Legal teams prepare for battle in Florida

BY BUDDY NEVINS

South Florida Sun-Sentinel   28 October 2004

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - (KRT) - Republicans and their attorneys say they are arming themselves with lists of voters whose registrations appear flawed, preparing for what Democrats are calling a statewide effort to challenge voters and slow the process on Election Day.

The fight over who is eligible to cast a ballot is a particularly vital point in this key state with its 27 electoral votes, the largest prize still undecided in the polls. Political experts widely agree that Democrats need a huge turnout for presidential nominee John Kerry to win Florida, a state he needs to offset Bush's strength in the rest of the South.

Republicans say their legal team's goal is to ensure that the only people voting are legally registered. The Democrats contend that the GOP seeks to depress turnout by using repeated challenges to slow down voting, causing voters to leave the polls because of long lines.

"We want everyone to vote - legally," said Edward Pozzuoli, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer handing the GOP challenges in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Pozzuoli and GOP officials in Tallahassee said this week that their attorneys will have lists of voters whose registrations appear flawed. They are preparing to try to stop them from voting.

Bernadette Norris-Weeks, the lawyer for the Broward elections office, said, "I've been hearing about the (Republican) lists. It would be helpful if they showed it to us before hand so that we can fix it ahead of time."

Democrats are mobilizing their own attorneys to fight back.

"The Florida Democratic voting rights team is putting voting rights lawyers on the ground in all 67 counties to protect voters from intimidation, poor administration and illegal acts that suppress voting rights," said Nick Baldick, the Democratic National Committee's senior Florida advisor.

GOP lawyers say this conspiracy talk by the Democrats is off base. Their public statement is that they are only assuring that those who vote are lawfully eligible to do so, and they charge that Democrats want to steamroll into polling places people who shouldn't be voting.

"I question whether the other side has all these lawyers so that they can attempt to do something wrong? In that case, we'll have lawyers to defend the law," Pozzuoli said.

Democrats say the Republican efforts and Democratic countermeasures will take in heavily Democratic urban areas, such as South Florida, Tampa and Jacksonville, and ignore Republican areas. Republicans say they will be insuring that the lawfully registered voter can cast ballots everywhere.

State Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach, said Tallahassee Republicans have told him that the challenges will take place in Democratic Broward and not in areas of GOP strength.

"You won't see it happening in the Panhandle," said Geller.

Pollster Jim Kane said he understands the Democrats' worry about any attempt to challenge voters that could lessen turnout.

"Kerry has to get lots of people to the polls to win. A big turnout means that marginal and occasional voters are turning out and those voters are usually Democrats," said Kane, who has worked for candidates from both major parties. "The lower the turnout, the better it is for Bush."

Democrats have already filed formal requests with county elections offices in Florida that poll workers should take any challenges from Republicans off to the side so as not to tie up voting lines.

The Democrats and their special interest group allies have more than 3,000 volunteer lawyers working Nov. 2. The Republicans are mum about their numbers, but say they will have enough to match the Democrats.

Since most have some other specialty such as construction law and real estate, they have been given quicky training courses in Florida election law.

"Our observers are there at the polls to make sure every single vote is cast legally," said Joseph Agostini, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party.

Agostini said the party lawyers would only challenge people not eligible to vote because their registration is flawed.

Florida Republican Party adviser Mindy Tucker Fletcher declined requests from newspapers to identify which voters the Republicans believe have unlawfully registered to vote. Republicans in the past have complained of felons and voters with false addresses on the voting rolls.

Republicans also have lists of Florida voters who are also registered in New York City and its suburbs, said Pozzuoli. Such a list could be used in local condominium precincts, bastions of Democratic strength, to attempt to block seniors from voting, said Democrat Geller.

"It's not a crime to be registered in two places," said Charles Lichtman, a Fort Lauderdale commercial trial attorney who is the Democrat's lead counsel in Florida.

A British Broadcasting Corp. investigative team reported this week that it had obtained a portion of the Republicans' list, which contains 1,886 names and addresses of voters in heavily black and Democratic areas of Jacksonville. Republican spokespersons told the BBC that the list merely records the names and addresses on returned campaign mail.

Bill Lynch, Kerry deputy campaign manager, predicted that blacks would vote in record numbers despite Republican efforts.

"We're not going to be deterred by what the Republicans are trying to do," Lynch said. "They will fail."

Democrats say they are prepared for attempts by Republican lawyers to block voters from the polls because of questions about their lack of identification proving their address.

A study done for the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bipartisan group formed after the Florida ballot meltdown of 2000, found that 5 percent of Americans lack good personal identification. These Americans tended to be poor, less educated and living in cities.

Democrats have traditionally done better in those demographics than Republicans. Democrats know that U. S. Sen. John Kerry will need to get a large turnout in black and Hispanic voting precincts to have any chance of winning and accuse the Republican lawyers of planning to suppress the vote in those areas.

"We are focusing our efforts so that minority precincts will have lawyers in them," said the Democrat's Lichtman.

He said positioning lawyers at the polls is designed to head off a court battle in front of a legal system made more conservative by four years of appointments by Gov. Jeb Bush since 2000.

"We will be well-trained to deal with anything at the polls," Lichtman said. "Right now I don't see people running into court."

From his perch as a law professor at Nova Southeastern Law School and as one of South Florida's premier constitutional lawyers, Bruce Rogow doesn't believe it's a positive sign to see the army of lawyers mustering for Tuesday's election.

"Anytime you unleash 5,000 lawyers, there is danger," Rogow cautioned. "A lawyer's recourse is generally a courtroom."

-