The day after the election
 

Let's start this now to allow everyone a chance to get on the record :laugh:

Many of the commie liberals on this board (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE :laugh: :wavey: ) bitched, complained, and cried FOUL when Gore won the popular vote and W won the electoral vote and, thus, the election. Will these same people still feel the same if W wins the popular vote and Kerry wins the electoral vote? Comments :wavey:

Here are some sites on the Electoral College and how the process works

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_elec.html

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclop...ctoral-College

http://www.vote-smart.org/election_p...al_college.php

no, i won't feel the same, but i may still think it's unfair...
Amber

I'm not sure I understand your question. Gore won Florida,thereby winning the electoral and popular vote. :shrug:
I think it might be better to ask if the Supreme Court should have taken Bush v. Gore.

You tell 'em Goldie! We won Florida. We couldn't win the Supreme Court, if you recall and we Democrats do recall--they say that Elephants have the long memories but I believe it's the Democrats who have the correct memories!

Please prove that Gore won Florida because every credible recount I read in the places GORE chose to selectively recount (again, only in counties he had a chance of winning - I guess every other Floridian's vote was not worth recounting :rolleyes: ) indicates he did not. Moreover, once the USSC determines something, that is it. That is the way it is - period - end of discussion. :wavey: I mean if it is not, then Roe has no application just because someone may not agree with it a la the Bush/Gore decision :shrug:

BUT - let's say the Ct. determines it for Kerry this time under the same set of facts. Will the D's say Oh No No No No No - the USSC has no right to det. this, etc., blah blah blah :shrug:

:wavey:

But, I digress, let's just assume W wins the popular vote and Kerry gets the electoral vote. Many people said that was unfair. Would those same people still say it is unfair?

Prove it :wavey:

You cannot and you know you cannot :wavey:

Plus, that recount was the biggest hoodwink I ever saw. I still maintain that a dimpled chad is not a vote. If you are too stupid to push the chad all of the way through then you are too stupid to vote IMO :laugh:

OH--and commie liberal???? WTF is that supposed to mean? I assure you that I am not a communist.

I would suggest to you that your beloved president seems to be the one who is practicing communist like activities by limiting the constitutional rights of the citizens of the United States and taking away freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and any number of civil liberties away from us.

It's pretty bad when the Feds can come into your home, without a search warrant, and without even telling you that they've searched your home and take what they want and never give you a reason for doing so. What is it called when they can round you up and arrest you and hold you without charging you all in the supposed cause of "national security?"

I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like a free, and open, and democratic society to me. Those are not the principals that this country was founded upon and anyone who supports them seems to me to be the one who would more likely to be called a communist or more correctly, communist enabler!

I was joking silly - I know you are not a commie - Dissention on the other hadn :laugh:

AND - W is not my "beloved president" - I did not vote for him :p :wavey:

I also think you mean facist, not communist, when describing the current administration :shrug:

from www.merriamwebster.com

Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
- fas·cist /-shist also -sist/ noun or adjective, often capitalized
- fas·cis·tic /fa-'shis-tik also -'sis-/ adjective, often capitalized
- fas·cis·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb, often capitalized

Main Entry: com·mu·nism
Pronunciation: 'käm-y&-"ni-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: French communisme, from commun common
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R. b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively

P.S. the feds did not need the PA to do what you say, they had that authority way before that under a myriad of Acts, most significantly RICO. But why take my word for it :laugh:

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/Safe...ID=12161&c=206

http://quicksitebuilder.cnet.com/sartre/VIEW/id35.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2087984/

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclop...SA-PATRIOT-Act

BTW - I hate the PA and think it is too broad. But, it has some good things in it like the money reporting provisions :shrug: I suppose you want no one to have to report anything ever. I submit that would make law enforcement impossible, which I assume is not your goal - even though you are a commie (JUST JOKING!!!!!! :laugh: )

A group of the largest news organizations in the United States selected NORC to provide the definitive picture of the Florida ballots in the uncertified presidential election of November 2000. The media group chose NORC for this work because of NORC's long-standing reputation for nonpartisan, objective, and analytically rigorous data collection and analysis. Kirk Wolter, NORC’s Senior Vice President of Statistics and Methodology and Professor of Statistics at the University of Chicago, has directed NORC's effort on the project.Approximately 180,000 ballots in Florida’s 67 counties are uncertified because they failed to register a “valid” vote for President. These ballots include those in which no vote was recorded (undervotes) and those in which people voted for more than one candidate (overvotes). NORC is examining the undervotes and overvotes.
The goal of the project is not to declare a “winner,” but rather to carefully examine the ballots to assess the relative reliability of the three major types of ballot systems used in Florida. The results of this assessment will help state legislatures, other decision-makers, and developers of ballot systems to work toward more reliable ballot systems in the future. The data archive containing the results of NORC’s work will be available for use by the news organizations, and by sponsoring the public soon thereafter. The investigation took 8 months and cost $900,000. No matter what standard for judging ballots is applied, Gore wins. The results of which can be found here:
http://www.amstat.org/misc/President...ionBallots.pdf

and here's a fine article from NY Newsday:

Published on Thursday, November 15, 2001 in the Long Island, NY
Newsday

Not That It Was Reported, but Gore Won
by Jim Naureckas

IN JOURNALISM, it's called "burying the lead": A story starts off with what everyone already knows, while the real news - the most surprising, significant or never-been-told-before information - gets pushed down where people are less likely to see it.
That's what happened to the findings of the media study of the uncounted votes from last year's Florida presidential vote. A consortium of news outlets - including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Co. (Newsday's parent company), The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and CNN - spent nearly a year and $900,000 reexamining every disputed ballot.

The consortium determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the ongoing recount to go through, George W. Bush would still likely have ended up in the White House. That's because the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court - as well as the more limited recount asked for by Democratic candidate Al Gore - only involved so-called undervotes, ballots that when counted mechanically registered no choice for president.

Gore and the Florida Supreme Court ignored overvotes - votes where mechanical counting registered more than one vote - on the assumption that there would be no way to tell which of the multiple candidates the voter actually intended to pick.

But as the consortium found when it actually looked at the overvotes, one often could tell what the voter's intent was. Many of the overvotes involved, for example, a voter punching the hole next to a candidate's name, and then writing in the same candidate's name.

