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Florida justices uphold absentee judgment
By Times staff writer © St. Petersburg Times, published December 13, 2000 TALLAHASSEE -- The first news of the day for Vice President Al Gore came from the Florida Supreme Court. It was not completely unexpected, and it wasn't good. At 4:30 p.m., Tuesday a court spokesman in Tallahassee announced two 6-0 opinions, upholding the rulings of two state judges, both of whom had said absentee ballots in Martin and Seminole counties should count even though local election officials permitted Republican activists to add information to the ballot applications. The effect of the rulings was to validate votes that, if discarded, could have let Al Gore overtake Bush in the state that stands to pick the next president. In the Seminole County case, where more than 15,000 absentee ballots were challenged, the court said it found "competent, substantial evidence to support the trial court's conclusion that the evidence in this case does not support a finding of fraud, gross negligence or intentional wrongdoing in connection with any absentee ballots." The court did agree that Seminole's elections supervisor erred by rejecting completely the absentee ballot applications in question and then compounded the problem by letting Republicans correct omissions on the forms. "The court does not in any sense condone the irregularities found by the trial court," Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said, reading from a statement on the steps of the high court. Waters added that in the Martin County case, in which 10,000 absentee ballots were challenged, there were also irregularities, but they, too, did not reach "the level of fraud or intentional misconduct." Justice Leander J. Shaw Jr. recused himself from both rulings for reasons that Waters did not specify. Democrats had sought to throw out 25,000 votes in the two counties, alleging that Republicans were unfairly permitted to correct ballot applications while Democrats were not given the same opportunity. The state Supreme Court ruling came after both sides submitted written arguments Monday. In the arguments, Democratic lawyers pared back their demands, seeking to disqualify only 673 Bush votes in Martin County, still enough to overturn Bush's lead of fewer than 200 votes. In Seminole County, they still wanted to eliminate 15,000 votes. "You're always disappointed when you lose a case but there's some solace in the fact that they did find serious irregularities," Edward Stafman, attorney for Martin County voters, said after the ruling. Lawyers in yet a third absentee ballot case were hoping the U.S. Supreme Court would hear their appeal in the case of 2,400 overseas ballots that arrived in election offices after Election Day, most of them from military personnel. Bush received 1,575 votes of the contested ballots, compared with 836 for Gore, so throwing them out would boost Gore's total. The voters claim federal law and the U.S. Constitution require all ballots to be received by the close of the polls on Election Day. Florida law, however, allows for ballots mailed by Election Day as long as they are received within 10 days of the election. A federal judge ruled against the voters last week, and a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld that ruling. - Staff writers Bill Adair and John Balz contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.
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