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Stephanopoulos: Candidate Not Wrong to Say Bush Stole Election
Don Imus, Quoted in NewsMax ^ | 5/14/03 | Carl Limbacher

Posted on 05/14/2003 11:24:38 AM PDT by Paul Ross

NewsMax.com

 

Wednesday, May 14, 2003 12:07 p.m. EDT

Stephanopoulos: Candidate Not Wrong to Say Bush Stole Election

In a radio interview Wednesday morning, ABC's "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos defended a claim by one of the Democratic Party presidential candidates that President Bush stole the 2000 election, saying it was "a reasonable inference" based on the evidence.

Stephanopoulos was asked to respond to a comment by former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who told Sen. Joe Lieberman during the party's May 3 presidential debate: "We need to pursue opportunities for individuals to vote, instead of making it a high hurdle that they have to leap. And in all cases, make certain that we never again allow for the stealing of an election, as happened with you and, and Senator Gore."

Asked why, as the debate's moderator, he didn't challenge Moseley Braun when she made the erroneous claim, Stephanopoulos told radio host Don Imus that the debate rules didn't allow him to follow up.

But in the next breath the objective newsman insisted that Bush really didn't win the state of Florida legitimately.

"I believe that Al Gore got more votes both in, obviously the popular vote," insisted the "This Week" host, "and if you count all the votes in the state of Florida, Al Gore would have had more."

When Imus pointed out that investigations by numerous media organizations failed to turn up compelling evidence that Gore won more Florida votes than Bush, the former Clinton spokesman countered, "To not believe [that Gore beat Bush], you'd have to believe that 30,000 elderly Jewish voters in South Florida voted for Pat Buchanan.

"You can't believe that," Stephanopoulos added.

The Democrat spinmeister-turned-ABC newsman then explained that while he disagreed that the election was deliberately stolen by Bush, he didn't think the claim was unreasonable.

"It doesn't mean that George Bush stole the election," he told Imus. "I don't think he did. But it's just this. I just think it's a reasonable inference."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2000election; 2004election; abc; abcdisney; abcnews; algorelostgetoverit; boycott; boycottdisney; bushgore; clymers; denydenydeny; dnc; donimus; election; election2000; election2004; georgestephanopoulos; hangingchad; mediabias; mickeymouse; moseleybraun; mousesevilempire; moveonmorons; paidshill; slapthadonkey; spinspinspin; stole; waawaaaa
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To: TC Rider
]"To not believe [that Gore beat Bush], you'd have to believe that 30,000 elderly Jewish voters in South Florida voted for Pat Buchanan. "You can't believe that," Stephanopoulos added.]

Especially since Buchannon only got 3,389 votes in Palm Beach County, 560 in Dade County and 788 in Broward County.

Furthermore, is Georgie under the bizarre impression that "elderly Jewish voters" are the *only* kind of voters that exist in South Florida?

41 posted on 05/14/2003 12:26:16 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Paul Ross

what can you expect from a clinton but boy


42 posted on 05/14/2003 12:27:05 PM PDT by The Wizard (Saddamocrats are enemies of America, treasonous everytime they speak)
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To: Paul Ross
Objective "journalists" like steponallofus and McAuliff think that the rest of the country thinks like they do. Perhaps in '04 the military will get to vote and the so called close election will be more like SHOCK AND AWE!!!

Pray for GW and Our Troops

43 posted on 05/14/2003 12:27:36 PM PDT by bray (Old Glory Means Freedom)
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To: Paul Ross
Here's a 'simple' explanation of what happened in Palm Beach County that I found on the net..

Palm Beach County and Counties across the United States
We show that in Palm Beach County in the 2000 election the discrepancy between the share of votes expected for Buchanan on the basis of previous election results and the share of votes Buchanan actually received was exceptionally large. The discrepancy in Palm Beach County was the second largest among the 3,015 counties in the U.S. for which discrepancies could be estimated.8 Most of the other counties for which we observe extremely large discrepancies either trace to documented balloting problems or occur in patterns that suggest that systematic and distinctive patterns of support for Buchanan developed in those places.

