, and we're going to live or die with the results Tuesday. The bottom line, we wouldn't fight it."

The McBride and Reno camps are in frequent contact, but their relationship has become increasingly tense. The latest skirmish occurred Sunday, after the Reno camp announced it had gained more than 3,500 votes -- only to acknowledge later it had mistakenly inflated the figure by 1,000.

Meanwhile, more apparent problems with the Miami-Dade elections system are turning up. State Sen. Daryl Jones, who ran a distant third in the Democratic primary, said more than a dozen of his Miami-Dade Democratic supporters turned out to vote and found they were listed as having no party affiliation. Greer said the Reno campaign has found 50 to 100 similar cases, though many of the voters wound up casting their ballots after convincing election workers to correct the problem.

Reno, win or lose, is on a mission to fix Florida's election system.

"Whether she's a private citizen or the Democratic nominee or the governor of this state, she's really going after this issue," said Greer, "because it's just wrong."

-- Information from the Associated Press was included in this report.

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