...WHERE EVERY STORY IS COUNTED BY HAND.
At 1 p.m. ET Florida State Judge Lewis ruled that one of George W. Bush's major Florida fund-raisers and a key member of his Florida election campaign, Katherine Harris, who also happens to be Florida's Sec. of State, has the discretion to demand that all votes be handed in by 5 p.m. today. The Gore campaign immediately tendered an appeal to the Florida Suprement Court, which will have to consider the appeal before today's Florida deadline or issue of stay of the vote report until the case can be heard.
Associated Press, 11/13/00... Harris No Stranger To Controversy
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A Harvard-educated blueblood from one of Florida's wealthiest families, Secretary of State Katherine Harris is no stranger to controversy. She's been investigated for campaign finance violations and criticized for spending state money jetting around the world, spending up to $500 a night for hotel rooms in Washington. She's also been one of George W. Bush's most prominent political supporters, campaigning for him in Florida and elsewhere. Harris placed herself in the middle of the increasingly partisan struggle over Florida's 25 electoral votes Monday with her public announcement that all 67 counties are required by law to wrap up their recounts by 5 p.m. Tuesday. She sits as one of six elected members on the Florida Cabinet, which with Gov. Jeb Bush, decides on issues ranging from the mundane to the momentous affecting schools, the environment and other statewide concerns. As secretary of state, Harris oversees elections, the state's historical and cultural resources and also keeps the state's public records. She makes $106,000 a year. ``For what is probably the easiest of the Cabinet positions, she's made it awful difficult,'' said state Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch. In her first two years on the job, Harris spent $100,000 in Florida tax dollars on foreign trade missions to places like Barbados and Brazil as well as the Sydney Olympics. Her travel expenses were significantly higher than the other five Cabinet members and three times more than Gov. Jeb Bush. Harris defended her travel, saying she has brought millions of dollars of international trade to the state and established cultural ties such as a cooperative ballet between the state and Mexico. Sandra Mortham, the incumbent who lost to Harris in a nasty Republican primary in 1998, said every secretary of state emphasizes their own key areas of concern. ``For me, it was elections, and it was to get the elections online and on the Internet,'' Mortham said. ``Katherine has decided that she wanted to move the office more into the area of international relations.'' Ben McKay, Harris' chief of staff, said Harris was too busy with Monday's court hearing to return calls. In 1994, Harris became implicated in a campaign finance scheme surrounding her first run for public office. She was forced to reimburse $20,000 after state investigators discovered that employees of Riscorp, Inc., an insurer, were improperly reimbursed for their contributions to her 1994 Senate campaign. She said she had no knowledge that anything was amiss with the contributions. This year, Harris approved a taxpayer-financed public service announcement featuring retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, a Bush ally, urging Floridians to vote. She received criticism for spending the public's $30,000 to finance the ads, which aired during the final month of the presidential campaign. McKay said Harris' office asked Schwartzkopf, as a prominent Floridian, to make the ads months ago, after Gloria Estefan and Tiger Woods turned down the request. Harris, 43, earned a degree in history from the all-female Agnes Scott College in Georgia, received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard and she studied art and Spanish in Madrid, and philosophy and religion in Geneva. Her grandfather, citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin, served as a longtime legislator. He was also a friend of former state Republican Party chairman, Tom Slade, who hand-picked Harris for her Senate run. Her cousin, J.D. Alexander, is a state representative. The Cabinet job, one that has been largely ceremonial, is being abolished after Harris' current term, which expires in January 2003. Harris, who is married to businessman Anders Ebbeson, listed her net worth as more than $6.5 million as of December 1999, according to her latest financial disclosure.