To measure discrepancy we use residuals from robust estimation of an overdispersed binomial regression model of the number of votes cast for Buchanan compared to the votes cast for all other presidential candidates.9 We estimate a separate model for each state. The binomial model respects the fact that the basic data are counts of votes. Following McCullagh and Nelder (1989), we allow for overdispersion because we believe that the county-level data (and, further below, precinct-level data) are subject to unobserved internal clustering effects.

We use robust estimators for several reasons. The primary reason is obvious: the voter complaints, legal cases and media reports strongly suggest that the processes that produced the electoral results in Palm Beach County were substantially different from the processes that produced the results elsewhere in Florida. The robust estimators we use have a high breakdown point (Donoho and Huber, 1983; Hampel, 1971) so that they are consistent and produce reliable measures of discrepancy even if unusual voting processes occurred in several counties in a state.10 A large anomaly in one county will not mask (Atkinson, 1986) comparable or perhaps somewhat smaller anomalies that occur in other counties (Hampel et al., 1986, 67). An estimator that lacks a high breakdown point will underestimate the frequency of highly anomalous election results. Another reason to use robust estimators is the fact that the regression models we use are at best rough approximations for the processes that produced the vote counts (Hampel et al., 1986, 82). The estimators we use produce reliable measures of discrepancy even under such conditions, as long as the model gives a pretty good approximation for Buchanan's expected vote share in most counties in each state. Data weakness is another reason for robust estimation. Because our regressors include functions of results from the previous election, there is a generic kind of problem. If anomalies occurred in the earlier election at roughly the same rate as in the current one, then the data include observations that have distorted regressor values. The robust estimators we use protect against the influence such distorted regressors might otherwise have on the results. An observation that has a substantially distorted regressor will not affect the results for the other observations and will itself appear as an observation that has a large discrepancy.

A county that has a discrepancy larger in magnitude than a certain threshold is an outlier. The threshold is defined in terms of quantiles of the standard normal distribution.11 If the threshold is large, it is highly likely that the relationship between current and previous election results in an outlier county differs from the relationship that approximates the data elsewhere in the state. The outlier county may have a different disturbance (e.g., a nonzero mean, a fat-tailed distribution), different regression coefficients or contaminated regressors. To explain why a county is an outlier requires investigation using additional information. There are many possible reasons for Palm Beach County to be an outlier. In later sections we provide further support for our claim that the cause of Palm Beach County's exceptional status is the butterfly ballot.
44 posted on 05/14/2003 12:30:06 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: William McKinley
ok, now I have to bump for reading later!
45 posted on 05/14/2003 12:31:12 PM PDT by eyespysomething (Breaking down the stereotypes of soccer moms everyday!)
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To: SunStar
More accurate to say Algore nearly stole the election.
46 posted on 05/14/2003 12:33:31 PM PDT by RightWhale (Post no Bills)
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To: TC Rider
Didn't John Lott run a regression analysis on the 2000 election which more or less debunked these guys?
47 posted on 05/14/2003 12:37:00 PM PDT by Paul Ross (From the State Looking Forward to Global Warming! Let's Drown France!)
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To: Paul Ross
Tell a lie often enough and people start to believe it.
48 posted on 05/14/2003 12:39:01 PM PDT by McGavin999
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To: Paul Ross
To not believe [that Gore beat Bush], you'd have to believe that 30,000 elderly Jewish voters in South Florida voted for Pat Buchanan.

You're right. I don't believe it.

Never did.

I believe that this was a lie made up by a Democratic operative to throw the election in the court where they hoped a Democrat judiciary would rule in their favor. The whole thing was bogus from the start, George.

To believe the opposite, you'd have to believe that a consortium of left-wing newspapers who counted the ballots and have consistently stated that Bush won Florida, are lying.

49 posted on 05/14/2003 12:41:17 PM PDT by CaptRon
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To: Paul Ross
Didn't John Lott run a regression analysis on the 2000 election which more or less debunked these guys?

That's my recollection. I'm still favoring the theory of poorly done ballot tampering by the dems.

