Let it not be said (Dad) that I don't acknowledge when John Kerry does something right: "A million African-Americans disenfranchised in the last election," he said at the N.A.A.C.P. convention in Philadelphia on Thursday. "Well, we're not just going to sit there and wait for it to happen. On Election Day in your cities, my campaign will provide teams of election observers and lawyers to monitor elections, and we will enforce the law."...it is the campaign of Mr. Kerry that appears to be doing the most to apply lessons from the Florida recount and that is adopting the more fiercely partisan posture in the early going. Its plans include setting up SWAT teams of specially trained lawyers, spokesmen and political experts to swoop into any state where a recount could be needed. "The U.S. has had a policy of being able to fight two regional conflicts and still defend the homeland," said Marc E. Elias, the Kerry campaign's general counsel. "We want to be able to fight five statewide recounts and still have resources available to the campaign." ...This time, Kerry aides say, they are recruiting not only specialists in election law who work in small law firms or alone, but also litigators at large firms in every state who have the resources and office space to support a long-term, large-scale and pro bono recount operation. "We don't want a situation where we wake up the next day and are scrambling to think of what our legal team looks like," Mr. Elias said. The Kerry campaign has already enlisted lead lawyers in all 50 states, and those lawyers are recruiting lawyers at the county and the precinct level. "It's our intention to have lawyers in one fashion or another covering all of Iowa's 99 counties," said Brent Appel, the Kerry lawyer in Des Moines. Kerry aides say the campaign has set up a national steering committee with task forces tackling different issues: one on ballot machines, another on voter education, and a third on absentee, early, and military voting, to name a few. At the Democratic convention next week in Boston, they say, any lawyers interested in volunteering will be offered training. And dozens of the lawyers already recruited by the Kerry organization will hold two days of intensive meetings to finalize strategy, tactics and assignments. Democrats say they learned from the Florida vote, and from the Supreme Court rulings that arose from it, that the most important legal battles are those fought before Election Day, over how election laws are to be carried out, who is allowed to register and who will be allowed to vote. Take enough bold, overdue steps to pursue the enfranchisement of marginalized voters, and you won't need to worry about a recount.