Posted on 11/11/2001 7:07:57 PM PST by classygreeneyedblonde
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.
This page is dedicated to exposing the monumental efforts by the media to distort the truth: that Al Gore won Florida, and George Bush stole the Presidency with the help of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the TV networks. In other words, the 2000 election was decided by criminal fraud, not by a democratic election. We have documented nearly 60 crimes by these officials on our Floridagate page.
Democrats.com has been covering the Theft of the Presidency in depth since November 8, 2000. For links to our complete coverage, visit Stolen Election 2000
Here are some of the lies that are dominating media coverage of the Florida recount.
Gore's Voters Were Stupid.....(true)
The Lie: This has been the dominant Republican argument since Election Day 2000. It's a simple argument, and a transparently racist one. It argues that since many of the overvotes and undervotes were cast in black precincts, the cause of these invalid votes was the presumed stupidity of black voters
The Truth: Gore's voters were just as smart as Bush's voters, but they voted with error-producing ballots on error-prone machines.
Ballot design was crucial. The counties with the highest error rates were those where the list of Presidential candidates spilled over into two columns (as in Palm Beach's infamous butterfly ballot) or two pages (as in Duval County's infamous "vote every page" ballot). After a year of study, the Miami Herald finally concluded that Ballot design caused most spoiled votes. What the Herald fails to point out is that these confusing ballot designs were illegal.
Error-checking systems were crucial. The lowest invalid vote rates were found in counties that checked each ballot for errors before accepting the ballot - counties using Optiscan equipment with precinct tabulation. The original error rate may have been just as high as in other counties, but voters in these counties were given a second chance to fix their errors. This equipment was found primarily in Republican counties with few black voters.
Working machines were crucial. In some precincts, the voting machines simply didn't work properly, although the law requires county officials to make sure they do. This occurred disproportionately in majority-black precincts
Gore's Lawyers Were Stupid...(I agree)
The Lie: This is the more sophisticated lie told by self-styled political insiders. The argument is that Gore's lawyers used the "wrong" arguments; if they had used the "right" arguments, they would have won.
The Truth: Gore's lawyers never had a chance to win the recount battle in court, because Republicans controlled the U.S. Supreme Court - as well as the Florida state legislature, and the ultimate arbiter of a dispute over electors, the U.S. Congress
Gore's lawyers followed a consistent strategy throughout Florida, namely to count every vote. In contrast, Bush's lawyers followed a cynical two-track strategy. In Republican areas, they fought to count every possible vote, whether legal or not. In Democratic areas, they fought to reject every possible vote, whether legal or not. Gore's lawyers should be credited with integrity, if nothing else.
Gore's lawyers publicly proposed a deal to Bush: to settle the dispute by recounting every vote in Florida. There was no provision in Florida law to do this, so it required agreement from Bush. James Baker rejected the proposal immediately
Gore's lawyers did win one huge victory: they persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to order a recount of 60,000 undervotes. Unfortunately, as election officials in nearly every county in Florida began counting, a narrow 5-4 Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency injunction to stop the recount, on the outrageous - and treasonous - theory that counting all of the votes would harm their fellow Republican, George W. Bush. This horrendous ruling was denounced by 673 law professors, and has been defended by none. Two days later, the same Republican majority declared the election over in a decision with no basis in law, as documented in bestselling books by Vincent Bugliosi and Alan Dershowitz.
Even if Gore's lawyers had persuaded the Supreme Court to allow a recount - and Gore had won that recount - Florida's Republican state legislature would have appointed pro-Bush electors. And any dispute over electors would have ended up in Congress, which was controlled at that moment by Republicans in both the Senate (Trent Lott) and the House (Tom DeLay) - the same folks whose unlimited partisanship led them to focus the nation's attention on Bill Clinton's sex life, while Osama Bin Laden was preparing his deadly attack on America.