Associated Press, 11/1/98... TALLAHASSEE - Katherine Harris was not spoiling for another political street fight after a bruising Republican primary, but that is what Democrat Karen Gievers is trying to give her in the secretary of state race. Harris, a state senator from Sarasota, scored a stunning victory in the Sept. 1 primary by soundly defeating incumbent Sandra Mortham after the Republican women exchanged ethical charges and counter-charges. Gievers, a Miami lawyer, has picked up where Mortham left off, with more questions about Harris' involvement in a campaign contribution scandal. She also has criticized various Senate votes by Harris, including her support of a suspended voter fraud law and a vetoed $50 homeowner tax rebate. Harris, the granddaughter of late citrus and cattle baron Ben Hill Griffin Jr., is not responding in kind this time. "I don't have anything to say against Karen," Harris said, instead touting her background in history, art, business and government. "It's as though I've stumbled into the culmination of everything I've worked on all my life." The secretary of state, paid $106,870 per year, is responsible for historic and cultural affairs, corporation charters and elections. The secretary also sits on the Florida Cabinet that, with the governor, oversees agencies dealing with the environment, education, and driver licensing, among other matters. Gievers counters with her background as a lawyer, mother, grandmother, children's advocate and insurance commissioner candidate, but that's not all. "I am the only one in this race who has no history of taking illegal contributions," Gievers said. "I am the only one in this race whose campaign staff has not been named as an unindicted co-conspirator." That's what a federal grand jury called the manager of Harris' 1994 Senate campaign after Riscorp, a Sarasota insurance company, gave Harris $20,293 in illegal contributions. One Riscorp official went to prison and others got probation for illegally reimbursing employees for contributions to nearly 100 candidates. Prosecutors, however, said candidates were unaware of what was going on. During the primary, Harris symbolically returned her contributions by donating an equal amount to a state fund to combat voting fraud. "This story's over and it shouldn't be an issue," Harris said. Gievers also criticized Harris for sponsoring legislation Riscorp sought. Harris said her bill helped all Florida-based insurers, not just Riscorp, by allowing them to offer the same discounts as out-of-state companies. Gievers blamed Harris and other lawmakers for restricting absentee voting after a ballot fraud scandal in the Miami mayoral race. The law was suspended when the U.S. Justice Department found it discriminated against minority voters. "The bill has problems," Harris acknowledged. "I did vote for it because I thought we had to address the fraud." She promised to work with lawmakers to correct the problems.
BROWARD COUNTY SAYS NO HAND COUNT, STATE JUDGE WILL DECIDE ON RECOUNT DEADLINE AT 10:30
SEC. OF STATE, CANVASSING HEAD CITE LAWS THAT FAVOR BUSH, IGNORE THE REST, AND MAKE UP OTHERS...from a Bush Watcher..."Crawford picks and chooses which laws he will obey and which he will ignore. He chooses to ignore the law which says the Canvassing Commission has discretion to extend deadline (102.112). He chooses to obey the law which arguably makes deadline mandatory. The only consistency is that he does whatever will favor Bush. While the question of the deadline leaves some room for argument, at least to the extent that his position would not be laughed out of court, his belief that he can certify unofficial results is absolutley and directly contrary to a third statute. No room for debate whatsoever, Florida Statute 102. 131 makes this very clear, saying, in part: "The Elections Canvassing Commission in determining the true vote shall not have authority to look beyond the county returns."
