Recently, I've been reading alot about the aftermath of the Nov. 2000 Presidential election, or more accurately its aftermath. I have to admit that at the time I was appalled that Republican officials were stonewalling hand-recounts, as if flawed machine recounts meant anything, when the problem was the way the machines were reading (or not reading) the ballots. I was disgusted when the Felonious Five stepped in to overturn the rule of law and picked their man. Think about it. A Supreme Court that keeps insisting that state law should be supreme, overturns a state process to get its own guy in office. No bias there at all.
Since that time in December, 2000, things have trickled out about the role of Florida in the election, and more recently about voting problems across the country.The big number that should make some things perfectly clear: in Florida there were 120,000 over-votes out of about 6 million votes cast. That's right 120,000 people ended up voting for President twice on the same ballot. That means that, for whatever reason, 120,000 people picked two separate people for the same office. Somehow, I don't buy that.
I also recently saw an analysis of case law regarding elections and recounts -- I'll dig up the link later. The gist is that all U.S. case law makes it clear that without a defined recount methodology, you cannot have a legitimate election in the United States of America. This case law goes back well over 200 years and would have been well known by every member of the Supreme Court. If they don't, or they're going to ignore it completely (they didn't even address the concept), the should be impeached. Immediately, if not sooner. At best this is unforgivable ignorance of the law, at worst...judicial misconduct.
The following are some fun items from a book called We Will not Get Over It:
* Former President Jimmy Carter said that his election monitoring group would refuse to monitor an election in a country if the process were like that in Florida.
* Al Gore won the popular vote by 540,000 votes. That's more than Kennedy or Nixon.
* This is the second time a stacked panel chose a Republican as President under dubious circumstances (Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes, but Hayes became President after a scandal involving votes in Florida).
* GWB had approximately $447 million dollars in campaign funds -- mostly from wealthy and corporate donors, including a Canadian Mining Company (wasn't there a ruckus about Chinese campaign contributions a few years back? I thought foreigners weren't allowed to contribute to US campaign finds?)
* The company hired by the State of Florida to purge voters did not verify by phone voters identified as ex-felons, even though required by state law and their contract. The company's director gave $503,000 to Republican commitees.
3,000 ex-felons whose voting rights ahd been restored were removed from the voter rolls, in violation of Florida state law. I don't know how I feel about felons voting, but the law is the law.
* In Seminole County, Republican Supervisor of Elections Sandra Goard, illegally allowed Republican volunteers to alter thousands of Republican pre-printed absentee ballots (with incorrect birthdates or no voter id number), and threw out Democratic absentee ballots with missing information. (Which gave GWB 2,000 votes)
* In Hillsborough County, Isis Segarra filled out abesntee ballots for non-disabled voters, in violation of Florida law.
* Okaloosa County sent out unsolicited absentee ballots in response to change of address notifications, in violation of the law, netting Bush 8,600 more absentee ballots than Gore.
* In Bay county, where more Democrats are registerd than Republicans, a suitcase full of absentee ballots was illegally submitted. The absentee margin for Bush was 6,000 greater than for Gore.
* Bay, Escambia, and Pinellas cCounties may have illegally sent absentee ballots overseas to troops after Nov. 7, 2000.
* Some military families voted in the state they lived in, and on absentee ballots in Florida. Being from a military family this one really bothers me I can't imagine anyone in the family, or even that I know in the Armed Forces now doing this. Having sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution those involved definitely know that this isn't allowed.
* Chris Carman, a member of the Manatee County Republican executive commitee voted both at the polls, and via absentee ballot.
* In Miami 144 invalid votes turned up, including one by a dead Haitian immigrant.
* In two precincts malfunctioning voting machines (13 of 20) were used anyway, in violation of state law.
* 19,120 votes in Palm Beach County were disqualified for having more than one vote on the infamous butterfly ballot.
* In Duval County there were 27,000 overvotes, more than 19,000 over what occured in the 1996 election.
* In Gadsen County 12.5% of votes were thrown out.
* 5% of voters were turned away because the state didn't file their applications to vote.
* 1,2786,916 Americans had their Presidential votes thrown out in 31 states.
* In four states uncounted the number of uncounted votes exceeded the margin of victory.
* In Chicago, up to 36% in 125 precincts either didn't vote for President or voted for more than one candidate.
* In Tennesee, black voters were intimidated by police and election workers, told to remove bumper stickers from vehicles, or denied access to polling places.
* One analysis by Sharman Braff concluded that many of Florida's 120,000 overvotes were deliberately spoiled by Republicans who massed punched holes in Democractic precincts (and there were no overvotes in areas using optiscan machines).
*20,000 Florida voters were purged from the rolls, and 50,000 to 1000,000 more were prevented from registering.
Obviously there is alot more to this than we've been led to believe about this. I'd like to know why the major media outlets haven't bothered to make an in-depth analysis of the November 2000 election. What possible journalistic reason would there be not to? Because the White House might get mad? Because people might get upset? Because the corporate owners of media outlets have something to lose?
Posted by Chris at May 8, 2002 07:21 PM