Today could bring decisions on absentees

By ALICIA CALDWELL and THOMAS C. TOBIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 8, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- Rulings are expected as early as today in two absentee ballot lawsuits that could change the outcome of the presidential election.

Democrats are asking two judges to throw out 25,000 of what they call tainted absentee ballots, enough to overcome Republican George W. Bush's 537-vote lead in Florida.

The two cases, which normally might take months to litigate, were compressed into two days, including one session that ended at 12:30 a.m. Thursday. The pace has left lawyers, some of whom are trying both actions, bedraggled and sleep-deprived.

The lawsuits are similar. They center on the propriety of Republicans in Martin and Seminole counties adding voter identification numbers to absentee ballot applications.

And so the closing arguments heard Thursday echoed each other in many respects.

Lawyers in both cases talked about whether Republicans got preferential treatment, and whether the access afforded them to alter applications was misconduct or fraud that changed the outcome of the election.

As both cases wrapped up Thursday and the waiting began, the Leon County Courthouse looked like an occupied country, with television technicians snoozing in corners amid empty takeout food containers, and legal assistants double-parking boxes of documents in hallways.

Even judges took the conditions in stride.

Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis relaxed his ban on drinks in his courtroom, a proclamation that resulted in an immediate coffee stampede. As one lawyer looked without success for a chair in Circuit Judge Nikki Clark's courtroom, he said he had never been in a courtroom without an extra seat.

"Welcome to Tallahassee," Clark quipped.

Because of the crush of lawyers, closing arguments in the Seminole case lasted more than three hours.

Clark fired questions at the lawyers, asking them how they would reconcile the evidence with the law. At times she appeared to be cutting the blocks to build the foundation for her legal opinion.

Gerald Richman, who represents the Longwood lawyer who brought the lawsuit, has intimated that with unusual access to the Seminole elections supervisor's office, Republican Party staffer Michael Leach could have committed all manner of electoral sins.

"Are you asking me to presume that things happened there that are not in evidence?" Clark asked. "Is it the unfettered access ... that renders the process so compromised that the votes can't count?"

Richman contended the process was corrupted when the supervisor's office became "an arm of the Republican Party."

Everyone, it seemed, was fair game for Clark's pointed questions.

Almost immediately after Orlando lawyer Terry Young began his closing statement on behalf of Seminole County officials, Clark asked him how Supervisor of Elections Sandra Goard could allow Leach into her office to add information to her records.

Wasn't that, Clark asked, a violation of state law?

Young said Goard derived such authority from a state Division of Elections memorandum, and furthermore, in the end Leach's access had no effect on the ballots cast.

In the Martin County case, Judge Lewis was more low-key and the arguments shorter.

In that case, the behavior of Peggy Robbins, the elections supervisor, was alleged to be more egregious because she allowed a local Republican official, Thomas Hauck, to remove the ballot requests from her office and add the numbers.

Tallahassee lawyer Edward Stafman, who represents the Martin County voters bringing the suit, expressed frustration in his closing argument at the conflicting testimony of elections workers and Republican operatives.

In the end, he said, no one could be sure how long Hauck kept the records, how many trips he made to the elections office or how many requests he altered.

"Where have these records been? Why have they been out of the office?" Stafman asked. "The tampering has been more extensive than they have been willing to admit."

He alleged Robbins and her fellow Republicans had violated several statutes by treating Democrats differently, altering public documents and removing them from public property.

"If that is not intentional misconduct," he said, "I don't know what is."

He acknowledged his suggested remedy of throwing out absentee votes was harsh, but added it was necessary to right the wrong.

Daryl Bristow, a lawyer for Bush, countered that the actions of Robbins and local Republican lawyers did not affect the ballots themselves or the voting process. At worst, he said, they were minor, "hypertechnical" infractions that do not warrant throwing out votes. Such an action would punish innocent voters, he said.

"There's nothing about Florida law that could criminalize that."

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