Florida Recount
Florida FEC Rules that Palm Beach Commissioner Violated Laws in Pressuring Judges during Recount 09-Jul-03 Florida Recount
"The Florida Elections Commission has ruled that Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty violated state campaign finance rules in working to oust three Florida Supreme Court justices. It will decide next month whether to impose up to $450,000 in fines against her. On May 21, the FEC voted 7-0 to adopt an administrative law judge's findings that McCarty violated state election laws in the collection, expenditure and reporting of tens of thousands in political action committee (PAC) funds... During McCarty's two-day hearing, the FEC's lawyer argued that Stone and McCarty established the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary to pressure the state Supreme Court to rule in favor of then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in his ballot recount battle with Al Gore. McCarty testified that the committee began to take shape six to nine days after the Nov. 7 election. The Florida Supreme Court was first asked by Gore to order hand recounts in the decisive Florida race on Nov. 15."
Scott Wyman writes: "An employee in Broward County's elections office has told prosecutors that there are more uncounted absentee ballots from September's primary than those found this week in a file cabinet. The lawyer for the employee said she discovered more than 500 unopened ballots in the office mailroom two days after the election. According to the story she laid out to prosecutors, she notified her supervisor and was told there had been a mix-up and that the votes needed to disappear."
In an article about Katherine Harris' new book, The Associated Press lied about the manual recount by the Media Consortium - which included the AP. The AP now says, "Some unofficial ballot inspections paid for by consortiums of news agencies showed Bush winning by varying margins." But here's what the AP itself wrote on 11-11-01: "A full, statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes could have erased Bush's 537-vote victory and put Gore ahead by a tiny margin ranging from 42 to 171 votes, depending on how valid votes are defined." E-mail feedback@ap.org and tell the AP to stop its Orwellian rewrite of history!
Bloomberg.com reports: "Enron Corp., Halliburton Co. and Reliant Energy Inc. -- three companies whose finances are being examined by U.S. regulators -- were among the corporations reimbursed for the use of their corporate jets by the Bush committee during the 36-day recount...The Bush committee paid the 10 companies $140,365 for use of the planes, according to the documents, which listed total spending of $13.8 million on legal, transportation and other expenses during the recount...Several other executive jets rented by Bush's recount committee belonged to oil industry companies, including Houston- based Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., and Tom Brown Inc., a Denver-based oil- exploration company." The filing also shows that Bush spent about $1 million to house the Bush recount staff, about $40,000 per person, for the 36 day period.
A distinguished panel of leaders -- including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Congressman Alcee Hastings, Civil Rights Commission Chair Mary Francis Berry, and others -- headline a community meeting in Ft. Lauderdale on Wednesday January 9th. The event will build support for pre-emptive actions to ensure that the discriminatory actions used in 2000 to disenfranchise Florida voters will not be able to be used in 2002. If you are in south Florida bring 5 people with you and go!
Aaron Cohen gave Meria Heller the exclusive scoop on two breaking stories. First, why September 11th wasn't prevented - where were our intelligence men? The FBI was diverted ever since the lst bombing of the WTC in 1993 by Republicans obsessed with Bill Clinton. 52 of the best FBI agents were assigned to Clinton, leaving limited resources available to follow up on all the leads that could have prevented 9/11. Second, Aaron worked for the NORC report (Fla. Recount) and reports that it was defective MACHINES - not people - that screwed up the count, yet no investigation of illegal tactics has occurred. Other news: NEW Bin Laden Video; boat people and children in trouble in Australia; Brigitte Bardot threatened for defending dog-meat in South Korea; and an AWESOME report by Robert Fisk, who got his butt kicked in Afghanistan
On November 12, the members of the corporate Media Consortium published their analysis of the Florida recount. Although the data proved that Al Gore won under all scenarios in which ALL legal votes were counted, the Media Consortium nevertheless proclaimed Bush the winner. In other words, the media lied - to preserve the fiction that Bush is a legitimate President, and the Supreme Court's outrageous and anti-democratic ruling in Bush v. Gore was irrelevant. In a Democrats.com EXCLUSIVE, we are reviewing all of the Florida Recount stories, and issuing a grade. We call it the "Media Integrity Test" - and we welcome your own submissions!
