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Speaker 1: previously on Fiasco.
Speaker 2: Some strange, unusual things happening in Florida.
Speaker 3: The Gore campaign is trying to lengthen out the timeline.
Speaker 1: Florida Democratic officials will be requesting a handcount of ballots
Speaker 1: of Palm Beach County as well as three other counties.
Speaker 4: It was unsettling to me that a candidate would cherry
Speaker 4: pick four counties out of sixty seven to recount fifty teams.
Speaker 5: We'll start to handcount more than four hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: thousand ballots.
Speaker 6: There's been a lot of discussion about the Hanging Chad
Speaker 6: and the dimple chat.
Speaker 1: The fundamental framework was to slow walk the count.
Speaker 2: Gore advisor accusing Florida's Republican Secretary of State just trying
Speaker 2: to ensure.
Speaker 7: A Bush victory.
Speaker 4: I had no idea to who benefit it would accrue.
Speaker 4: I just know I had had to follow the law.
Speaker 8: Florida's highest state court has blocked the Secretary of State.
Speaker 9: Voice wins one round, Gore wins the next. It is
Speaker 9: a legal slug fest that won't end soon.
Speaker 1: In the weeks after election day, an overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: Americans between seventy seven and eighty seven percent, said they
Speaker 1: were closely following the Florida recount. But the Florida recount
Speaker 1: was not easy to follow. Staying up on the latest
Speaker 1: developments could feel a cramming for an exam the procedural
Speaker 1: debates between the two parties and intricacies of Florida law
Speaker 1: could be a bit much.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: The judge says, the five o'clock deadline stands. But it's
Speaker 1: not that simple, because the judge also says.
Speaker 10: Balance, Natalie, All of what John Zurella just explained was complicated,
Speaker 10: but it did seem to be a little bit consistent.
Speaker 1: But there was more, and it was murkier. There were
Speaker 1: just so many names and subplots to keep track of.
Speaker 5: There are so many claims and counter claims, so many
Speaker 5: numbers flying through the air.
Speaker 11: We hope you all have your scorecards out, because this
Speaker 11: one's getting more complicated.
Speaker 1: All the time, and no one knew how long it
Speaker 1: was going to take to resolve.
Speaker 12: Everybody is starting to lose patience with this election.
Speaker 13: The process seems doomed to work its slow and painful
Speaker 13: way through a series of court rooms.
Speaker 2: No matter what happens, it certainly leaves Florida in a
Speaker 2: sort of legal state of limbo.
Speaker 1: The worst part might have been how impossible it was
Speaker 1: to talk about the recount without using all these horrible
Speaker 1: bureaucratic phrases like certification deadline and canvassing board and advisory opinion.
Speaker 1: This deadening jargon was not just a problem for journalists
Speaker 1: trying to make the recount story exciting or at least legible.
Speaker 1: It was also a problem for the two campaigns. Both
Speaker 1: of them needed to frame the churn of the recount
Speaker 1: on their terms, and to do so in ways that
Speaker 1: had at least some emotional residence. Democrats found that emotional
Speaker 1: residence early with the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach. It
Speaker 1: was easy to comprehend how terrible it might feel to
Speaker 1: know that you wasted your vote in such a close race.
Speaker 1: But about ten days after the election, the Republicans found
Speaker 1: an emotional rallying point of their own, and they found
Speaker 1: it in something exquisitely boring sounding called overseas absentee ballots.
Speaker 8: The postmarks come from all over the world, votes usually overlooked.
Speaker 14: This year, they could determine the election.
Speaker 2: More than six million Americans live overseas, which is.
Speaker 15: Roughly the size of the population of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Speaker 5: Just how many of those absentee ballots are author are
Speaker 5: still to be.
Speaker 1: Counted, and who will get how many of them? Overseas
Speaker 1: absentee ballots were used by American citizens living abroad in
Speaker 1: recent presidential elections. The state of Florida had received between
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred and three thousand of them in a normal election.
Speaker 1: That was not a lot of votes. But in two thousand,
Speaker 1: when it became clear that overseas absentee ballots could determine
Speaker 1: the outcome of the race, they were thrust into the
Speaker 1: center of a bitter confrontation between the two campaigns.
Speaker 16: There are battles going on in county offices all over
Speaker 16: the state. We've heard reports of county officials screaming at
Speaker 16: each other as Democrats and Republicans go to the map
Speaker 16: for every overseas absentee vote.
Speaker 1: The process for tabulating overseas absentee ballots in Florida followed
Speaker 1: its own special timeline, one that was intended to compensate
Speaker 1: for the fact that mail coming in from far away
Speaker 1: takes a long time to get where it's going. Here's
Speaker 1: Mark Herron, a lawyer who became an expert on overseas
Speaker 1: absentee ballots while working with the Gore recount team.
Speaker 8: In Florida. You could continue to receive and count overseas
Speaker 8: absentee ballots until ten days after the election if they
Speaker 8: had been postmarked prior to the close of election day.
Speaker 1: The voters who used overseas absentee ballots tended to belong
Speaker 1: to one of several distinct groups American diplomats working at
Speaker 1: four or embassies, American Jews living in Israel, expats in general,
Speaker 1: and US military personnel stationed abroad. The Gore team expected
Speaker 1: many of the overseas ballots to come from this last group,
Speaker 1: and that they would overwhelmingly favor Bush.
Speaker 8: The military people were generally more conservative in terms of
Speaker 8: their viewpoints on the world than Democrats, and I guess
Speaker 8: the thinking would be that the military folks would vote
Speaker 8: for Bush. As opposed to Gore.
Speaker 1: As overseas absentee ballots poured into Florida's sixty seven county
Speaker 1: canvassing boards, the Gore team worried that their opponents would
Speaker 1: try to take advantage of the system.
Speaker 8: There were reports and rumors that planes military planes were
Speaker 8: flying into Panama City stuffed would oversee ballots that had
Speaker 8: not been postmarked prior to election day.
Speaker 1: No evidence of such organized ballots stuffing ever emerged, but
Speaker 1: at the time anything seemed possible, so higher ups on
Speaker 1: the Gore recount team asked Heron to do some research
Speaker 1: and write up a detailed memo under what circumstances would
Speaker 1: it be appropriate, according to Florida law, to challenge the
Speaker 1: validity of an overseas absentee ballot. The intended audience for
Speaker 1: Heron's memo was the network of Democratic lawyers helping the
Speaker 1: Gore campaign around the state. When Florida's sixty seven counties
Speaker 1: started going through their overseas absentee ballots, these lawyers would
Speaker 1: be responsible for challenging incomplete or legal ones.
Speaker 8: They could use it when they appeared before the canvassing
Speaker 8: boards and say, hey, this one here can't be counted
Speaker 8: because it isn't signed. This one here can't be counted
Speaker 8: because there's no postmark on it. There's no postmark that
Speaker 8: indicates that it was mailed or transmitted prior to the
Speaker 8: close of election day, or it has a postmark that's
Speaker 8: after election day, and therefore it can't be accepted.
