Bush Builds Lead on Overseas Vote

Republicans launched a concerted effort Saturday to delay and discredit the hand counting of Florida’s presidential ballots, even as a tally of overseas votes widened George W. Bush’s lead to 930.

But the hand counting showed Al Gore continuing to whittle away at Bush’s margin. The vice president netted 79 votes in the recount of 259 of Broward County’s 609 precincts, and tallying continued in Palm Beach County.

On a day the principals stayed out of sight, partisans battled on multiple fronts--lawyers in the state Supreme Court and Seminole County, Republicans and Democrats elbow-to-elbow inside overheated tabulation centers. As fingers jabbed and tempers flared, the Bush campaign worked to stir doubts about the integrity of the recount process.

Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, enlisted by the Bush campaign to help undermine the effort, asserted that paper ballots had been mislaid, mishandled and deliberately miscounted. “I think when the American people learn about these things they’re going to say, ‘What in the name of God is going on here?’ ” Racicot told reporters at a news conference in Austin, Texas.

At one point, the dispute grew so bitter--and so ludicrous--that Republicans in Broward County accused Democrats of swallowing chads, the little pieces of paper that fall out when a ballot is punched. The incident “underscores that the process is running amok,” said Ken Lisaius, a spokesman for the county GOP.

The Gore campaign accused Bush operatives of deliberately attempting “to politicize a process that ought to be governed by our laws.”

“The difference between the two camps could not be clearer,” said Chris Lehane, a Gore spokesman. “Al Gore wants a hand recount because it guarantees the will of the people will be reflected. The Bush campaign is doing everything possible to impede that from happening.”

The vote count in Florida fluctuated as the hand tallying continued throughout the day but stayed within the same narrow spectrum: an infinitesimal fraction of the 6 million ballots cast Nov. 7. Bush pulled ahead by 930 votes after the overseas absentee ballots broke nearly 2 to 1 in his favor, with Bush picking up 1,380 votes to Gore’s 750.

About 1,400 overseas ballots were disqualified for various reasons, and Republicans said they were contemplating still another lawsuit challenging those decisions.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris released the overseas vote totals unceremoniously, in contrast to her earlier plans to certify the election and award Florida to Bush--making him president-elect, pending further litigation.

The Bush campaign issued a low-key statement, saying the Texas governor and running mate Dick Cheney were “pleased that the returns from the overseas absentee ballots have increased their lead in the state of Florida.”

Harris’ more elaborate plans were halted when the state Supreme Court on Friday unanimously blocked certification of the election returns at least until a hearing at 2 p.m. EST Monday.

In legal briefs filed Saturday, Gore’s attorneys asked the high court to include hand-counted ballots in the final certified results, charging that Harris, a Republican and strong Bush backer, is playing a “Kafkaesque” game of changing her position to shut off further counting.

Gore’s lawyers also attacked the reliability of computers for counting ballots--the method used on election day and in a mandatory statewide recount--and said hand counting provides a more accurate total.

“Machine reading of punch card ballots will predictably misread a certain percentage of ballots,” the brief says. “In a close election, that percentage will affect the results of an election.”

Attorneys for Bush are due to respond today.

The two sides battled Saturday on a second legal front as well, as a judge in Seminole County took up a suit by Democrats asking that 4,700 absentee ballots be tossed out because GOP operatives inappropriately filled in missing voter identification numbers. Judge Debra S. Nelson set a date of Nov. 27 to hear the complaint.

The lawsuit says that Bush received 10,005 absentee votes in Seminole County, near Orlando, while Gore tallied 5,209 votes. If the mishandled ballots cannot be identified, the suit asks that all absentee ballots in the county be declared invalid.

Apart from the unceasing legal fight, both Democrats and Republicans have aggressively sought to mold popular opinion during their 11-day standoff.

After failing to block the hand counting in various court venues, the Bush campaign Saturday stepped up its efforts to convince the public that the process was corrupt and inherently flawed.

At a briefing in Austin, the campaign produced Racicot, who cited “clear and convincing evidence” of irregularities in Palm Beach County, including elderly counters who were “overworked and burned out” and a report in Saturday’s Miami Herald that at least 39 felons had illegally cast absentee ballots in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

“This is a process that is completely untrustworthy,” Racicot said. “And this is what the campaign has been warning about from the beginning.”