Actually, "Crawford is not just making up law, he is violating the law. As to the two statutes mentioning the deadline, Crawford tried to say one applied to the Secretary of State and one to the Canvassing Commission, or at least he implied it, but that's not true, the one which allows discretion, 102.112, does refer to the Department of State, but that's meaningless, the Canvassing Commission is part of the Department of State and the Secretary of State is on the Commission. This Statute deals solely and exclusively with deadlines for the counties to submit returns and the penalties for failure to do so, while 102.111, the statute Crawford has decided he likes, concerns the duties of the Canvassing Commission. 102.112 should control for a number of reasons; first, it is the more specific provision, its stated purpose is limited to the deadlines and penalties for failure to meet them. Second, from what I can see, 102.112 was passed later, after 102.111, and therefore it should supersede it. Again, statutes must be read "in pari materia," which means you must read all the statutes together, and read them in a way that makes sense. It does not make sense that the statutes permit a lengthy and time consuming recount, but then disqualify the results of the recount. Finally, on at least two occasions in the past, the Division of Elections has advised the Canvassing Commission, and a County Supervisor of Elections, that they may disregard procedural technicalities in the Statutes in order to further the greater goal of ensuring the integrity of the election process. 11/13/00
BUSH BACKERS WHO ARE FLORIDA OFFICIALS REFUSE TO EXTEND VOTE COUNT DEADLINE... Associated Press, Monday morning at 10:26 AM... TALLAHASSEE, Fla. –– "Sticking to a firm deadline, Florida's Republican secretary of state said all of the states' counties must finish recounting votes by 5 p.m. Tuesday. Al Gore's advisers decried the decision as "arbitrary and unreasonable" and promised court action. Volusia County, one of four Democratic-leaning counties in the midst ofrecounting, went to state court seeking an extension of time. The deadline is a major roadblock for Gore, because some of the manualrecounts requested by Democrats probably cannot be completed by the end of the day on Tuesday. The state warned that counties that don't certify their vote by the deadline "shall be ignored." Warren Christopher, who is overseeing Gore's recount effort, suggested that Harris' ruling was politically motivated. Noting that she campaigned for Gore's rival, George W. Bush, and is a political supporter of Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Christopher said. "Her statement has to be taken into that context," he said."
UPDATE... At a later press conference this morning, Bob Crawford, the member of the state canvassing commission who replaced Jeb Bush, stated that while the law gives the Sec. of State some discretion on upholding the deadline date, another section of the law that pertains to his commission does not. Thus, the deadline will remain in place. He acknowledged that he voted for Bush and that the Sec. of State was a key Florida backer of Bush and a member of his campaign funding team. He also said that although four counties have not handed in their official vote counts, he would use informal reports to ascertain their vote counts, rather than simply reporting that the counties have not provided their votes, as the state law appears to state. A reporter later said that Crawford appears to be making up law as he goes along. --Politex, 11/13/00
NOTE FROM A MIAMI BUSH WATCHER "Florida has a loooooooong history of vote tampering -- specifically double punching. This is most prevelant in Miami-Dade County....Double punching is as old as the Castro regime....Someone...saw election suprevisors handing out pre-punched ballots -- ballots with one or more holes already punched. When the voters -- mostly spanish-speaking poor -- asked about the hole already punched in their ballots, they were told that it was fine, don't worry about it. Here's the thing. There are 7900 disqualified ballots because of double punching in Broward county, where 560K votes were cast -- but 18000 disqualified double punched ballots in Dade where about 640K votes were cast and 19000 disqualified votes in Palm Beach, where about 400K votes were cast. Strange? I think more than strange." [We told the person to call 1-800-579-8871 and report the allegations.]
BACKGROUND... "Absentee ballots apparently have a recent history of being used for voter fraud in Florida elections. A 1998 report on voter fraud after an investigation by the Florida Department Of Law Enforcement identified a wide variety of types of voter fraud that have been historically used in Florida. The reports stated "it appears that the elderly voter or elderly witness to another's absentee ballot are often targeted for use in fraud schemes, perhaps because some of these voters may be easily manipulated or influenced by those in whom they have previously placed their trust." The 1998 law enforcement investigative report also indicated that "the absentee ballot is the "tool of choice" for those who are engaging in election fraud" and provided a review of past voter fraud cases from Dade, Volusia, Hardee, Dixie, Baker, and Lafayette counties." --Web Site Daily, 11/12/00
According to Daniel McGrory, a London Times reporter, "The FBI is being asked to investigate how thousands of mainly black supporters of Al Gore were given ballot papers that had allegedly already been marked for rival candidates. Yesterday Democrat officials were examining claims that up to 17,000 ballot papers in the Miami area had been tampered with in what they described as “organised corruption”. Lawyers from across the United States descended on Miami and were busy taking statements from those complaining that they had been cheated or intimidated out of voting for Mr Gore. A senior Democrat official in Miami, who has hired a team of 20 investigators to carry out an inquiry, told The Times: “Until now in Florida, we have been arguing foul-ups, human error and stupidity. But this is deliberate corruption to spoil votes for Gore and that must be a matter for the FBI.
