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Election battles may be brewing as lawyers and campaign workers subject votes - and voters - to unprecedented scrutiny.
By JONI JAMES and ADAM C. SMITH
Published November 2, 2004
In the state that again could decide the presidency, Democrats and Republicans alike are bracing for the prospect of another unclear outcome by day's end and a host of legal skirmishes.
Thousands of partisan lawyers are positioned across Florida ready to pounce on problems; campaign workers are on alert to prepare for post-election legal fights in Florida and/or other states; and, in a pre-emptive strike, the state Republican Party tried unsuccessfully Monday night to convince a judge to intervene in Democratic-vote-rich Broward County.
Polls point to a dead heat in Florida. The outcome is all the more unpredictable with both sides mounting unprecedented voter mobilization programs, more than 1.5-million new voters on the rolls since 2000 and aggressive efforts to turn out first-time and infrequent voters.
"I wouldn't bet a penny on either candidate," said Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant. "I've never been so puzzled by an election."
Early voting ended Monday with lines snaking around blocks and voters in some areas waiting more than five hours to cast their votes. On 18th Avenue S in St. Petersburg, people in Kerry-Edwards shirts handed out sno-cones and water to voters waiting two hours or more in the heat.
Even before the polls open at 7 this morning, more than 2-million Floridians had cast their votes by absentee ballots or in-person early voting. Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards officials each claimed to have decisive advantages in the early voting, though three public polls found Sen. John Kerry leading handily among early voters.
Kerry made a quick campaign appearance in Orlando Monday morning, while Gov. Jeb Bush campaigned across the state for his brother and made a series of rare national media appearances.
"The announced move by Democrats already that they're going to sue no matter what is just a sign of our times that everything has to get lawyered up in our society," Gov. Bush told Rush Limbaugh from the Hernando County campaign headquarters in Brooksville. "I think the people will reject it, and I hope the Kerry campaign doesn't do it."
Even as high-profile campaigning started winding down Monday night, the partisan legal battles expected should Florida produce another razor-thin election began.
The battleground was Broward County, which offers Kerry the richest cache of Democratic votes in Florida. The state Republican Party accused elections officials there, among other things, of ignoring two of its poll watchers' right under state law to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting.
Broward Circuit Judge David Krathen dismissed the suit Monday night, defending Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes and chastising Republicans for their last-minute effort. Before ruling, Krathen disclosed his own recount history. In 2000, he represented a Palm Beach voter who sought to cast a new vote for Vice President Gore after misusing the county's flawed butterfly ballot.
Snipes would run a good, if not perfect, election, Krathen said, and "a one-voter mistake, a two-voter mistake, a 10-voter mistake out of 150,000 (votes) is not a crisis."
Florida Republicans, following a strategy the party is using in other states, finally confirmed that they would use a 109-year-old state law to challenge up to 13,568 registered voters; the challenges will be based on data gleaned from the flawed state felon voter database and compared with records on the Florida corrections Web site.
The state party also armed poll watchers with precinct-specific lists of Democrats who had already voted, and GOP poll watchers said they will keep a sharp eye out for people without adequate identification.
State law does not require voters to show a photo ID. They can sign a form attesting to their identity or cast a provisional ballot if they are first-time voters. Under Florida law, among acceptable forms of ID are a credit card with photo, a student ID, a company badge or a utility bill.
"The only reason for the Democrats to oppose this action is if they believe these felons should be casting illegal votes," Bush-Cheney adviser Mindy Tucker Fletcher said of the felon challenges.
Democrats called it voter intimidation, arguing the GOP is trying to chill voter turnout or slow voting in heavily Democratic precincts. They noted that Republicans culled their list of felon voters from a database Secretary of State Glenda Hood had to scuttle in July after it showed numerous flaws.
"The Republican Party has concluded that they are going to lose the state of Florida, and they are taking any measure they can to disrupt this election," said Miami lawyer Steve Zack, general counsel for the Kerry-Edwards Florida campaign.
On radio stations popular with African-Americans, former President Bill Clinton urged people not to worry about potential Republican efforts to block votes: "The Democrats will protect your rights," Clinton said in the radio ad, "but you need to show up."
Democrats, meanwhile, did their part to try to intimidate thousands of Republican poll watchers expected to be on duty today. The Democratic National Committee sent each of them a letter warning that they could be criminally prosecuted for voter intimidation if they knowingly file a false challenge against a voter.
"I perceived some of the language in it to be somewhat intimidating," said Charles Lee Pourciau Jr., a Republican poll watcher from Clearwater.
Also Monday, a network of Democratic trial attorneys and law professors threatened to sue poll challengers who intimidate or disenfranchise voters in Florida, Ohio and other battleground states.
"Quietly and lawfully monitoring voting is one thing, but aggressively suppressing and intimidating voters is quite another," said Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, announcing the Voter Protection Network.
"Aggressive poll challengers need to ask themselves a simple question - is one day of trampling on voters' rights worth risking my financial security? Because that's what it could ultimately cost."
Fattah estimated that individuals issuing improper challenges could face civil damages of more than $100,000.
As if Florida's election system weren't already stretched enough, employees in Florida's main elections office in Tallahassee arrived at work Monday morning to find their building surrounded by police and a bomb squad truck parked out front. A security guard had reported a suspicious package that appeared to vibrate in a storage room for the state's archives, which shares the R.A. Gray Building. It turned out to be a bundle of documents being blown by an air vent.
By early afternoon, the Gray building was filling up with some of the nearly 300 journalists, most from out of state, who requested credentials to spend Election Night there. More than a dozen satellite trucks sat parked at the Leon County Civic Center across the street.
-- Times staff writers Steve Bousquet, David Karp, Lucy Morgan, Michael Sandler and Alisa Ulferts contributed to this report, which includes information from the Associated Press.
[Last modified November 2, 2004, 00:34:11]
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