Spotlight grows on ballot flap in Seminole County

By ALICIA CALDWELL and THOMAS C. TOBIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 28, 2000

SANFORD -- In the weeks before the presidential election, two men showed up at the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Office with a laptop and a mission.

The GOP operatives toiled in a back room for the better part of two weeks, without supervision, correcting thousands of Republican absentee ballot applications that had been rejected because of a printing error.

Now, a lawsuit by a local Democratic lawyer that seeks to throw out all of Seminole County's 15,215 absentee ballots is getting more attention as the legal path to the presidency narrows for Vice President Al Gore.

Victory for the plaintiff would set aside 10,006 absentee votes for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, giving Gore an overwhelming advantage and a surge he never imagined from the tedious recounts in South Florida.

Republicans dismiss the unusual access granted to the two Republicans, saying it shouldn't be grounds to disqualify so many ballots.

"They have not alleged one iota of fraud to the level that it ought to be to throw out 15,000 votes," said Ken Wright, a lawyer representing the Republican Party of Florida.

But Democrats say it was an illegal show of favoritism by the Republican supervisor of elections, Sandra Goard.

"What happened here was cheating," said Gerald Richman, a lawyer for Harry Jacobs, who filed the suit Nov. 17. "One party got an advantage."

With the end of the legal wrangling and manual recounts that brought notoriety to the heavily Democratic counties of Palm Beach and Broward, the lesser known lawsuit brought by Jacobs has expanded the presidential battleground to one of Central Florida's most solidly Republican enclaves.

It also has Republicans and Democrats reversing roles they have faithfully played over the last two weeks.

After Republicans complained of chad-related mischief and irregularities during the South Florida recounts, they now dismiss as "a mere technical irregularity" the questionable actions of their own members in Seminole County. On the other hand, the Democrats' willingness to discard 15,000 absentee ballots here does not square with their dire calls to "count every vote."

So striking is the turnabout in Seminole County that Republicans are using Democratic arguments in their pleadings -- going so far as to support the Florida Supreme Court's ruling of last week and concluding: "Simply put, the Florida courts should protect the will of the electorate." Republicans have vilified the high court's decision in every other arena and will argue today that the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn it.

It all began in this fast-growing suburban county where all top elected officials are Republicans, and a majority of voters went for Republican presidential candidates in the last two elections.

Into this milieu came Jacobs, a transplant from a New Jersey town who has done well in Florida as a personal injury lawyer. While Jacobs is a Democrat and a party contributor, he did not consider himself an activist.

This election, he said, Democrats asked him to observe the Seminole County recounts on behalf of the party. He agreed. During the tedious process, he caught a whiff of a rumor of ballot tampering.

"I started asking questions," said Jacobs. "One of the Republicans put her fingers to her lips."

Jacobs' curiousity culminated in the lawsuit, which revealed that Republicans were granted unusual access that may have violated election laws.

Goard said in a deposition last week that a state Republican official called her in the weeks before the election and asked her to set aside absentee ballot requests mailed by the party, which contained an omission: no voter identification number.

Typically, incomplete or otherwise ineligible ballot requests would be tossed into a communal reject box. These, however, were set aside, Goard testified.

In mid-October, Michael Leach, a state field director for Republicans, showed up with another man. They said they would look up missing voter identification numbers on their computer and fill in the information. They were allowed to set up shop in a back room that housed live computer terminals with access to voter information.

Under questioning, Goard said she did not know who the other man was, how long the men spent in the office, whether they added other information to ballot requests, how many requests they altered and whether they took anything out of the office.

In the end, the lawsuit alleges, thousands of requests were illegally altered. Florida law says only the voter, an immediate family member or legal guardian may fill out an absentee ballot request.

Statements from Democrats involved in other races say Goard did not offer them the same accommodation. Goard said only the Republicans asked.

"Had the Democratic Party wanted to come in they could have come in, pulled up a chair and done the same thing," said Terry Young, a lawyer representing Goard.

Bob Poe, chairman of the state Democratic Party and a Seminole County resident, said Goard's account of events keeps changing. Poe, who talked to Goard in October, said he first was told the party operatives merely had a chair in a public area. Then, he found out they were in the non-public areas of the office and handled elections materials.

"This is a Supervisor of Elections Office working hand in glove with a presidential campaign to hike their vote," Poe said. "This is not a benign thing."

Poe said the Democratic Party is contemplating intervening in the lawsuit, which on Monday was transferred to Leon County Circuit Court, a move that the parties to the lawsuit agreed upon.

Republicans argue that the access Goard gave their operatives was a minor, pre-election infraction -- if that -- and that it didn't affect the election.

Joseph W. Little, a University of Florida law professor agreed.

"These voters did nothing wrong," he said. "They cast a legal ballot on time. Why should they be excluded? I just don't see that as an appropriate remedy."

Republicans, meanwhile, see Jacobs' lawsuit as a manifestation of Gore's attempt to "steal the presidency" and are outraged. James Stelling, vice chairman of the state Republican Party, stood in front of Goard's office in quiet downtown Sanford and shook his head at what he called a desperate and hypocritical attempt to reverse the outcome of the election.

"Did you see them crawling all over the records back there like ants?" asked Stelling, gesturing toward a passel of lawyers hunting for absentee ballot records to bolster Jacobs' case.

"They're photocopying everything," Stelling said. "They even rented two copy machines and hauled them in there. Really, they're desperate."

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