Since the intent of the voter is clear, these are clearly valid votes under Florida law. And Gore picked up enough of such votes that it almost didn't matter what standard you used when looking at undervotes - whether you counted every dimple or insisted on a fully punched chad, the consortium found that Gore ended up the winner of virtually any full reexamination of rejected ballots.

So there are two main findings: The Supreme Court's intervention probably did not affect the outcome of the limited recounts then under way, and more people probably cast valid votes for Gore than for Bush.

If the first finding was the important news, the consortium was scooped long ago: The Miami Herald and USA Today, working as a separate team, published stories in April that argued persuasively that the particular recounts that were halted by the Supreme Court probably would have produced a Bush victory.

What's new is the finding that, since voters are supposed to decide elections rather than lawyers or judges, the state's electoral votes appear to have gone to the wrong candidate. Given that the outcome in Florida determined the national victor, this is not just news but a critical challenge to the legitimacy of the presidency.

So how did the media report the results of the ballot reexamination?Overwhelmingly, they chose to lead with the news that was comfortable, uncontroversial - and seven months old. "In Election Review, Bush Wins Without Supreme Court Help," was The Wall Street Journal's headline on its story, paralleling The New York Times' "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote." That angle would be fine if you believed that the Supreme Court was the most important aspect of the story; but what about the presidency?

Other members of the consortium emphasized the most Bush-friendly aspects of the story: "Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds," was the Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times' main headline on its report, matching The Washington Post's "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush" and CNN.com's "Florida Recount Study: Bush Still Wins." The St. Petersburg Times' Web site put it succinctly: "Recount: Bush." While some of these outlets tried to convey greater complexity in subheads, all these headlines obscure the fact that the outlets' most comprehensive recount put Gore ahead of Bush.

Emphasizing the old and conventional while playing down the new and controversial is a recipe for being ignored, and sure enough, few outlets that were not part of the consortium did much with the findings. A story that may well be mentioned in high school history classes a hundred years from now didn't even merit an editorial comment from most newspapers.

It's tempting to attribute this coyness to Sept. 11, and news outlets' reluctance to undermine the legitimacy of the presidency when the country is at war. But the coverage of the consortium's findings is similar to the way earlier media recounts were handled; even the most preliminary Miami Herald/USA Today ballot stories prompted "Bush Really Won" stories across the country. Similarly, when Bush's inauguration was greeted by raucous marchers contesting his victory, many outlets played down the significance of the protests. The New York Times virtually ignored them.

War or no war, many journalists are instinctively protective of the legitimacy of the institutions they cover, but the job of a journalist is not to promote but to question. The theory behind the First Amendment is that the system will be strengthened by an unflinching look at the system's flaws. In looking back at the results of the Florida election, the media flinched.

Please go back to the Ghost Story Thread and tell some tales on there--I like you better when you don't post political nonsense such as "Bush won Florida".

Easy. I'm watching the Red Sox right now but this is long and I will post later. I came here to post something else.

That's right. And you and I both know that we can support this point.

BULLSH*T

Gore requested a limited recount in limited counties and then did not ask for the same standard in each county. If he had asked for the whole state or even those counties under the same standard, then the Court could not have reached the Equal Protection argument it did. But, Gore was slimey about it and he thought he was being clever by ignoring the Repub. friendly panhandle and requesting recounts in D friendly south Florida.

and HELLO:

The consortium determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the ongoing recount to go through, George W. Bush would still likely have ended up in the White House. That's because the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court - as well as the more limited recount asked for by Democratic candidate Al Gore - only involved so-called undervotes, ballots that when counted mechanically registered no choice for president.

Gore lost Florida for himself - period. He was a fool and it showed. AND - we have paid the price.

Interestingly, don't you think that if we went back to the many states that each candidate won by only 1,000 or so votes and recounted those, it could have made a difference. I submit it could.

But, in any event, the Court determined it and Gore gave them the way to do so. So, by law, Gore lost Florida - period end of dicussion no matter what anyone says. Again, if we do not respect the Court and its controversial decisions, then Roe has no application :shrug:

DO not bother - we have had the discussion 1,000 times :laugh: I am still right at the end of the day :laugh: But, if you must . . . . :wavey:

He could only recount in certain Florida counties if he was going to have a case at all. That was the LAW IN FLORIDA. I will go get the article which refers to this specifically and quote it for you. he would have loved to have had the whole state recount but in order to put his case before the Florida Supreme Court he could only ask for recounts in certain counties. that is the LAW in Florida.

No here is the law in Florida

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html

:wavey:

I am just joking (although that is the law now :cool: )

I read nothing in Fla. Stat. §102.166 (2000) that says Gore could not ask for manual recounts in all of Florida. But, I will keep looking.

As I said before...
 

and I will again for the LAST time, If Al "I created the Red Sox, The Cards, The DH, The Cards lack of pitching & clutch hitting & The Red Sox 2-0 lead in the World Series" Gore WOULD HAVE won his home state Tennessee, Al "My personality is as stiff as Pee-Wee Herman in a porn theater" SNORE could have conceded Flori-DUH to George "Gimme Gimme Sweet War" Shrub and won the election...

But that is 4 years ago and I PRAY to GOD that I wont have to hear this **** after a possible Franken-Kerry election...But for some reason I believe I will! I just know the Repubs will pull something is Shrub loses and vice-versa with the Demos if Franken-Kerry loses.

Man, I hate politics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brian "Thank GOD for DVD's..." j.

