The post-campaign campaign is a fight over whose controlling legal authority — Al Gore’s or George W. Bush’s — will win the Florida ballot battle. After tweaking the Gore campaign last week about starting lawsuits over voting irregularities in Florida, the Bush camp yesterday sued to stop a manual recount of the Palm Beach county ballots. Former Secretary of State James Baker, Bush’s man on the Florida case, insists on the “precision machinery” of the automated recount, but he’ll take a new manual recount that will give Bush a four vote lead in New Mexico.
And votes in other close states like Iowa, Wisconsin and Oregon could be contested now too. Meanwhile, George W. Bush is holed up in the oval office of the Texas Governor’s mansion and Al Gore is in leisure mode, but their lawyers have hit the Florida beach running. The continuing story of the ballot bungle of 2000 is this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Steve Stark, NPR commentator
Akhil-Amar, Professor of Constitutional law at Yale University
John Fund, reporter for the Wall Street Journal
and Kevin Phillips, political writer and author of “The Cousins’ War”.