It's Treasonous for the Media to Publish the Recount Results During a War
The Lie: This is simply the latest argument by Republicans to bury the truth, that Al Gore won Florida
The Truth: on numerous occasions, Bush has declared that the purpose of our war against terrorism is to defend democracy and freedom. How can we defend democracy if we don't practice it - by counting all of the votes?
Republicans have opposed any recount of Florida's votes since November 8
During the recount battle, Republicans led by James Baker insisted that all of the votes had been counted and recounted. In fact, 1.25 million votes were never recounted, in direct violation of Florida law, which requires a machine recount when the margin of victory is under .5%. Moreover, another 175,000 votes were never even counted once because they were rejected by vote-counting machines. Those are precisely the ballots that were counted by the Media Consortium, in their effort to find legal votes that should legally have been counted.
The Media Consortium was ready to publish their results the week after Sept. 11, but they postponed publication in order to avoid raising questions about Bush's legitimacy at a moment when the nation truly needed to unite
The overwhelming majority of Americans - including Democrats - rallied behind George W. Bush after the terrorist attack on Sept. 11. But Bush has discredited himself by using the unprecedent spirit of national unity to advance his right-wing agenda on tax cuts for the rich, eliminating civil liberties, and drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
The Problems Are All Fixed
The Lie: Florida Republicans claim to have fixed all of Florida's election problems with legislation passed in 2001.
The Truth: Election systems remain broken in Florida and all across America
Florida's new law left many problems untouched, including a felon purge system that illegally removed thousands of legal voters. Moreover, Florida's new law added a new form of "literacy test" that was outlawed by the Voting Rights Act, and is under review by the Justice Department
Many states have problems that are as serious as Florida's, if not worse. Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to fix those problems, but Republicans refuse to consider these changes.
The Supreme Court's outrageous decision in Bush v. Gore continues to cast a shadow over all elections. The Court ruled that minor variations in vote-counting practices violate the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution, and can be used to invalidate an election. Since variations in vote-counting are the rule - not the exception - virtually all elections could be invalidated on this basis.
Americans Are "Over It"
The Lie: Ever since the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush as President on December 12, 2000, Republicans have told Americans to "get over it." Obviously, this is not an attempt to persuade those who believe the election was stolen - it's an effort to silence them.
The Truth: Millions of Americans continue to believe the election was stolen
Florida Democrats are still furious. In June 2001, 1,500 donors attended the party's annual Jefferson-Jackson fund-raising dinner and contributed $750,000 - three times as much as the June 2000 dinner, which came in the midst of a presidential campaign and featured an appearance by candidate Al Gore
African-Americans are still furious. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the NAACP has assigned paid personnel to each of the states to coordinate early registration and mobilization campaigns, while other groups have rounded up thousands of volunteers to educate voters, including teaching people how to use voting machines. The Sept. 11 attacks only heightened interest in politics and government, according to those who lead these drives.
Democratic activists are still furious. Less than 5% of Democrats.com members believe we should "get over it," while over 95% believe we should "investigate, prosecute, and defeat Republicans."
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in July asked whether Bush won "fair and square." By 50%-48%, a majority of Americans said no. Over one quarter (26%) of the respondents did not accept Bush as a "legitimate" President
A Fox News poll in June found that 58% of Americans were still angry about how the votes for president were counted in Florida.
Americans Can't Do Anything About It
The Lie: Republicans succeeded in installing George W. Bush as President, despite the fact that he lost the election. Now they want to make sure they succeed in their crime, by preventing any investigation or prosecution of those responsible for the Theft of the Presidency.
The Truth: Americans do NOT have to accept the Theft of the Presidency.
Democrats.com has documented nearly 60 crimes committed by the Bush campaign, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the TV networks. We call these crimes Floridagate, and we believe they are even more serious than Watergate, because they resulted in the Theft of the Presidency. These crimes should be investigated, and those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
Democrats.com has launched the Democracy in 2002 campaign to remind voters about the Stolen Election of 2000, and to channel the frustration felt by millions of Americans into a grassroots campaign to elect Democrats at all levels of government.
Join the discussion of the Florida recount in Democrats.community (registration required).
