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Lawyer urges snowbirds to cast their votes (to help Kerry)in Florida
Palm Beach Post ^ | Sept. 19, 2004 | Mary McLachlin

Posted on 10/03/2004 9:04:29 PM PDT by FairOpinion

BOCA RATON— In the muddled aftermath of Election 2000, Lawrence Caplan lost a legal fight and learned an important political lesson at the hands of none other than Vice President Dick Cheney:

You can live in one state and vote in another.

Caplan, a tax and corporate lawyer, has turned that lesson into Operation: Snowbird, an Internet tool designed to make a difference in the election of 2004 — if Democratic voters in New York and New Jersey respond to it.

POPULAR PAGESAll they have to do, according to Caplan's Web site, www.operationsnowbird.com, is switch their registrations to Florida, where their votes are more likely to be needed by the Kerry-Edwards ticket than in the deep "blue" states up north. (The last day to register for the Nov. 2 election is Oct. 4.)

New York went for Gore-Lieberman by more than 1.7 million votes, while the official margin for Bush-Cheney in Florida was 537. If only 600 of the 2.2 million votes cast for the Democratic ticket in New York had been cast in Florida, according to the Snowbird site, the state's electoral votes and the presidency would have gone to Al Gore.

"We don't know how close this election is going to be," Caplan said. "If we get 10,000 people to switch it's worth it."

But they'd better heed the instructions on the Web site, because Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood is on the warpath over a New York newspaper's claim last month that at least 46,000 New York City dwellers are registered both there and in Florida, and some have been voting in both places. That's voter fraud, a federal crime with a fine of $10,000 and up to five years in prison.

Hood has asked the FBI and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to investigate the allegations and advise the state Division of Elections how to deal with the problem of multiple registration.

Caplan's Web site warns voters emphatically about the penalties for trying to vote in two states and lays out the process for moving registration legally. It says anyone is eligible who maintains a mailing address in Florida and intends to make the state his or her legal residence at some unspecified time.

"(Y)ou do not even have to be a homeowner in Florida," the site says, "but could merely be a part-time renter who wishes to become a Florida resident."

The Operation: Snowbird instructions include a list of 15 things that can be used for identification and links for downloading registration forms, checking state election law and contacting all supervisor of elections offices.

"The key is having a mailing address," Caplan said in an interview. "Whether you're renting, or own it, or it can be your mother's address. If you have a driver's license, a Florida ID card or even just a utility bill with your name and address on it, then you can register to vote, effective immediately, just like there was no waiting period for Cheney in Wyoming."

Constitution forces Cheney switch

As the nation focused on who would get Florida's electoral votes in 2000, Caplan filed suit in Miami federal court to stop Texas' 32 electoral votes from going to George W. Bush and Cheney. Both were legal residents of Texas, the suit said, and the U.S. Constitution's 12th Amendment forbids a state's Electoral College delegates from casting their votes for both a president and vice president from the same state.

Cheney lived, worked, voted and claimed homestead exemption in Texas during the 1990s, while he was CEO of the Halliburton Co. energy conglomerate. Just before he became Bush's running mate, he flew to Wyoming, where he grew up and still owned property, and switched his voter registration and driver license. That, his lawyers would later argue, made him an "inhabitant" of Wyoming and provided a loophole around the 12th Amendment.

Caplan's suit was rejected on jurisdictional grounds in Miami, then refiled by other lawyers in Texas. There, it was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater, a conservative Republican for whom George P. Bush — Gov. Jeb Bush's son, who got married last month — has clerked since finishing law school at the University of Texas at Austin.

A three-member panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — two appointed by George H.W. Bush and one by Ronald Reagan — upheld Fitzwater's ruling. But the U.S. Supreme Court, after reversing the Florida Supreme Court to halt the recount of the state's ballots and give Bush the presidency, declined to hear an appeal of the 12th Amendment suit.

"What happened four years ago was totally unplanned, a reaction to what was going on around me," Caplan said in an interview. "I'm not a political animal, I have no party involvement, I'm registered as an independent, I vote for the person, not the party."

But he said controversy over touch-screen voting systems, the Bush administration's failure to fund the Voter Education Act and the debacle over a list of 40,000 felons the state proposed to purge from voter rolls "kind of ticked me off."

That emotion spawned the Web site for snowbirds — slang for Northerners who spend winters in Florida.

