about what the Bushists were pulling with those ballots.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/11/absentee/index.htmlBending the rules boosted Bush totals
Republicans objected to Democratic efforts to extend vote tally deadlines -- but pressed to change standards for absentee ballots.
- - - - - - - - - - - - By Eric Boehlert
Dec. 11, 2000 | Going into oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, attorneys for Gov. George W. Bush have argued that the manual recount ordered Friday by the Florida Supreme Court was unconstitutional because there was no uniform statewide standard for judging ballots. As spelled out in its brief to the court, Bush's legal team stressed, "The new set of manual recount procedures concocted by the Florida Supreme Court is arbitrary, standardless, and subjective, and will necessarily vary in application in violation of Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Yet Bush's slim lead of less than 200 votes -- down from 537 before Friday's ruling -- stands precisely because a handful of sympathetic county canvassing boards in late November used an arbitrary, standardless procedure to quietly boost Bush's total by reinstating some invalid overseas military ballots. Not only did the boards clearly change the rules in the middle of the game -- something else the Republicans have repeatedly accused the Florida Supreme Court of doing -- but they created a hodgepodge of new standards, some of dubious legitimacy. These included accepting ballots postmarked after Nov. 7 as well as ballots faxed to county election offices. Both instances violate Florida election law.
"It was anything goes," says Mike Langton, chairman of Gore's northeast Florida campaign. "Should those ballots have counted? Probably not."
When the recounting of military ballots previously rejected was completed, Bush picked up a net gain of 115 questionable votes; votes that by the Bush team's logic in other contexts should not be valid. Without them, Bush's lead would shrink to 39 votes -- or 78, depending upon a final determination of which of two disputed tallies from Palm Beach County to include. Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, Vice President Al Gore picked up a net gain of 16 votes during the aborted hand recount on Saturday, which means that -- as the Supreme Court ponders the fate of the election -- observers could argue Bush's lead is just 23 votes (or 62) out of more than 6 million cast in Florida.
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