Word: beck
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...fell to Judge Lewis, the level-headed, mustachioed novelist-jurist who had disappointed the Gore team with his ruling four weeks ago backing Secretary of State Katherine Harris. On Friday night, when Lewis held a preliminary hearing to set a timetable for the recount, Bush lawyer Phil Beck staged a remarkable filibuster, a meandering, hourlong statement that seemed designed to delay the counting for just as long as Beck could string sentences together. Beck, the Bush team's lead trial lawyer, sensibly pushed Lewis to define the terms of the hand count--dimples, no; hanging chads, yes? But the judge...
...team offered two witnesses and planned to call 18 more. At times the proceedings dwelled on small but crucial matters, like whether old chads build up behind ballots and sometimes prevent a hole from being fully punched. Gore won a victory on that point, but Bush lawyer Phil Beck expertly cross-examined the Gore team's statistician, Yale professor Nicolas Hengartner. The professor had to admit that he had in fact never inspected a certain ballot that he claimed to have examined in his affidavit. The embarrassing admission didn't change Hengartner's overall point that there were serious problems...
...have fought hand counts of undervotes so doggedly? Yes, but they have valid reasons for opposing the counts - chiefly that there is no single standard for them. They also say handling the ballots "spoliates" them, a lawyerly way of saying counters can push chads through accidentally. Bush lawyer Phil Beck wanted Lewis to rule that only a chad with a stylus imprint could count, not one pushed through, say, by a finger. Lewis dismissed that request for now, but in the end his decision may not matter...
...Beck walked Ahmann through a litany of questions, trying to establish the relative delicacy of the ballot. Ahmann admitted that even normal handling can dent, dislodge or dimple parts of the ballot, let alone the vigorous handling inherent in repeated hand counts. You see, Beck seemed to be saying, if even the expert here believes there are marks on the ballots that are in absolutely no way related to voter intent, how can we ask non-experts to differentiate inadvertent marks from intended marks...
...ruckus broke out, Phil Beck stormed forward and asked to read the document, which Zack grudgingly permitted him to hold. The surprise statement was allowed - and Zack got Ahmann to admit that his device can lead to unreadable votes due to chad buildup, dangling chads and even rubber problems...