Firecracker--or Bomb?

By Amanda Ripley

Compared with the lawyers' arguments about itty-bitty paper dots and the pleadings of grandmothers in tracksuits for a revote, the news coming out of tiny Seminole County has seemed like a strange little sideshow, barely worth noticing. But now both candidates are realizing that the sideshow could potentially decide the election. A lawsuit--filed not by Al Gore but by an Altamonte Springs personal-injury lawyer--demands that the county throw out some 15,000 absentee ballots because of alleged fraud. That would give Gore a net gain of about 5,000 votes, more than enough to win the White House. The plaintiff, a Democrat named Harry Jacobs, charges that because G.O.P. workers were allowed to fill in blanks on thousands of absentee-ballot applications last October, none of the ballots should count. A similar suit was filed Friday against Martin County, another wealthy, predominantly Republican county. G.O.P. officials have belittled the charges as baseless attempts to throw out perfectly good votes, anathema to the "count every vote" mantra of the Gore camp. But the Bush team has sent two powerhouse attorneys to attack the sleeper case before it gobbles up the election.

The Seminole case is scheduled to be heard by Judge Nikki Clark on Wednesday in Tallahassee. But it was in the making well before Election Day, when Republican operatives realized that the firm they hired to print ballot applications had accidentally left off the voter ID numbers required by state law. (Both parties in Florida mailed out thousands of partly completed applications for members to sign and return--a little end run around voter apathy.) In Seminole, when elections supervisor Sandra Goard noticed the omission, she put the forms in a pile to be tossed. But in mid-October, a G.O.P. worker called her office and asked if party staff members could come fill in the missing numbers.

Goard, a Republican described as a stickler for the rules, said she didn't have enough workers to fill in missing ID numbers, as election officials in other counties were doing. But in a questionable display of judgment, she let two G.O.P. workers spend 10 days in her office writing in the numbers on some 2,000 forms. "All I did was provide these people with a chair in my outer office," Goard has said. "I would have allowed the Democrats to do the same thing." But the Democratic form didn't have the same flaw. And once the applications entered Goard's office, Democrats argue, they became official records and should not have been touched.

Given Florida's tough laws governing absentee ballots (instituted in 1998, after fraud led to the removal of a Miami mayor), it seems dubious to let party operatives tinker with signed ballot applications. But the proposed remedy--throwing out all 15,000 ballots--seems extreme. The Democrats "have a strong case if we insist on following technicalities," says University of Miami law professor Mary Coombs. "But ultimately the application went out to the right person, who ended up being able to vote for whom he wanted. Tossing out the ballots seems to be a very peculiar remedy for the harm that happened."

If Judge Clark finds for the Democrats, her decision could be appealed to the state supreme court, which hinted Friday about how it might respond. In an opinion denying a Palm Beach revote request, the court said a ballot must be "in substantial noncompliance" to justify an extreme remedy.

--By Amanda Ripley. Reported by Alice Jackson Baughn and Kate Kelly/Seminole and Kathie Klarreich/Miami

With reporting by Alice Jackson Baughn and Kate Kelly/Seminole and Kathie Klarreich/Miami