Word: brace
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...Bush team pounced. They relentlessly questioned the expertise of the expert witness, in which Brace wound up looking like a sort of hobbyist, able to voice his opinions only as "personal observations" based on his long experience in the field. (Or, as Bush lawyer Phil Beck put it disdainfully, "his years of travels.") And then they let him talk...
...stiff over age, he told Gore questioner Stephen Zack. Some styluses were particularly apt to leave chad behind. Some people voted with the card on top of the machine, and only left dimples. Sometimes the chad basin filled up so high that punching through was futile. And Brace never missed an opportunity to tack a Gore talking point at the end of observations. The scanner misses votes, so all the votes in Maimi-Dade must be counted by hand, "the only way of absolutely knowing for sure" who won. Thank you, Kimball...
...Cross-examination is a savage business, and Beck came out with teeth bared. Sneering, sardonic, and sometimes downright vicious, Bush's new star went after Brace on the rubber blends used in South Florida ("I don't know"), the name of the machine that tests rubber softness ("I don't know") how many chads make a pile ("I don't know"), and every other technical fine point with which he could stump Brace for Sauls' amusement. "Your opinion as a political science major is that rubber gets harder?" Beck scoffed, the scarcasm dripping. Brace had come in looking like...
...while he cut away at the technical truth of Brace's claims, Beck did something else - he goosed the passionate and pontification-prone witness into helping the Bush team with its backup plan. As Brace defended the integrity of some dimples, he got Brace to valiantly defend the abilities of canvassing boards to discern dimpled intent. Whoops. Boies, looking for another 600 votes, is also suing for a recount of the hand count in Palm Beach. If Gore's witness for his case in Miami-Dade turns out to be credible, he'll have done some work for Bush...
...ultimately, commonsense aspects of Brace's claims may make a lasting impression on Sauls. The idea that hanging chad happens - and can fool a machine scanner - is still a valid and sensible argument for a Miami-Dade manual recount, whatever the legal questions involved (that'll come later), and there was no evidence Sauls didn't see it. And when Beck had finished, and wiped the blood off his lips, Gore lawyer Zack made up some lost ground, bringing in a genuine Votomatic whose basin that was "filled to the brim with chad." The intuitive virtues of Brace's testimony...