Don't condescend to me. :mad: And don't tell me not to bother. :mad: I AM TRANSCRIBING THIS BY HAND. This is an important issue and I will not allow you to spew the Faux news party line about this so as to muddy the issue for other people who do not know this.
This is from David Margolick's Vanity Fair article published in the October 2004 issue. It is a good fifteen pages long and very much worth the read. Obviously, I am transcribing excerpts:

By contrast, (Warren) Christopher's Republican counterpart, James Baker, another ex-secretary of state, dug in like a pit bull. Unlike Christopher and company, Baker spoke to the press loudly and often, and his message was Bush had won on November 7. Any further inspection would result only in "mischief." Privately, however, he knew that at the start he was on shaky ground. "We're getting killed on 'count all the votes,'" he told his team. "Who the hell could be against that?"
Baker saw his chance that Thursday November 9, when the Gore team made a formal request for manual recount in four counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade. Asking for a recount in these large, Democrat-dominated counties left the Gore team fatally vulnerable to the charge that they wanted not all votes counted, as Gore kept claiming in his stentorian tones, but only all Gore votes. Yet the Bush team knew full well that Gore could not have asked for a statewide recount, because there was no provision for it in Florida law. A losing candidate had 72 hours to request a manual recount on a COUNTY BY COUNTY basis or wait until the election was certified to pursue a statewide recount. THE REQUESTS HAD TO BE BASED ON PERCEIVED ERRORS, NOT JUST THE CANDIDATE'S WISH TO SEE THE RECOUNTS DONE. Certainly, Gore chose counties that seemed likely to yield Gore votes. BUT HE CHOSE THEM BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE PROBLEMS WERE. Proper as this was by Florida election law, the Democrat's strategy gave Baker the sound bite he'd been seeking: Gore was just cherry -picking Democratic strongholds. It was a charge the Bush team wielded to devastating effect in the media, stunning the Gore team, which thought it's strategy would be viewed as modest and fair.

No, he obeyed the law and got screwed over by the US Supreme Court. Please see post #17.

DO not bother. I have already posted the article. And when it's all said and done, I'm right at the end of the day.http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/contrib/ed/the_finger.gif

You most certainly will hear it because in many states, they are using touch screen voting machines with no paper backup.

Thank GOD...
 

Oklahoma uses a simple connect the arrow with a felt ink pen ballot...Never heard a single complaint on TV about our states simple system since those type of ballots replaced the ol' clicking lever/button ballots.

Man, I'm gonna laugh hearing the local 80-90 yrs. old citizens once again ripping on the 'tards of Flori-DUH and their ballot casting stories:

"I want my vote to count but a UFO beamed the ballot box outta the polling office and replaced it with votes for Bush...Dammit I hate living near the bermuda Triangle." :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Brian "4 more years=No more years" j.

More from Margolick's Vanity Fair article:

A year after the election, a consortium of newspapers examined the ballots and reported that had the Supreme Court not intervened in the recount, Bush still would have won the election by the slimmest of margins, a headline that gave comfort to Democrats and Republicans alike. There was only one problem. The newspapers had looked at only the undervotes, which the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to be examined for the recount. But there were also more that 113,000 overvotes. Later examination by the same papers of the overvotes-which Judge Lewis says he would have been inclined to consider- determined that Gore would have edged out Bush had they been considered.

So to the original question, I cannot answer it because that is not what took place in the 2000 election. There was a coup d'etat.

He couldn't have asked them all to use the same standard when they were not voting on the same types of ballots. Some ballots were butterfly ballots and another part of the state used "Optiscan" ballots, ballots that were marked with a pencil, like the Iowa tests one would take in grade school. The Florida law called for "voter intent" to trump all.

Once again, from the Margolick VF article:

The day before Thanksgiving, the Bush campaign turned to the United States Supreme Court. Claiming that the situation in Florida had denigrated in a "circus," it asked the high court to stop everything, and cited two highly techinical federal issues for it to consider. The first, based on an obscure law from 1887, prohibited states from changing the rules after the date of that election. the second, a jurisdictional issue, was that by stepping into the case the Florida Supreme court has usurped the Florida legislature's exclusive powers to set the procedures for the selectinf electors, as provided for by Article II of the United States Constitution. The Bush lawyers claimed too, that the selctive recounts violated constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection-meaning the different criteria for recounting the ballots did not give equal rights to all voters.
Bush's petition for certiorari-that is for the court to take the case-went inititally to Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose task it was to consider all emergency motions from Florida, Georgia and Alabama. For Kennedy, then 64, a man known to relish the pomp and circumstance of the Suprme Court and his own often crucial role in close cases, weighing such a momentous matter must have been glorious indeed. Batting aside a Thanksgiving Day pleas from the Gore campaign to pass on the case, Kennedy urged his colleagues to take it on, suggesting that the Court was absolutely the essential arbiter of such weighty matters. He conceded, though, that Bush face an uphill struggle on the law.
When Kennedy's memo circulated, one flabbergasted clerk had to track down Justice John Paul Stevens on the golf course in Florida and read it to him over the phone.
Under the Court's rules, Kennedy needed only three votes bseide his own for the Court to hear the matter. Quickly, the four other who make up the Court's conservative block signed on: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor. In an unsigned order the day after thanksgiving, the Court agreed to consider the two more technical arguments, spurning the equal protection claim...

I cannot hammer this post enough. Once again from David Margolick's VF article:

The Court's proceedings are shrouded in secrecy, and the law clerks, who research precedents, review petitions, and draft opinions, are normally notoriously, maddeningly discreet. In addition, Rehnquist makes them all sign confidentiality agreements, then reiterates the point to them in person. A suprising number of clerks talked to Vanity Fair for this article, however. they all drew clear limits on what they would say. They would not discuss conversations with their respective justices, nor disclose any documents they might have retained..
"In this administration, the F.B.I. is likely to come after us," one explains. to the inevitable charges that they broke their vows of confidentiality, the clerks have a ready response: by taking on Bush v. Gore and deciding the case as it did, the Court broke it's promise to them. "We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court's power, and such an extrordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we'd otherwise honor," one clerk says.

Therein lies the problem, my friend. The United States Supreme Court had no business taking such a case.

The only justice on this Supreme Court who was around for Roe was Rehnquist and he dissented. They're trying their damndest to overturn it. Justice Stevens is 85 years old and if anything happens to him while W is in office then it is done for. We're f*cked on a whole lot of other issues as well. It is imperative that he is not reelected.

I was not condescending to you - I was condescending to DeeGee :laugh:

(I am just joking - BTW)

The article proves my point. This quote:

A losing candidate had 72 hours to request a manual recount on a COUNTY BY COUNTY basis or wait until the election was certified to pursue a statewide recount. THE REQUESTS HAD TO BE BASED ON PERCEIVED ERRORS, NOT JUST THE CANDIDATE'S WISH TO SEE THE RECOUNTS DONE. Certainly, Gore chose counties that seemed likely to yield Gore votes. BUT HE CHOSE THEM BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE PROBLEMS WERE.

shows that Gore could have requested hand recounts in other counties, but did not. Certainly there were problems in other counties :shrug:

Moreover, the writer you site is incorrect. Again, the Florida law said:

B. Florida's Recount Provisions

Because the margin between the two leading candidates was
less than one-half of one percent of the total votes cast for that
office, Florida law required an automatic recount of the ballots.
Fla. Stat. § 102.141(4). No specific process is required under
Florida law for this recount. Most counties conducted this
recount by simply repeating whatever process, usually machine,
they had used to count the ballots initially. A few counties,
however, conducted hand recounts. At the end of this initial
automatic recount, the margin between the two leading
candidates for President of the United States was reduced from
the initially stated 1,784 votes to 300 votes.