I won't assault the ears of fellow Freepers that might detest the pervert x42 as much as I do. Try the URL if you need ammo to post over at DU or other irrational sites.
Oh, I see. I guess the poll workers would instruct the voters who appeared to be democrats to vote in the stupid voting machines and the voters who appeared to be Republicans to vote in the smart machines. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Still stupid. Fell for the old error producing ballots and error-prone machine trick.
LOL...
Seriously folks....this is one unforgiving lot. We'll be hearing this dribble for decades to come. If they continue they'll begin to become more and more bitter and more and more blind to reality.
It will help to speed up their downfall.
It happened in Germany in the 1930's and almost happened in the USA last year.
1. NORC is largely funded by the left wing Joyce Foundation(http://www.joycefdn.org). If this is the best that they can come up with, then to say that they are stretching is an understatement.
2. Punch cards should be banned. Period. End of Story. Go to scantrons. Less fraud. Vote fraud needs to be stopped. In Palm Beach, Bill McCollum ran better than Bush. It was the only dem county where that happened.
3. All that really mattered IMO on recounts were the UNDERVOTES. Overvotes show the stupidity of the voter. It's called following directions.
4. They tried the whining game in Michigan as well with the 8th congressional district. It didn't fly here either, and Byrum(who didn't bother me that much until after the race where she showed her true colors) backed off. In Michigan, by law, I have to vote where my driver's license is. It made the papers, and wasn't a secret. East Lansing is a college town. I have two addresses. I voted in Livingston County where I was supposed too. It's simple right. Apparently not. Byrum was pushing for a REVOTE. There was a recount as well, and unlike Floriduh(aimed at South Fla, not North FLA), there is no hanging chad rule. With the punchcards, two corners must be off for a vote, period, end of story. Rogers won again BTW - 150 votes.
5. The counties with the highest error rates were those where the list of Presidential candidates spilled over into two columns (as in Palm Beach's infamous butterfly ballot) or two pages (as in Duval County's infamous "vote every page" ballot).
SO WHAT? BTW - Let's eliminate straight ticket voting as well. :)
6. Working machines were crucial. In some precincts, the voting machines simply didn't work properly, although the law requires county officials to make sure they do. This occurred disproportionately in majority-black precincts
Don't election officials come from the counties themselves.
7. Two days later, the same Republican majority declared the election over in a decision with no basis in law, as documented in bestselling books by Vincent Bugliosi and Alan Dershowitz. Real credible there. Has Vinnie done anything since Charlie Manson? Dershowdicks speaks for itself.
8. However, this election was too close. The electoral college gambit favored the GOP SLIGHTLY more in 2004, it still will be a close race. Forget Hillary. She's a mosquito, a minor problem, a nothing, and can't win nationwide. For a dem candidate, the best way to describe a threat is this. Can he sell in the Midwest? Michigan, Pennsylvania(Not midwest, but similar politically) Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri. John Edwards and Roy Barnes can win this. I don't give a rip about approval ratings. It's early, and politics is still local at heart.
9. Why in the blue hell did Southfield Michigan, a dem stronghold, buy those Palm Beach ballot machines?
10. Lastly, this shows that the dems fight to win. We all have to know that, and we all have to win. The GOP isn't perfect. I'll be the first to say that. However, it is the best we got, and to the libertarians and Buchananites here, 3rd parties don't win. That's a fact. We need you to help change the GOP. That's why I finally joined it. Politics are made through deals. If you can't beat them join them. We need them, and they need us. That doesn't mean sell out. If you think I'm ever going to back MFN for China or something like that, it still isn't going to happen, but we have to go long term and win the war against the DLC first, and the dems in general. Here's the thing here. I'm not over it. The democraps tried, and are still trying to STEAL the election. These power hungry freedom grabbers need to be put in their place, and wiped off the face of the earth politically. I'll personally help see to that in 2002.
I fight to win.
