Word: beachings
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...Bush effort. Under questioning by Gore attorney Stephen Zack, Hengartner, who qualified as an "expert" witness, painstakingly explicated a pile of placards bearing simplified bar graphs and carefully highlighted statistics, simultaneously charming the courtroom and making a solid case that the newly famous Votomatic voting machines (used in Palm Beach County) are more likely to fail or register incomplete voter choices than other voting methods...
...underscore a serious miscalculation on the part of Gore's legal team - which would probably have been wise to have stuck with the Miami-Dade recount as the basis for their contest. Then, instead of wasting two witnesses trying to prove esoteric mechanical flaws of machines in Palm Beach, the Democrats might have scored a few points by insisting they were only trying to procure a first count of 10,000 Miami-Dade ballots...
...they'd officially rested their case, GOP attorney Fred Bartlit sprung from his seat to request a directed (or immediate) verdict on the grounds the Dems had no case. Judge Sauls "respectfully" denied the motion and Bartlit demurred, calling his first witness: Judge Charles Burton of the Palm Beach canvassing board...
...Happily for the Democrats, while Burton managed to score a few points for Bush's cause of discrediting the admittedly erratic recount process in Palm Beach ("There's bound to be some opinion involved in situations like this," Burton remarked ruefully during Bartlit's direct) those doubts may be enough to plant a lingering question in Judge Sauls' mind. If all Palm Beach County needed was a set of guidelines to ensure "a fair and accurate" count, could Sauls be just the guy to set such parameters...
...There was great camaraderie between Sauls and Burton; at one point, Burton shook his head over his attempt to prescribe some order to the Palm Beach recount, saying, "I've been attacked since then as the one who?s tried to block the recount." Sauls took issue with this and replied warmly, "Well, I can?t say I agree. I personally salute you as a great American," eliciting the first smile from an exhausted-looking Burton...