Republicans rachet up the aggro

AUSTIN - Republican George W. Bush's allies cited "clear and compelling evidence" of serious irregularities in the manual recount of presidential votes in Florida yesterday but Democrats dismissed the charges as partisan politics.

The Texas governor's campaign took a newly aggressive tack in challenging the hand recounts in three heavily Democratic counties, calling them "fundamentally flawed," and also accused lawyers for Vice-President Al Gore of trying to nullify the absentee ballots of United States military personnel overseas.

In a preview of the arguments Bush lawyers will put to the Florida Supreme Court lalter today when it decides if the manual recounts should be added to the state's official election tally, spokeswoman Karen Hughes and Marc Racicot, Montana's Republican Governor, called them "completely untrustworthy."

Florida's 25 Electoral College votes hold the key to the disputed November 7 presidential election. They will put either Bush or Gore over the 270 needed to win the White House.

"We now have clear and compelling evidence from eyewitnesses that this manual recount process is fundamentally flawed and is no longer recounting, but is distorting, reinventing and miscounting the true intentions of the voters of Florida," Hughes said.

Although Bush's lead over Gore in Florida widened to 930 after the overseas absentee ballots were counted yesterday, Hughes and Racicot blamed Democrats for "a targeted effort" they said had succeeded in having as many as 1,100 of the votes, many from military personnel, thrown out.

"No one who aspires to be commander in chief should seek to unfairly deny the votes of the men and women he would seek to command," Hughes said.

Racicot called voting "a prerogative and privilege" highly valued by military personnel serving abroad.

"I am very sorry to say, but the Vice-President's lawyers have gone to war, in my judgment, against them men and women who serve in our armed forces," he said.

While his surrogates worked to discredit the Florida recounts with an eye on public opinion as well as the courts, Bush worked in his state office, a few blocks from his official residence and met with Republican Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Blunt described Bush as "very calm."

"I didn't get the sense that the Governor was anything but confident that this process would ultimately work the way Florida voters intended for it to, and that will mean he's the next President," Blunt said.

Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said the Vice-President's campaign was disappointed the Bush camp had "suddenly decided to inject raw, crass, partisan politics" into the process.

"The Gore campaign wants the will of the people to be reflected accurately and completely, which will be guaranteed by a manual recount, while the Bush campaign is trying to do everything possible to stop that from happening," he said.

Racicot offered a detailed litany of allegations in support of his contention that the hand recount in Florida had done "irreparable damage" to the process of electing the 43rd President of the United States and derided them as a case of "going back to the future."

'I think when the American people learn about these things, they're going to ask themselves, 'what in the name of God is going on here'." He cited mixed ballots, ballots used as fans, dropped ballots, stepped-on ballots, counters roaming rooms fruitlessly in search of instructions, multiple touching, overworked and burned-out elderly counters, counting by flashlight and the taping of chads - the bits of paper that fall out when a ballot is punched - over the spot for a Bush vote.

He cited one instance in which an older man had dropped a pile of ballots on the floor, amid scenes of exhaustion and confusion.

Racicot said observers in Florida had submitted sworn affidavits attesting to these allegations.

He told reporters Bush ballots had been found in the Gore piles to be counted as the Vice-President's votes, stressing that a Democratic observer had found them and pointed it out to a supervisor who ignored it.

"The Democratic observer later apologized to the Republican counterpart, telling him that the stack of ballots ... in his words had been 'sabotaged,"' Racicot said.

He said if Americans were aware of how the recounts were being conducted, they would be "flabbergasted" and urged the Gore campaign "to commit, as a matter of leadership" to a process that was fair and accurate.

"They keep alleging that we don't want to count votes. That's patent nonsense. We want to count votes that ought to be counted and that have a guarantee of trustworthiness associated with them," he said.

Meanwhile, in Miami-Dade, a county where 654,000 ballots await a hand review, an official said the operation could stretch into the start of December. David Leahy, is supervisor of elections for the county where 654,000 ballots awaited a hand review

"The goal December 1," he said. "I'm going to try to beat that but until we we are on new ground. We've never done this before."

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: America votes

Florida Dept. of State Division of Elections

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