n November, 2000 the Gore Campaign very likely changed for all time the aftermath of the voting process in American national politics. In fact. Gore attorney David Boies—flushed with victory from his recent legal battle against Microsoft —even coined a name for it. It's now called the post-election phase of the electoral process—the vote, the protest phase and the contest phase. Prior to 2000, no presidential candidate—before or after the Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel Tilden race in 1876—had ever contested the outcome of a national election until Al Gore attempted to recast the votes in Florida in order to snag that State's 25 electoral votes and take the White House out of the grasp of the man the America elected—George W. Bush.

With a clear precedent established by the ultra-liberal Florida Supreme Court in 2000 for "legal" post-election vote tampering, the Kerry Campaign has now embarked on a dangerous, conscious fundraising effort to recruit as many as 25,000 lawyers as "poll watchers" in the key 16 battleground States. Their job will be to contest the vote in any close States where it appears that Kerry is narrowly losing—or in any precincts within those States where it appears Kerry might gain an appreciable number of votes by doing so. (This was the same tactic employed by Gore in 2000, where he did not contest the votes in any Florida county in which he lost—he only contested the votes in counties that had overwhelmingly voted for him—a violation of Florida law. Florida the law does not permit a candidate for office to contest the votes in precincts he won—only in those he lost. Yet, Gore and his lawyers sidestepped the law and demanded recounts in counties in which he had won since Gore believed that any recount would favor him. Those counties became the basis of his protest. In the final phase of the endgame, two counties that Bush won—Seminole and Martin—figured in Gore's gasping at straws gambit when he tried to have all of the absentee ballots cast in those two counties thrown out because a handful of ballots of challenged.)

Last week, Sen. John Kerry's on-again, off-again Campaign Manager Mary Beth Cahill launched what can best be described as an urgent fundraising appeal on the campaign's website to finance what she described as the possibility of another protracted recount battle—only this time, in as many as 16 States simultaneously. "Election day," Cahill wrote, "is several weeks away, but our campaign is already considering our options should John Kerry or George Bush pursue a recount like the famous Florida ballot dispute in 2000. That year, the Bush Campaign raised more than $14 million in the Florida crisis, compared to Al Gore's campaign, which raised $3.2 million. We can never again be outspent 4-to-1 in such a critical situation."

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe weighed in, saying "...There are people who felt that the Democrats didn't fight hard enough last time. That's not going to happen [this time]." Clearly, the Democrats did everything short of holding a loaded gun on the electorate in their effort to steal the Election of 2000—and, by adroitly using the liberal mainstream media, slanted the news coverage to make it appear that Bush hijacked the election from the Gore Campaign which was only trying to make sure every that ballot was counted—even those who may have deliberately voted "none of the above" (something that 3.2% of the voters do in every national election). Lawyers employed by the Gore Campaign successfully disenfranchised the votes of 25% of the American soldiers serving overseas by disqualifying their ballots because they lacked postmarks (which military mail generally does not have). And in the closing minutes of Boies' "protest phase" of the election, the Democrats also attempted to disenfranchise over 25,000 Republican voters in Seminole and Martin counties as they screamed how important it was to make sure every vote was counted. What they meant, of course, was every Gore vote.

"The Democrats," Republican National Committee senior spokesman Terry Holt said, "have made the very large number of lawyers they're using a part of their political message. They are playing a very high stakes legal game for a political outcome. It's almost as if they would rather have lawyers decide this election than the voters." Of course he would. To put it very bluntly, Sen. John Kerry is becoming increasingly convinced with each passing day and each new poll that the American people are not going to elect him as the 44th President of the United States. Therefore, Kerry is coming acutely aware that if he's going to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next four years he's going to need an endtime strategy even better than Al Gore's. And the Kerry Campaign is already preparing for that eventuality.

New Yorker magazine reported last week that the Bush team, which was caught flat-footed in 2000 when the Democratic legal blitzkrieg rolled across Florida, plans to have lawyers on "call," ready to go on a moment's notice to any of 30,000 precincts within the battleground States when the expected Democratic election shenanigans begin.

Although the election-law experts insist that 2004 won't be marred with the same type of dispute that ended the Election of 2000, there is little doubt in the mind of the Bush team that it will happen. And, because they are convinced that Kerry's endgame strategy is to contest any close State, they claim they are prepared for challenges from Kerry anywhere. Throughout the summer and early fall the Republican National Lawyers Association has conducted what they term were "Florida Schools" for hundreds of conservative lawyers nationwide. The RNC has been evaluating the legal teams that have been put together by the respective State party organizations.

Kerry's campaign counsel, Marc Elias, described the Democrat's election-law challenges and poll-watching activities to the Washington Times as "aggressive and proactive." Elias told Times reporter Donald Lambro that the Kerry team will be ready to send heavyweight legal teams to any State where balloting is challenged, and the outcome is uncertain. In point of fact, Kerry will have lawyers on the ground in key precincts around the country to raise the initial cries if the counts appear close enough to challenge. Kerry's "heavyweight legal teams" will likely already have their plane tickets for those locations before the first votes are even cast on Nov. 2 since Kerry, using demographic expert Bob Beckel's knowledge of voting patterns in Democratic strongholds, will already know where to go to find a few extra votes in any close State race. (Beckel was the strategist that put together the weekend-before-the-election

The Republicans, on the other hand, are too optimistic. They are confidently predicting that the platoons of Democratic lawyers won't have anywhere to go after the votes are counted since they expect a Reagan-Mondale landslide—or at least a Nixon-McGovern victory—over John Kerry. "You are going to have a lot of people dressed up for a party and nowhere to do," Republican election lawyer Jan Baran said. "The Florida situation historically occurs every 100 years because, generally, presidential elections are not close in the States, and if theyare, usually the outcome won't matter in the electoral vote count."

However, the odds are very good that John Kerry may still show the Republicans that not only can lightening strike twice in the same place—but that, very likely, it will if the vote in any State is close enough for lawyers to manipulate. Only a very embarrassing, lopsided loss will keep John Kerry from morphing into Al Gore. If that happens, he will morph into Walter Mondale and Mary Beth Cahill—who is currently being sabotaged by the Clinton and Gore Campaign carryovers—may find work with Beckel's political demographics consulting firm.