He acknowledged that Republicans have observers overseeing the recount side-by-side with their Democratic counterparts. “However, every questionable ballot is decided by a Democrat-dominated canvassing board,” Racicot said.

While Democrats control the boards in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the board in Miami-Dade County consists of one Democrat and two independents. Miami-Dade is set to begin its hand count Monday.

Separately, the Bush campaign accused Democrats of a targeted effort to disqualify as many as one-third of the overseas ballots cast by Republican-leaning members of the armed services. “How can felons be allowed to vote while the men and women in our armed forces are not?” demanded Racicot, a former Army prosecutor.

The campaign even issued a statement from retired Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, a Florida resident, criticizing the Democrats.

“It is a very sad day in our country when the men and women of the armed forces [who] are serving abroad and facing danger . . . are denied the right to vote” because of what he called “some technicality out of their control.”

Gore officials accused the Bush campaign of hypocrisy. Ron Klain, a senior strategist for Gore’s postelection operations, said the votes of ordinary citizens, such as “policemen, firemen and nurses,” should be just as carefully counted as those of soldiers living abroad. “Their newfound dedication to the counting of ballots, while welcome, seems a little off.”

The toxic exchanges between the two campaigns was matched by their surrogates in Florida.

In Palm Beach County, the recounting degenerated into near slapstick, amid allegations of misplaced votes, dropped ballots, intentional delays--even attempts by partisan spies to infiltrate behind enemy lines.

Democrats accused Republicans of purposely gumming up the process to hurt Gore’s standing when the Supreme Court takes up his case Monday. The vice president hopes to pick up enough votes by then to show he could conceivably overtake Bush if the hand counting is allowed to continue.

In some of the 88 precincts that had been counted--but not yet certified--more than 400 votes had been challenged and routed to a pile that would be reviewed later, said Dennis Newman, an attorney for the Florida Democratic Party and an election observer in West Palm Beach.

Tucker Eskew, a spokesman for Bush, denied attempts to sabotage the count. “We are doing our jobs,” Eskew said. “It’s not a slowdown.”

But privately, some Republicans admitted they hoped to drag out the recount as long as possible and at one point a GOP observer stormed out declaring, “I’ve had it.”

“There are some real games going on here,” she said, indicating that a fellow Republican observer was systematically objecting to every sixth vote for Gore.

Palm Beach County Judge Charles Burton, the Democratic chairman of the canvassing board, accused Republicans of dilatory tactics.

“We’re sitting here wasting all our time,” he said. “We will be here until Christmas” at this pace.

“People need to relax. I think everything is going pretty well,” he said. “We are handling half a million ballots. Is somebody, at some point, going to drop one? Yes. Have there been any outrageous errors? Absolutely not.”

The scene was similar in adjacent Broward County.

There too, Democrats charged that Republicans were trying to grind the process to a halt by making frivolous ballot challenges. “What’s ironic here is that Republicans keep saying that they want it over but they’re doing whatever they can to slow this thing down,” said Steve Geller, a Democratic state senator.

Meantime, election officials in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous, decided to begin their manual recanvassing Monday. But even before the counting started, the squabbling between Democrats and Republicans was well underway.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How Hand Counts Work

Hand counting is done by workers gathered in teams, overseen by representatives from each party. Twenty-five teams work at a time in Palm Beach County, one of the three counties where hand counting is underway:

Results as of 8:30 p.m. PST

More Inside

FOCUS ON WORDS: One key phrase in Florida’s election law is at the core of the case to be heard by the state Supreme Court. A22

HUMANS VS. MACHINES: People do so many odd things to ballots that machines can’t always interpret them. Humans often can. A22

PIGSKIN TALK: The spotlight is on Florida. But in Tallahassee, for a day at least, it’s The Game that commands all attention. A23

BALLOT REDESIGN?: The large number of disqualified overseas ballots suggests to experts a need for uniform rules. A23

NO. 2 MAN: A big issue in Austin, Texas, is who will replace Lt. Gov. Rick Perry, whose post carries the real power in the state. A23

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Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Scott Gold and Richard A. Serrano contributed to this story.