Overseas tally boosts Bush lead, GOP cries foul over discarded ballots

Dan Sewell

Saturday, Nov. 18, 2000 | 9:05 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The counting of overseas absentee ballots wrapped up Saturday and, as expected, added to George W. Bush's slight lead in Florida. But a surprising number of ballots were thrown out, raising cries of foul play from the Bush campaign.

With all 67 counties reporting their overseas results, Bush picked up 1,376 votes and Gore got 750 votes, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Bush now leads by 926 votes in the overall count, including overseas votes and the numbers certified earlier by the Florida secretary of state.

Still, the Bush campaign expressed displeasure at the number of overseas ballots that were disqualified.

"We are distressed at what appears to be a statewide effort on behalf of Al Gore to discredit the votes of military servicemen and women," Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Friday night, after more than 1,400 overseas ballots had been rejected.

While Republicans complained of a coordinated effort by Democrats aimed against ballots from military personnel - which the GOP claimed would favor Bush - the Gore campaign decried GOP "misinformation and conspiracy theories."

"It was local, elected Florida elections officials who decided whether or not to accept these ballots," Gore spokeswoman Jenny Backus said. "It's also somewhat disingenuous for the Republican Party to talk about some kind of Democratic conspiracy when both sides had observers out in the field."

Counties had until noon Saturday to report their results to Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who is blocked by the Florida Supreme Court from certifying the state results. The Supreme Court meets Monday to hear arguments about ongoing hand recounts in three South Florida counties.

In some counties, half or nearly all the overseas ballots were rejected, many of them military ballots that apparently didn't have postmarks.

Orange County, for example, rejected 117 of its 147 overseas ballots. In Hillsborough County, 74 of the 135 ballots were rejected after Democrats raised concerns about postmark or signature problems. Alachua County rejected half of the 56 ballots it received. St. Lucie rejected 13 of 14 and Lake County, all five.

"The party of the man who wants to be the next commander in chief is trying to throw out the votes of the men and women he will be commanding," charged Jim Post, a Republican lawyer in Duval County, where 107 ballots were rejected.

Thomas Spencer, a Miami attorney for Bush, said the GOP legal team would weigh whether to sue this weekend. "One of the problems with those ballots is it is so difficult under Florida and federal law that you almost have to be a rocket scientist to comply," he said.

Earlier this week, Mark Herron, a Tallahassee lawyer helping shepherd Democratic presidential election lawsuits through the local courts, sent a five-page letter to Democratic attorneys throughout Florida giving them tips on how to lodge protests against overseas ballots.

Such protests had to be filed before the ballot was taken out of the envelope. The letter focused on protesting military ballots.

Herron said he was retained by the DNC on election night.

"I'm not the only one that did this," he added. "Everybody got the opportunity to argue their case in front of the canvassing boards."

Asked about the high number of ballots thrown out, Herron replied: "I don't know what the numbers would be. It was our position in a neutral way, these were standards everywhere."