In its rush to conceal the truth about the Florida recount, the NY Times declared "George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward." But the judge chosen to supervise this recount, Terry Lewis, recently told the Orlando Sentinel that "he would not have ignored the overvote ballots" - especially since Bush's lawyers were demanding their inclusion. As Mickey Kaus points out in Slate, the conclusion of the NY Times (and other Consortium members) "is thoroughly bogus - unfounded and inaccurate. If the recount had gone forward Judge Lewis might well have counted the overvotes in which case Gore might well have won. Certainly the Times doesn't know otherwise." In other words, the NY Times LIED. E-mail letters@nytimes.com and demand a front page retraction!
"Gore won under a strict-counting scenario and he won under a loose-counting scenario. He won if you count 'hanging chads' and he won if you counted a 'dimpled chad.' He won if you counted a dimpled chad only in the presence of another dimpled chad on the same ballot the so-called 'Palm Beach' standard. He even won if you counted only a fully-punched chad. He won if you counted partially filled oval on an optical scan and he won if you counted only a fully-filled optical scan. He won if you fairly counted the absentee ballots. No matter how you count it, if everyone who legally voted in Florida had had a chance to see their vote matter, Al Gore would be sitting in the Oval Office today." So writes Eric Alterman in MSNBC.
According to the St. Petersburg Times, "Gore could have picked up 2,182 votes last November on overvotes where voter intent is clear, and Bush would have gained 1,309 votes, the media companies' analysis shows. That difference [873 votes] would have enabled Gore to defeat Bush in any statewide recount that included overvotes, regardless of what statewide standard for counting undervotes was used." These clear votes should have been counted on Election Day; election officials who failed to do so broke the law. Moreover, the analysis of 2-candidate overvotes shows that Gore would have gained another 25,000 votes, if all of Florida's counties used error-checking machines.
"Make no mistake. Al Gore won in Florida. Under any consistent legal standard of counting the ballots, Gore won. The fact that the media consortium is lying about the results is more an indication of just how debased our democracy has become, than it is a reflection of what appears on the ballots that were examined." So writes Paul Lukasiak.
The media consortium applied its ballot review to nine scenarios for recounting ballots. Under six of the nine, Al Gore won.
We waited for more than a year for 175,000 uncounted votes to be counted. Now the results are in, and the facts show that Al Gore won Florida. But Republicans and the corporate media cannot allow the public to see the truth - that Gore won and Bush lost - because that would expose the Presidency of George W. Bush as illegitimate. So the same people who helped Bush steal the Presidency are now trying to steal the Truth. This page is dedicated to exposing the monumental efforts by the media to distort the truth: that Al Gore won, and George Bush stole the Presidency with the help of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the TV networks.
Way back in January, the Media Consortium promised to announce the results of its recount by the end of March. Amazingly, it's now November - and we know the results of the 2001 election before the 2000 election! According to the grapevine, the results will FINALLY be released on Sunday. Naturally, we are certain the data will PROVE that AL GORE WON. Stay tuned...
"There's an elite few who do know what happened in Florida, or at least have a better sense than anyone else. What they're doing is concealing information that's crucial to the spirit and process of American democracy. Election reform was, for a while there, an urgent requirement for both federal and state government. Only there's something very odd about trying to fix something when it's unclear just what went wildly wrong (if Mr. Gore really won) or even just mildly wrong (if Mr. Bush still won, flaws in casting votes and counting votes aside). Imagine these newspapers and the like railing on and on, and justifiably so, if it were the government withholding such information from them." So writes the Albany Times-Union.
The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday quoted the chief flack for the Wall Street Journal as saying that it no longer cared to know who won the presidential election. Well, now why would that be?
