| http://www.gopbi.com/news/special/harris_recount.html
Files: Harris' office set for Bush win before recount � By S.V. D�te, Jim Ash and Mary Ellen Klas Palm Beach Post Staff Writers TALLAHASSEE -- Hours before Palm Beach County's final presidential election recount totals were due last November, staffers for Secretary of State Katherine Harris and GOP political operatives were preparing speech drafts calling them "unlawful" and declaring George W. Bush the winner in Florida, according to documents from her computers recovered by The Palm Beach Post. When she later appeared on national television on Nov. 26, Harris disregarded Palm Beach County's manual recount because it was completed two hours after a 5 p.m. deadline when she certified Bush the winner. But according to drafts of that document made legible by a data recovery company from Harris' office computers, Harris' advisers -- which at that point included two top Republican campaign operatives with access to her computers -- had drafted a document by 1:30 p.m. that named Bush the winner. While the majority of the tens of thousands of files released Tuesday contained drafts of speeches, news releases, some e-mail messages, phone lists and other office material, some showed that state computers in Harris' Capitol suite were used for political work on behalf of then-candidate Bush. "After seven years of Democrat rule in the White House -- we need to send the loudest possible message that we are READY TO LEAD!" read one speech prepared in January 2000 on the office computer of then-communications Director Donald Tighe. Tighe, who now works for a Washington nonprofit group, Tuesday acknowledged doing political work in Harris' office, but said the time spent on politics was dwarfed by the time he spent doing state business. "There was never a week when I was on staff when there wasn't 50 to 60 hours put into nonpolitical work," he said. Harris spokesman David Host said initially that the speeches and "talking" points on behalf of George W. Bush had not been written in Harris' office, but, rather, that they had merely been sent to her office. After learning that Tighe had conceded that the material had, in fact, been written in Harris' office, Host said Tighe had made a mistake. "That's something that would have been wrong for him to have done," Host said. Harris released a statement taking credit for "the greatest effort any public office has ever made to honor Florida's proud heritage of government in the sunshine" and saying the restored files "prove that despite the innuendo and misinformation reported in the media, no partisan political activity transpired in my office during the recount period." ' Talking points' Tighe, who earned $71,960 a year until he left the office in April 2000, had on his computer in March "talking points" for Harris from the Bush campaign, calling him a "reformer with results" leading up to Florida's March 14 presidential primary. Also on that same computer was a set of talking points for Harris in which she urged Floridians to vote in the primary. Those two duties were merged in a single document -- a speech delivered to the Republican Party of Florida's Jan. 29 winter meeting in Orlando -- in which she first urged listeners to vote, and then urged them to vote for Bush. "I am a bit biased -- after all -- I co-chair the campaign effort of George W. Bush -- and I have to tell you how great it was to campaign with Jeb in the snows of New Hampshire last weekend, delivering Florida oranges door to door," according to the recovered document. Tighe said Tuesday that Harris devoted only a small percentage of her time to partisan politics while in office, but that was a fact of life in Florida's unique elected Cabinet system where every member must run for statewide office. "That's part of the challenge created by the constitutional structure of the state," he said. State Democratic Party Chairman Bob Poe was not impressed with the explanation. "We knew all along she was only moonlighting as secretary of state and working full time for the George W. Bush campaign," he said. "She ought to reimburse the taxpayers for the time she spent working on the campaign." GOP consultants in her suite The interest in Harris' computers began a month ago, when a New York Times article revealed that she had allowed two top Republican political consultants full access to her office and two conference room computers during the monthlong recount controversy. The Times reported that attempts to view those two computers were unsuccessful. In fact, Harris informed them in writing in March that both computers had been "re-formatted" -- essentially erased. Host repeated this claim to The Post the day after The Times article appeared. The office changed its story in the coming week, however, after The Post and other newspapers ran articles questioning whether such deletions violated the state's public records law. Harris' office then allowed a media consortium that included The Post and a dozen other news organizations to examine the two computers that were located in the conference room as well as two other computers that had been used election night. The media consortium hired Minnesota-based Ontrack Data International -- a company that was originally recommended to Harris by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for the identical purpose -- to catalog the computers' hard drives and recover any data that may have been deleted. Ontrack made a copy of the four computers' drives last week and shipped the data to the news organizations Monday evening. To count, or not count As much of the nation was watching television coverage of the Palm Beach County canvassing board peer through chads and dimples Nov. 26, Harris' staff had anticipated the county wouldn't finish by the 5 p.m. deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court. "As we all know, the returns from Palm Beach are composed of some votes that were manually counted that included votes that were manually recounted and votes that were not," the 1:30 p.m. draft entitled " Statement from the Secretary of State" speculated. The statement blames the high court for creating a situation that gave Harris "no discretion to reject this unlawful return" but predicts that whatever the county's return, Bush would still win. "Thankfully, this unlawful return does not affect the outcome of this election," the draft read. "Therefore, I believe we may proceed to certification without frustrating the will of the people." Sometime between 1:30 and 5 p.m., Harris and her advisers had a change of heart. They did reject Palm Beach County's partial hand-count results and instead used the county's final total from Nov. 14, when the machine count was certified. Tallahassee lobbyist and Republican consultant J.M. "Mac" Stipanovich was one of those advisers who had access to the computers, but he said Tuesday he did not recall writing the announcement. He did say it was justified given the timeline. Harris knew the Palm Beach County hand counts were not going to be included in the official certification because, "under the law, you cannot have partial hand recounts," he said. Broward had completed its counting and Miami-Dade had thrown up its hands, he said. "It sounds more portentous and onerous than it was," he said. "At some point, it was just a matter of the clock ticking off. We were just waiting." |
