Yowza!

HBO is filming the movie Recount, about the 2000 Florida election saga:

Gore's staff chief, Ron Klain, is being played by [Kevin] Spacey, according to former Bush 2000 election lawyer Barry Richard, who chatted briefly with the actor. ''I wish you were playing me,'' Richard said he told Spacey.

But Richard's character isn't featured because, he said, Recount is ``about the back-room intrigues, which I was not involved in. The enormity of it, what was happening, was far greater than this.''

Others, such as Democratic lawyer Mark Herron, who had wanted to challenge the validity of some military ballots, want little to do with the production or the recount. ''I really don't want to relive it,'' he said.

Laura Dern, pictured above, is playing Katherine Harris.

Any thoughts on who should play Joe Klock?

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Lawyers Worry About the Silliest Things!

Oh lawyers, always worrying about whether the id. is capitalized and other such picayune matters. Belts and suspenders, dotting i's and crossing t's and all that.

But get this: apparently some of you are concerned that the election in November may not go off perfectly. In Florida, of all places! So much so that Berger Singerman attorney Charles Lichtman has assembled his own private army of perfectly coiffed legal first-responders:

The Obama campaign has 1,000 volunteer lawyers in Florida, in 55 of the 67 counties, said Chuck Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Obama campaign. Five thousand are expected to be signed up by Election Day for poll-watching.

In previous Florida elections, there have been reports of people having to wait in line for hours, of voting machines registering the wrong vote and of people being turned away from the polls for not having two forms of identification or for incorrectly being listed as felons.

"We're not hiring litigators," said Lichtman, a partner at Berger Singerman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "The public doesn't want litigation. We're doing election protection. We know election law backwards and forwards and we've been looking at every issue, hard, for the last year."

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have also sent 11 out-of-state lawyers to Florida to monitor voting problems. Leading them is David Sullivan, who took a leave of absence from his job as legal counsel for the Massachusetts governor. He has been stationed at Obama Florida headquarters in Tampa since Aug. 11. Sullivan was dispatched to Florida in 2000 and Ohio — another battleground state — in 2004. "Our mission is to protect the vote," he said.

Also leading up the efforts in Florida are Stephen and Richard Rosenthal, two brothers who are Miami lawyers — one at the law firm Podhurst Orseck and the other leading his own appellate law firm.

Additionally, Mark Herron, a Tallahassee, Fla., election law expert, has been hired as state counsel for the Democratic National Committee. Herron — who was featured in the HBO film Recount — gained some notoriety in 2000 after his law firm, Akerman Senterfitt, fired him, allegedly for associating himself with Al Gore.

Fellas, fellas - turn that frown upside down!

What could possibly go wrong?

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Mark Herron Thinks Florida Voters Are Highly Educated and Read Really Well; Florida Supreme Court Says "Huh"?

It's nice when judges actually attempt to understand the actions of the typical voter or consumer. In striking down the unfunded property tax swap amendment (Amendment 5) yesterday, we had this exchange before the Florida Supreme Court:

Leon County Circuit Court Judge John Cooper first ruled Amendment 5 unconstitutional because of that misleading implication. Wednesday, the high court agreed. Several justices reiterated his reasoning that the title and summary could confuse voters.

'The average person is going to read this and say, `OK, those property taxes are gone, but the state is going to put that same amount of money back into the school system -- I don't have anything to worry about,' '' said Chief Justice Peggy Quince. ``What will put them on notice . . . that this isn't a feature of it?''

Mark Herron, the attorney representing the Florida Association of Realtors and other proponents, argued that the amendment ''doesn't imply or infer'' that the money will be replaced beyond the first year.

Justice Charles Wells disagreed. ''Unfortunately, like I find with some warranties, it's not a lifetime warranty and I don't have any recourse,'' he said.

How about that? Now let's get some of our local judges to understand that merely having language buried somewhere in a document doesn't mean that everyone will understand it or agree to it.

Are you listening, Judge Shepherd?

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