Let's investigate Wayne County. Why in the blue hell do they get to report their votes seperate from the rest of the state. Wayne County is headed by Ed McNamara, the crooked piece of trash that makes Daley look ethical.
Which reminds me, I'm calling Scranton and Garcia, as well as the state GOP, county GOP, and every one of my connections to end this.
How can you steal something from the Dems if they don't have it in the first place?
...illustrating one of the many reasons the Supreme Court did the right thing by intervening. Would you have wanted a president-less Republic on September 11th?
Now the results are in, and the facts show that Al Gore won Florida.
The "facts", of course, prove no such thing but if we repeat this often enough you just might by it.
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.
...an argument we ourselves refute later in the story but, being Democrats, we know you're not smart enough to notice.
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.
Yes, the TV networks that breathlessly overplayed a 25-year-old DUI story the weekend before the election and called Florida for Gore before the polls in the Florida Panhandle had even closed are now involved in a monumental coverup which they will do with lead stories on every newscast in every news cycle this entire coming week. Yeah, right!
Here are some of the lies that are dominating media coverage of the Florida recount.
Gore's Voters Were Stupid.
The Lie: This has been the dominant Republican argument since Election Day 2000. It's a simple argument, and a transparently racist one. It argues that since many of the overvotes and undervotes were cast in black precincts, the cause of these invalid votes was the presumed stupidity of black voters.
Of course, no Republican has charged any such thing which is why whenever we start a paragraph with "The Lie:", it is really our lie we wish to proffer.
The Truth: Gore's voters were just as smart as Bush's voters, but they voted with error-producing ballots on error-prone machines.
Errors that only happened to occur when Gore voters were voting, proving it wasn't the ballots or the machines that were error-prone. If it had been random errors, Bush would have roughly the same margin.
After a year of study, the Miami Herald finally concluded that Ballot design caused most spoiled votes. What the Herald fails to point out is that these confusing ballot designs were illegal.
Of course, it was Democrats who designed these ballots, posted them in newspapers and held hearings to approve them before the election at the county level but that doesn't negate out contention that it was all a conspiracy on the part of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris who had nothing to do with either the ballots or the machines used.
Gore's Lawyers Were Stupid.
The Lie: This is the more sophisticated lie told by self-styled political insiders. The argument is that Gore's lawyers used the "wrong" arguments; if they had used the "right" arguments, they would have won.
Of course, the only "right" arguments were the ones used by those mean-spirited Republicans and their biased lackeys on the Supreme Court. They were called "the law".
The Truth: Gore's lawyers never had a chance to win the recount battle in court, because Republicans controlled the U.S. Supreme Court - as well as the Florida state legislature, and the ultimate arbiter of a dispute over electors, the U.S. Congress.
...proving that Bush would have probably won anyway so there's no point in a giant conspiracy to suppress the "truth", is there?
Gore's lawyers followed a consistent strategy throughout Florida.
...to stall for time in order to deface as many ballots as possible in order to steal the victory. It came dangerously close to working too.
In contrast, Bush's lawyers followed a cynical two-track strategy.
...they wanted to count only the ballots that were legally cast and to comply with the state election laws of Florida. These were truly underhanded evil schemes.
Gore's lawyers should be credited with integrity, if nothing else.
(insert laugh track here)
Gore's lawyers publicly proposed a deal to Bush: to settle the dispute by recounting every vote in Florida. There was no provision in Florida law to do this, so it required agreement from Bush. James Baker rejected the proposal immediately.
...which was correct because "there was no provision in Florida law to do this", meaning it would have been illegal.
Gore's lawyers did win one huge victory: they persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to order a recount of 60,000 undervotes. Unfortunately, as election officials in nearly every county in Florida began counting, a narrow 5-4 Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency injunction to stop the recount, on the outrageous - and treasonous - theory that counting all of the votes would harm their fellow Republican, George W. Bush.
Actually, it was a 7-2 count but a narrower decision on the the grounds for the ruling. Their theory was about violating the Constitution and the laws of the Electoral College if the recounting nonsense couldn't be concluded in time to meet federal mandates. If they couldn't, the decision on electors would have been thrown to the Florida legislature and we all know what they would have done. There was nothing even remotely "treasonous" about it.