“We don’t want to be seen as playing the race card here, but the areas where this happened are in poorer precincts, which are predominantly black areas that would be expected to vote almost unanimously for Vice-President Gore. We are not accusing the Republican Party or any other ethnic groups for being behind this. All we are saying is the vote was corrupted. There are just too many double-punched papers.” Jewish leaders in staunch Democrat areas of the city claimed that they, too, had evidence of voting slips being marked before they reached polling stations in areas populated by retired Jewish couples. At a rally in a Miami synagogue, Lisa Versaci, Florida director of People for the American Way, said: “There can be no innocent explanation for a pre-punched ballot sheet.” --London Times, 11/13/00
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE... The "presidential election has yet to be decided, and it seems Florida is the straw that will break the electoral camel’s back....There are...a number of allegations regarding voting irregularities in several counties in the Sunshine State. It seems, however, that Florida’s history of voter fraud is just as storied as the Bush political legacy. The most famous -- or infamous -- case involves the now derided ex-mayor of Miami, Xavier Suarez, whose last election in 1997 was overturned because of charges of voter fraud and falsification of records. And Suarez's relevance might not be limited to past election irregularities....
What is most stunning, though, is that Suarez now sits on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade Republican party and was specifically involved this year in helping get out the Republican vote. Suarez, who told FEED that he is working to become the committee’s chairman, said that leading up to last night’s election he "helped fill out absentee ballot forms and enlist Republican absentee voters in Miami-Dade County."...Kendall Coffey, lead attorney in the original Suarez suit, said, "He said that?" Coffey, a recognized expert in absentee ballot law,...went on to say that Suarez’s participation in any part of enlisting absentee ballots troubled him deeply.
"Suarez was found to have taken part in systematic and massive absentee ballot fraud. He was found to have done significantly better in absentee balloting than in the general vote." He went on to say that since that time, while some improvements have been made, "no one watchdogs absentee balloting, other than the campaigns themselves. The election commission has no authority to oversee the distribution of coordination of absentee ballots until they are counted.These ballots are going to decide the outcome of the closest race in a generation and, given Suarez’s and this state’s murky history with regard to absentee balloting, this calls for meticulous and vigorous investigation." --FEED
Recent statements by a Florida Election Commissioner and the Florida Secretary of State may provide the missing ingredient necessary to permit the Federal Court to grant George Bush the injunction he seeks, halting the hand count which began over the weekend. According to a story posted at CNN.com Saturday night, Florida Election Commissioner Bob Crawford threatened to disqualify all of the votes from any county which does not complete its count and send its certified results to the State by Tuesday, November 14. CNN's story makes it very clear that the Commissioner was directing his comments at the Gore campaign: "Bob Crawford, who replaced Gov. Jeb Bush as commissioner of Florida's Canvassing Commission, said Saturday that if a county misses the state's deadline for certifying results, the entire county's vote will be thrown out. The statute is very clear that if a county's results are not to us by 5 p.m. Tuesday we shall ignore that county's vote, and the counties need to be very aware of that," Crawford told reporters. "Candidates asking for recounts need to be aware of that.""
Commissioner Crawford is referring to Florida Statutes Section 102.112, which does permit the Department of State to disregard a County's votes if the results are not submitted to the Secretary of State within 7 days. However, it should be noted that this Statute does not require the secretary of state to take this action, it only allows it. The relevant language reads as follows: "Returns must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the first primary and general election and by 3 p.m. on the 3rd day following the second primary. If the returns are not received by the department by the time specified, such returns may be ignored and the results on file at that time may be certified by the department." Late Sunday, it was reported by ABC News at ABC.com that the Florida Secretary of State had indicated that the Tuesday deadline will be enforced, although ABC's report does not specifically state that votes will be disqualified: "the Florida secretary of state’s office told ABCNEWS today that it will enforce a Tuesday deadline for counties to turn in all vote tallies except overseas ballots, which are due Friday."