Speaker 1: In its first paragraph, Heron's memo specifically mentioned members of
Speaker 1: the Armed forces, along with other citizens of the United
Speaker 1: States who are temporarily residing outside the country. The memo
Speaker 1: went out to a group of Democratic Party lawyers on
Speaker 1: November fifteenth, with the expectation that it would stay among friends,
Speaker 1: but less than forty eight hours later, a copy made
Speaker 1: its way to Bush headquarters in Tallahassee. The Republicans instantly
Speaker 1: recognized it as a major opportunity. Here was a Gore
Speaker 1: lawyer providing instructions on how to disqualify votes sent in
Speaker 1: by American soldiers. The indignant TV appearances practically booked themselves.
Speaker 12: The Vice President's lawyers have gone to war in my judgment,
Speaker 12: against the men and women who serve in our armed forces.
Speaker 14: I'm tired of hearing Democrats saying, including out Gore account
Speaker 14: every vote, and yet they're all over the state of Florida,
Speaker 14: challenging thousands of our military votes.
Speaker 1: The Bush team pushed the story to every news out
Speaker 1: what they could, and organized press conferences to publicize the issue.
Speaker 17: We are concerned that a targeted effort by the Democratic
Speaker 17: Party sought to throw out as many as a third
Speaker 17: of the overseas absentee ballots received since election day, many
Speaker 17: of them the votes of the men and women of
Speaker 17: our United States Armed Forces who are serving the cause
Speaker 17: of freedom throughout the world.
Speaker 1: The Heron memo, as it came to be known, instantly
Speaker 1: broke through the static of recount coverage. And if you're
Speaker 1: wondering how the Bush communications team turned to phrase as
Speaker 1: cumbersome as oversees absentee ballots into a hot issue, the
Speaker 1: answer is they didn't have to because they could call
Speaker 1: them military ballots instead.
Speaker 12: The Democrats have launched a statewide effort throughout as many
Speaker 12: military ballots as they can.
Speaker 16: Democratic lawyers had been given guidelines on how to challenge
Speaker 16: military ballots, and the wife of one sailor spoke out.
Speaker 18: It was the first that he had heard that his
Speaker 18: ballot was one of the votes that did not count.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's too cynical or unfair to wonder
Speaker 1: how the Gore team didn't see this coming. But Heron
Speaker 1: really thought that all he was doing was summarizing this
Speaker 1: corner of Florida election law so that Gore's lawyers in
Speaker 1: the ground would know what they were dealing with. Now
Speaker 1: the campaign was being accused of trying to disenfranchise men
Speaker 1: and women in uniform.
Speaker 8: The military is a somewhat sacred thing, and these folks
Speaker 8: are giving up their lives, their family life, you know,
Speaker 8: to defend the country. And then to say that, hey,
Speaker 8: these Democrats are trying to take away their vote. It
Speaker 8: kind of all fits into the narrative of what democrats
Speaker 8: are all about, and it was very, very powerful. They
Speaker 8: do a great job with spin even when the reality
Speaker 8: is completely to the contrary, and this was one of
Speaker 8: those examples.
Speaker 1: You may recall that in our previous episode you heard
Speaker 1: a lot of people say repeatedly that all they did
Speaker 1: during the recount was follow the law. But as Mark
Speaker 1: Heron learned the hard way, the recount was about much
Speaker 1: more than the law. It was also about politics as
Speaker 1: a means of influencing how the law gets applied. By
Speaker 1: using the Heron memo as the basis for a pr
Speaker 1: onslaught against Gore. The Bush team wasn't just trying to
Speaker 1: score points on cable news or win hearts and minds.
Speaker 1: They were generating pressure that would make the law work
Speaker 1: to their advantage. I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. This is Fiasco Bush v.
Speaker 3: Gore.
Speaker 19: Gore made a conscious decision that he would fight in
Speaker 19: the courts, but not on the streets.
Speaker 11: Republican demonstrators stormed the hallway.
Speaker 17: It sounds like you're in the middle of a prison riot.
Speaker 1: Episode four spinoff How the Bush campaign achieved crucial legal
Speaker 1: victories by burying Al Gore in the court of public opinion,
Speaker 1: Believe it or not. One of Al Gore's most effective
Speaker 1: advocates in two thousand was his running mate Joe Lieberman.
Speaker 1: During the recount, while Gore strategized with his lawyers behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, Lieberman appeared on TV as something between an
Speaker 1: attack dog and a cheerleader. Day after day he defended
Speaker 1: the Democratic line and calmly predicted that when all the
Speaker 1: votes were counted, he and Gore would be victorious.
Speaker 20: We think we want if we think if all the
Speaker 20: votes in Florida. Aret it not only will we have
Speaker 20: won the popular vote in America, Al Gore and I
Speaker 20: would have won the election. Maybe our opponents think that too,
Speaker 20: and that's why they don't want those votes to be counted.
Speaker 1: With Gore facing intense criticism over Mark Heron's memo, the
Speaker 1: campaign looked to Liberman to come in and play the enforcer.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, November eighteenth, Lieberman was briefed on the Haroan
Speaker 1: memo over the phone, and the next morning he appeared
Speaker 1: on Meet the Press with Tim Russard.
Speaker 20: Senator Joseph Lieberman is with us, welcome back, warning Tim
Speaker 20: still a senator, not Vice president.
Speaker 1: Russert brought up the Heron memo almost immediately.
Speaker 11: And people are very, very concerned.
Speaker 20: They point to a memo written by.
Speaker 9: Mark Herron, a lawyer who assists the Gore campaign, telling
Speaker 9: Democratic lawyers, this is how you knock out balance from
Speaker 9: military people overseas.
Speaker 1: They don't have a postmark to the Gore operatives in Tallahassee.
Speaker 1: Watching Lieberman's appearance on TV, it was obvious how he
Speaker 1: should have responded.
Speaker 21: He was getting pounded, and the answers should have been
Speaker 21: we're for counting all votes that were cast on before
Speaker 21: election day.
Speaker 1: This is Nick Baldick, one of Gore's top lieutenants in Florida.
Speaker 21: You know there are proceedures to make sure that illegal
Speaker 21: votes don't come in after and those should be upheld.
Speaker 21: That would have been roughly the response I would have given.
Speaker 21: It was not the response he gave.
Speaker 1: Instead, Lieberman took a trip to Waffle City. He didn't
Speaker 1: even try to defend the campaign or make the argument
Speaker 1: for enforcing election law in the way Heron's memo had suggested.
Speaker 20: Again, Al Gore and I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 20: want to ever be part of anything that would put
Speaker 20: an extra burden on the military personnel abroad.
Speaker 22: If Joe Lieberman said this morning, count those.
Speaker 1: Baldick watched in disbelief as Lieberman threw Mark Herron and
Speaker 1: the Gore campaign as a whole under the bus.
Speaker 20: My own point of view, if I was there, I
Speaker 20: would give the benefit of the doubt to Bellot's coming
Speaker 20: in from a military personnel generally, but particularly in light
Speaker 20: of the letter and the kind of statements we've heard
Speaker 20: about it.
Speaker 1: But the here's Baldick again.
Speaker 21: I mean, I remember screaming at the television, being very
Speaker 21: angry when lots of people working with me, young people volunteers,
Speaker 21: had been across sixty seven counties trying to uphold the
Speaker 21: law and make sure the ballots from Maryland and ones
Speaker 21: that were sent obviously after election day were not counted illegally,
Speaker 21: and they were screamed at and called unpatriotic and had
Speaker 21: batteries thrown at them, and Senator Lieberman sold all those
Speaker 21: people out by just caving on that morning.