Weston Cowan, 22, a recent college graduate working in New York City, said he definitely intends to take advantage of Caplan's instructions and switch his registration back to Broward County, where his parents own property.

"I just really don't like George Bush," Cowan said, "and I figure my vote doesn't really count much in New York because the Democrats are going to win anyway."

Democratic and Republican reaction to the snowbird initiative is predictably partisan.

"The Democratic Party always welcomes more voters in Florida," said Carol Ann Loehndorf, head of the Palm Beach County Democratic Executive Committee. "We're happy to have more voters down here, but I wouldn't want anybody to have a personal loss by losing their homestead exemption in New York."

Loehndorf's GOP counterpart, Sid Dinerstein, also cited homestead exemption as an issue. He called the plan "just another way that Democrats exploit (people), particularly seniors, in their quest for ever more illegitimate power.

"Democrats, across the country, steal votes, whether it's slightly legal or slightly illegal. This guy probably protected himself with all his caveats, but if somebody does what he says and votes here, they could be in danger of losing their homestead exemption."

Will some vote early and often?

The Web site maintains that anyone who intends to take up legal residence, even for a brief time, can legally register to vote and then transfer the registration back later. Voter registration can be used as identification when claiming homestead exemption, according to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's office, but claiming exemptions in two places would be a crime.

Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections, said after reviewing the Web site that her main concern would be about double voting.

"He was very careful to put all the caveats about changing their legal residence, so we can't say it's not legal," LePore said. "Hopefully, they won't be committing a felony."

Caplan's caveats got a grudging approval from Secretary of State Hood's office, which oversees the state Division of Elections.

"While the intent of the Web site may be irresponsible," press secretary Jenny Nash said, "it has all the right words."

Electoral expert Allan Lichtman, chairman of the history department at American University in Washington, said he saw nothing illegal or unethical about using a residence in Florida as a basis for voter registration.

"This is someone taking advantage, very shrewdly, of our Electoral College system where, unfortunately, votes count more in some states than in others," said Lichtman, author of The Keys to the White House and of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study of Florida ballots rejected in the 2000 election.

"It would be a little hard for Republicans to say this is illegal, having shipped Alan Keyes (from Maryland) to Illinois to run for the U.S. Senate."


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: allanlichtman; battleground; election2004; electionfraud; fraud; lookoutflorida; lyingcheatingdims; snowbirds; voter; voterfraud
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I saw this on FoxNews today, and it wasn't posted here. It's a long, somewhat rambling article.

Caplan, a lawyer found out that in Florida there is some loophole, that if you have any mailing address in Florida, that you claim as part time residence, and say that you intend to live there at some unspecified time in the future, you can vote there.

Caplan started a website: www.operationsnowbird.com, which gives detailed instructions of how to do that.

He actually said on TV, that he wants Democrats who live in safe states for Dems, like NY & CA to register and vote in Florida, instead of in their home states.

Of course many of these people will probably vote twice, both in their own states and in Florida. But even if they only vote once, this still should be fraudulent.

Apparently his site is barely on the legal side, but that Florida law should be changed. It's probably too late to change it before the election.

1 posted on 10/03/2004 9:04:30 PM PDT by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion

"Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood is on the warpath over a New York newspaper's claim last month that at least 46,000 New York City dwellers are registered both there and in Florida, and some have been voting in both places."

Is anyone actually removing these people from the rolls in Florida?


2 posted on 10/03/2004 9:05:44 PM PDT by FairOpinion (FIGHT TERRORISM! VOTE BUSH/CHENEY 2004.)
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To: FairOpinion

Well hopefully the hurricanes have sent a bunch of them back north.


3 posted on 10/03/2004 9:07:41 PM PDT by CindyDawg
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To: FairOpinion
Whats with the statement 'slightly illegal mean'
4 posted on 10/03/2004 9:10:22 PM PDT by mammer
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To: FairOpinion

Even the ones from Canada?


5 posted on 10/03/2004 9:11:16 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)
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To: CindyDawg
Well hopefully the hurricanes have sent a bunch of them back north.

Perhaps God disagrees with this tactic.

6 posted on 10/03/2004 9:12:11 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (CBS's story is sinking faster than Uncle Ted's Oldsmobile.)
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To: FairOpinion

One would think that it would have been more prudent to have promulgated this at the beginning of the campaign.


