[Vision2020] Felonies in Florida: Don't Blame Nader!

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 06:42:14 +0000

Tim and All:

First I would like to answer the often made comment "Get over it" against 
anyone still objecting to or discussing the Florida Gore v. Bush 2000 
election.  Illegal activities that disenfranchised thousands of voters, and 
felonious violations of Florida law by people tampering with the voting 
process, were committed.  Maybe this happens all over the USA, but does that 
make it right or excusable?  If someone commits a crime, a few years later 
do we say "Get over it," if those who committed the crime got off scott 
free, while there are victims seeking to have justice?  The entire nation is 
the victim when we have a Presidential race influenced by the activities of 
law breakers.  In fact such lawbreaking stands as an egregious crime 
violating the fundamental principles the USA ostensibly represents.

I watched intently much of the coverage on C-Span of the suit brought, with 
Judge Nikki Clark presiding, regarding the tampering with the absentee 
ballot process in Florida's Seminole County, committed by Republicans.  It 
was admitted this had occurred, yet I know of no charges being brought 
against these felons.  I know what they did was a felony according to 
Florida law:  I downloaded the actual legal technical descriptions from the 
Florida law books where this is clearly outlined.

We are just to forget about this?  What message does this send to people in 
elections in the future who may try to break the law to influence an 
election?  That they can break the law and influence elections and people 
will just "get over it?"

I have researched this subject extensively, so of course my post on 
vision2020 was "incomplete."  I'm not going to post 100 megs on vision2020 
to try to be "complete."  Against the rules.

Before I go over a few other issues in some detail, I want to clarify that I 
do not think there was a coordinated Republican conspiracy in Florida 
against the Democrats.  But differing Republican operatives, acting in what 
they thought was the best interests of their party, did engage in illegal 
and/or unethical behavior that influenced the election.  Do Democrats do the 
same?  Yes, but in Florida 2000 the Republicans got the better of the 
Democrats, for sure!

Yes, the Palm Beach butterfly ballot, which was not used in Broward county 
as far as I am aware of, was designed by a Democrat.  Her name was Theresa 
Le Pore.  I have seen her interviewed on this subject.  Ostensibly this 
ballot design, violating certain ballot guidelines (the two major candidates 
were supposed to be first and second but Gore was placed third on the 
ballot, odd conduct for a Democrat!), was to enable the elderly in Palm 
Beach County to see the ballot better.  What a joke that was!

Who ever said Democrats are always loyal to their party, or even smart 
politicians, if they are loyal?

Who designed the ballot is tangential to the the fact that, according to a 
exhaustive professional statistical analysis of the vote in this county, 
Gore lost over 6000 votes, according to an article published in the Palm 
Beach Post newspaper, due to honest mistakes voters made in marking the 
butterfly ballot.  This one error causing fact alone gives Gore Florida, 
according to, yes, "the intent of the voters," which is, according to 
Florida law, the guideline to be used in recounts.

There are thousands of other "votes" for Gore that were not included in part 
because many people in minorities were not allowed to vote in the first 
place, even when they tried.  Their voter registrations were illegally 
voided by being placed on a voter purge list by the state of Florida that 
was full of errors.  It was so well known this list was full of errors, some 
Florida counties refused to enact this list, though ordered to by the 
Republican Kathern Harris controlled branch of government in charge.  There 
were other methods by which minority voters were discouraged from voting.  
It's too much to go into everything here.

All these Gore votes from the mistakes in Palm Beach county over the 
butterfly ballot, and the disenfranchised minorities from the voter purge 
list, were lost forever.  No recount could re-claim them.

A re-vote in Palm Beach County was sought in the courts, but could not be 
legally allowed.  Many Jews realized later in horror they had voted in Palm 
Beach for Buchanan (placed second on the ballot ahead of Gore!), who many 
view as an anti-semite, rather than their real choice, Gore.  Buchanan 
himself admitted there was no way the voters gave him that huge a percentage 
of the vote in Palm Beach.  Bush was listed as the first candidate on that 
ballot, rendering a mistake in voting for him much less likely.

Why do you make no mention of the illegal voter registration purge list 
carried out by the Republican dominated Florida government, which illegally 
voided the voting rights of thousands of minority voters, or the felonious 
tampering with the absentee ballot process in Martin and Seminole Counties, 
carried out by Republicans?  You also compare the "mob" that entered the 
Miami-Dade facilities to disrupt a court ordered recount that was being 
conducted, to other protests the Democrats conducted.  But I do not know of 
any protests conducted by the Democrats where they ENTERED THE BUILDING AND 
DISRUPTED A RECOUNT UNDER WAY during the 2000 recounts in Florida.  For one 
thing, the Democrats wanted the recounts to continue!  The Republicans 
sought to block, quite successfully, every recount that was ordered by law 
and the courts.  And in fact, as I stated, not one of the recounts was 
completed, as ordered by law, not even the first automatically ordered 
machine recount.

I am have no illusions about what activities the Democrats may have been 
engaged in, but show me any real evidence the Democrats engaged in 
activities like the ones discussed in the last paragraph?  Like I said 
before, the Republicans out-scammed the Democrats in this election in 
Florida.  It was well known from various polling being conducted months in 
advance that the Republicans were likely to lose Florida, and the 
Republicans knew this.  They implemented various methods of negating just 
enough Gore voters to pull it off.  Florida governor Jeb Bush claimed he was 
100% neutral about influencing this election!!!!!!!!
Gag!