The failure of the U.S. media organizations to complete the definitive study of uncounted ballots from the Florida presidential election is due to a misplaced politics of patriotism, observed the London Telegraph on October 21st. The results of an examination of 170,000 ballots that were rejected by machines as uncountable are now being suppressed by the American media organizations who sponsored the study. An apparent Gore victory, says the Observer, "appears to have been sacrificed on the altar of patriotism and a perception that America needs to be led into war by a strong president." Apparently, our supposedly independent news media believe we can't handle the truth.
"The media conglomerates chose sides in the 2000 election based on the one and only thing that matters to multinational corporations - profit. They accurately determined that George W. Bush was the candidate who would best allow them to maximize that profit. They have a huge financial stake in the political well being of Bush. And now, they have the results of a ballot study in Florida that unexpectedly shows a decisive victory for Al Gore. Journalistic integrity dictates that they release the accurate results of that study to the public. Financial self-interest dictates that they do not. Unless public pressure causes the media elite to decide that failing to release the accurate results of the ballot study would do them more harm than good, it is likely that financial self interest will trump journalistic integrity. As usual." So write Carolyn Kay and David Podvin in Makethemaccountable.com.
"It is simply false for the Consortium to claim people were unaware that the results were developing in a way that would be highly embarrassing, at best, for George W. Bush. The Republican observers saw the strong pro-Gore trend and responded with typical aplomb. A GOP activist accused one NORC coder of being drunk on the job, a lie that was later disproven. Even so, Republican operatives reportedly pressured another coder to confirm the phony allegation. The Republicans yelled about the quality of the coders, screamed about the treachery of the process, and threw temper tantrums about the unfairness of it all. Of course, they offered no proof of their slanderous charges. Though the GOP observers were publicly panicking as the trend continued strongly against them, the Consortium observers in the very same rooms claim to be completely unaware of who was winning." So write David Podvin and Carolyn Kay at Make Them Accountable.
David Podvin writes in Make Them Accountable, "According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gores victory from the American people... The Consortium was stunned to discover that the recount revealed Gore won a clear victory. Even after casting aside the controversial butterfly ballots and discarding ballots that were 'iffy', Gore decisively won the recount. While the precise numbers are still unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was involved in the project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to create 'major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out.'" We demand the truth!!!
If Mr. Bush and his cohorts are unable to guide our nation back to truth and democracy, and if our Democratic leaders are not powerful enough to ensure that formal investigations are launched, we may have only one alternative left. To adhere to the rule of law, and to reclaim and restore our democracy - we must resort to a Citizens' Arrest of George W., Jeb, Katherine, et. al.
Just released is an independent analysis of the spoiled votes in Florida's 2000 presidential election by Philip A. Klinkner of Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. This analysis gives even more weight to the findings of the Civil Rights Commission that thousands of black voters in Florida were systematically disenfranchised. Klinkner analyzed the spoiled votes from all precincts in Florida, adjusting for a variety of factors that could contribute to vote spoilage -- such as age, education, illiteracy, etc. The results show that the number of spoiled votes was not significantly related to education, age, or even voting method. Instead, the number of spoiled votes was found to be related to the number of black voters in a precinct. In other words, systematic vote spoilage appears to have occurred that was caused by something - or someone - other than the voter. Gee, we wonder who that could be?
Steve Cobble, who directs the Campaign for a Progressive Future, takes a good hard look at the real numbers shown by the polls. You wouldn't know it by watching the evening news, but a very healthy slice of the American electorate has not forgiven the Republicans for their theft of the presidency. Bush is still not regarded as a legitimate president by the American public. The truth wants to be told.