Speaker 1: Heron, who was also watching the interview from gore headquarters,
Speaker 1: did not take it well.
Speaker 8: It was like I'd been kicked in the stomach. I
Speaker 8: was quite sick, so to speak, and at that point
Speaker 8: in time I had to leave the building and walk
Speaker 8: around Tallahassee for a while. I just couldn't believe what
Speaker 8: he had done.
Speaker 1: Lieberman told me in an interview that he still remembers
Speaker 1: meeting with Gore after his TV appearance.
Speaker 23: And it was actually, as I recall, the only time
Speaker 23: during the whole campaign when now seemed to be disappoint
Speaker 23: pointed in something I'd done.
Speaker 1: But Lieberman maintains he did the right thing, the patriotic thing,
Speaker 1: the morally defensible thing by distancing the campaign from the
Speaker 1: Haroan memo.
Speaker 23: We Democrats believe in the franchise, and in fact that
Speaker 23: other parts of Florida were fighting because we were alleging
Speaker 23: that the Republican officials prevented some people from voting.
Speaker 1: Setting aside the legal merits of the Haroan memo, Lieberman
Speaker 1: says that he was concerned about how the campaign would
Speaker 1: look if he stood by it. What if Democrats ended
Speaker 1: up winning the White House and American soldiers believed that
Speaker 1: their own commander in chief had tried to disenfranchise them.
Speaker 23: And I must say the other thing that swung into
Speaker 23: action as Tim Ruster to meet to Posess with this
Speaker 23: question was wait a second, I don't want al Gaar
Speaker 23: and me to be seen as people who are gonna
Speaker 23: do anything to stop We want so much to win
Speaker 23: that we're going to block the vote of a soldier
Speaker 23: who's overseas serving us because he made some technical mistake.
Speaker 1: Lieberman wanted the campaign to commit to its count every
Speaker 1: vote mantra, even if he saw Republicans making contradictory arguments
Speaker 1: of their.
Speaker 23: Own, because both sides were being inconsistent. The Republicans were
Speaker 23: calling for technical adherence to the law in some parts
Speaker 23: of the state about cutting ballots, but they were saying, oh,
Speaker 23: you got to go a little easy on these soldiers.
Speaker 23: We were saying, in some parts of the state, you
Speaker 23: got to be a little easy on these voters, particularly
Speaker 23: minority voters, and not exclude them from voting. But in
Speaker 23: this case, we were saying, this is the letter of
Speaker 23: the law, so that these absmptee ballots can't be count it.
Speaker 1: After Liberman's appearance on Meet the Press, other Democrats joined
Speaker 1: him in calling for lenient standard on military ballots.
Speaker 24: That's the order from Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth.
Speaker 1: Among them was Bob Butterworth, the Democratic Attorney General of Florida.
Speaker 14: Saying no man or woman in military service to this
Speaker 14: nation should have his or vote rejected solely due to
Speaker 14: the absence of a post bar.
Speaker 1: It was not exactly a legal victory for Republicans, since
Speaker 1: neither Lieberman nor Butterworth had authority over any aspect of
Speaker 1: the recount, but symbolically it was devastating.
Speaker 14: The public relations fight over rejected overseas absentee ballots.
Speaker 2: On NBC's Meet.
Speaker 25: The Press, Joe Lieberman supports giving them quote the benefit
Speaker 25: of the doubt.
Speaker 1: More after the break. While the Gore campaign tried to
Speaker 1: play defense on overseas absentee ballots, the hand recount of
Speaker 1: regular old domestic ballots was continuing in fits and starts.
Speaker 1: The four counties where Gore had requested recounts were all
Speaker 1: at different stages of the process. Palm Beach and Broward
Speaker 1: had been added for several days, Volusia was already done.
Speaker 1: In Miami Dade, they hadn't even started yet. Now this
Speaker 1: feels like a good moment to confess some thing, which
Speaker 1: is that here at Fiasco, our journalistic bias towards the
Speaker 1: dramatic and dysfunctional means that Volusia and Broward, where the
Speaker 1: hand recounts went relatively smoothly, are getting short tripped on
Speaker 1: this podcast. It's not exactly fair, but shout out to
Speaker 1: them for doing such a good job counting votes. That
Speaker 1: hearing about it is not all that interesting. In Miami Dada,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, things were about to get turbulent.
Speaker 1: To be fair, the task before the Miami Dade canvassing
Speaker 1: board was enormous. It was the biggest county in Florida
Speaker 1: by a huge margin, and they had about six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand votes. To get through a recount would
Speaker 1: require a lot of manpower and a lot of time,
Speaker 1: and because of how many votes were at stake, both
Speaker 1: the Bush campaign and the Gore campaign were watching the
Speaker 1: process like hawks and fighting over it.
Speaker 5: Also like hawks, Republicans in Miami tried one last time
Speaker 5: this morning to prevent a handcount in Florida's most populist county.
Speaker 5: The effort failed, opening the door to a recount that
Speaker 5: could add hundreds, maybe thous of new votes to the
Speaker 5: state's total.
Speaker 1: The logistics of the recount in Miami Dade were pretty
Speaker 1: much the same as in Palm Beach. After going through
Speaker 1: a one percent sample of the overall vote, approximately six
Speaker 1: thousand ballots, the Canvassing board debated whether or not to
Speaker 1: conduct a full manual recount. After some hesitation, they decided
Speaker 1: to proceed.
Speaker 2: Miami Dade County, under pressure from the Gore campaign, decided
Speaker 2: that it too, will recount ballots by hand, meaning that
Speaker 2: heavily democratic Florida counties will be recounting more than one
Speaker 2: point seven million ballots.
Speaker 1: The eighteenth floor of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center
Speaker 1: in downtown Miami was converted into a publicly accessible recount room.
Speaker 1: Rows of tables and chairs were set up for the
Speaker 1: people doing the counting and the partisan volunteers who had
Speaker 1: been sent to watch over the proceedings. The three members
Speaker 1: of the canvassing board sat at a special table up
Speaker 1: front where they examined ballots that have been deemed ambiguous.
Speaker 14: It all began at nine to oh two. If you're counting,
Speaker 14: and these people certainly are to our Day County.
Speaker 1: The recount began on Monday, November twentieth, two days after
Speaker 1: the Big Florida Florida State football game.
Speaker 14: Four at each table in the highest stakes card game
Speaker 14: in the land, and.
Speaker 1: At first it looked like they might actually get it done.
Speaker 1: This was a very happy development for al Gore. As
Speaker 1: long as ballots were being counted, it meant he still
Speaker 1: had a chance of picking up new votes and eating
Speaker 1: into Bush's lead.
Speaker 14: Al Gore has picked up a net gain of eighteen votes,
Speaker 14: but there are six hundred and fourteen precincts total that
Speaker 14: must be recounted.
Speaker 1: In the next night, just before ten o'clock, the Gore
Speaker 1: team received even more good news, this time from Tallahassee,
Speaker 1: where the Florida Supreme Court had just issued a ruling.
Speaker 7: Good evening.