Florida law provides that its counties may conduct a further
manual recount to address "an error in the vote tabulation which
could affect the outcome of the election." Fla. Stat.
§ 102.166(5). In any county, any candidate "may file a written
request with the county canvassing board for a manual recount."
Id. § 102.166(4)(a). The statute requires that the request
"contain a statement of the reason the manual recount is being
requested." Id. Any such request "must be filed with the
canvassing board prior to the time the canvassing board certifies
the results for the office being protested or within 72 hours after
midnight of the date the election was held, whichever occurs
later." Fla. Stat. § 102.166(4)(b).

The purpose of the manual recount is to determine
whether there is "an error in the vote tabulation which could
affect the outcome of the election." Fla. Stat. § 102.166(5). If
a county canvassing board decides to grant a request for a
manual recount, it need not initially order a county-wide recount.
Rather, an initial recount only "must include at least three
precincts and at least 1 percent of the total votes cast for such
candidate or issue * * * . The person who requested the recount
shall choose three precincts to be recounted, and, if other
precincts are recounted, the county canvassing board shall select
the additional precincts. Id. § 102.166(4)(d). The statute further
provides that:

If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote
tabulation which could affect the outcome of the
election, the county canvassing board shall:

(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining
precincts with the vote tabulation system;

(b) Request the Department of State to verify the
tabulation software; or

(c) Manually recount all ballots.

Fla. Stat. § 102.166(5) (emphasis added).

Manual recounts must be conducted in accordance with the
procedures set forth in Section 102.166(7). Those procedures
require that the county canvassing board appoint counting teams
of at least two electors who are members of different political
parties to manually recount the ballots. If a counting team is
unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot
must be "presented to the county canvassing board for it to
determine the voter's intent." Fla. Stat. § 102.166(7)(a)-(b).

http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/suprem...resp.gore.html

Nowhere in there do I see where Gore was legally prohibited from requesting every county in the state perfrom a manual recount. Please show me where it says that :shrug: Instead, Gore chose the counties he knew were favorable to him.

In any event, Gore set the issue and then asked for no uniform standard to be applied. That is why he lost the case. I cannot see why you all cannot just admit that.

Again, I am not saying that Florida, the R's, or the Court behaved properly. I am just saying Gore tried to be clever and it bit him in the a$$. Now we are paying the price.

But, enough of this rehash - at least for me :laugh:

My original intent was to ask:

If W wins the popular vote and Kerry wins the electoral vote, will the liberals be okay with that. I ask this because many people griped and alleged how unfair it was that the electoral college elects the President even when that goes against the voice of the people. So, will those same people be okay with that when it falls to their favor?

Honey - you are preaching to the choir. I detest W. I think he destroys everything he touches. But, that was not my point.

My point was even though I think the Court should not have taken the Florida election case because, inter alia, Florida had a mechanism to resolve its own issues without Federal interference, when the Court determined it, it was the law and I respect that even though I disagreed and still disagree with it.

And how many of the Supreme Court justices had been appointed by W's Daddy? You don't think that they felt like they "owed" him something?????

Let's look at this another way--say that this election happened in another country--say. . . for the sake of argument. . . why not Iraq. . for instance. And that one of the candidate's running just happened to be the son of a former president of the country. And in the state (provence, whatever) that the brother of the candidate just happened to be Governor of, there had been a "purge" of registered voters-mostly of minorities who happened to vote heavily in favor of the opposing party. So the case goes to the state supreme court in the state that the brother runs and has a majority of judges who were handpicked by the same political party as the candidate. Then the case is sent to the Supreme Court, who just happens to have judges appointed by the candidate's father (and one of whom happens to be a hunting buddy of the candidate's running mate). Would any of you think that this was a legitimate election? Of course not, you'd see it for exactly what it was--a coup. So what happened in the US where we stood by and let this happen???? Could it be that we had "media' like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the right-wingers spreading lies and misinformation in order to swing public opinion towards W?

Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program - Salon.com's politics story of the year
www.Salon.com
Monday, December 4, 2000
E-Mail Article
Printer Friendly Version


If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a "scrub list" of 173,000 names targeted to be knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. A close examination suggests thousands of voters may have lost their right to vote based on a flaw-ridden list that included purported "felons" provided by a private firm with tight Republican ties.

Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to "scrub" from their list of voters.

But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list -- the state of Texas.

Florida officials moved to put those falsely accused by Texas back on voter rolls before the election. Nevertheless, the large number of errors uncovered in individual counties suggests that thousands of eligible voters may have been turned away at the polls.

Florida is the only state that pays a private company that promises to "cleanse" voter rolls.The state signed in 1998 a $4 million contract with DBT Online, since merged into ChoicePoint, of Atlanta. The creation of the scrub list, called the central voter file, was mandated by a 1998 state voter fraud law, which followed a tumultuous year that saw Miami's mayor removed after voter fraud in the election, with dead people discovered to have cast ballots. The voter fraud law required all 67 counties to purge voter registries of duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons, many of whom, but not all, are barred from voting in Florida.

In the process, however, the list invariably targets a minority population in Florida, where 31 percent of all black men cannot vote because of a ban on felons. In compiling a list by looking at felons from other states, Florida could, in the process, single out citizens who committed felons in other states but, after serving their time or successfully petitioning the courts, had their voting rights returned to them. According to Florida law, felons can vote once their voting rights have been reinstated.

And if this unfairly singled out minorities, it unfairly handicapped Gore: In Florida, 93 percent of African-Americans voted for the vice president.

In the 10 counties contacted by Salon, use of the central voter file seemed to vary wildly. Some found the list too unreliable and didn't use it at all. But most counties appear to have used the file as a resource to purge names from their voter rolls, with some counties making little -- or no -- effort at all to alert the "purged" voters. Counties that did their best to vet the file discovered a high level of errors, with as many as 15 percent of names incorrectly identified as felons.

