Palm Beach Bingo

So it is this balmy evening in the palm-laden Meyer Amphitheater, which abuts West Palm Beach’s Inter-coastal Waterway. Kicking off week two of the post-presidential election fiasco, Jackson is back for yet another rally. Last week, Democrats had suggested he leave, but after observing the Sabbath — perhaps as a sop to Palm Beach’s populous Jewish electorate — Jackson is back. The amphitheater is the kind of place where you normally find frozen-mocha-sipping yuppies taking in a smooth-jazz concert. But tonight the verdant venue is full of “the disenfranchised,” as they now call themselves — victims of the butterfly ballot who regurgitate all manner of baseless conspiracies that they think entitle them to a revote. Jackson calls for a three-block protest march to the supervisor of elections’ office, where the blinds are drawn and nobody’s home thanks to all the unwanted attention.

Last week’s street demonstrations seemed like the result of genuine voter outrage, but now the pros have taken over. The crowd is armed with identical Gore/Lieberman propaganda, bearing the brands of everyone from the NAACP to Planned Parenthood. Cher has just canceled her appearance, but there’s still an undeniable star presence. There’s pink-haired “Medical Marijuana Barbie,” striving to legitimize pot-use in a “positive, non-threatening way.” And there’s lip-ringed Carl, who insists he, like Gore, was robbed of votes in his write-in campaign for president, though upon further interrogation, he admits he’s 18 years old and too young to serve. “When I become president,” he promises, “that’s the first thing I’ll change.”

After a Democratic county commissioner stokes the crowd with the confidence-inspiring “message to America” that “we are not sunstroked,” Jesse takes the stage in his walking shoes and Idi-Amin-style safari suit. If you close your eyes and forget all the upscale boutiques and martini-bars, it could be Selma circa 1965. Jackson’s words sound inspiring, if slightly confused. “We’re at the fork in the road,” he tells the crowd. “We must not choose the fork!” His stage directions are equally unclear. The crowd is commanded to fill nearby Flagler Drive, but as the street runs two lanes in opposite directions, nobody knows which side of the median strip they are working. They push on valiantly (on both sides of the street ) until Jackson shows up to consolidate them in the northbound lane.

There is evidence Jackson’s lost a step, as an aide runs ahead to caution the police-driven pace car that the Reverend is suffocating on its fumes. Young protesters holding a Gore/Lieberman sign jump offsides and get ahead of Jackson, who fiercely waves them back. This march, it’s clear, is about something a lot bigger than Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. It’s about Jesse Jackson.

Rounding the turn onto North Olive in front of the elections office, Jackson is greeted by a steely band of Republican protesters, who have staked out prime heckling territory so they can scream “Go home, Jesse.” As one Republican does so with a megaphone, Jackson partisans wittily reply, “You go home, asshole.” A who-should-go-home argument ensues for several minutes, the back-and-forth becoming so rancorous that Jackson, fearful of violence, commands the crowd to reconvene back at the amphitheater. The Republicans’ de facto leader, a Las Vegas roofer named Wade Whitaker, thinks it’s all a trick to force Republicans to relinquish their turf. I point out to him that this would be a pretty elaborate ruse, as Jackson would have to convince 2,000 people to participate in a head-fake. Wade ponders this for a moment, then raises a fist. “On to the amphitheater!” he cries.

Wade is accompanied by a roughneck band of black Republicans from North Miami who call themselves Freedom Fighters International. Headed by a club singer named Michael Maurice Symonette, the FFI is alerting anyone who will listen that it was Democrats who lynched their ancestors, that the Gore family held slaves, and that Jackson is a “house Negro.” This kind of talk makes them stand out in the crowd. Back at the amphitheater, Gore loyalists collapse around them, swear at them, and joust at their anti-Jackson signs with signs of their own. From a distance, it looks like a drunk puppet show. Wade, Michael, and Co. decide to take an early leave after seeing one of their members thumped on the head, having their signs dismantled, and getting repeatedly threatened. Jesse, meantime, is bringing home the message that in an election, no voice should be stilled. “It’s helpin’ time; it’s healin’ time; it’s holy time,” he says. For those of us who’ve endured three of his rallies in less than a week, it’s Miller time.

TUESDAY, 11:33 A.M. Historically, Republicans have grown agitated at the idea of a state’s decisions being countermanded by overfed, underworked Washington bureaucrats. But if there’s anything this post-election morass has taught devolutionists, it’s that while the theory of state government is a fine thing, the reality is a circus like the one in Florida.

In Volusia County, for instance, an elderly poll worker showed up during a recount with a bag of ballots he’d forgotten in his car. Then there’s Palm Beach’s newest state representative Irv Slosberg, who campaigned by handing out corned beef sandwiches to voters, and who might face charges after getting caught with a Votamatic machine (used to punch holes in ballots) in his car. Most discouraging, especially to Palm Beach residents who’ve been whining that theirs was a confusing ballot, is this underreported tidbit from the Palm Beach Post: 15 Florida counties had worse ballot-error rates than Palm Beach’s 6.39 percent, giving new life to widespread suspicions about sunstroke.