Speaker 26: My name is Craig Waters. I'm the spokesman for the
Speaker 26: Florida Supreme Court. I'm now going to read to you
Speaker 26: a statement that was authorized by the entire Court, the
Speaker 26: court halls that amended certifications from the county.
Speaker 1: Camp Remember, at this point, the manual recountscore had requested
Speaker 1: were being threatened by the Florida Secretary of State, who
Speaker 1: was refusing to accept what she called late vote counts.
Speaker 1: A few days earlier, the Florida Supreme Court had stepped
Speaker 1: in and blocked Catherine Harris from certifying the election results
Speaker 1: until they could weigh in. Oral arguments have been held
Speaker 1: on Monday, November twentieth. The central question at hand was
Speaker 1: whether Catherine Harris had acted improperly by refusing to accept
Speaker 1: late vote totals from the three counties still conducting handcounts.
Speaker 1: And now the seven justices of the Florida Supreme Court
Speaker 1: had handed down a unanimous ruling they were siding with Gore.
Speaker 27: The court saying hand counts in three Florida counties must
Speaker 27: be included in the state vote totals.
Speaker 1: This was a huge and potentially decisive victory for the
Speaker 1: Gore campaign.
Speaker 26: The court halls that amended certifications from the county canvassing
Speaker 26: boards must be accepted by the Election Canvassing Commission.
Speaker 1: As part of their ruling, the court set a new
Speaker 1: certification deadline of Sunday, November twenty sixth, at five pm,
Speaker 1: thereby giving the canvassing boards in Miami Dade, Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: and Broward five more days to count ballots. The ruling
Speaker 1: further specified that if the Secretary of State's officer was
Speaker 1: not open on that Sunday, the counties could turn in
Speaker 1: their vote totals on the following Monday morning at nine am.
Speaker 26: Until nine am on November twenty seven. The opinion of
Speaker 26: the Court is.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't all. In addition to granting the deadline extension,
Speaker 1: the justices also ruled that hyper technical adherence to voting
Speaker 1: instructions was less important than the intent of the voter.
Speaker 1: The fundamental purpose of election laws, the court wrote in
Speaker 1: its opinion, was to facilitate and safeguard the right of
Speaker 1: each voter to express his or her will. Gore celebrated
Speaker 1: the ruling as a major victory.
Speaker 10: The Florida Supreme Court has now spoken, and we will
Speaker 10: move forward now with a full, fair and accurate count
Speaker 10: of the ballots in question. Our democracy is the winner.
Speaker 1: Tonight, the Bush side was apoplectic. As they saw it,
Speaker 1: the Florida Supreme Court had just retroactively changed Florida election
Speaker 1: law by pushing back the certification deadline. To the Republicans,
Speaker 1: that looked like a violation of the US Constitution, which
Speaker 1: said that election laws had to be in place before
Speaker 1: the voters went to the polls, and they were to
Speaker 1: be drafted by state legislatures, not state courts. Just before
Speaker 1: midnight on the night of the ruling, James Baker, the
Speaker 1: head of the Bush recount effort, offered some pointed thoughts
Speaker 1: at a press conference in Tallahassee.
Speaker 9: It is not fair to change the election laws of
Speaker 9: Florida by a judicial fiat after the election has been held.
Speaker 9: It is simply not fair, ladies and gentlemen, to change
Speaker 9: the rules, either in the middle of the game or
Speaker 9: after the game has been played.
Speaker 1: Bush's supporters and media surrogates moved swiftly to paint the
Speaker 1: Florida Supreme Court as a biased institution run by Democrats
Speaker 1: who were trying to swing the election toward Gore. Charles Wells,
Speaker 1: the chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court at the
Speaker 1: time remembers one remark especially vividly.
Speaker 27: I had read a comment by Congressman at the time,
Speaker 27: Joe Scarborough from Pitscola, and his comment was, Tonight the
Speaker 27: Florida Supreme Court declared war on the rule of law
Speaker 27: in Florida. Seven radical Democratic lawyers have chosen to ignore
Speaker 27: the clear intent of Florida's legislature and executive branches. Is
Speaker 27: a political war they want. It's a political war. They
Speaker 27: should get lost.
Speaker 1: Amid all this heated rhetoric was that the Florida Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruling actually came with a major silver lining for
Speaker 1: the Bush campaign. Specifically, the part about how voter intent
Speaker 1: matters more than strict adherence to the technical requirements provided Republicans
Speaker 1: with a perfect weapon with which to attack the Democrats
Speaker 1: on the issue of overseas absentee ballots. Prior to the ruling,
Speaker 1: Bush's lawyers have been having trouble persuading canvassing boards around
Speaker 1: the state to accept overseas absentee ballots that lacked signatures,
Speaker 1: proper postmarks, and so on. A total of four hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty ballots have been thrown out as of November seventeenth.
Speaker 1: Now it seemed possible that hundreds of those ballots would
Speaker 1: be back on the table, and the deadline extension for
Speaker 1: certifying the election results gave the Bush lawyer's time to
Speaker 1: make their case. To the Gore campaign's chagrin, there was
Speaker 1: another way the Florida Supreme Court ruling turned out to
Speaker 1: benefit Bush, one that had nothing to do with overseas
Speaker 1: absentee ballots and everything to do with the ongoing recount
Speaker 1: in Miami. Because while the intention of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: had been to give the counties more time, the Miami
Speaker 1: Dade Canvassing Board had been banking on getting even more.
Speaker 1: In their initial estimate, the board had figured that the
Speaker 1: work of reviewing all six hundred and fifty thousand ballots
Speaker 1: in the county was going to take them until December first.
Speaker 1: The new deadline of November twenty sixth meant they had
Speaker 1: five fewer days than they'd budgeted for, and so the
Speaker 1: morning after the Florida Supreme Court ruling came down, the
Speaker 1: Canvassing Board held a public meeting to review their options.
Speaker 1: The Supervisor of Elections was audibly anxious about how the
Speaker 1: recount process could be sped up.
Speaker 28: We could not, given our best efforts of this board,
Speaker 28: the best effort to the county, the best efforts of
Speaker 28: all these people sitting here, complete the manual recount the
Speaker 28: way we've been doing it, even adding more tables, adding
Speaker 28: more staff.
Speaker 1: After some discussion, one of the board members proposed an idea.
Speaker 1: What if instead of counting all the ballots by hand,
Speaker 1: the board did a recount of just the ambiguous ballots
Speaker 1: that the machines couldn't read. By separating out the roughly
Speaker 1: ten thousand ballots that had not officially recorded a vote
Speaker 1: for president, the so called undervotes, the board could focus
Speaker 1: their energies and their time on ballots that required human attention.
Speaker 29: And so the board voted unanimously a ditch the results
Speaker 29: of their two day county wide recount and focus on
Speaker 29: ten thousand under votes and.
Speaker 28: Count the undercounted ballots approximately ten thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 28: fifty public.
Speaker 1: It was a little before nine am when the board
Speaker 1: members decided to give the plan a world franchise. After
Speaker 1: explaining to everyone gathered in the counting room what they
Speaker 1: were doing, the three of them headed upstairs to a
Speaker 1: private area on the nineteenth floor to separate out the
Speaker 1: undervotes and start examining them. The Republican observers who had
Speaker 1: been helping with the count reacted to the board's announcement
Speaker 1: with profound suspicion.