The Herald's review of the Florida overvote is based on such erroneous data that the conclusions are completely unreliable. More significant, however, is the marked bias in the errors; they consistently increase the likelihood of a greater net gain in votes for George W. Bush than for Al Gore. The Herald consistently misrepresents its own data and consistently skews the numbers to create a "recount victory" for Bush in Florida... the Miami Herald has abdicated its journalistic duty to present the unbiased truth. Their "inconclusive" results on the recount have been achieved by using false data. Some votes were doublecounted; hundreds of others were omitted. Unable to sort out the confusing spin of numbers upon numbers presented in the Herald report, the average citizen will not question their accuracy or the validity of the conclusion. But if you follow the ball, bouncing all over Florida, the truth emerges. The conclusion that Al Gore got the most votes in Florida is the only way to explain the Bush team's desire to halt the recount, and the Supreme Court's willingness to risk its reputation by ordering the halt.
Researcher Paul Lukasiak invited the principal author of the Herald's analysis, Marty Merzer, to reply to our in-depth critique. His reply was a simple brushoff: "We stand by our methodology, our ballot reviews and our reporting." Lukasiak has again requested a detailed, point-by-point reply.
Upon close scrutiny, the Miami Herald's review of the Florida overvote is so egregiously flawed that it is completely unreliable. More importantly, however, is that there is a marked bias in that unreliability that provides a significant perceived advantage to George W. Bush. The Herald consistently misrepresented its own data, and just as consistently skewed the numbers to make it look as if Bush got more votes than Gore in Florida.
The Miami Herald completed its count of 111,261 overvotes, and Al Gore gained 682 votes among the 3% (3,146) where the intent of the voter was absolutely clear. "Generally, this occurred when voters chose a candidate and then cast a write-in vote for that same candidate," according to the Herald. Under Florida law, these votes are REQUIRED to be counted on Election Day. If these votes had been counted, Katherine Harris would have had to certify Gore as the winner on November 27 by 145 votes - without examining a single hanging chad in Palm Beach County. In addition, Gore beat Bush by 46,466 among the other 97% of the overvotes. These votes would have been clear votes if all of Florida's counties - not just the wealthiest - had used instant-check technology. We now know the truth: Al Gore won Florida, and Bush is not the legitimate President. Since Bush ran on "restoring honor and integrity to the White House," we are calling upon Bush to do the only honorable thing - RESIGN!
Matt Drudge reports that the media consortium has completed its Florida count. "It looks like there is going to be something for both sides [Bush and Gore] to chew on here," said a source with direct access to the recount data. "There are conflicting results." Here's the translation from Drudgespeak to English: Al Gore won the election, but Karl Rove & Co. are doing everything in their power to spin the results to deny this plain reality. Don't let the media distort the truth!
We didn't know that the Miami Herald, which released its count of 64,000 undervotes last month - is also counting the 110,000 overvotes, and will announce its results in "days." Meanwhile, the media consortium count by the AP, CNN, New York Times, Palm Beach Post, St. Petersburg Times, Tribune Newspapers, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, will be announced "within the next two months." The Herald's "Bush Wins Again" spin on the undervote recount was a journalistic scandal, since their own facts showed that Gore won if every vote was counted. Let's see how badly they distort the overvote results.
The Miami Herald rushed to judgment with its recount of Florida's undervotes, sacrificing thoroughness, method, and accuracy to break the story first. Meanwhile, the consortium of major news organizations that has been counting undervotes AND overvotes has hung in there, through internal squabbles, gun-jumping by the press and increasing pressure by impatient editors. When their tally is finally done, the result (no doubt marked by blood, sweat, and tears now as well as hanging chads!) is expected to be the "real thing."
The Democratic National Committee yesterday accused the $8 million Bush-Cheney vote-recount fund of evading a new law aimed at unreported political spending and called for an IRS investigation of the fund's failure to publicly disclose its contributions and expenditures. In a letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe charged that the Bush-Cheney recount operation amounted to "the biggest 'stealth PAC'" ever created. He said it should have registered with the IRS under the law passed last year requiring secretive tax-exempt groups to reveal their finances.