Nowhere, however, are things more confusing than at Palm Beach County’s Emergency Operations Center, where ballot recounts are constantly on-again or off-again, depending on the whims of various judges and canvassing board commissioners: Theresa LePore (who okayed the butterfly ballot), Judge Charles Burton, and Gore-partisan Carol Roberts (whom Republicans have accused of the highest crime imaginable: fondling chads during last Saturday’s recount). As my cabbie wheels me into the operations center, which he says is used for “disasters like hurricanes — and our elections,” Jesse Jackson is already working the parking lot full of reporters. He is wearing yesterday’s clothes, which seems appropriate, as he is fighting yesterday’s battles.

The edifice itself is all light-tile and aquamarine trim, making it look like the inside of Gloria Estefan’s bathroom. Inside the building, potbellied cameramen in a plexiglassed room of video monitors keep one eye on The Price is Right and the other on the empty chamber, a NASA-style control room where the bipartisan ballot-counters will reside. In front of the building among the satellite trucks and makeshift media cabanas is an elevated platform with a table and microphones, where the canvassing board (“Larry, Moe, and Curly” to some reporters) conduct their frequent meetings in accordance with Florida’s sunshine laws. They repeatedly announce that they are waiting for a state supreme court ruling or a circuit court ruling or whatever else they need to continue or discontinue their ballot recounts. Generally, they don’t seem to know the answer to anything. It’s enough to give sunshine a bad name.

12:50 P.M. If there is little action at the operations center, there is nothing but action at the Palm Beach County circuit court. Courtroom 4-D currently belongs to Judge Jorge Labarga, who had the election cases dumped on him upon returning from lunch, after five other judges had recused themselves — three of them in one day. Perhaps they had genuine conflicts of interest. Or perhaps they just didn’t want the headache of deciding when dimpled chads become hanging chads (until last week, Judge Labarga says, he thought a chad was a “country in Africa”). More likely still is that they didn’t want to deal with what is known around the courthouse as the “gang-bang,” a legal term of art describing the 10 or so lawsuits filed by angry, confused, uncoordinated Gore voters. (One of them complains that his 12-year-old son who accompanied him steered his stylus to Pat Buchanan’s punch hole.)

From a difficulty standpoint, making it into the courtroom is on a par with crashing Studio 54 during Bianca Jagger’s birthday party. Guarding the velvet rope are surly bailiffs with Village People mustaches who enjoy separating lawyers from their clients and reporters from their photographers, and who generally deny admittance to all who would enter. It’s understandable that they’re intoxicated with their new power. They haven’t seen this much excitement since the early ’80s Pulitzer divorce case, when Roxanne shocked some of the world’s most decadent citizens after it was alleged she had congress with a trumpet.

Journalists are shunted to an overflow room in the courthouse cafeteria. As we crowd around a TV set, heavily rouged newsbunnies take all the choice seats and someone draws shut the accordion room dividers. Courthouse workers apparently don’t wish to look at journalists — at least not while they’re eating. As Judge Labarga mounts the bench, he seems overwhelmed. He is uncertain of names and claims and what the exact motion is before him, which may not be his fault. In the media room, he has plenty of company. Throughout the week, there is a nagging sense that you are missing something important. With multiple cases filed everywhere from circuit court to the supreme court, from Tallahassee to Atlanta, new legal developments change the story nearly every hour. That is why, back at the operations center, most reporters stay glued to CNN. They are America’s news leaders; we are America’s news followers.

5 P.M. Back in the operations center parking lot, another one of the sunshine press conferences commences. Republican and Democratic plants are thick on the ground, and when they cheer and jeer during the canvassing board’s meeting (they are still trying to decide what to do about recounting ballots), the board’s Judge Burton threatens to clear this outdoor courtroom. Outside the compound, I wait for a cab with Marco Bardazzi, a correspondent for ANSA Italian news. We commiserate about the difficulty of covering the multifaceted story. “Eeet’s very deeefeecult to explain to reader what chad is,” he says in a Roberto Benigni accent. “We thought we had the worst election system in the world. Now we are happy because someone has worst than ours.”

Standing next to us on the curb is a perky Bush supporter, holding a sign that says “Pray for our nation.” A beat-up El Camino drives by with the window rolled down. “Go home, asshole,” the driver yells, picking up on the theme of the Jackson rally debate. “I’m very happy I’m leaving,” says Bardazzi, as he steps into his cab.