Speaker 22: There were slow grumblings that, you know, wait, what they're doing.
Speaker 1: What this is Lena m Conky pelt here In two thousand,
Speaker 1: she was a young lobbyist based in Washington, DC, and
Speaker 1: like many of her Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, she
Speaker 1: flew down to Florida to lend a hand with the
Speaker 1: recount after the Bush campaign put out a call for
Speaker 1: volunteers to.
Speaker 22: Take it behind closed doors and say they're going to
Speaker 22: finish the count. Just it's stunk. It didn't look good,
Speaker 22: didn't sound good, and we couldn't believe they were doing
Speaker 22: it with a straight face.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to let the Canvassing Board members out of
Speaker 1: their site, ma Conki pelt Here and a group of
Speaker 1: other Republicans followed them up to the nineteenth floor.
Speaker 22: We had been good, dutiful volunteers, and they were taking
Speaker 22: it out of our hands and shutting down the process,
Speaker 22: and that really didn't go overwell.
Speaker 1: Words spread quickly that the Canvassing Board was throwing some
Speaker 1: kind of curve ball a.
Speaker 29: Decision, eliciting an angry response by Republicans.
Speaker 19: This is the most brazen attempt by the Gore people
Speaker 19: and the Democrat machine and the thugs in that building
Speaker 19: to hijack the American presidency.
Speaker 1: Outside the Clark Government Center, a crowd of Bush supporters
Speaker 1: had been protesting the recount for several days. They led
Speaker 1: Chance of No More Gore, weaved American flags and held
Speaker 1: up signs that said Sore losermen. Overseeing the protest was
Speaker 1: a Republican operative named Brad Blakeman. He was huddled inside
Speaker 1: a parked RV in the plaza outside the Clark Center. Previously,
Speaker 1: Blakeman had worked for the Bush campaign as an advanced man,
Speaker 1: basically a high level event planner.
Speaker 19: Generally speaking for W's presidential campaign. I was in charge
Speaker 19: of major media events. So I was in charge of
Speaker 19: the convention. I was in charge of the debates. I
Speaker 19: was in charge of major rallies.
Speaker 1: Once the recount started, Blakeman knew how to make himself useful.
Speaker 19: We saw a three legged stool, and we knew that
Speaker 19: this battle would be fought in the courts. We knew
Speaker 19: that this battle would be fought in the recount centers.
Speaker 19: But the leg that was missing was the public relations.
Speaker 19: Although the voting had ended, the campaign had not.
Speaker 1: When Blakeman caught wind of what the canvassing board was
Speaker 1: up to on the nineteenth floor, he got worried. The
Speaker 1: recount in Miami had already cut Bush's lead by about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty votes. Who knew how many more
Speaker 1: Gore votes the board might find among the remaining undervotes.
Speaker 1: Blakeman decided to make a move.
Speaker 19: When we found out that they were going to go
Speaker 19: to an expedited system and that we could very possibly
Speaker 19: lose the momentum and Gore would be ahead, we had
Speaker 19: to figure out what are we going to do? What
Speaker 19: are options? And one of the options I thought of
Speaker 19: was why don't we do what democrats do? I said,
Speaker 19: let's do some civil disobedience, Let's have a sit in,
Speaker 19: let's create a ruckus.
Speaker 1: I should say here that there is someone else who
Speaker 1: takes credit for instigating the ruckus from inside the RV,
Speaker 1: and that is self styled dirty trickster Roger stone. Stone
Speaker 1: was not available for an interview, but for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: Blakeman insists that he had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 19: He wasn't there.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there at all.
Speaker 19: That was my RV. I rented it, and I could
Speaker 19: assure you if he was in there, I would have
Speaker 19: known about it, and he wouldn't have been there for.
Speaker 1: Long in any event, When the canvassing board went up
Speaker 1: to the nineteenth floor, a procession of Republican protesters, mostly
Speaker 1: young men, streamed into the Clark Center and piled onto
Speaker 1: the elevators.
Speaker 17: All right, just to add a little more drama to
Speaker 17: this situation, Republican recount.
Speaker 14: Observers, I had a little scuffle with police this morning.
Speaker 11: Republican demonstrators stormed the hallways and demanded access to the
Speaker 11: recount room.
Speaker 19: And you know, first we had to get permission. Spoke
Speaker 19: to the sheriff and the people that you know, what
Speaker 19: we're going to do, why we're going to do it,
Speaker 19: That we're not dangerous, a lot of us are lawyers.
Speaker 19: We're not going to be arrested. We're not there to
Speaker 19: be disrespectful. But we feel like we're being taken advantage
Speaker 19: of and that the system is not working and that
Speaker 19: this is something that we need to do to send
Speaker 19: a message upstairs.
Speaker 1: The protesters joined Maconkey pelt here and the other Republican
Speaker 1: observers and demanding to be let into the counting room.
Speaker 1: We're joined now by our Frank Buckley.
Speaker 17: He's on the phone with us.
Speaker 30: Frank, it sounds like you're in the middle of a
Speaker 30: prison riot. I mean, are you getting the feeling that
Speaker 30: this is out of control?
Speaker 31: Clearly, this is a raucous crowd. It was a raucous
Speaker 31: and confined crowd on the nineteenth floor with people trying
Speaker 31: to get into the room where the canvassing board was
Speaker 31: going to commence operations.
Speaker 32: The people who came out to protest were wearing, you know,
Speaker 32: button down shirts, tucked into khaki pants and got probably
Speaker 32: in those days, braided belts. If we consume in enough
Speaker 32: on the photos.
Speaker 1: This is Nicholas Cololish. He was covering the Miami Dade
Speaker 1: recount as a twenty five year old reporter for the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, and he was on the nineteenth floor
Speaker 1: of the Clark Center when the protesters arrived.
Speaker 32: You definitely have the impression that these were the people
Speaker 32: who did not protest in college, and that they didn't
Speaker 32: really necessarily know how to protest, that they're sort of
Speaker 32: sort of winging it. For the very first time.
Speaker 1: That the protesters pounded on the window leading to the
Speaker 1: tabulation room, Coolish felt the atmosphere change.
Speaker 32: And what I remember very vividly was they were pounding
Speaker 32: on the glass and on the other side of the
Speaker 32: glass there were municipal workers and some deputies. I mean,
Speaker 32: people were really fired up. The rhetoric that they were
Speaker 32: using was very much of a stolen election, of democracy
Speaker 32: being undone, and I couldn't judge to what extent it is
Speaker 32: sincere or cynical, but there is something that can happen
Speaker 32: where people can start to under the spell of their
Speaker 32: own rhetoric.
Speaker 1: The demonstration reached a climax when one of the Republicans
Speaker 1: on the nineteenth floor accused the Democratic Party official of
Speaker 1: trying to steal a ballot.
Speaker 11: At one point, they charged the Democratic attorney. It turned
Speaker 11: out to be a sample or practice ballot.
