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11/11/00
1:40 p.m. By Arnold Steinberg, a political strategist living in Los Angeles |
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I do. Twenty years ago, I learned just how important they are. One of my clients in 1980 was congressional candidate Bobbi Fiedler, who was running against the long-time incumbent, Democrat James C. Corman. This was no easy task. Rich in seniority and influence, Corman was in line to be the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Further more, his Southern California district was 62 percent Democrat, 31 percent Republican. (It is now represented by Democrat Howard Berman.) The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had targeted Corman, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, not to defeat him, but to embarrass him. Corman seemed invulnarable, but the NRCC wanted to give him an active challenge, if only to keep him busy locally to prevent him from raising money nationally for his fellow Dems. As Fiedler's campaign consultant, I obviously wanted to do more than just keep Corman busy. I wanted to win. And, despite being overwhelmingly outspent, Fielder did win. But the margin of victory was slim, and Corman's own consultant demanded that a recount be done by hand. Democratic Party lawyers and recount specialists descended on the county registrar's office. Each recount station had a government employee to do the counting, flanked by one Democratic and one Republican observer. The Democrats' agenda was, of course, to change the election result, and they went about it systematically. At their urging, the recounting began with Corman's strongest precincts, Fiedler's weakest. Their intention was to recount ballots in those areas until the election outcome was reversed, and then stop the recount. Similarly, today in Florida, the Gore people are demanding hand recounts in their favored counties, where they would be most likely to gain. But the order in which the precincts are recounted isn't the only thing that matters: As I learned firsthand, the recounting process itself affords plenty of opportunity for tampering with ballots. Their hired guns tried lots of tricks on Corman's behalf, but what I remember most was the hanging chads. A chad is the perforated square (or circle) on the ballot that a voter depresses with a pin to indicate his preferred candidate. The chad hangs from the ballot if the voter didn't fully depress it — for instance, if an older person did not press firmly enough. This matters because voter machines usually are not able to tabulate cards with hanging chads. It often comes down to interpreting the voter's intention. Does the chad hang "strongly" — i.e, detached only a little — meaning that it is a mistake that should not be counted? Or does it hang loosely — i.e., mostly detached — as an intended vote would be? What my lawyers soon discovered was that the opposition would eyeball a disputed ballot before picking it up to officially inspect it. If the hanging chad indicated a vote for Fiedler, the lawyer for the other side picked up the ballot ever so carefully, so he could argue that the voter really never intended to vote for Fiedler. If the hanging chad was a Corman vote, the lawyer picked up the ballot quite vigorously, so that the chad soon was no longer hanging. "You see," their guy would declare, "that voter obviously intended to vote for Corman." During the recount, Congressman Corman conducted himself appropriately, and cooperated with Fiedler's transition planning. Still, we took the recount very seriously. Luckily, it didn't take long to figure out all the opposition's tricks. I added more lawyers, more observers, and the bad guys eventually caved. Bobbi Fiedler's victory was preserved. But it was a nasty business. The more things change, the more they stay the same. |
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o you know what two
words will determine the Presidential election?" Bill Press posed the
rhetorical question last night on CNN's The Spin Room. His answer?
"Hanging chads." Co-host Tucker Carlson said he didn't know what a "hanging
chad" is.