These threats by Florida State officials may be crucial to George W. Bush's pending request for a court order to block the ongoing hand counts in Palm Beach and other counties, and they appear to be perfectly timed to strengthen Bush's case. Under federal law, a court is much more likely to issue an injunction, the type of order Bush is requesting, if the court finds the injunction is necessary in order to prevent "irreparable harm." As reported in the New York Times Sunday, Bush's suit did not appear to be on strong grounds: " some . . .experts said they were skeptical of the suit's chance of succeeding." These statements by the Florida Secretary of State and an Election Commissioner appear to increase Bush's chance of success because they clearly indicate the possibility of "irreparable harm." If what the Florida officials say is true, that they will impose the draconian penalty of throwing out hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of votes if the lawful recount is not finished, this would give Bush's lawyers the opportunity to argue that enormous harm will result if an order is not issued stopping the recount.
The Bush campaign could not ask for much better help in its uphill legal fight, and it couldn't ask for better timing. In addition, this hard line stance by Florida officials gives the Bush camp the opportunity to turn the tables on Gore's people, who have been arguing their case before the public that they are only seeking to protect the people's right to be heard. Bush can now claim that Gore is the one endangering the votes of possibly millions of people. If, that is, people believe its really Gore's fault that officials from Florida, the state where Bush's younger brother Jeb is governor, decide to take such drastic action. --Patrick F. Cox, Esq., 11/13/00
Wondering why the recount figures and the original count figures in three Florida counties were the same for the presidential run-off, Salon has discovered that the Lake City Reporter had a story which asserted that voting officials in Columbia, Alachua, and Leon counties never re-ran the ballots through the counting machines. Instead, officials, "merely replaced the memory cards back into the tabulating machines and reprinted the results from the original vote." When we tried to verify that report by going to the Lake City Reporter web site, we discovered the site was unavailable. We then clicked on today's Lakeland Ledger in Polk County. According to JENNA DEOPERE, a Ledger reporter, 73 of Polk County's 163 precincts are not going to be recounted.
"Polk has 163 voting precincts but only 90 were designated for recount. They were the ones where the machine's total of votes cast and the poll workers' numbers did not match. For the recount, ballots from the chosen precincts were fed through counting machines at the election office in Bartow. Changes in the vote numbers were found in numerous precincts, with both Gore and Bush gaining and losing votes from their Tuesday precinct totals. In each precinct the changes were minor and explainable, elections officials said. Kaylor said most discrepancies were math errors in the ballot accounting form or clerical errors. For example, in Precinct 158 north of Lakeland, the ballot accounting form reported 945 ballots cast Tuesday. The machine count had 948 ballots cast. A poll worker's note with the form explained the discrepancy, saying three ballots got stuck in the machine and may not have been counted.Kaylor said that's what happened. The three were counted Saturday. Bush got two votes, Gore one."