News coverage has focused on some maverick Florida counties that decided not to use the central voter file, essentially breaking the law and possibly letting some ineligible felons vote.

On Friday, the Miami Herald reported that after researching voter records in 12 Florida counties -- but primarily in Palm Beach and Duval counties, which didn't use the file -- it found that more than 445 felons had apparently cast ballots in the presidential election.

But Palm Beach and Duval weren't the only counties to dump the list after questioning its accuracy. Madison County's elections supervisor, Linda Howell, had a peculiarly personal reason for distrusting the central voter file: She had received a letter saying that since she had committed a felony, she would not be allowed to vote.

Howell, who said she has never committed a felony, said the letter she received in March shook her faith in the process. "It really is a mess," she said.

"I was very upset," Howell said. "I know I'm not a felon." Though the mistake did get corrected and law enforcement officials were quite apologetic, Howell decided not to use the state list anymore because its "information is so flawed." She's unsure of the number of warning letters that were sent out to county residents when she first received the list in 1999, but she recalls that there were many problems. "One day we would send a letter to have someone taken off the rolls, and the next day, we would send one to put them back on again," Howell said. "It makes you look like you must be a dummy."

Dixie and Washington counties also refused to use the scrub lists. Starlet Cannon, Dixie's deputy assistant supervisor of elections, said, "I'm scared to work with it because of lot of the information they have on there is not accurate."

Carol Griffin, supervisor of elections for Washington, said, "It hasn't been accurate in the past, so we had no reason to suspect it was accurate this year."

But if some counties refused to use the list altogether, others seemed to embrace it all too enthusiastically. Etta Rosado, spokeswoman for the Volusia County Department of Elections, said the county essentially accepted the file at face value, did nothing to confirm the accuracy of it and doesn't inform citizens ahead of time that they have been dropped from the voter rolls.

"When we get the con felon list, we automatically start going through our rolls on the computer. If there's a name that says John Smith was convicted of a felony, then we enter a notation on our computer that says convicted felon -- we mark an "f" for felon -- and the date that we received it," Rosado said. "They're still on our computer, but they're on purge status," meaning they have been marked ineligible to vote.

"I don't think that it's up to us to tell them they're a convicted felon," Rosado said. "If he's on our rolls, we make a notation on there. If they show up at a polling place, we'll say, 'Wait a minute, you're a convicted felon, you can't vote. Nine out of 10 times when we repeat that to the person, they say 'Thank you' and walk away.

They don't put up arguments." Rosado doesn't know how many people in Volusia were dropped from the list as a result of being identified as felons.

Hillsborough County's elections supervisor, Pam Iorio, tried to make sure that that the bugs in the system didn't keep anyone from voting. All 3,258 county residents who were identified as possible felons on the central voter file sent by the state in June were sent a certified letter informing them that their voting rights were in jeopardy. Of that number, 551 appealed their status, and 245 of those appeals were successful.

Some had been convicted of a misdemeanor and not a felony, others were felons who had had their rights restored and others were simply cases of mistaken identity.

An additional 279 were not close matches with names on the county's own voter rolls and were not notified. Of the 3,258 names on the original list, therefore, the county concluded that more than 15 percent were in error. If that ratio held statewide, no fewer than 7,000 voters were incorrectly targeted for removal from voting rosters.

Iorio says local officials did not get adequate preparation for purging felons from their rolls. "We're not used to dealing with issues of criminal justice or ascertaining who has a felony conviction," she said. Though the central voter file was supposed to facilitate the process, it was often more troublesome than the monthly circuit court lists that she had previously used to clear her rolls of duplicate registrations, the deceased and convicted felons. "The database from the state level is not always accurate," Iorio said. As a consequence, her county did its best to notify citizens who were on the list about their felony status. "We sent those individuals a certified letter, we put an ad in a local newspaper and we held a public hearing. For those who didn't respond to that, we sent out another letter by regular mail," Iorio said. "That process lasted several months."

"We did run some number stats and the number of blacks [on the list] was higher than expected for our population," says Chuck Smith, a statistician for the county. Iorio acknowledged that African-Americans made up 54 percent of the people on the original felons list, though they constitute only 11.6 percent of Hillsborough's voting population.

Smith added that the DBT computer program automatically transformed various forms of a single name. In one case, a voter named "Christine" was identified as a felon based on the conviction of a "Christopher" with the same last name. Smith says ChoicePoint would not respond to queries about its proprietary methods.

Nor would the company provide additional verification data to back its fingering certain individuals in the registry purge. One supposed felon on the ChoicePoint list is a local judge.

While there was much about the lists that bothered Iorio, she felt she didn't have a choice but to use them. And she's right. Section 98.0975 of the Florida Constitution states: "Upon receiving the list from the division, the supervisor must attempt to verify the information provided. If the supervisor does not determine that the information provided by the division is incorrect, the supervisor must remove from the registration books by the next subsequent election the name of any person who is deceased, convicted of a felony or adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting."

But the counties have interpreted that law in different ways. Leon County used the central voter file sent in January 2000 to clean up its voter rolls, but set aside the one it received in July. According to Thomas James, the information systems officer in the county election office, the list came too late for the information to be processed.

According to Leon election supervisor Ion Sancho, "there have been some problems" with the file. Using the information received in January, Sancho sent 200 letters to county voters, by regular mail, telling them they had been identified by the state as having committed a felony and would not be allowed to vote. They were given 30 days to respond if there was an error. "They had the burden of proof," he says.

He says 20 people proved that they did not belong on the list, and a handful of angry phone calls followed on Election Day. "Some people threatened to sue us," he said, "but we haven't had any lawyers calling yet."

In Orange County, officials also sent letters to those identified as felons by the state, but they appear to have taken little care in their handling of the list. "I have no idea," said June Condrun, Orange's deputy supervisor of elections, when asked how many letters were sent out to voters. After a bit more thought, Condrun responded that "several hundred" of the letters were sent, but said she doesn't know how many people complained. Those who did call, she said, were given the phone number of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement so that they could appeal directly to it.

