Posted on 11/28/2004 12:46:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Morgan invited the visitors for an early Thanksgiving dinner, but the reporters had to return home, driving to the Jacksonville airport past Snoball stands, chicken farms and antiabortion billboards.
LAKE BUTLER - Since George W. Bush captured Florida and the White House again, critics have fixed their sights on northern pockets of the Sunshine State and asked: How did the Republicans win so heavily in counties stocked with Democrats?
Some wondered whether Florida's tally was corrupt, with one Internet site writing: ``George W. Bush's vote tallies, especially in the key state of Florida, are so statistically stunning that they border on the unbelievable.''
Last week, The Herald went to see for itself whether Bush's steamroll through North Florida was legitimate. Picking three counties that fit the conspiracy theory profile -- staunchly Democratic by registration, whoppingly GOP by voting -- two reporters counted more than 17,000 ballots over three days.
The conclusion: No conspiracy.
The newspaper's count of optical scan ballots in Suwannee, Lafayette and Union counties showed Bush whipping Sen. John Kerry in a swath of Florida where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-1.
The newspaper found minor differences with the official results in each county, most involving a smattering of ballots that had been discarded as unreadable by optical scan machines but in which reporters felt the voter intent was clear.
Under the optical-scan system, voters fill in an oval or darken an arrow by a candidate's name on a card. A machine reads the card optically.
Wrinkles aside, The Herald count confirmed that Bush's message sold in a part of the state where many voters may be Democrats by registration only.
''They're not going to vote for a Northeast liberal,'' said Lafayette County Judge Harlow Land, director of the county canvassing board.
Kerry had solidly won the battle in South Florida, where touch-screen machines do not create a ballot paper trail that can be checked. But Bush won the war in Florida by dominating elsewhere, particularly in the 52 counties that use optical scan ballots, which can be checked for accuracy.
Republicans had often done fairly well in those counties, but this year more so. And it was on those counties that the critics focused. Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 340,000 voters in the 52 optical scan counties, but Bush took them by about 340,000 votes -- a 680,000-vote swing that assured him of winning the White House.
UNION COUNTY
The Herald focused on three counties that represented some of the more severe disparities between registrations and votes, beginning last Monday morning in Union County, where more than 75 percent of the registered voters are Democrats.
Election clerk Mary Francis Williams flipped ballots in the courtroom in Lake Butler, as reporters marked lines on pads -- counting votes for Bush, votes for Kerry and the rare votes for a third-party candidate.
As the counting went on, the daily hubbub of life breezed through. One worker's husband dropped by to say he was taking a truckload of cucumbers and collards to Jacksonville. A neighbor stopped in to tell friends about the lot size for her double-wide.
Union County Judge Dave Reimer popped in, too, saying: ``People here traditionally register as Democrats to vote in local primaries, but they're very conservative. When I came here in 1983, there were only 54 registered Republicans in the whole county.''
Election Supervisor Babs Montpetit was a little more direct. ''People here are mostly fundamentalist Christians who work in the prisons,'' she said. ``Do you think they're going to vote for the liberal senator from Massachusetts?''
The Herald total: 3,393 votes for Bush and 1,272 for Kerry. There were 15 votes that couldn't clearly be counted.
The official Union County total: 3,396 votes for Bush, 1,251 for Kerry and a few dozen that couldn't be counted.
''The difference is in the under-over votes,'' Montpetit explained. The Herald concluded voter intent in a couple of dozen cases that scan readers could not discern.
SUWANNEE COUNTY
The next stop was west a bit, past cattle and tall pines to neighboring Suwannee County. Election Supervisor Glenda Williams greeted reporters at the election office in Live Oak: ``Most people in this county are against abortion and gay marriage. So, they voted for Bush.''
Did it matter that Dick Cheney, Bush's vice president, said that same-sex marriage should be left to states to decide, a position that differs from Bush's? ''We don't think that deep,'' she replied.
Williams had just put together a packet to mail to BlackBoxVoting.org, an Internet group that has questioned the outcome of the Florida election.
''BlackBox wants office memos,'' Williams said. ''But we just talk to each other,'' she said.
Williams displayed the voting tabulation machines and demonstrated how the ballots are fed in by voters. She printed out a tape that looked like a cash register receipt to show the early vote results. It matched The Herald's count.
Halfway through Tuesday, Williams took a break so she could pick up Sassy at the dog groomer and buy a pecan pie from Cracker Barrel.
The head of the Suwannee County Chamber of Commerce, Dennis Cason, put in his two cents during the respite. ''A lot of Christians here -- independent, fundamentalist Baptists -- think that God interceded for Bush,'' he said.
The Herald counted almost 60 percent of the votes in Suwannee County, where nearly 64 percent of the voters are registered Democrats.
The newspaper's total from those precincts: 6,140 votes for Bush and 2,984 for Kerry, which nearly matched the county's official tally.
LAFAYETTE COUNTY
Next stop: Mayo in Lafayette County (pronounced ``Luh-FAY-it''), where 83 percent of the voters are registered Democrats.
Along the way were neighborhoods called ''The Christian Village'' and a warehouse called ''The Christian Outlet.'' One billboard said: ``There is life before birth.''
''This can't be déj vu, like four years ago,'' county Election Supervisor Lana Morgan said at the courthouse, where the ballots awaited.