Speaker 1: The three members of the canvassing board moved back downstairs
Speaker 1: to get away from the chaos. Eventually the nineteenth floor
Speaker 1: quieted down. Later, the incident at the Stephen P. Clark
Speaker 1: Government Center was nicknamed the Brooks Brothers Riot, and in
Speaker 1: its aftermath there was a lot of debate about how
Speaker 1: volatile and dangerous it had actually been. One Bush lawyer
Speaker 1: claimed that a press conference that there had been little
Speaker 1: kids and babies in the crowd and that there was
Speaker 1: quote in some ways a holiday atmosphere. Leida McConkey pelt
Speaker 1: here didn't go quite that far when I asked her
Speaker 1: about it, but she still finds the allegations of violence absurd.
Speaker 22: I don't think it would have ever turned violent. I
Speaker 22: think the anger was palpable. I mean, everybody who was
Speaker 22: standing there was feeling it, and I'm sure they felt
Speaker 22: it on the other side of the door.
Speaker 1: After the demonstration, Macnkie Peltier became a minor icon thanks
Speaker 1: to a widely circulated photo in which you could be
Speaker 1: seen wearing a red dress and brandishing her fist alongside
Speaker 1: a group of guys and white button downs.
Speaker 22: So I would say that there was an element of anger,
Speaker 22: but not violence. I mean, come on, I'm standing there
Speaker 22: in the Liz Claiborne dress. I'm not going to be
Speaker 22: taking anybody out.
Speaker 1: Regardless. The three members of the canvassing board seemed rattled
Speaker 1: by what happened, and they halted the undervote plan in
Speaker 1: order to regroup.
Speaker 8: We've been listening to a hearing down in Miami Dade
Speaker 8: Canvassing Board.
Speaker 6: There's ongoing dispute about the hand count, exactly what they
Speaker 6: will count and what they will not.
Speaker 1: But the few hours later they reconvened for another public
Speaker 1: meeting to make an important announcement.
Speaker 13: I do not believe that there is time to carry
Speaker 13: out a complete, full manual recount that is accurate and
Speaker 13: that will count every vote because of the limitations put
Speaker 13: on this board in terms of time.
Speaker 30: I do agree with Judge King and mister Lahy that
Speaker 30: it is not physically possible to continue with this task.
Speaker 1: We do want to the Miami Dade recount was over,
Speaker 1: none of the new gore votes that have been discovered
Speaker 1: would be counted in the final vote tally.
Speaker 3: That is the unanimous decision of this Canvassing Board that
Speaker 3: we will not be proceeding further with a manual recount,
Speaker 3: and that the certification of November eighth, two thousand be
Speaker 3: accepted by the Secretary of State for the valid cast
Speaker 3: votes of Miami Dade County.
Speaker 30: All right, the Miami Dade County Canvassing Board taking a
Speaker 30: vote to end the recount. There there will be no
Speaker 30: more counting of votes in Miami Dade County, the largest county.
Speaker 1: The Gore team watched in horror as the canvassing Board
Speaker 1: announced their decision on live tele division. The main reason
Speaker 1: they gave for stopping was that there just wasn't enough
Speaker 1: time to finish before the deadline. But what was different
Speaker 1: at one thirty pm compared to eight that morning, when
Speaker 1: completing the count had still seemed feasible. Common sense seemed
Speaker 1: to suggest that the protesters had intimidated the canvassing board
Speaker 1: into abandoning the recount.
Speaker 32: The whole tone of things had changed, and it was
Speaker 32: certainly the biggest thing that happened between when they were
Speaker 32: counting the ballots and when they suddenly decided not to
Speaker 32: count the ballots. You know, you're you're on an election board,
Speaker 32: and like your job is to ensure like a free, fair,
Speaker 32: you know, and impartial election, and the idea that sort
Speaker 32: of that sort of people chanting and chasing partisans from
Speaker 32: of the other side, you know, around and threatening people
Speaker 32: causes you to stop counting votes. It seems like almost
Speaker 32: as undemocratic a thing as you could imagine.
Speaker 1: Right after the vote, one canvassing board member told reporter
Speaker 1: that the protesters' concerns were a factor in the decision
Speaker 1: that when it became clear that the board's work around
Speaker 1: the deadline problem wasn't going to fly, they were left
Speaker 1: with no other options. This was perceived as not being
Speaker 1: an open and fair process, the canvassing board members said,
Speaker 1: and that weighed heavily in our minds. Once again, the
Speaker 1: Republicans appeared to have outmatched the Gore team through raw
Speaker 1: political strength. Brad Blakeman told me that he was astonished
Speaker 1: that it had been so easy.
Speaker 19: Gore made a conscious decision that he would fight in
Speaker 19: the courts and the recount centers, but not publicly on
Speaker 19: the streets, and it was if it was a total
Speaker 19: sterile environment, and that we were the only ones there
Speaker 19: who seemed to, you know, fight for what we believed in.
Speaker 19: We fully expected to be overrun, quite frankly, because we
Speaker 19: said that Democrats are going to be out in force,
Speaker 19: and they never showed up anywhere.
Speaker 1: In fact, early in the recount, there were organized protests
Speaker 1: in Gore's favor, particularly in Palm Beach, where Jesse Jackson
Speaker 1: led rallies criticizing the butterfly ballot and calling attention to
Speaker 1: the alleged disenfranchisement of Haitian American voters. But al Gore
Speaker 1: worried about the spectacle coming across as unseemly, and he
Speaker 1: put out word to Jackson that he would prefer it
Speaker 1: if he left town. We'll be right back. While the
Speaker 1: battle overhand recounts raged in South Florida, the Bush campaign
Speaker 1: and their allies tried to gain an advantage in other
Speaker 1: parts of the state by continuing to hammer Gore on
Speaker 1: the issue of military ballots.
Speaker 25: Those rejected absentee military ballots. Hundreds of servicemen's ballots were
Speaker 25: initially tossed out statewide for, among other things, missing or
Speaker 25: late postmarks.
Speaker 8: Ballots.
Speaker 25: Republicans have been beating the drum.
Speaker 2: To have counted.
Speaker 1: As you recall, the controversy around military ballots initially played
Speaker 1: out at the lefvel of public relations. For the first
Speaker 1: few days after Mark Heron's memo got leaked, Bush's people
Speaker 1: seem to be mostly focused on making Gore look bad.
Speaker 25: They're having people like Senator Bob Dole, military heroes speak out, they.
Speaker 1: Went on TV, they gave press conferences.
Speaker 27: If they're going to count a dimple, then they need
Speaker 27: to count a vet's vote.
Speaker 1: They even got retired General Norman Schwartzkoff to issue a statement,
Speaker 1: just not fair.
Speaker 15: It's a sad day for this country when our military
Speaker 15: people on the front lines don't get their ballot counted
Speaker 15: when the selection of the Commander in chief.
Speaker 1: But then on November twenty second, the same day as
Speaker 1: the Brooks Brothers riot in Miami, the Bush campaign raised
Speaker 1: the stakes by bringing the issue into the legal realm.
Speaker 2: Bush's lawyers file suits in thirteen Florida counties seeking to
Speaker 2: have hundreds of rejected overseas absentee ballots counted, many of
Speaker 2: them from sailors and soldiers serving abroad.