WEDNESDAY, 9 A.M. In the courthouse cafeteria/media room, it’s all chad talk, all the time. Whether it be hanging, pregnant, or dimpled chads, we take childlike glee in our new vocabulary, awed that the election hangs on little paper punchouts that sound like the name of some failed garage band (please welcome, the Hanging Chads!). Today’s business involves the Florida Democratic party’s lawsuit to force the counting of dimpled chads (indented, but not perforated, punch cards). Labarga has been on the case only two days, but already he wonders aloud if “there’s anybody in Florida who has not sued in this case” and he seems at wit’s end. Instead of recusing himself like all the other judges, however, he mocks and cajoles the phalanx of barristers before him. “We’ve got 50 lawyers here and nobody hired a court reporter?” he asks incredulously, before calling a recess so one can be hired. Watching lawyers get ridiculed — there are worse ways to pass a day.

12:35 P.M. In the conference room at the operations center, listless counters pass the time, waiting for someone to give them the green light. Some read the paper. Some swivel in their chairs. But all of them are subjected to a particularly cruel form of torture — eight straight hours of MSNBC on a wall-length television screen with no remote control. Inside the video room, passed out cameramen saw logs on the floor, while their alert colleagues eye the counters as if they were apes at a zoo exhibit. “She’s the only hot one, I’d like to switch to her party affiliation,” one camera operator says of a Democratic counter. “The rest look like government employees.”

1:45 P.M. A few miles away on Belvedere Road, I visit the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And they are a brotherhood too — what the mafia used to call a “brotherhood of silence.” As I enter the parking lot of a dilapidated building shared with a bail bondsman, there is enough union-worker traffic in the parking lot to make one think it is a shopping mall. Before I can enter the building, however, I’m intercepted by spokeswoman Lane Windham, just in from D.C. along with scores of out-of-town AFL-CIO volunteers and lawyers. All across the city, Democratic types have started up affidavit sweatshops, where “disenfranchised” voters, convinced they were rooked in the election, can swear out complaints. The trade unionists say they are not planning to file suit, they’re just “collecting stories.” When I ask Windham if I can collect some of the stories, she tells me to be on my way — but not before insisting I talk to the head of the Florida AFL-CIO, Marilyn Lenard, on her cell phone. Lenard tells me that the AFL-CIO is not working in cahoots with the Democrats. But when I pop my head into a lunch room, out of Windham’s vigilant gaze, I see a big phone number magic-markered on the wall — the number for the Florida Democratic party. It seems the electrical workers aren’t the only ones telling stories.

3:45 P.M. At the Lake Ida strip mall in Delray Beach there is a similar affidavit factory, catering to elderly Jewish voters. Here at the Palm Beach Democratic party headquarters, the volunteer hacks and lawyers are a lot more open to letting me collect stories about their collecting stories. At an outdoor folding table, I meet Margot from Boca, a Gore supporter who thinks she confused the punch holes and inadvertently voted for Pat Buchanan. A lawyer asks her if she’s sure. She isn’t. He asks her if she asked for assistance. She didn’t, she says, because the poll worker misplaced her driver’s license as she signed in, so “how in the hell was he going to assist me.” The lawyer tells her to write down in her complaint (over 10,000 of which have been drafted) that she had “no confidence in the process.” Margot obliges, but she does so with trepidation. She is embarrassed over making the goof. “I’m a reading teacher,” she confides. “I have degrees up the rear end.” But it wasn’t her fault, she says. Not only was the ballot confusing, but she wears bifocals. Plus, she was “dead tired” and in a “hurried state” and at a “real low at 4:30 P.M.” Somehow, she has summoned the courage to fight. The fear is gone. The document is notarized. The sausage has been made.

THURSDAY. This is a long day at the operations center, as we endure all manner of protest and press conference. Working the parking lot is Bush flack Tucker Eskew (second cousin of Gore strategist Carter Eskew — “we don’t keep up,” he says) and Republican congressman Mark Foley. Foley has been spinning so long under the hot sun that by midday he has a George Hamiltan. As a Miami Herald reporter and I conclude lunch at a nearby sub shop, my colleague is alerted on his cell phone by an editor that mass civil disobedience is breaking out. By this time, he’s fairly jaded. “Rallies are so last week,” he says.

Back at the compound, straw-hatted Republicans brave pro-pot activists and karate-pose-striking Gore supporters while taking to the streets to defend secretary of state Katherine Harris, on track to become the next Linda Tripp. Inside, the counters have finally been given the go-ahead to resume their recounting, though it’s not clear if their recounting will count. In the media overflow room, where we watch catatonic bipartisan counters stare at little holes (newsroom wags now call them “f — ing chads”), fierce journalistic debate breaks out. Half the room thinks the first ballot was touched at 7:14 P.M., while the other half thinks it was 7:15 P.M. Blood is nearly spilled as two reporters quibble over whether Theresa LePore welcomed the recounters back with an “okay” or a “good evening” before saying, “here we go again.” The authorities are nearly called when a chad debate spins out of control: Is the plural “chads,” or is chad its own plural, like “sheep”?

As in the sunshine state itself, it is brother against brother, copy slinger against newsbunny. For now, only one thing is certain: Composing history’s first draft isn’t pretty.

Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.