11/18/00 4:30 p.m.
Democratic Counting Hypocrisy
Aren’t military votes votes too?

By Robert Alt, adjunct fellow, John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs

l Gore has said repeatedly that he wants to make sure that "every vote counts," but as the recent disqualification of military ballots demonstrates, only Democratic ballots need apply.

Gore has been relying on lawyers to do his dirty work, and not just in court. First, the Gore campaign requested that 500 trial lawyers volunteer with the recount effort. Then attorney Mark Herron, who has been involved with various Democratic election lawsuits, produced a five-page memo for his litigious brethren explaining how to challenge absentee ballots. The memo emphasized how to disqualify military ballots — which are predominantly Republican — and even included a section on military postmarks. The counters applied these suggestions vigorously. As a result of these orchestrated efforts, more than 1,000 absentee ballots were thrown out, many for the lack of a postmark.

Unlike voters who failed to comply with the ballot instructions to remove chads, the military voters who properly signed and witnessed their ballots did everything they could to assure that their votes complied with the law. It is disturbing that these military personnel are penalized not because of an error of their own, but because of an error of the postal service. It is even more disturbing that an individual who is seeking the position of Commander in Chief would allow his counters to participate in a scheme to deny service men and women of their votes.

In the aftermath of the overseas ballot counts, George Bush increased his lead in Florida to 930 votes. But the manual recounts of several counties continues, and the very counters who relied on the partisan memo to disqualify military votes are likely there trying to discern the "intent" of voters. With the increase in Bush's vote margin will inevitably come an increased effort by these counters to find evidence of intent. First it was the hanging, pregnant, or dimpled chad. Soon you will inevitably see some new fiction like the freckled chad — a chad without a discernable indentation but perhaps a mark. As the race becomes more dire, so will their efforts to pull out the win.

If Gore is serious about making every vote count, then he should publicly denounce his supporters who challenged military ballots, and should call for a recount of the military ballots to allow the "intent" of the voters to prevail. If he's not willing to do this and instead thinks that the rules should be applied, then he should comply with the rules in the case of the manual recounts and acknowledge the validity of the current count, both because the statutory deadline for submitting counts has passed and because the disputed "chad" voters did not comply with the ballot instructions. Barring these actions, Gore's aspiration to make every vote count is revealed for what it really is: empty political rhetoric.