Speaker 1: Bush filed suit against more than a dozen Florida counties
Speaker 1: where overseas absentee ballots have been disqualified because they lacked postmarks, signatures,
Speaker 1: or other elements required by law. The lawsuit accused the
Speaker 1: Gore campaign of pressuring the canvassing boards into rejecting ballots
Speaker 1: that should have been counted.
Speaker 2: Republicans sensing that Gore is vulnerable on the issue of
Speaker 2: military ballots.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit didn't end up having legs, but it didn't
Speaker 1: need to. Before a judge had even made a ruling,
Speaker 1: six of the counties named as plaintiffs in the suit
Speaker 1: agreed to their own volition to reevaluate the overseas ballots
Speaker 1: that they had earlier rejected.
Speaker 14: It was postparked from the United States, but I see
Speaker 14: no reason not.
Speaker 1: To include this here again is Mark Herron.
Speaker 8: And so all these canvassing boards decide they're going to
Speaker 8: meet again and review what they had done previously. Okay,
Speaker 8: and so they started accepting ballots that do not have
Speaker 8: any postmarks on them. To me, those ballots from a
Speaker 8: legal point of view should not have been accepted. But again,
Speaker 8: this furor over the issue led some people not to
Speaker 8: show that they had backbone to follow the law.
Speaker 1: It was a case of perfect synergy between legal and
Speaker 1: political warfare. By creating public pressure around the issue of
Speaker 1: military ballots, the Republicans were able to shape how the
Speaker 1: law was interpreted and applied. By the end of the week,
Speaker 1: canvassing boards around the state had agreed to accept two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight ballots that had previously been rejected
Speaker 1: as illegal.
Speaker 25: Those absentee ballots inched upward all afternoon for Governor Bush,
Speaker 25: finally handling him one hundred and eight more overseas votes
Speaker 25: at a time when Peter every vote matter precisely.
Speaker 1: Thanks much with that, a pr misstep by the Gore
Speaker 1: team had been converted into real gains for Bush. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter that in order to make that happen, the
Speaker 1: Republicans had been forced to stake out two mutually inconsistent
Speaker 1: positions on ballot standards. So what if they were calling
Speaker 1: for a looser approach to ballots that were likely to
Speaker 1: benefit Bush while calling for precise adherence to the law
Speaker 1: in counties that went for Gore. Unlike the Democrats, the
Speaker 1: Republicans weren't afraid of looking like hypocrites. They were afraid
Speaker 1: of losing.
Speaker 7: Let's turned out a Palm Beach county where the canvassing
Speaker 7: ord is trying to be the deadline of five pm
Speaker 7: today for completing it's hand raycot see it.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, November twenty sixth, both campaigns were bracing themselves
Speaker 1: for the arrival of the new certification deadline for vote totals. Remember,
Speaker 1: according to the Florida Supreme Court ruling, the counties had
Speaker 1: until five pm to turn in their numbers if the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State's office was open. If it wasn't, they'd
Speaker 1: have until the following morning, in Palm Beach County, the
Speaker 1: manual recount was still furiously underway. It had been going
Speaker 1: well well enough that Charles Burton and Teresa Lapour, two
Speaker 1: of the Palm Beach Canvassing Board members, had decided it
Speaker 1: would be okay to take a break for Thanksgiving. This
Speaker 1: turned out to be a grave mistake. By Sunday at noon,
Speaker 1: the prospect of finishing the count on time no longer
Speaker 1: looked so good.
Speaker 24: They're still counting in the Emergency Operations Center. Be behind me,
Speaker 24: and time will tell. And indeed the clock is ticking
Speaker 24: away here. They have been going now since eight am
Speaker 24: yesterday morning, and they still now have about five hours
Speaker 24: to go.
Speaker 31: If you do the math.
Speaker 1: The Palm Beach Canvassing Board still had about five four
Speaker 1: hundred ballots to get through, and since the Secretary of
Speaker 1: State's office was open for business, the deadline was five pm.
Speaker 24: Catherine Harris, the Secretary of State, is inside the administrative
Speaker 24: building here inside at work today on the Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1: Now, around half past noon, Judge Burton organized a press
Speaker 1: conference and read a letter out loud to Catherine Harris,
Speaker 1: pleading for more time.
Speaker 7: It says, Dear Secretary Harris, the Palm Beach County Canvassing
Speaker 7: Board respectfully requests your assistance and ensuring that the most
Speaker 7: accurate results of the two thousand presidential election are submitted
Speaker 7: for certification. We have been working diligently, including the last
Speaker 7: twenty four hour period, to complete this critical portion of
Speaker 7: the handcount. Your consideration of our request to extend the
Speaker 7: deadline for final submission of this handcount until Monday, November
Speaker 7: twenty seventh, at nine o'clock am, would be he greatly appreciated.
Speaker 7: As we know you were read.
Speaker 1: Harris's office informed Burton that the five pm deadline was
Speaker 1: non negotiable. The Florida Supreme Court had said that if
Speaker 1: they were open on Sunday, then five pm was the deadline. Well,
Speaker 1: they were open and that meant five pm was the deadline.
Speaker 2: Getting confirmation out of the Secretary of State's office here
Speaker 2: in Tallahassee has told the Vogue countersen in Palm Beached
Speaker 2: at the extension for that deadline.
Speaker 11: Will not happen.
Speaker 24: Quite a blow to Judge Charles Burton. To Commissioner Carol
Speaker 24: Roberts and Teresa Lapour, the three members of this canvassing
Speaker 24: board here who have been working now since eight o'clock
Speaker 24: yesterday morning with maybe just a two hour Burton.
Speaker 1: Was devastated, and at four fifteen PM he held another
Speaker 1: press conference, this time to announce that after ten grueling days,
Speaker 1: the recount in Palm Beach had failed.
Speaker 7: So the Secretary of State has apparently decided to shut
Speaker 7: us down. With approximately two hours perhaps left to go.
Speaker 7: We believe there are approximately eight hundred to one thousand
Speaker 7: balls left to come. So unfortunately, at this time, we
Speaker 7: have no other choice but then to shut down the
Speaker 7: supervisor elections.
Speaker 1: Hardly up to that point, Palm Beach had discovered a
Speaker 1: net of around two hundred new votes for Gore, but
Speaker 1: now that no longer mattered. None of those votes would
Speaker 1: be counted and there was nothing anyone in Palm Beach
Speaker 1: could do about it.
Speaker 6: Live pictures of the Cabinet room at the Florida State Capitol.
Speaker 6: We're told that this is the room where the official
Speaker 6: certification of votes will take place.
Speaker 1: Hours after the five pm deadline passed, Catherine Harris presided
Speaker 1: over a certification ceremony at the state Capitol.
Speaker 6: Once again, Catherine Harris coming in to this room in
Speaker 6: the state capital to begin the certification process. I think
Speaker 6: we want to listen.
Speaker 18: Ladies and gentlemen, as the State Elections Canvassing Commission. We
Speaker 18: are here today to certify the results of the election
Speaker 18: that occurred November seventh, two thousand, because of the great
Speaker 18: interest in our actions, we're meeting.
Speaker 1: Probably the ceremony was just that a ceremony because everyone
Speaker 1: knew that it wasn't actually going to end the election.