Four years ago, the Florida vote was so tight, and so flawed, that The Herald counted every questionable ballot. This time, the results weren't as close, but the questions remained. Reporters told Morgan the newspaper had come back to hand-count presidential votes to end the speculation.
''Good,'' she said. ``You don't know how frustrating it is to convince people who are set on believing something -- even if it's not true.''
Lafayette County Judge Land paid a visit during the count. Bush made ''an honest mistake'' when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the judge said, and voters looked past that error to other issues.
The reporters' total: 2,452 votes for Bush and 848 for Kerry, with 20 that couldn't be clearly counted.
The official Lafayette County total: 2,460 votes for Bush, 845 for Kerry and others that couldn't be counted.
Morgan invited the visitors for an early Thanksgiving dinner, but the reporters had to return home, driving to the Jacksonville airport past Snoball stands, chicken farms and antiabortion billboards.
Snotty? I'd say so.
Some Democrats still suffering the post-election blues***....There's a reason Democrats are taking the loss of the White House personally. This time, it is personal, Dashev said.
"The big difference between 2000 and now is that, if you were given the choice between having your wallet stolen or losing your wallet, you would choose to have your wallet stolen," he said.
"Clearly, if it is stolen, it has nothing to do with you. If you lose it, well then you feel like you are just a bumbling fool."....***
I wonder what those deluded, deranged, desperate democrats have to say about this. My guess is they'll claim (which they're already doing) yet again that the media is in the gop's pocket and scream "liar liar pants on fire," or else this is (laughably) a cunning "strategy" to lull us into a false sense of security.
With all the snide remarks peppered throughout this article, Kerry supporters can take "comfort" in the fact that those odd religious, trailer living folks cast those awful votes - it wasn't thinking, wealthy Americans who voted for that cowboy Bush.
What a waste of a reporters time. I could understand an out of state newspaper doing this, but surely the Miami Herald employees know how those counties vote and were not the least bit surprised by the results?
Sometimes I find it very interesting that many people in DU hate (some) MSM as much as we do. But, they do have their favorites. Not surprisingly, Dan Rather is one of them.
I wasn't aware of the law that allowed the bearer of a journalism degree, who happens to be working at a crappy So. FLA newspaper, to double as an elections supervisor.
They knew, it's just intimidation and LIBERAL angst.
They're LIBERALS with access and approval from their paper to lean on these voting districts.
The explanation is very simple. Old School Democrats in the Northern Panhandle and in the I-4 Corridor are conservatives who haven't bothered to switch parties. They vote their beliefs not their party label.
Zell Miller democrats.
Zell Miller bump!
Wrinkles aside, The Herald count confirmed that Bush's message sold in a part of the state where many voters may be Democrats by registration only.
Is there any chance the mainstream press, incluging that smug Oberman on pMSNBC will air this stroy? <[> I seriously doubt it. Email this story to every media outlet you can find.
The problem is, they never will.
I live in what most objective observers would probably consider to be the most conservative neighborhood-with the possible exception of Boro Park-you'll find without actually crossing the Verrazano.
Yet I'm willing to bet that if you took a statistical sampling of Dyker Heights, you'd find that a majority of the people surveyed would be registered as Democrats.
Just because someone is registered as a Democrat doesn't necessarily mean that they're some latte-sipping, Krugman-quoting, Birkenstock-clad Eurotrash wannabe who gets off on reading the New York Review Of Books.
Yeah - not all Democrats follow their party's stance of "America bad, France good." It bears keeping in mind there are still millions of Democrats in Flyover Country who are patriots to the core and don't like what their party has now become.
My numerous misspellings, not to mention the fact that my head is about two inches away from crashing onto my keyboard, tell me that it's time to retire for the night.
Or, as the case may be, morning.
-good times, G.J.P.(Jr.)
It isn't just Florida. Democrats go crazy in a lot of places when Republicans win despite Democrat registrations being much higher. Democrats are crazy enough to think they are owed election wins just because they snared a lot of motor voter registrations and such. Democrat voters are lazy, not motivated to go to the polls, thus their huge get out the vote efforts.
This is a serrious problem in the blue states..
Do you know someone who has,
P.U.B.E.S. ?
People
Upset
By
Election
Syndrome
I'm sure since they're so impressed by Kerry's impressive loss, he's a shoo-in for 2008, if not the presidency than certainly the nomination. Very conveniently overlooking the fact, that at least in theory and on paper, Bush "should" have lost by so many points--a messy war, high gas prices, widespread perception of a listless economy, the draft lie perpetuated, his bad 1st debate performance, most negative media coverage of a gop candidate in 20 years, high-profile Hollywood a$$holes shreiking their punk mouths off, a very united anti-Bush democrat party. Yes, very impressive that Kerry "only" managed to lose by 3 points--NOT.
So dems, if you want to run the Frankenstein stiff again, go ahead--I'm sure he'll do reaalllll well without the anti-Bush wind at his back (which accounted for most of his "support"), a war that may very well be "resolved" and an economy that may completely recover in 4 years, extraordinarily high expectations set due to his 3 impressive debate "wins" in 2004, and the fact that he'll be even more gruesome-looking in 2008.
Another psychotic delusion dribbles down the legs of the 'Bush didn't win' nutlets. Poor lunatics can't catch a break. Here's hoping this little article will help nudge a few more of these fruitcakes in the direction of the Canadian border.
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