7 posted on 10/03/2004 9:12:21 PM PDT by Old Professer (The Truth always gets lost in the Noise.)
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To: FairOpinion; Old Sarge; Radix; 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub; SandRat; Arrowhead1952; All

Ok - at the risk of sounding much more cold-blooded than I am in REAL life -- maybe it's a good thing the hurricanes went thru. Lots of snowbirds headed north or aren't going at all....??? Just a thought!


8 posted on 10/03/2004 9:12:56 PM PDT by StarCMC (It's God's job to forgive Bin Laden; it's our job to arrange the meeting.)
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To: FairOpinion

One would think that it would have been more prudent to have promulgated this at the beginning of the campaign.


9 posted on 10/03/2004 9:12:59 PM PDT by Old Professer (The Truth always gets lost in the Noise.)
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To: CindyDawg

Maybe Bush should just "restation" all troops from places like Wyoming,Idaho, Texas and Utah to places like Washington, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.


10 posted on 10/03/2004 9:14:10 PM PDT by proudpapa (of three.)
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To: FairOpinion

If they throw one or two of these grannys/grampas in jail for voting twice it would stop.


11 posted on 10/03/2004 9:16:35 PM PDT by CindyDawg
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To: CindyDawg

The Dems are already filing lawsuits to even keep people from having to show ID-s.

Campaigns begin mobilizing lawyers (Dems already filing lawsuits)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234511/posts

They fully intend to steal this election.


12 posted on 10/03/2004 9:19:38 PM PDT by FairOpinion (FIGHT TERRORISM! VOTE BUSH/CHENEY 2004.)
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To: FairOpinion

"and I figure my vote doesn't really count much in New York because the Democrats are going to win anyway."


Not if all of them vote in Florida.


13 posted on 10/03/2004 9:23:47 PM PDT by nonkultur
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To: FairOpinion
IMO we need a public service,national add stating that 100% of registrations will be reviewed and the penalty to anyone committing fraud. In addition we need a reward for people to anonymously report anyone attempting to commit voter fraud,
14 posted on 10/03/2004 9:25:46 PM PDT by CindyDawg
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To: FairOpinion
In my hurricane blur--was certain this article had been posted several weeks ago. The original thread did not reflect the correct article title, nor did it receive much traffic here while hurricanes were pounding. Thanks for bringing this important topic back to our attention.

Operation Snowbird - How the Donkeys tend to steal election

15 posted on 10/03/2004 9:25:58 PM PDT by NautiNurse (Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan Sr, Ivan Jr, and Jeanne...painting curtains on the boarded windows)
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To: nonkultur; FairOpinion

My parents live in Boca Raton (AKA New York South) and have told me that many of their neighbors who are registered in New York have discussed registering in Florida to help "defeat Bush."


16 posted on 10/03/2004 9:26:13 PM PDT by Clemenza (Say NO to Rudy in 2008.)
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To: FairOpinion
New Texas Lawsuit Challenges Cheney Residency
21-Nov-00
Texas Electors

Yesterday, a Federal judge in Miami refused to hear the 12th Amendment lawsuit brought by Palm Beach attorney Lawrence Caplan, with an amicus brief by Philadelphia attorney Phil J. Berg with nearly 1,000 plaintiffs recruited by Democrats.com. The suit was rejected because the Florida judge did not want to interfere in Texas politics.

17 posted on 10/03/2004 9:31:51 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: NautiNurse

Well, I put in snowbird to search, and that article didn't come up.

There is too little attention being paid to it, anyway.


18 posted on 10/03/2004 9:33:46 PM PDT by FairOpinion (FIGHT TERRORISM! VOTE BUSH/CHENEY 2004.)
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To: Blue Jays
Good Evening All-

Originally posted in article shared by FairOpinion:
"...But Caplan said controversy over touch-screen voting systems, the Bush administration's failure to fund the VEA and the debacle over a list of 40,000 felons the state proposed to purge from voter rolls "kind of ticked me off..."

What is it with leftists and their bizarre attraction to violent, predatory criminals? These dirtbags in prison would just as soon slit Caplan's throat as vote for his candidate. It's the same as their insane desire to have a more "sensitive" approach to terrorism. The liberals are really nuts in the head.

~ Blue Jays ~

19 posted on 10/03/2004 9:34:19 PM PDT by Blue Jays (Rock Hard, Ride Free)
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To: Mrs Zip

ping


20 posted on 10/03/2004 9:58:40 PM PDT by zip ((Remember: pingDimocRat lies told often enough became truth to 42% of Americans))
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