In This Bitter Fight, the Motto Is: Make Every Ballot Count

George W. Bush’s surprisingly strong gains from overseas absentee ballots in Florida have confronted Al Gore’s campaign with an unexpected threat: the possibility of still losing the election even if it wins the legal fight to include the results of manual recounts in three heavily Democratic counties.

Bush gained more votes from the overseas ballots than either side expected, pushing his official overall lead to 930 votes, according to figures released Saturday.

Those numbers approach the outer edge of what both sides project Gore could gain from the three counties recounting votes: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, which is scheduled to begin counting Monday.

“It would be a huge irony to win the legal battle and lose the election anyway,” one top Gore aide said.

A senior Bush aide said last week that they expected the two candidates to come out about even in Miami-Dade and Gore to pick up about 100 votes in Broward but potentially 1,000 in Palm Beach. If Gore meets those estimates, he would have about 170 votes more than Bush’s current lead--pending any further adjustments to the absentee tallies.

Two senior Gore aides said those estimates mirrored the Democrats’ own calculations. One official said Democrats were hoping to win as many as 250 more votes out of Broward, 100 votes out of Dade and at least 600, “if not potentially a lot more than that,” out of Palm Beach.

Those numbers still would give Gore a majority, but the margin of error has shriveled to the point where some key Democrats are worried that the vice president could fall short even if the Florida Supreme Court ultimately orders the inclusion of the manually recounted votes in the final result.

“It’s possible, but that 900-plus is a big number,” Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said.

The prospect that the outcome may remain achingly close, even with the manually recounted votes, has created an irresistible incentive for each side to contest virtually every vote.

That dynamic is encouraging endless conflicts in the recounts themselves, with Republicans accusing Democrats of mishandling ballots, and Democrats accusing the GOP of undermining the process by filing excessive objections to disputed ballots. In both Texas and Florida on Saturday, Bush officials dramatically escalated their criticism of the recount process, describing it as rife with error--a charge that the Gore campaign immediately dismissed.

The belief that every vote may prove vital has encouraged both parties to challenge results on other fronts. On Friday, one Democratic activist in Florida’s Seminole County filed suit seeking to invalidate 4,700 absentee ballots that Democrats claim the county’s election supervisor, a Republican, improperly helped the GOP to complete.

Unprecedented Political Combat

On Saturday, Bush aides immediately urged an investigation of a Miami Herald report that 39 convicted felons may have improperly voted in Broward and Miami-Dade counties--and charged the Gore campaign with systematically seeking to disqualify absentee ballots from military personnel abroad.

This political equivalent of house-to-house combat may be unprecedented in modern American history. It suggests that both sides are searching for ways to patch together a bare majority even if the Florida Supreme Court rules against them on the paramount question of whether to include the manually recounted ballots. “I don’t know where it ends,” sighed one Republican close to the Bush camp.

Bush’s 630-vote gain from the overseas absentee ballots exceeded what either campaign expected; Democrats had hoped he might net only 300 to 400 votes. Bush aides had said they were hoping for a gain of 400 to 500 votes.

On Saturday, Bush advisors signaled that they hope to expand that margin further. Racicot and Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker charged that Democrats had systematically sought to disqualify absentee ballots from overseas military personnel; the campaign said it was mulling legal challenges meant to reinstate between 400 and 1,500 military ballots that were disqualified, mostly on grounds that they were not postmarked before election day.

Gore is Stuck Playing Catch-Up

Any votes Bush gains on that front, of course, raises the bar even higher for Gore in the manual recounts now proceeding across Southeast Florida.

Early results in Palm Beach and Broward counties have shown only small gains for Gore; with more than one-third of the precincts recounted in Broward, for instance, Gore had netted 79 votes, local officials said. Palm Beach has only released figures covering four precincts; they showed a four-vote gain for Bush.

But those figures may not accurately reflect the vice president’s potential gains in these counties because so many ballots have been challenged by the partisan observers and set aside for the three-member county canvassing commissions to judge later. In Palm Beach alone, about one in every six ballots is being contested.

With each vote looming so large, the process of counting ballots has become a war without blood (as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich liked to call politics).

In Palm Beach County on Saturday, there were fresh allegations of misplaced votes, dropped ballots, intentional delays and chads found on the floor--even attempts by partisan spies to infiltrate enemy lines by enlisting as ballot counters for the other party.

Republican leaders in Palm Beach privately concede that they have an interest in making the recount last as long as possible. The Palm Beach County vote is 50% behind schedule and could last as long as 12 days, election officials said.

Democratic leaders asserted Saturday morning that GOP election observers inside the counting room are challenging far more votes than Democrats; county election officials confirmed that report. They pointed to a pile of 63 ballots that had been contested and set aside for the county’s canvassing board. Of those, the board ruled that 60 were Gore votes and three were Bush votes. None was thrown out.

Republicans also have routinely failed to provide enough counters to assemble counting teams. The county would like to have at least 25 four-person teams for at least 14 hours a day. Instead, the county has typically had about 15 teams, for fewer hours each day.

Republicans said they were just doing their job, monitoring what they view as a “fundamentally flawed” procedure, said Tucker Eskew, a Bush spokesman.

Eerily identical disputes flared in Broward County. In the hot, humid counting room, where the air-conditioning had conked out, Democrats charged that Republicans were trying to grind the process to a halt by making frivolous ballot challenges. “There were ballots where the hole couldn’t be any clearer that they challenged,” said Georgia Foster, a Democratic observer from Fort Lauderdale.

In turn, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to infiltrate their orientation centers. Each party is scrambling to process as many observers as possible to ensure that party loyalists are seated at the counting tables. On Saturday, one woman who had been a Democratic observer was caught trying to sit through a Republican orientation session.

“She was obviously trying to get a seat at the table as one of us,” Republican operative Chris McNulty said.

Deciding What Counts as a Vote

While these competing charges may affect the vote tally, many more ballots will be reconsidered if Democrats succeed in persuading the Broward County canvassing board to lower the standards on what counts as a vote. Right now, the fabled chad on the ballot must be detached on two sides of its hole before it can be considered a vote. Gore supporters want to allow dimples, indentations and chads detached on just one corner to also be counted. A Palm Beach County judge ruled Friday that such votes would count there.

Judge Robert W. Lee, chairman of Broward’s election board, said he will defer to the Florida Supreme Court for guidance on what standards to apply. So far, the Broward board has been setting aside ballots that could be considered votes under looser standards. Lee would not say how many of these ballots the board has found so far, but he implied that if the Supreme Court directs such votes to be counted, the effect could be significant.

“If we are required to change the procedure of evaluating ballots, there are literally going to be hundreds of more votes in this county that will be counted, and in all likelihood the majority of these votes will go to Al Gore,” he said Saturday afternoon, adding another note of uncertainty to a process already immersed in it.

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Florida Tally

The popular vote reported by the Florida secretary of state, including absentee ballots:

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BUSH: 2,911,872

GORE: 2,910,942

BUSH LEAD: 930

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Results of ongoing uncertified hand recounts:

NET GAIN

PALM BEACH: BUSH +12

BROWARD: GORE +79

MIAMI-DADE: (Recount begins Monday)

Gore Net Gain +67

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If these votes were included, Bush’s lead narrows to: 863

Results as of 10 p.m. PST

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Source: Associated Press