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By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 19, 2000; Page A23

Republicans complained bitterly yesterday that Democratic lawyers in Florida systematically sought to invalidate absentee ballots from U.S. military personnel, saying the Democrats presented a barrage of technical objections when those votes were counted Friday.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush increased his lead over Vice President Gore to 930 after the absentee count, but that margin might have been greater had 1,000 or more absentee ballots from overseas not been thrown out. Democratic Party lawyers, armed with a five-page instruction sheet on how to scrutinize and protest overseas postmarks and voter signatures, aggressively challenged the overseas ballots during counts by Florida's 67 county election boards.

"We are concerned that a targeted effort by the Democratic Party sought to throw out as many as a third of the overseas absentee ballots received since Election Day," said Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes. "No one who aspires to be commander in chief should seek to unfairly deny the votes of the men and women he would seek to command."

She said lawyers for Bush were considering contesting the invalidated ballots.

Montana Gov. Marc Racicot (R), appearing with Hughes, said, "Last night we learned how far the vice president's campaign will go to win this election. And I am very sorry to say but the vice president's lawyers have gone to war in my judgment against the men and women who serve in our armed forces."

Aides to Gore said Republicans were equally vigilant in scrutinizing the ballots. "The final decision about whether to keep a ballot or get rid of a ballot is up to the local election officials. The bottom line is, it's not our decision," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jenny Backus. The Bush camp, said Backus, is "trying to raise the rhetoric to try to muddy the process."

Backus said that a county-by-county canvass done by Democrats found that officials received 3,600 absentee ballots from overseas after Nov. 7, one-third of them from military addresses. Of the total number, Democrats calculated 1,400 were rejected, she said, though she did not know how many of those were from the military.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that Bush had picked up 1,380 votes in the overseas ballot count, while Gore gained 750. Bush's 630 votes, added to his existing lead of 300, put him ahead by 930 votes.

In Duval County in North Florida, about 10 lawyers from both sides showed up to mount challenges to many of the 603 overseas ballots. In the end, 107 were invalidated, 44 of them unfairly, in the view of Republican lawyer Jim Post.

"They had us there for nine hours checking signatures, even though the elections supervisor had already done that," said Post. "They objected to over 100 of them. 'That T doesn't match that T, we object.' We won every single one of those objections.

"A large majority were military. They were trying to get rid of everyone because this area of the state is conservative," said Post.

Many of the discounted ballots lacked a postmark or legible post date, though they were sent by military personnel. The Bush camp released a letter from the Defense Department's military postal service agency explaining that while postmarks are required on mail processed by the military, it is not always possible to apply them.

"There are instances when time constraints do not allow for proper postmarking/cancellation of mail," wrote E.M. DuComm, military postal service deputy director. "The last flight may be departing ship and the mail has to get on it. . . . No one is going to refuse to take a letter or ballot at the last minute because they do not have time to postmark it. It could be weeks before they see mail service again."

Post said military ballots without postmarks were discarded even though they had been received within a day or two of the Nov. 7 election, so clearly had been mailed well before.

Miami-Dade received 307 overseas ballots but accepted only 102. "If it was from Guam, which I consider overseas, it went out. If the postmark was smudged, it went out," said lawyer Thomas R. Spencer, who observed the Miami-Dade balloting for the Republicans.

Navy Lt. j.g. John Kiefaber, commander of a helicopter squadron on the USS Klakring, knew the vagaries of military mail. When his ship left Norfolk for Brazil, he wrote to request absentee ballots, not only for himself but for the 17 pilots in his squadron.

"I sent away for them in August but didn't even get them until November 7," he said yesterday. The tiny post office on his ship wouldn't have been able to postmark his ballot and get it out that day, so he took his ballot, marked for Bush, to a post office in Florida as soon as the ship docked Nov. 13, but it was too late.

Democrats carried a battle over absentee votes cast by U.S. residents into court in Seminole County yesterday, arguing that Republican Party officials illegally filled in voter identification numbers on thousands of ballots. The party had obtained the ballots, partially filled them out and mailed them to voters, who sent them in. When the elections supervisor, a Republican, discovered many had failed to include their voter ID number, she contacted the Republican Party. Party workers went through the voter rolls and filled in the numbers, a move Democrats contend was illegal.