RLANDO, Fla. - Four years ago, employees in the Volusia County elections office altered 6,000 absentee ballots, re-marking them with a felt-tipped pen because a machine could not read the marks made by voters.
The loser in the race for sheriff, Gus Beckstrom Jr., sued. The case went to the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the election results in a 1998 ruling. The justices harshly criticized Volusia supervisor of elections Deanie Lowe for what happened, but they did not throw out the votes in that race. Incumbent Sheriff Bob Vogel held on to his victory.
Now, lawyers and legal experts predict the ruling in the Volusia case signals what is likely to happen in the lawsuit over Seminole County's 15,000 absentee ballots. Democrat Harry Jacobs is asking that they all be thrown out. If he prevails, it could tip the presidential election to Vice President Al Gore.
Gerald Richman, Jacobs's attorney, said Monday that he had not analyzed the Beckstrom case. But legal specialists have been saying for weeks that Jacobs is unlikely to win.
''Will this bird fly? In my view, no way,'' said Don Weidner, a Jacksonville attorney who represented Beckstrom.
In the Volusia case, the court ruled that elections officials do not have to be perfect. All they have to do is substantially comply with the law, said Donald Lively, dean of Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville.
That will be one of the key issues before state Circuit Judge Nikki Clark, who is scheduled to preside today over the Seminole case in Tallahassee. A pretrial hearing was yesterday. Attorneys for Seminole supervisor of elections Sandy Goard asked that the case be dismissed.
Goard allowed GOP employees to work for three weeks out of a back room of her office, writing in voter-identification numbers on postcards from voters requesting absentee ballots.
The cards had originated from a Florida GOP mass mailing. Goard had thrown them into a discard box because they lacked the numbers, something required by state law.
Jacobs's lawsuit alleges that by writing in the numbers on 2,130 cards, the GOP committed vote fraud, and by letting them do it, Goard did, too. It is now impossible to identify specifically which ballots were involved, so Clark is left with little option but to rule in favor of Goard or throw out all 15,000 absentee ballots. If she does the latter, that would mean a 4,800-vote swing for Gore.
Ken Wright, an attorney for Florida's Republican Party, calls the suit a dispute over ''a hypertechnicality.''
Still, the suit continues to attract attention for its potential to reverse the election results. Nevertheless, the Gore campaign will not join in, said Dexter Douglas, one of Gore's attorneys.
The vice president told his staff to stay out of the Seminole case, a source close to his lawyers said Monday. To jump in would mean Gore, who has fought for weeks in court to have more votes counted, would be working to have unquestionably legal votes thrown out.
Jacobs and his lawyers insist they are acting independently of Gore and the Democratic Party.
But the Democrats clearly are paying close attention. An attorney for the Democratic National Committee said Monday that he gave advice to Jacobs and read a draft of his first complaint before Jacobs delivered it Nov. 12 to the Seminole County canvassing board.
Mark Herron said he did not encourage or discourage Jacobs from filing the complaint or, later, the lawsuit, which he also read before it was filed.
''My role is just to advise people on what Florida election law is,'' he said.
He was vague about the specifics of his conversation with Jacobs and said he did not remember who called whom, but he said that most likely he warned Jacobs about the deadline for filing a complaint.
In a deposition Saturday, Jacobs said he also contacted Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and a Gore fund raiser.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen Seminole absentee voters have joined with the supervisor to fight the suit, seeking to keep the judge from throwing out their ballots and those of others.
Mathew Staver, their lawyer, said Monday that he would argue that the judge in this case should do what the Florida Supreme Court did in the Beckstrom case.
''If you can doctor a ballot after it's cast to make it so a machine can read it, then you certainly should be able to add a voter ID to an application for a ballot and not void that person's vote,'' Staver said.
