When lawyers disrupt elections, it's the voters who lose. It makes me sick what the Florida Democratic Party is doing.
Silly me. I thought voters would choose the next president.
Now it's starting to look like lawyers and judges will have more say on the elections, at least in Florida.
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Lawyers doing the voters no favors
Silly me. I thought voters would choose the next president.
Now it's starting to look like lawyers and judges will have more say on the elections, at least in Florida.
It all started in 2000 when lawsuits became the way to win political elections. Al Gore is not president today because he lost in the Supreme Court.
Democrats vowed it wouldn'thappen again.
Believing the system is stacked against them in Republican-dominated Tallahassee, Democrats have begun an unprecedented preemptive assault in the courtroom. Party lawyers and their activist allies in special interest groups are challenging everything from how voters are registered to who should be on the ballot.
These suits distract elections officials at a time they should be preparing for what may be the biggest turnout Florida has ever seen. The lawyers are doing voters no favors.
Not that some of them seem to care. Many of these Democratic-oriented activist groups depend upon publicity to raise money, so they have a hidden reason to keep a high-profile suit alive. When it comes to some lawyers, the only thing they like more than billable hours is a microphone and a television camera.
A good example of lawyers running amok is the court battle over who should appear on the ballot in Congressional District 22. Democratic activists are insisting at the last minute that they have a new candidate on the ballot to run against U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale.
Their former Democratic nominee, Jim Stork, flubbed his withdrawal from office as badly as he waged his campaign. He announced publicly he was leaving the race almost a month before the deadline for removing his name from the ballot. Then he didn't file the proper papers in time.
Democrats sued.
They want political consultant Robin Rorapaugh to replace Stork on the ballot.
Never mind many absentee ballots have already been distributed, marked and returned to the elections office. Never mind it is too late to reprogram the electronic touch-screen voting machines. Never mind that early voting starts Monday. Never mind this foolish suit is sidetracking election administrators when they need to be concentrating on the Nov. 2 election.
Gisela Salas, Broward's second-in-command in the elections office, says, "I'm involved in day-to-day operations. I had to go to Tallahassee for two days on one suit when I could have been preparing for the election."
Don't expect any sympathy from the lawyers. Ron Meyer, a Tallahassee attorney representing the Democrats, told The Associated Press they'll stay in court. Even if the ballots can't be changed, Palm Beach County Democratic State Committeeman Joseph Martin and Committeewoman Katherine Kelly, who filed the suit, want votes cast for Stork to be counted for Rorapaugh. That raises other questions that could end up before a judge.
What's behind this suit?
Rorapaugh, who has managed many campaigns from the backrooms, is hardly a household name. I believe there is no way that even a well-known Democrat could start a campaign this late and beat Shaw.
Maybe the answer is that Democrats just want to hassle Shaw and the Republican-led state Elections Division.
But suits like the one in District 22 serve to complicate an already difficult election to run. It is the voters who could suffer from a flawed election.
Somewhere along the line, Democrats have forgotten what Ben Franklin warned as the nation was beginning so many years ago. Franklin said, "A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."
Posted by floridacracker at October 17, 2004 11:03 AM