Many Orange County voters never got the chance to appeal in any form. Condrun noted that about one-third of the letters, which the county sent out by regular mail, were returned to the office marked undeliverable. She attributed the high rate of incorrect addresses to the age of the information sent by DBT, some of which was close to 20 years old, she said.

Miami-Dade County officials may have had similar trouble. Milton Collins, assistant supervisor of elections, said he isn't comfortable estimating how many accused felons were identified by the central voter file in his county. He said he knows that about 6,000 were notified, by regular mail, about an early list in 1999. Exactly how many were purged from the list? "I honestly couldn't tell you," he said. According to Collins, the most recent list he received from the state was one sent in January 2000, and the county applied a "two-pass system": If the information on the state list seemed accurate enough when comparing names with those on county voter lists, people were classified as felons and were then sent warning letters. Those who seemed to have only a partial match with the state data were granted "temporary inactive status." Both groups of people were given 90 days to respond or have their names struck from the rolls.

But Collins said the county has no figures for how many voters were able to successfully appeal their designation as felons.

ChoicePoint spokesman Martin Fagan concedes his company's error in passing on the bogus list from Texas. ("I guess that's a little bit embarrassing in light of the election," he says.) He defends the company's overall performance, however, dismissing the errors in 8,000 names as "a minor glitch -- less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the electorate" (though the total equals 15 times Gov. George W. Bush's claimed lead over Gore).

But he added that ChoicePoint is responsible only for turning over its raw list, which is then up to Florida officials to test and correct.

Last year, DBT Online, with which ChoicePoint would soon merge, received the unprecedented contract from the state of Florida to "cleanse" registration lists of ineligible voters -- using information gathering and matching criteria it has refused to disclose, even to local election officials in Florida.

Atlanta's ChoicePoint, a highflying dot-com specializing in sales of personal information gleaned from its database of 4 billion public and not-so-public records, has come under fire for misuse of private data from government computers.

In January, the state of Pennsylvania terminated
a contract with ChoicePoint after discovering the firm had sold citizens' personal profiles to unauthorized individuals.

Fagan says many errors could have been eliminated by matching the Social Security numbers of ex-felons on DBT lists to the Social Security numbers on voter registries. However, Florida's counties have Social Security numbers on only a fraction of their voter records. So with those two problems -- Social Security numbers missing in both the DBT's records and the counties' records -- that fail-safe check simply did not exist.

In its defense, the company proudly points to an award it received from Voter Integrity Inc. on April 1 for "innovative excellence [in] cleansing" Florida voter rolls. The conservative, nonprofit advocacy organization has campaigned in parallel with the Republican Party against the 1993 motor voter law that resulted in a nationwide increase in voter registration of 7 million, much of it among minority voters. DBT Online partnered with Voter Integrity Inc. three days later, setting up a program to let small counties "scrub" their voting lists, too.

Florida is the only state in the nation to contract the first stage of removal of voting rights to a private company. And ChoicePoint has big plans. "Given the outcome of our work in Florida," says Fagan, "and with a new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country."

Especially if that president is named "Bush." ChoicePoint's board and executive roster are packed with Republican stars, including billionaire Ken Langone, a company director who was chairman of the fund-raising committee for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's aborted run against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Langone is joined at ChoicePoint by another Giuliani associate, former New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

And Republican power lobbyist and former congressman Vin Weber lobbies for ChoicePoint in Washington. Just before his death in 1998, Rick Rozar, president of a Choicepoint company, CDB Infotek, donated $100,000 to the Republican Party.

(Alicia Montgomery, Daryl Lindsey and Anthony York contributed to this story.)

[email protected]

Winning the Election – The Republican Way: Racism, Theft and Fraud in Florida
The Weekly Dig, Boston, MA
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
This was an interview with the author of The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy

Winning the Election – The Republican Way: Racism, Theft and Fraud in Florida by Liam Scheff

What really happened in Florida?

Five months before the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 names from Florida’s voter rolls on grounds that they were felons. Voter rolls contain the names of all eligible, registered voters. If you’re not on the list, you don’t get to vote.

If you commit a felony in Florida, you lose your right to vote there, and you‘re “scrubbed” from the rolls. You become a non-citizen, like in the old Soviet Union. This is not the case in most other states; it’s an uncivilized vestige of the Deep South.

My office carefully went through the scrub list and discovered that at minimum, 90.2 percent of the people were completely innocent of any crime – except for being African American. We didn’t have to guess about that, because next to each voter’s name was their race.

When I questioned Harris’ office about the high percentage of African Americans on the scrub list, they responded, “Well, you know how many black people commit crimes.”

But these people weren’t felons, so why were they scrubbed?

The Florida Republicans wanted to block African Americans, who largely vote as Democrats, from voting. In 1999 they fired the company they were paying $5,700 to compile their felony “scrub” lists and replaced them with Database Technologies [DBT], who they paid $2.3 million to do the same job. [DBT is the Florida division of Choicepoint, a massive database company that does extensive work for the FBI.]

There are a lot of Joe Smiths in the Florida phonebook. DBT was hired to verify which Joe Smith was a felon and which was not. They were supposed to use their extensive databases to check credit cards, bank information, addresses and phone numbers, in addition to names, ages, and social security numbers. But they didn’t. They didn’t use one of their 1,200 databases to verify personal information, nor did they make a single phone call to verify the identity of scrubbed names.

So where did DBT get their data?

From the Internet. They went to 11 other states’ Internet sites and took names off dirt-cheap. They scrubbed Florida voters whose names were similar to out-of-state felons. An Illinois felon named John Michaels could knock off Florida voter John, Johnny, Jonathan or Jon R. Michaels, or even J.R. Michaelson. DBT matched for race and gender, but names only had to be similar to a certain degree. Names could be reversed, and suffixes (Jr., Sr.) were ignored, but aliases were included. So the felon John “Buddy” Michaels could knock non-felon Michael Johns or Bud Johnson Jr. off the voter rolls. This happened again and again.

Although DBT didn’t get names, birthdays or social security numbers right, they were very careful to match for race. A black felon named Mr. Green would only knock off a black Mr. Green, but not a single white Mr. Green. That’s how DBT earned its $2.3 million.

Why didn’t DBT use their own databases?

They didn’t, because the state told them not to. Choicepoint vice-president James Lee was grilled by a Congressional committee, headed by Cynthia McKinney, and he admitted everything, but said DBT was following state directives. Florida state officials told DBT to knock off voters by incorrectly matching them with felons.

