Medal of Honor Winners Enter the Fray


A Florida -attorney retained by the Democratic Party organized a statewide effort to disqualify as many overseas absentee ballots as possible-including those posted by members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Florida counties subsequently rejected over 1,200 of these ballots for many reasons, including bearing domestic postmarks or no postmarks at all.


War veterans in Congress as well as Floridian Medal of Honor recipients have decried this as a "plan and design to disenfranchise the overseas military vote in Florida." The Republican Party has sued county canvassing boards for rejecting many of the ballots, arguing that federal law requires their acceptance.

Adding to the confusion, different counties have used different standards in determining the validity of the ballots.
Florida law generally requires that absentee ballots be received by Election Day, but overseas voters get a 10-day extension for presidential elections. State statutes, taken together with rules promulgated by the state's election division, require that all absentee ballots be signed by the voter and a witness, and either dated or postmarked by Election Day. During the 10 days after the election, only those ballots with foreign or military postmarks are accepted-to ensure that no domestic voters receive the extension.


On Friday, November 17, when county canvassing boards began examining the overseas absentee. ballot envelopes, Democratic attorneys lobbied the boards to reject most of them, and Republican lawyers urged their acceptance.


Under Fire


Democratic attorneys were operating under the instruction of Mark Herron, a Tallahassee lawyer retained by the Democrats the -night of the election.


Bob Sweat, the elections supervisor in Manatee County, described the scene at the canvassing board meeting that Friday. "We had some hotshot Democrat attorney from out of the state. He protested everything, it didn't matter. He almost protested-our breathing."


St. Petersburg resident Ronald Ray, a soldier in Vietnam, and one of the 151 living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, decried this concerted effort. Ray, who was born Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, entered the Army in 1966. He received the Medal of Honor for organizing a reaction force to a Vietcong assault, directing his troops to safety, under heavy fire, while sustaining serious wounds.


Ray twice provided cover for soldiers and medics who were under assault by throwing grenades at the enemy. When an enemy grenade landed near two of his soldiers, Ray dove in front of it, using.his body to shield his men. After the grenade tore up his legs and feet, Ray was shot in his legs.


Still, he led his men to safety before allowing medics to attend to him.


In an interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Ray said that Vice President Gore "is doing everything he can to get elected right now," and that includes a systematic effort to reject military votes. "Politics is okay up to a point, but when you start not counting military overseas votes, that's when you step in my court. and that's where I will definitely come down hard against it."


Ray watched the absentee ballot. canvassing in Manatee County, where, he said, Democratic attorneys "were fighting every one of those ballots." He said that a number of the ballots were postmarked from Hampton Roads, Va. "Now everyone with one eye and half a brain knows, those are votes that come off a ship."


Herron's memo included the various grounds for rejecting overseas ballots, but did not cite,,a conflicting federal law. Rep. Steve Buyer (R.-- Ind.) a Vietnam veteran who is chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, has sent out a "Dear Colleagues" letter suggesting that Florida might be disenfranchising overseas and military voters in violation of federal law.


In an interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Buyer said that Herron's memo misrepresented the law and "confused the boards with regard to the law." Buyer argued that the 1965 Voting Rights Act subordinated state election law to federal laws, and that the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) eliminates the requirement for an overseas postmark.


Federal law does not require a postmark for military mail and specifies that no postage is needed for military absentee ballots. Accordingly, much military mail does not receive a postmark until it reaches the United States, and some is never postmarked at all. Buyer argues that a strict interpretation of the relevant laws would require counties to accept military ballots with domestic or missing postmarks.


Gore surrogates originally claimed that Herron was an independent lawyer. The St. Petersburg Times, however, reported on November 17, that the DNC called Herron to hire him at 4 a.m. Wednesday, November 8.


Herron's former law firm-Akermann, Senterfitt-- officially holds that Herron resigned on November 7, and the forwarding number they gave HUMAN EVENTS was a Democratic headquarters in Florida. A Democratic spokesman confirmed that "the Democratic Party has retained Mark Herron."


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