This horrendous ruling was denounced by 673 law professors,
...some of whom have expressed relief that Bush, not Gore, is president in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Even if Gore's lawyers had persuaded the Supreme Court to allow a recount - and Gore had won that recount - Florida's Republican state legislature would have appointed pro-Bush electors. And any dispute over electors would have ended up in Congress, which was controlled at that moment by Republicans in both the Senate (Trent Lott) and the House (Tom DeLay).
...again proving how idiotic this recount "conspiracy" business is but, when you're a Democrat, emotion always trumps reason.
The Media Consortium was ready to publish their results the week after Sept. 11, but they postponed publication in order to avoid raising questions about Bush's legitimacy at a moment when the nation truly needed to unite.
...We Democrats believe a united, patriotic America is in violation of everything we stand for. Naturally, we would have run this story front page on September 12th in order to show that dissent is the only true American value.
The Problems Are All Fixed The Lie: Florida Republicans claim to have fixed all of Florida's election problems with legislation passed in 2001.
This is a lie. The law included new voting machines that have no backup and no paper trail making the chance of fraud an even greater possibility.
The Truth: Election systems remain broken in Florida and all across America.
...We Democrats want to do all we can to insure that more felons, illegal aliens, multiple voters and the deceased have their votes counted because they are among our most supportive constituencies. We want the system in Florida and all across America "broken" because we are so talented at "fixing" them.
Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to fix those problems, but Republicans refuse to consider these changes.
If you liked "motor voter", you'll love how we eliminate voter registration altogether as a racist and mysogynist relic of our shamed past. Democrats should have the freedom to vote wherever and however they like as often as they can. We fully encourage it.
Florida Democrats are still furious. In June 2001, 1,500 donors attended the party's annual Jefferson-Jackson fund-raising dinner and contributed $750,000 - three times as much as the June 2000 dinner, which came in the midst of a presidential campaign and featured an appearance by candidate Al Gore.
...which should tell you all you need to know about what a popular candidate we had leading our party in 2000.
African-Americans are still furious. The NAACP has assigned paid personnel to each of the states to coordinate early voter registration.
They are test-marketing ballots with pictures of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods next to Democrat candidates as part of their "Hit The Hole(tm)" voter education campaign.
Democratic activists are still furious. Less than 5% of Democrats.com members believe we should "get over it," while over 95% believe we should "investigate, prosecute, and defeat Republicans."
...and as soon as we can find a charge that won't be laughed out of court, we'll let you know.
A Fox News poll in June found that 58% of Americans were still angry about how the votes for president were counted in Florida.
Most of them were angry about the ridiculously biased recounts done BY Democrats FOR Democrats which had to be watched over like hawks. And angry, too, that the Democrats had wasted so much time when Gore should have just conceded as he was supposed to do like any politician with any class on Election Night.
The Truth: Americans do NOT have to accept the Theft of the Presidency.
The Real Truth: They succesfully thwarted that theft last Florida when Gore and the Democrats were defeated.
If they were as smart as Bush's voters, they would have voted for Bush.
We were very lucky to get a respite from the democrats with Bush. As a country, we did not deserve it. We should be made to suffer the consequences of electing 8 years of democrat criminals. Really, nothing but an experience of the consequences of our own irresponsibility will teach us to elect better leaders. It is unlikely that the world will continue to respect us, if we cannot at least elect honest administrations. It is NOT true that we are all forgiven our past electoral stupidities, just because we finally elect one good president -- Bush, in this case.
Unfortunately, we are at political war with the democrats. There is no nicer way to put it. They are anti-democracy, and intent on subverting our system. If we allow them, it is because we ourselves are lame and gutless.
If you agree, put a Bush sticker on your car right away; order one from the GOP website today. If you do not at least have the courage and conviction to do that much, then indeed you're part of the problem.
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