Late last week, the National Opinion Research Center completed its tally of 180,000 undervotes AND overvotes in Florida. We haven't heard the results yet, but we bet that Shrub has! And we know that the LAST place he wants to be when Gore is declared the winner is in Florida. So is that why he suddenly cancelled his visit to Jacksonville on Wednesday? Inquiring minds want to know...
When the Miami Herald came out Wednesday with the much-anticipated story about the Florida vote count, I was again hoping against hope that some major media outlet in this country would start covering the Florida Presidential Election in a fair and even handed manner. I was again disappointed.
"[Barry] Richard has discovered that the Bushies' gratitude has its limits. More than four months after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the 2000 election, he and his firm, Greenberg Traurig, are still owed more than $800,000 in legal fees. The firm, which sent 39 lawyers and 13 paralegals into court battles all over the state, is one of a dozen that have so far been stiffed. The estimated total tab: more than $2 million...As for the law firms, they are taking pains not to alienate their deadbeat clients, for fear of damaging their burgeoning Washington lobbying practices. Greenberg Traurig now represents electric power companies, drug manufacturers and Internet gambling interests willing to pay big money for access to policymakers." Bush Daddy's buddies will probably bail out the wastrel son. They always do.
"Bush officials refused to reveal the final tab for the 40 days of legal combat that raged through election boards, a series of state courts and twice went to the Supreme Court. And many of the lawyers who submitted bills totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars concede they may never be paid. Some ethics watchdogs criticized the secrecy, cloaking the millions of dollars in debts and funding that made a presidency possible. One unanswered question is whether attorney Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher worked for free when he argued Bush's case before the Supreme Court, or whether his tab is still pending. Olson, of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is the president's pick for U.S. solicitor general." Commented Larry Noble of the Center for Responsive Politics: "[These firms] may figure that this is an administration in power and that they'll get paid back in other ways over time," such as through their lobbying practices.
According to the investigation by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Lantigua in the April 30 issue of The Nation, Florida's black community -- provoked by Governor Jeb Bush's attack on affirmative action -- mounted a voter registration drive that increased black voter turnout by an astounding 65 percent. What did Bush do? Using taxpayer funds, the state took extraordinary steps to fight the influx of legitmate American voters. As many as 200,000 Floridians -- mostly African Americans -- were purged from the voter rolls or denied the right to vote in what has to be considered the biggest crime against the people since the era of cross-burnings and lynchings.
It has been more than three months since the U.S. Supreme Court violated all principles of law and stopped the counting of votes in Florida in order to declare George W. Bush the President of the United States. With the passage of time, we have learned many details about how Bush stole Florida, but the media remains adamantly opposed to examining these details. Here are some of the many crucial questions we believe the media needs to ask about the Florida election in order to find out the truth.
"If you count every vote, Gore wins." So says Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign spokesman. When USA Today declares "Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed In Fla. Vote," they are simply lying.
What did our readers think of the Nightline show? Read their own words.
DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe took on the Miami Herald's distorted coverage of the Florida recount results. "The same study that Republicans tout as proving that Bush really won Florida, also shows that if all the ballots were counted on election night, Al Gore would have won. And if all the people who intended to vote for Gore actually got to vote, without being confused or intimidated, the results would have been overwhelmingly in favor of Gore. Any way you spin this data, you still come to the same conclusion, more must be done to protect our sacred right to vote and have our votes counted." And more must be done to tell America that Bush didn't win the Presidency, he stole it!
On the day AFTER its headlines circled the planet, the Miami Herald published a follow-up story headlined: "Recounts could have given Gore the edge." Say what? "Had the Broward and Palm Beach canvassing boards used the loosest standard in judging ballots and finished the recount by the court-set deadline -- which Palm Beach did not meet -- Gore almost certainly would have won. He might have gained 2,022 votes in the two counties when Bush's state lead was only 930." So why wasn't this the lead story on Wednesday? E-mail the Herald (HeraldEd@herald.com) and demand an apology for this journalistic dirty trick. And forward this story to all of the media that yesterday proclaimed that "Bush won."