Based on another statement in Deopere's story in appears that the Polk County officials were doing exactly what Bush spokesman James Baker said should not be done in the four counties scheduled for hand counts during the next few days. "Some ballots were improperly marked and had to be examined by the canvassing board. Some voters marked the oval on the ballot but didn't darken it enough to be counted. Some voters wrote in the name of Bush or Gore in addition to darkening the oval. Those ballots would have been considered invalid by the machine on the first count. But many were counted Saturday and added to the candidate totals. Under Florida law, a canvassing board is to determine the intent of a voter where that is clear and award the vote." It appears that the hand counting genie is already out of the bottle, and any attacks made upon hand counting in :Palm Beach, Dade, Broward, and Volusia counties by Bush or his spinners should be seen in the context of what already has taken place in other counties. And as for the Tuesday recount deadline facing those four counties, it appears that at least three counties and part of another have met the recount deadline by not really recounting the ballots. --Politex, 11/12/00
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla (Reuters) - The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on Sunday ordered a hand recount of all presidential ballots cast in the county, raising the possibility that a significant number of additional votes could be tallied for Vice President Al Gore. The board voted two-to-one to take the countywide action after it completed a hand count on a sample of more than 4,500 ballots. The sample amounted to one percent of the votes cast in the election and yielded a net gain of 19 votes for Gore. Board member Carol Roberts, extrapolating that sample across the entire county, speculated that Gore could gain as many as 1,900 additional votes in the countywide hand recount. ``This clearly would affect the result of a national election,'' she said, noting that Republican George W. Bush holds a lead over Gore of only a few hundred votes in the entire state. A win of Florida's 25 electoral votes would give Gore the White House, if no other state results changed. 11/12/00
One of the ironies of Bush's legal attempt to prevent hand counting of voters' ballots in Florida is that he spent the last months of the campaign telling the people that he trusts them while Al Gore trusts the federal government. Yet, today, he's doing exactly the opposite, calling upon the federal government to void the hand counted votes of the people. Now, comes another irony, another example of Bush hypocrisy. The core of Bush's law suit against the state of Florida is that a machine count of the votes is more accurate than a hand count, and a hand count will simply introduce inaccuracies into the counting process. Yet, two years ago in Texas, Bush signed a bill into law that did just the opposite, affirming that a hand count is more accurate than a machine count. Here is the relevant passage: "(d) If different counting methods are chosen under Section 214.042(a) among multiple requests for a recount of electronic voting system results, only one method may be used in the recount. A manual recount shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount and an electronic recount using a corrected program shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount." Clearly, Bush will say and do anything to win, even contradict his own recorded beliefs. --Politex, 11/11/00
BUSH LITIGATION UPDATE...Bush is requesting an injunction to stop the ongoing hand counting in Florida and asking for other remedies, such as declaring the buttefly ballot lawful, arguing that the Florida voting laws dealing with the hand count option are unconstitutional on the basis of their standards of evaluation. The federal judge selected to hear the case is Judge Middlebrook, who has been described as "fair" by his clerks. He will hear the case Monday morning at 9:30. Meanwhile, since the Bush lawyers will argue the Bush case before the judge, Gore has decided that his lawyers will defend the relevant Florida laws in that court. Observers believe that the Bush team has a difficult burden to prove, with very little legal precedent to defend their position. The Gore camp has been emboldened by Bush's decision to be the first to take the election to court, particularly with such a weak case. The Gore people believe that Bush's decision is a serious political error. All of this according to MSNBC. --Politex, 11/11/00.
In a later interview at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, in which we watched Bush talking to his off-camera dog, he was unable to explain the specifics of his federal injunction. Instead, he said reporters should ask James Baker. He then turned th mic over to Dick Cheney, who spoke longer about nothing than Bush did. Bush appeared tired, distracted, edgy and out of the loop.
In the clearest indication to date that George W. Bush is feeling his presidential lead slipping away, James Baker, his Florida spokesman, has announced that the Bush campaign has requested a federal injunction from the U.S. Dictrict Court of Florida against continuing the ongoing manual vote count in two Florida districts, Palm Beach and Volusia, against the planned manual vote count in Broward Country, against the scheduled consideration of a manual vote count in Dade, and against any future manual counts in any of the other counties in Florida.
Baker gave three reasons for requesting this injunction. First, he claimed that there are no standards to determine how the will of the voter is to be seen in cases of "chads" and double-votes. Secondly, there is a potential for human error or mischief. Third, the votes have already been recounted, as directed by Florida law. Baker concluded that he would withdraw the Bush request for an injunction if Gore accepted the unofficial, incomplete report of a Bush victory by 327 votes, subject to the counting of overseas ballots.
