Block the vote: 50 Floridas in '04.

• Author: Kirshner, Alexander S.

If you believe the experts, this year's presidential election might look much like the 2000 election: a down-to-the-wire and somewhat unseemly affair. And if it's anything like the 'last round--margins of 537 votes in Florida and 366 in New Mexico--the party that wins will have done a better job of last-minute electioneering: driving voters to the polls, explaining sample ballots to bewildered seniors, etc. One myth of American politics is that this kind of work has always been done best by seedy, working-class Democratic machines: picture Daley's henchmen politely encouraging the unwilling to vote or performing voting-booth resurrections of the dead. But things have evolved. Eight months before the election, only one party seems to be girding for this particular fight. And that party will rely not on flinty-eyed Teamsters, but on upbeat suburban lawyers with Blackberries.

On a cold, sunny Saturday in December, the Republican Party of Virginia introduced the RNC's new-style electioneering scheme to apparatchiks from around the state. The place--a suburban Sheraton ballroom--was packed with a crowd whose aesthetics veered dangerously close to Republican kitsch: elephant emblem ties and perfectly parted hair. The Virginia GOP officials who led the seminar explained Karl Rove's 72-hour plan--how to win this fall's election in the campaign's last three days--to the operatives in the seats. In coming months, RNC field staff will lay out the plan for similar audiences across the country.

The strategy is simple. Local organizers assemble teams to contact voters and watch the polls. Some teams will go out with palm pilots so they can access data about voters on the streets they're walking. They will go door-to-door and drive people to the polls. All of this is standard electioneering. But a new tool, crucially important, they said, is that an army of attorneys will be deployed alongside the get-out-the-vote campaigners and poll-watchers.

Ever since Florida, it's been obvious that an election's crucial point is not when you vote but when the vote is counted. To get to this point, lawyers are crucial. Rove's strategy ensures that there will be a Republican lawyer assigned to each contested precinct on election day. Thus positioned, they can explain ballots to loyal voters, confront potentially ineligible voters, and challenge the legality of election conduct. It is this element of the strategy, Rove and the RNC believe, that may win them the 2004...