I asked if the recount being requested by Gore was in the heavily Democratic areas of the state?
Where is the phony issue that you are claiming.
In the implication thaty he did something wrong by asking for recounts in the heavily Democratic counties, which is exactly what the las allows him to do.
Having lived in Broward during the fiasco;
Each county determines it's method of voting and also the design of the ballot.
The county Board of Election supervisors approve the machines and the location of the machines.
A statement was made by nobodyknows that the voting machines that would have problems with chads were pushed into the Democratic areas (implied as if forced in by the State).
I am stating that the selection of machines (by the State leadership) that would produce hanging chads is erroneous.
Yes, I posted a response to him too, IIRC, and clarified some of the real issues (you didn't respond to those).
Hanging chads were caused by people not punching the ballot cleanly. It is not dependent on the machine. A ballot is placed on the machine; and the voter pushes a styles through a set hole to break the paper. If they do not press properly or at an angle; the "chad" will not be popped off.
If it can be shown that the ballots themselves were rigged so the Democratic candidates' chads were defective then that theory might be able to hold water. Otherwise it is intended to be a smokescreen
Realize that the ballots did not come from the state but from a contract with some printer.
One of the issues, which alone cost Gore far more than enough votes to win the election, was that the machines had a setting to either return erroneous ballots for correction, or keep them and don't tell the voter, so they'd just not get counted. As I recall, there waqs also an issue of some precincts having the machines that could return the ballots for correction while other precincts counted the ballots later when it was too late for voters to correct them.
As the book Banana Republicans summarized:
In addition to kicking out innocent people as felons, Florida committed a number of other irregularities that disadvantaged blacks and elderly voters (who also tend to vote Democrat). "In a presidential race decided by 537 votes, Florida simply did not count 179,855 ballots," Palast states. Many votes went uncounted due to inferior voting-machine models and suboptimal machine settings. In counties across the state, Palast reports, racial demographics correlated closely with the proportion of uncounted ballots. Gadsden County, for example, had 52 percent African-American residents and a 12 percent ballot rejection rate, while Citrus County, with only 2 Percent black residents, had only I percent of their ballots rejected.- When USA Today compiled a statewide database correlating race and other factors to rejected ballots, it found that blacks were four times as likely as whites to have their votes go uncounted .
See Greg Palast's book for the charts by county, which show the most back counties with the far higher rates of disqualified ballots, as many as over 25% IIRC, and the most white counties with the fewest.
There was also multiple confusion in the way that some ballots were layed out.
That was tried to be blamed on the Republicans - yet people ignored that it was the Democratic Board of Election supervisors thatdesigned and approved the famous butterfly ballot.
Agreed. This issue alone was far more than enough to cost Gore the election, but it's one I file under 'accidental', not 'intentional'. Regardless, it still caused the election to go to the man who lost.
There were problems of ex-cons being purged from the voting lists. People claimed that most ex-cons are Democrat and that is was a way to suppress their vote.
The lists were provided by the counties to the state. Conspiracy?
You're wrong on this one. Read the Palast book for details. The felon purge list was a creation by state Republicans, and Jeb Bush's administration was responsible for the bad instructions to create a list with tens of thousands of false matches, disqualiifying valid voters who were highly disprortionately Gore voters. While 20 counties didn't use the list because it was so flawed, many thousands of valid Gore voters were denied a vote because of it. Read the Jeb Bush administration instructions to the company hired to make the list, read how the contract called for them to validate the names with cross references and phone calls - not one call was ever made and the state did nothing about that - for all kinds of evidence that this was an intentional problem to block black/Gore voters.
For another 'conspiracy', note how Katherine Harris' office sent out iillegal instructions that hurt Gore voters, then claimed the instructions said the opposite and released a copy supporting that claim, but Palast, calling her staff undercover was faxed the real document showing the opposite; he interviewed her aide in charge, and when he pulled out the real document, the aide jumped up, tore off his mcrophone, ran into his office and locked the door and called security to remove the interviewer.
There were also problems of military not getting their ballots in time to be recorded. Again this was a county problem - and in reverse from the ex-cons - stats showed that many military were Republican leaning. Another conspiracy?
I'm not sure whether the problem was more with the counties or the military, but you have a point, though the numbers don't clome close to the numbers of Gore votes lost to the election problems.
From the same book, on the Republicans' behavior on this issue:
Another disturbing aspect of the Florida election was the double standard used by Republicans regarding the counting of absentee ballots, including votes by overseas military. After the Supreme Court's decision, the New York Times conducted an exhaustive investigation into the handling of absentee ballots, some of which were received after election day but included in the Florida total nevertheless. "With the presidency hanging on the outcome in Florida, the Bush team quickly grasped that the best hope of ensuring victory was the trove of ballots still arriving in the mail from Florida residents living abroad," reported David Barstow and Don Van Natta, Jr. "Over the next 18 days, the Republicans mounted a legal and public relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws when counting overseas absentee ballots. Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President A] Gore." In counties where Bush had strong majorities, the GOP team successfully persuaded canvassing boards to accept flawed votes that "Included ballots without postmarks, ballots postmarked after the election, ballots without witness signatures, ballots mailed from towns and cities within the United States and even ballots from voters who voted twice. All would have been disqualified had the state's election laws been strictly enforced." In Gore strongholds, by contrast, "Bush lawyers questioned scores of ballots, almost always from civilian Democrats but occasionally from members of the military. They objected to the slightest of flaws, including partial addresses of witnesses, illegible witness signatures and slight variations in voter signatures." Correcting this disparity alone might have been enough to tip the balance in Gore's favor, they noted, since "without the overseas absentee ballots counted after day, Mr. Gore would have won Florida by 202 votes, and thus the White House. But no one knew that until the 36 days were over; by then, it was a historical footnote."
Then you have the media calling Florida for Gore before the ballots had closed. In local media, it was documented that people were upset that they were being advised that their vote was not needed for the Federal Elections and/or the voting had closed. Those areas where the voting was still valid was not Democratic leaning - Another conspiracy by the media to suppress the vote?
See my post above that the time the election was called was only 12 minutes before polls closed. While I think that's a mistake to call it before they close, the number of votes affected was clearly small.
Again, the number is far smaller than the number of Gore votes lost to problems.
It seemed as if each side was determined to screw up and confound the election process. When they were exposed, the finger pointing began, instead of trying to actually resolve the problems and put in procedures to prevent it from happening again.
There were accidents and mistakes on both sides, including Democrats hurting their own votes.
But the clearly intentional wrongs were by the Jeb Bush administration.
And the bottom line is that when you look at the votes for the various issues, it's very clear Gore won the election. The problems hurting him took far more votes than the problems addecting Bush.
And even if you put aside the problems and just look at the votes cast, the media consortium showed that under any scenario compatible with Florida law, Gore won as well.
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