Baker answered only three questions after making his statement, hastily cutting off reporters and quickly leaving. The first question had to do with the fact that Florida law allows for a manual count request within 72 hours of a reported vote count, which is what happened and was being carried out. Why, then, was Bush not allowing a legal action run its course? Baker did not answer that. Instead, he repeated portions of his announcement. The second questioner reminded Baker that yesterday he said legal actions only prolong and delay, and that Gore should not do so. Yet, it is Bush, not Gore, who is doing so. Baker repeated if Gore agrees that Bush won, he would withdraw the request for an injunction. The third question elicited an answer from Baker that Bush did not initiate legal activities first, since voters have already filed legal actions. Baker identified any such suit as being created by Gore "supporters" rather than by a person who feels that his voting right has been violated.
After the Baker press conference a Florida Republican observer said he doubted that the grounds indicated by Baker were strong enough to obtain an injunction against the manual vote counts. No one thought to ask why the manual vote count in Republican Seminole County which gained Bush 98 of his 327 vote lead was not questioned by Baker. In a fitting conclusion to the TV segment, an NBC reporter standing in the middle of Crawford, Texas, the crossroads town near the Bush ranch, reminded viewers that she did a story on the woman in charge of elections in Austin, Texas, the city where Bush votes. That woman said that she uses manual counting rather than machine counting to resolve election disputes, because machine counting is more subject to error. --Politex, 11/11/00
In a move that will guarantee that if he ever becomes President he will most likely be considered an illegitimate leader of a corrupt administration by the majority of American citizens, George W. Bush has authorized his father's Secretary of State to "seek a court order today" to prevent the people from having their votes hand counted. It's one thing to argue that the Palm Beach 19,000 made a mistake with their ballots, and that this mistake can't be remedied, it's another to attempt to prevent a legal hand count of ballots in order to ascertain the will of the voters. Valusia, Broward, and Palm Beach counties have planned hand counts for today. In Republican Seminole County the other day, nearly 100 new votes were found for Bush by doing exactly that. The genie is out of the bottle and the Republicans can't put it back. A hand count doesn't mean that every single ballot need be looked at. What it means is that the ballots rejected by the machine need to be examined for two things.
First, and most important, the human counter looks for evidence that the ballot had been punched, but the little paper square, called the "chad," for one reason of the other, has not fallen off. In such cases, the machine would read that ballot as "no vote." The Washington Post reports that "In Palm Beach County, there are about 10,000 such ballots, known as "undervote" ballots. In Miami-Dade there are another 10,000 to 11,000, and in Broward County about 6,700. All three counties are heavily Democratic, and some Gore officials believe a thorough hand counting of the undervote ballots might yield additional votes for the vice president." Secondly, when ballots are double-punched, either by the voter or by someone who had the ballot prior to the voter, voters often take a pencil or a pen and indicate their choice with a circle or an arrow. Once the machine has rejected the ballot, the counter can easily see such markings.
Since Republican Seminole County has established that such decisions are prefectly legal in Florida, having engaged in such a count the other day, and since we are three days from the Florida state deadline for finishing the recount, there's little doubt that any attempt to legally prevent such hand counting from taking place is an attempt on the part of George W. Bush to steal the presidency by negating the will of the people. If the mainstream newspapers and the television talking heads back him on this today, and you know well enough from experience how to determine that, we will then be at the beginning of a profound Constitutional crisis, because a majority of Americans will not stand for it. I sincerely hope that Mr. Bush thoroughly understands the implications of what he is doing. However, his stunning lack of insight into the philosophic underpinnings of justice and of government in the past, coupled with the well-documented arrogance and single-mindedness of both he and those around him, do not, I'm sorry to say, bode well. --Politex, 11/11/00
BUSH WATCH: THE NOVELby Jerry Politex
I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Che Zee.
Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car (love to hear those turbines winding down) and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait.
He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms.
"Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Jerry. Good description."
to be continued next Wednesday...
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