Speaker 1: Gore and his team had already indicated that they would
Speaker 1: be filing a lawsuit to contest the official results, and
Speaker 1: that meant the beginning of a whole new stage in
Speaker 1: the process. For now, the final tallies stood at two million,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and twelve two hundred and fifty three votes
Speaker 1: for Gore and two million, nine hundred and twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred ninety votes for Bush. Gore would be entering
Speaker 1: the so called contest phase of the recount, trailing by
Speaker 1: just five hundred and thirty seven votes. I have to
Speaker 1: admit I was pretty flabbergasted when I learned about how
Speaker 1: the hand recount and Palm Beach ended. And for the record,
Speaker 1: I went into this project not knowing anything about what
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State's office really did or didn't do
Speaker 1: during the recount. I was aware of Harris's reputation, and
Speaker 1: I understood that Democrats generally believed that she made decisions
Speaker 1: to benefit Bush. But I was prepared to find out
Speaker 1: that the truth was more complicated. And then I read
Speaker 1: about this thing with Palm Beach, about how Charles Burton
Speaker 1: begged Catherine Harris for a few more hours they could
Speaker 1: finish counting, and how she wouldn't allow it no matter what.
Speaker 1: And what I saw in this story was Harris making
Speaker 1: a decision that was transparently and unambiguously motivated by a
Speaker 1: desire to stop the recount. Yes, the canvassing board had
Speaker 1: made a truly short sighted decision to take time off
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving, but the Florida Supreme Court had said that
Speaker 1: having vote totals come in on Monday at nine am
Speaker 1: would have been fine. Why couldn't Harris have just given
Speaker 1: Palm Beach the extra couple hours. What possible reason could
Speaker 1: she have had other than wanting to protect Bush's lead.
Speaker 1: I asked Harris about this, and to my be she
Speaker 1: remembered the story completely differently. In Harris's mind, she didn't
Speaker 1: cut the Palm Beach recount short. She thinks she actually
Speaker 1: extended the time they had.
Speaker 4: They said originally Friday, and we said we'd stay open
Speaker 4: till Sunday to give people more time.
Speaker 1: No, I think they said Sunday. They said Sunday. This
Speaker 1: was the beginning of a pretty drawn out debate.
Speaker 3: Sunday.
Speaker 1: No, they said that the votes have to be in
Speaker 1: by Sunday at five pm. If the Secretary of State's
Speaker 1: office is open, or if the Secretary of State's office
Speaker 1: is not open on Sunday, they can come in at
Speaker 1: nine am on Monday.
Speaker 4: I remember the nine am on Monday, but I also
Speaker 4: clearly remember that because we wanted it to be finished,
Speaker 4: everybody argued, let's do it Friday, Let's do it Friday,
Speaker 4: and we said, no, we're going to stay open. So
Speaker 4: I'm not sure. Maybe I'm not remembering that exactly. I
Speaker 4: do know about the nine but I thought that we
Speaker 4: had to certify at five. It said you shall.
Speaker 1: Certify if you were if you were open.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we chose to stay open so that they
Speaker 4: would have the time. So you're you and I just
Speaker 4: agree on that. But I can go back, you know,
Speaker 4: we can both go back and check. But I clearly
Speaker 4: in my mind, it was my understanding that we had
Speaker 4: a choice of Friday or Sunday.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of this exactly, other
Speaker 1: than Harris really truly remembers doing everything right, right according
Speaker 1: to the law, right according to the principles of democracy,
Speaker 1: right according to the duties of her office. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, that's true of pretty much all the people
Speaker 1: I interviewed for this show. Everyone remembers acting impartially and
Speaker 1: honorably and fairly, but that doesn't mean they remember it correctly.
Speaker 20: Good evening, from the beginning of this extraordinary period of time.
Speaker 1: Seven minutes after Catherine Harris presided over the vote certification
Speaker 1: in Florida, Joe Lieberman was once again asked to go
Speaker 1: on television to represent the campaign. Leeberman addressed reporters as
Speaker 1: the Hey Adam's Hotel in Washington, Who's three days after
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and the interior of the hotel was already decorated
Speaker 1: for Christmas. This time, the would be VP said exactly
Speaker 1: what he was supposed to.
Speaker 20: This evening, the Secretary of State of Florida has decided
Speaker 20: to certify what, by any reasonable standard, is an incomplete
Speaker 20: and inaccurate count of the vote's cast in the state
Speaker 20: of Florida. We have an opportunity here and we have
Speaker 20: a responsibility to ensure that this election lifts up our
Speaker 20: democracy and respects every voter and every vote, no matter
Speaker 20: what the outcome. And that is precisely what Vice President
Speaker 20: Gore and I will seek to do in the days ahead.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush gave a speech that night too. He
Speaker 1: called on Gore to drop his plan to contest the
Speaker 1: election and to concede instead. He also asked President Clinton
Speaker 1: to formally open a transition office for his new administration.
Speaker 23: Good evening.
Speaker 15: The last nineteen days have been extraordinary once but now
Speaker 15: that the votes are counted, it is time for the
Speaker 15: votes to count. I've asked Secretary Cheney to work with
Speaker 15: President Clinton's administration to open a transition office in Washington,
Speaker 15: and we look forward to a constructive working relationship throughout
Speaker 15: this transition. Together, we can make this a positive day
Speaker 15: of hope and opportunity for all of us who are
Speaker 15: blessed to be Americans. Thank you very much, and God
Speaker 15: bless America.
Speaker 1: Just after Catherine Harris's certification ceremony, lawyers from the governor's
Speaker 1: office rushed to prepare the documents that would officially seat
Speaker 1: Florida's twenty five Republican electors. The Bush camp was concerned
Speaker 1: that the Democrats would try to subpoena the documents and
Speaker 1: prevent them from getting filed, so, out of an abundance
Speaker 1: of caution, the lawyers transported the documents in an unmarked
Speaker 1: police car and mailed them to Washington from an out
Speaker 1: of the way post office where no one would be
Speaker 1: expecting them. In the end, none of it turned out
Speaker 1: to be necessary. The Democrats didn't even try to interfere.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Fiasco, Al Gore becomes the
Speaker 1: first presidential candidate in American history to formally contest the
Speaker 1: results of an election, while Republicans in the Florida State
Speaker 1: legislature lay the groundwork for installing Bush as president by
Speaker 1: any means necessary. For Their basic argument was, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: a mass, it's confusing. How about we let these fine
Speaker 1: legislators over here decide whether not Bush or Gore will
Speaker 1: be president. Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects, and
Speaker 1: it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: Andrew Parsons, Madelin kaplan Ulakulpa, and me Leon Nafock. Our
Speaker 1: script editor was Daniel Riley, Our editorial consultant was Camilla Hammer,
Speaker 1: and we received additional editorial support from Lisa Chase. Our
Speaker 1: music and score are by Nick Silvester of god Mode,
Speaker 1: with additional music from Alexis Quadrado. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Speaker 1: Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Raphael
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans of Final Final V two Special
Speaker 1: Thanks to Luminary for a list of books, articles, and
Speaker 1: documentaries that we relied on in our research. Click the
Speaker 1: link in the show notes. Thanks to c SPAN, NBC
Speaker 1: News Archive, CNN and Channel twenty in Palm Beach for
Speaker 1: the archival material you heard in today's show. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 15: I don't know wh