Congresswoman McKinney led this commission to her own peril. Choicepoint is in her Atlanta district. She was destroyed in the last election by fabricated quotes and a vicious propaganda campaign.

Is this the only way votes were stolen?

No. There were 8,000 Floridians who had committed misdemeanors, but were counted as felons. Their votes were scrubbed. Katherine Harris’ office illegally scrubbed people who’d served time in other states, then moved to Florida, and Jeb Bush’s office illegally barred these people from registering to vote at all.

The biggest wholesale theft occurred inside the voting booths in black rural counties. In Gadsden County, one of the blackest in the state, thousands of votes were simply thrown away. Gadsden used paper ballots which are read by an optical reader. Ballots with a single extra mark were considered “spoiled“ and not counted. The buttons used to fill out the ballots were set up – with approval from Bush and Harris – to make votes appear unclear to the machine. One in eight ballots in Gadsden was voided by the state.

The same ballots were used in Tallahassee County, which is mostly white. There only one in 100 votes was “spoiled.” What made the difference? In Tallahassee, ballots were read on the premises, and if they were marked incorrectly, voters were sent to revote until they got it right. In the black counties, the votes were trucked off immediately. There were no machines on site. Voters weren’t told that their votes were spoiled, and they certainly weren’t permitted to re-vote.

When Ted Koppel investigated voter theft in Florida, he concluded that blacks lost votes because they weren’t well educated, and made mistakes that whites hadn‘t. He didn’t even bother to ask how the machines were set up. This is the kind of reporting we get in America. In Britain, this story ran 3 weeks after the election, when Gore was still in race. It was in the papers and on TV. In the US, it was seven months before the Washington Post ran it, and then it was only a partial version. After the election, Gadsden County replaced its voting commissioner. In 2002 they only lost one in 500 votes. So you can say blacks in Gadsden got smarter in one way – they elected a black elections chief.

What happened to Choicepoint?

Bush is handing them the big contracts in the War on Terror; immigration reviews, DNA cataloging, airport profiling, and their voting systems are being rolled out across the country.

It wasn’t reported in mainstream press, but the NAACP sued Harris and the gang for the black purge, and won. The state threw up its hands immediately and said, ‘You got us! We’ll put these people back as soon as we can.’ We’re still waiting

SILENCE OF THE MEDIA LAMBS:
The Election Story Never Told
www.tompaine.com
Thursday, May 24, 2001

Here's how the president of the United States was elected: In the months leading up to the November balloting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge 64,000 voters from voter lists on the grounds that they were felons who were not entitled to vote in Florida. As it turns out, these voters weren't felons, or at least, only a very few were. However, the voters on this "scrub list" were, notably, African-American (about 54 percent), while most of the others wrongly barred from voting were white and Hispanic Democrats.

Beginning in November, this extraordinary news ran, as it should, on Page 1 of the country's leading paper. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong country: Britain. In the United States, it ran on page zero -- that is, the story was not covered on the news pages. The theft of the presidential race in Florida also was given big television network coverage. But again, it was on the wrong continent: on BBC television, London.

Was this some off-the-wall story that the Brits misreported? A lawyer for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called it the first hard evidence of a systematic attempt to disenfranchise black voters; the commission held dramatic hearings on the evidence. While the story was absent from America's news pages (except, I grant, a story in the Orlando Sentinel and another on C-Span), columnists for the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post cited the story after seeing a U.S. version on the Internet magazine Salon.com. As the reporter on the story for Britain's Guardian newspaper (and its Sunday edition, the Observer) and for BBC television, I was interviewed on several American radio programs, generally "alternative" stations on the left side of the dial.

How did a hundred thousand U.S. journalists fail to get the vote theft story and print it? Interviewers invariably asked the same two questions, "Why was this story uncovered by a British reporter?" And, "Why was it published in and broadcast from Europe?"

I'd like to know the answer myself. That way I could understand why I had to move my family to Europe in order to print and broadcast this and other crucial stories about the American body politic in mainstream media. The bigger question is not about the putative brilliance of the British press. I'd rather ask how a hundred thousand U.S. journos failed to get the vote theft story and print it (and preferably before the election).

Think about "investigative" reporting. The best investigative stories are expensive to produce, risky and upset the wisdom of the established order. Do profit-conscious enterprises, whether media companies or widget firms, seek extra costs, extra risk and the opportunity to be attacked? Not in any business text I've ever read. I can't help but note that the Guardian and Observer is the world's only leading newspaper owned by a not-for-profit corporation, as is BBC television.

But if profit-lust is the ultimate problem blocking significant investigative reportage, the more immediate cause of comatose coverage of the election and other issues is what is laughably called America's "journalistic culture." If the Rupert Murdochs of the globe are shepherds of the new world order, they owe their success to breeding a flock of docile sheep, the editors and reporters snoozy and content with munching on, digesting, then reprinting a diet of press releases and canned stories provided by officials and corporation public relations operations.

Take this story of the list of Florida's faux felons that cost Al Gore the election. Shortly after the UK and Salon stories hit the worldwide web, I was contacted by a CBS network news producer ready to run their own version of the story. The CBS hotshot was happy to pump me for information: names, phone numbers, all the items one needs for a quickie TV story.

I also freely offered up to CBS this information: The office of the governor of Florida, brother of the Republican presidential candidate, had illegally ordered the removal of the names of felons from voter rolls -- real felons, but with the right to vote under Florida law. As a result, thousands of these legal voters, almost all Democrats, would not be allowed to vote.

One problem: I had not quite completed my own investigation on this matter. Therefore CBS would have to do some actual work, reviewing documents and law, and obtaining statements. The next day I received a call from the producer, who said, "I'm sorry, but your story didn't hold up." Well, how did the multibillion-dollar CBS network determine this? Why, "we called Jeb Bush's office." Oh. And that was it.

I wasn't surprised by this type of "investigation." It is, in fact, standard operating procedure for the little lambs of American journalism. One good, slick explanation from a politician or corporate chieftain and it's case closed, investigation over. The story ran anyway: on BBC-TV. Let's understand the pressures on the CBS producer that led her to kill the story on the basis of a denial by the target of the allegations. (Though let's not confuse understanding with forgiveness.)

