Crucial Virginia Canvass Begins

Nov. 8, 2006 — -- Here come the lawyers!

As canvassing begins today in the tight Virginia Senate race between Democrat Jim Webb and incumbent Sen. George Allen, hundreds of lawyers from both parties have fanned out across the state to observe one of the most consequential vote counts in recent history.

"The closer the election, the more important these individuals are," said David Boies, who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the brutally contentious Florida recount of 2000.

While at least initially the lawyers will simply be observing the canvass -- the post-tally process of checking and double-checking vote counts, precinct by precinct -- a statewide recount could bring a host of election litigation.

Boies compared the process to "detective work."

"You just go precinct to precinct, and you try to see whatever you can find," he told ABC News' Law & Justice Unit. "You've got people going out doing detective work -- seeing whether someone made a clerical mistake, whether there are challenges to absentee ballots ... that is the ordinary stuff of election recounts."

Nevertheless, he said, being at the center of an election recount of such consequence is one of the most thrilling and humbling experiences in an attorney's career.

"The primary emotion is excitement," Boies said. "That's why you become a lawyer -- because you're interested in the justice system, in making a difference in important cases, in developing the law and making sure that people get to have their votes counted."

While the notion of lawyers flooding contested states to challenge elections may bring on an unpleasant electoral sense of déjà vu in some, experts who spoke to ABC News agreed that the days ahead will be nothing like the mess that was Florida 2000.

"I do expect it will be a bit more orderly than Florida," said Dan Takaji, an Ohio State University law professor and an expert on election law. "The difference in Florida is that you had a large state with punch card ballots and a number of big, urban jurisdictions. Those combined to make the process a mess. ... We won't have the problem of ambiguously marked ballots."