"If you count every vote, Gore wins." So says Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign spokesman. When USA Today declares "Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed In Fla. Vote," they are simply lying.
According to Florida law, county officials must count every ballot that cannot be read by a machine. If county officials had followed the law, Gore would have gained 1,323 among the 64,248 undervotes counted by the Miami Herald, not even counting the approximately 120,000 overvotes that will be counted in a few weeks.
On Sunday at 9 pm EST, the Miami Herald is expected to announce the results of its statewide recount of undervotes. On the eve of Bu$h's quasi-state-of-the-union address, the Herald lied to America by declaring that Gore's small gains in one county (Miami-Dade) proved that Bu$h actually won. Let's see how the Herald - and the Republicans - spin the story this time...
We went on high alert on Tuesday, expecting the Miami Herald and USA Today to announce the results of their recount of 67,000 undervotes in Florida. But then they called it off. Is Karl Rove scrubbing the data first? "That's bullshit," said Miami Herald managing editor Mark Seibel. "You can quote me on that." We shall see...
Nearly five months after the election, the US media has still not reported on the many frauds committed by Republicans to steal the Presidency. Judging from the advance writeup, Nightline's show on Duval County (Jacksonville) may be yet another attempt to deny the reality that Bush stole the election. Nightline's angle is that the testimony of countless witnesses is nothing more than "anecdotes" - and because the witnesses are mostly black, they should be dismissed as mere "perceptions." Hey Nightline, quit telling us how to think and do your job of reporting the facts: 1) that the overvotes were caused by specific instructions from Republican Election Supervisor John Stafford to "vote EVERY page", while he spread the Presidential candidates over TWO pages; 2) that 27,000 votes in Duval county were voided, more than any other county in Florida; 3) when Rep. Corinne Brown (D-FL) heard about the 20,000 void ballots in Palm Beach and asked Stafford how many ballots were voided, he lied and told her "a few hundred." If she had known the truth, she would have filed for a manual recount, which could have produced the 154 votes that Gore needed to win Florida. Phone Nightline at 202-222-7000, e-mail niteline@abc.com, or use their web form: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/email.html
An investigation by Democrats.com has revealed that hundreds - possibly thousands - of Florida votes for Al Gore and George W. Bush were never counted because marks in the "write-in" section of the ballot caused these ballots to be incorrectly treated as "overvotes." Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified more than 28,000 overvotes from counties that violated Florida law by ignoring such votes. Had these votes been properly counted, Al Gore may well have been declared the winner in Florida.
It is a crime that the Republican Party stopped the counting of Florida's 60,000 undervotes. But perhaps the real crime is in the overvote. There were 110,000 overvotes in Florida, ballots rejected because more than one choice was marked for president. Overwhelmingly, the spoiled ballots were Gore votes. It was the overvote, much more than the dangling and dimpled chads of undervote, that cost America the president we really elected. Did tens of thousands of voters screw up their ballots by mistake, or was the second hole punched by someone other than the voter?
Pat Stone is a member of Democrats.com who responded to our call to send letters to the editor to local newspapers following the publication of the outrageous false story that another recount "proved" that George Bush "won again." The recount in question added more votes to the Gore column from Miami Dade county but not enough by itself to give Gore his margin of victory. So Pat adopted the draft letter we sent out as his own and the Tallahassee Democrat published it, only to express shock afterwards when the same letter appeared in other papers. So offended was the editor of the letters section he ran an editorial against us and -- without having the courage and honesty to include this in his editorial -- unilaterally banned poor Pat Stone from ever getting another letter in the paper. We objected and appealed to the higher ups. The result? Pat Stone's right to speak in the Tallahassee Democrat with whatever damn words he chooses as his own have been restored, and readers get to ponder which is worse -- taking some words from the Internet for your letter to the editor or subverting the will of the majority of voters in a national election?
The rest is here:
Democrats.com Archive: Florida Recount