Of course both parties had observers supervising the recounts, but these 
were not loud yelling protests entering the recount facilities pounding on 
doors and windows to disrupt and intimidate the recount, like the Republican 
mob did in Miami-Dade.  House Republican Tom Delay brought in Republican 
staffers from DC, housed and fed them, gave them entertainment (Wayne 
Newton): they crossed state lines with the intent of disrupting, I mean 
"SHUTTING DOWN," a legal court ordered recount.  This is different than a 
legal civil protest on the street!  It's somewhat like the difference in 
Moscow between protests outside the Federal building, which are allowed, but 
if you enter the Federal building to disrupt government business, this is 
illegal.  Somewhere there is a law about crossing state lines to interfere 
with an election:  "Just get over it?"

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has helped to supervise elections in 
other countries, said he would not have even gone into Florida to try to 
help, things were so bad.  Florida was more like an election in a third 
world banana republic than in the "world's greatest democracy."

You show a lack of knowledge of the facts regarding the absentee military 
ballots in Gore v Bush Florida 2000.  Some Democrats were insisting on 
voiding military absentee ballots that had flaws, but when the media and the 
Republicans drew blood over this, making the Democrats look unpatriotic, 
they backed off. In fact numerous ILLEGAL absentee military ballots ended up 
being counted, most likely favoring Bush.  The The New York Times did an 
exhaustive investigation of these absentee military ballots and found that 
the Republicans made hay on this issue when they painted the Democrats into 
a corner by splattering them with charges of being against our military 
service people's right to vote.  Absentee military ballots were then counted 
when there was no way to verify when the ballot was cast.  Almost certainly 
there were absentee military ballots counted that were cast AFTER the 
Tuesday deadline!

You also ignore that many of the voting errors were caused by voting 
machines in disrepair or ill maintained, not the voters themselves.  It is 
well established that the voting machines in Florida in that election in 
heavily minority counties in Florida were in more disrepair on average then 
the machines in less minority dominated counties.  This very likely 
correlated to the differences in the money available for each county to 
maintain voting machines.

But who ever said being from a poor county means your vote should not be 
counted as reliably as someone from a rich county?   This slanted the votes 
counted in favor of Bush, who of course was not very popular among blacks, 
the largest minority voting block, that also tended to inhabit poor counties 
in Florida with the ill-maintained machines.

This was one of main reasons for a recount: to examine ballots that the 
machines had rejected, due to supposed over votes or under votes, to reclaim 
valid votes that machine error had caused not to be counted.  It was well 
publicized that some punch card voting machines had not been cleaned out for 
years!  Of course there were voter errors of various kinds, and some people 
did not punch the "chad" all the way through.  If markings are clear enough, 
though, these can be reliably determined by examination.

Odd that the same standards for recounting punch card ballots that were on 
the books in Texas where Bush was governor were now suddenly viewed as 
invalid by Republicans!  There were many experts who agreed that there were 
standards to examine punch card ballots that were reliable.

The dispute over the validity of recounting punch card ballots was a ruse by 
the Republicans.  In fact they SOUGHT TO STOP ANY AND ALL RECOUNTS after 
they had won the first election night count.  Any offer made to agree on a 
counting standard and follow through on a full recount was rejected by 
Bush's side.  They did not want to take a single chance of losing the 
election they had already "won."

Also, your assertion that the voting error in Florida was about what the 
national average is, does not make much of an argument against the fact that 
Gore won Florida, or against the validity of trying to do a professional and 
fair recount.  Assuming what you say to be true, this does not negate the 
value of trying to examine what happened in Florida, with its unique set of 
circumstances, to determine if there is any way to find out what voters were 
disenfranchised, and who they voted for.

Often the error rates in elections are below the threshold to impact the 
outcome of an election.  In Florida this was not the case.

Your argument would negate the value of recounts, which are a legally 
recognized method of determining an election when the results are in doubt 
and a critical examination of ballots can more closely determine the winner. 
  Other election recounts have been conducted in the USA in recent years 
with both sides agreeing on the outcome and the recount being finished.

If this is possible, why was it not in Florida?  We know why.  The 
Republicans refused to cooperate with the democratic process of court 
ordered recounts.

One factor often cited as favoring Gore in Florida was the calling of the 
election by the media so early (first for Gore than later for Bush) that it 
reduced turnout in certain more Republican areas in western Florida.  While 
this is possible, there were other races and issues to vote on than just the 
Presidential race, so any voter with sincere intent to participate in the 
full process would not just turn around and go home before voting, even if 
he thought Gore had already won.  But I think that election results should 
not be projected till after the polls close to avoid discouraging 
participation.

There is no more important act for a citizen of a democracy to participate 
in than elections.  And there is no more deserving government function to 
fund and encourage than the voting process.  Without fair, efficient and 
reliable elections, that are participated in by most of the voting 
population, we do not have a healthy democracy.

We do not have a healthy democracy in the USA, it is clear.

Gore won the Presidency according to the intent of the voters.