First, the story is difficult to tell in the usual 90 seconds allotted for national reports. The BBC gave me a 14-minute slot to explain it.

Second, the story required massive and quick review of documents, hundreds of phone calls and interviews, hardly a winner in the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am school of U.S. journalism. The BBC gave me two weeks to develop the story.

Third, the revelations in the story required a reporter to stand up and say the big name politicians, their lawyers and their PR people were freaking liars. It would be much easier, and a heck of a lot cheaper, to wait for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to do the work, then cover the Commission's canned report and press conference. Wait! You've watched "Murphy Brown," so you think reporters hanker every day to uncover the big scandal. Bull****. Remember, All the President's Men was so unusual they had to make a movie out of it.

Fourth, investigative reports require taking a chance. Fraudsters and vote-riggers don't reveal all their evidence. And they lie. Make the allegation and you are open to attack, or unknown information that may prove you wrong. No one ever lost their job writing canned statements from a press conference.

Fifth -- and this is no small matter -- no one ever got sued for not running an investigative story. Let me give you an example close to home. The companion report to my investigation of the theft of the election in Florida was a story about Bush family finances. I wrote in the Guardian and Observer of London about the gold-mining company for which the first President George Bush worked after he left the White House. Oh, you didn't know that George H. W. Bush worked for a gold-mining company after he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that this company has a long history of suing every paper that breathes a word it does not like -- in fact, it has now sued my papers. I've gotten awards and thousands of letters for these stories, but, honey, that don't pay the legal bills.

Finally, there's another little matter working against U.S. reporters running after the hard stories, papers printing them or TV broadcasting the good stuff. I'll explain by way of my phone call with a great reporter, Mike Isikoff of Newsweek. Just before the elections, Isikoff handed me some exceptionally important information about President Clinton, material suggesting corruption in office -- the real stuff, not the interns-under-the-desk stuff. I said, "Mike, why the hell don't you run it yourself?" and he said, "Because no one gives a ****!" Isikoff was expressing his exasperation with the news chiefs who kill or bury these stories on page 200 on the belief that the public really doesn't want to hear all this bad and very un-sexy news. These lambchop editors believe the public just doesn't care.

But they're wrong. When I ran my first story in the London Observer about the theft of the Florida vote, Americans by the thousands flooded our Internet site. They set a record for hits before the information-hungry hordes blew down our giant server computers. When BBC ran the story, viewership of the webcast of "Newsnight" grew by 10,000 percent as a result of Americans demanding to see what they were denied on their own tubes. Obviously, some Americans care.

[Proof of Coup 2000!] When five voted for millions --by Robyn E. Blumner "One of the darkest hours in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court was Dec. 12, 2000, at 10 p.m., when the five-member conservative majority handed the presidency to George W. Bush over his rival Al Gore... Reporter David Margolick headed a writing team that spoke with a number of former Supreme Court clerks who were there when the Bush case came before the court... Margolick reports that Justice Antonin Scalia was so anxious to shut the recount down that he pressured his colleagues to do so even before the Gore legal team had a chance to respond. That didn't happen, but consideration of the matter was moved up to the next morning. On the 9th, a stay was issued. According to Margolick, the court's more conservative members, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, quickly started 'sending around memos to their colleagues, each of them offering a different rationale for ruling in Bush's favor.' They were 'auditioning arguments,' Margolick wrote. During the first go-round, Margolick reports, an O'Connor clerk told fellow clerks that 'O'Connor was determined to overturn the Florida decision and was merely looking for grounds.' This was a court unhinged from the law, operating in a purely political guise, bereft of legitimacy."

Okay--Strand--are you ready to say Uncle yet? Because you know that Goldie and I are just getting warmed up and it's only a matter of time before Diss jumps in and begins to kick your ass too. Just saying :)

Blah Blah Blah - I know that and I agree with you - but that does not negate the facts, which partisan people tend to ignore out of blind allegiance :shrug:

And - what does that have to do with Gore not requesting recounts in Florida counties not favorable to him and/or the counties not using the same standard, thus giving the Court the Equal Protection nail on which to hang its decision. My reading and the plain intent of Florida law says he could, despite what the article the lovely and talented (praise not condesention)Goldie posted :shrug: And - maybe you are okay with one standard being applied by one ballot reader and a different standard being applied by another. Moreover, if the chad was merely slightly dimpled, who is to say that that denotes intent to vote for that person. The voter could have changed their mind and purposely not pushed the chad through. Yet, dimpled chads were counted. That is just wrong IMO. But, you all are okay with that. I suspect had the dimpled chads swung it to W, you all would not be okay with that :laugh: :wavey:

Again, I think the Court should not have taken the case. But, even if it had not taken the case, the Flordia Legislature could have negated the votes and would have voted to send R electoral college delegates, which clearly is what would have happened according to the papers at the time :shrug: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLI...election.wrap/

Again, if you use that logic you mentioned about the appointees to the Court, then Roe was a coup as well :shrug: So, do you apply that same illegitamacy argument to Roe. Do you think that people who are against Roe have the right to apply that same argument? I mean although I am all for Roe, the right to privacy is not ever once mentioned in the Const. The Court made it up.

No - because you all are wrong. Gore may have had a cahnce if he had requested a manual recount in every county, but he did not. Gore set the rules of the game and he lost. How can you argue against that.

But, I am tired of talking about this because you all will NEVER admit that and instead point to the later recounting of the entire state, which was never at issueand why - well because Gore did not put it at issue :shrug:

I know that - but Gore set the rules. He is the one that sued. He is the one that asked for the result to count only one kind of vote. The blame rests on him. So, according to the rules set forth by him, he lost. How can you all argue with that. I think you all think I am saying that Gore did not get more of the popular vote in Florida. I am saying and have always said that Gore lost Florida because he did not win the popular vote that he requested be counted.

I agree and have never disagreed with the recounting of all of the votes.

AND - I still say, that if we looked at stated like NM that were also close, the results could have shifted as well. But, the D's and R's chose to concentrate only on Florida.

Wait...you mean there are some of those dreaded "activist judges" in the Supreme Court, too?

Could've fooled me. :p

Isn't it amusing to see how conservative repug thugs try to constantly change the subject when you present them with evidence that they are wrong?

"What's this? A pubic hair in mah Coke?"

Gosh, I love them there conservative values.