BTW, I recall the only way found to create a 'dimple' was shoving 3 or more ballots at a time into the machine.

50 posted on 05/14/2003 12:50:05 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: Paul Ross
Step-on-all-of-us went from being Clinton's paid liar to - ABC's paid liar. When Brinkley retired, that was the last time I tuned in to This Week.
51 posted on 05/14/2003 12:50:50 PM PDT by 45Auto (Big holes are (almost) always better.)
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To: MHGinTN
More to the point, Steponallofus is covering up the fact that a DNC operative made a major mistake in his/her hole punching gambit, accidentally punching the Buchanan vote instead of the Gore

Exactly correct. If I may expand on your point.

I Believe…

This is what so infuriated the Democrats. They knew they had fixed enough votes to steal the election, but they screwed it up!

Tim Russert (big liberal) and Rush Limbaugh (big conservative) both tried, but so far no one has been able to create a pregnant or hanging chad using one voting card and punching out the chad as designed. Pregnant and hanging chads have only been created when one tries to punch many cards at one time.

When trying to fix votes, an operative will punch many cards at once for their candidate. The idea is, if the voter punches their candidate all is well. If the voter punches out a competing candidate, it will be an “overvote” ballot, with two chads punched and the vote meant for the other candidate will be discarded.

The ballots in Florida listed George Bush on the top left, with Al Gore directly below. Pat Buchanan was listed on the top right. To vote, the voter then punched out a chad in the center of the page. The chad positions were Bush at the top, Buchanan was second and Gore was third.

Where they made their mistake was when they punched multiple chads for Gore, they assumed Gore was the second chad from the top since Gore was listed second from the top on the left side. They then mistakenly punched 30,000 (Stephanopoulos’ number) chads for Pat Buchanan.

This is what drove the cheating Democrats wild. They knew they had fixed 30,000 votes for Gore, more than enough to win, but the votes went to Buchanan instead.

52 posted on 05/14/2003 12:56:46 PM PDT by RJL
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To: 45Auto
If the Dems are right and they can prove it, then Bush is eligible for two more terms.
53 posted on 05/14/2003 12:57:18 PM PDT by Consort
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To: Paul Ross
"To not believe [that Gore beat Bush], you'd have to believe that 30,000 elderly Jewish voters in South Florida voted for Pat Buchanan. "You can't believe that," Stephanopoulos added.

Yes, you can. The paper ballots were tangible proof that they did. Whether they intended to or not is another matter, but they did vote the way they voted. If they voted for someone other than they intended, then they were careless and certainly not entitled to a do-over. Period.

Furthermore, who's to say that those voters who voted for Buchanan were elderly or Jewish? Those ballots are anonymous, and certainly not every single voter in Palm Beach is elderly and Jewish. I mean, why not eliminate voting altogether and just assign a president based on demographics. Okay, Palm Beach is elderly and Jewish, so that area goes to the democrat candidate.

54 posted on 05/14/2003 1:29:31 PM PDT by alnick ("Never have so many been so wrong about so much." - Rummy)
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To: Paul Ross
Like the Dimocrats STOLE all of those military votes?
55 posted on 05/14/2003 1:32:39 PM PDT by Destructor
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To: Paul Ross
In my lifetime, there's been one presidential election that was stolen (bought): JFK in 1960.
56 posted on 05/14/2003 1:32:42 PM PDT by onyx
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To: Paul Ross
I really wish the GOP would have went after the Dems after the 2000 election for voter fraud. I think it is better put that the Democrats nearly stole the 2000 election. And I also suspect they stole the hotly contested South Dakota Senate election between Tim Johnson and John Thune in 2002. The Democrats are a party that I suspect are knee deep in the ugly mess of voter fraud. I hope some day they get theirs.
57 posted on 05/14/2003 1:33:20 PM PDT by miloklancy
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To: Paul Ross
Snuffalagous still goes by the Xlinton creed:
"If you lie often enough, the news media will start to believe you."
58 posted on 05/14/2003 1:35:48 PM PDT by OrioleFan
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To: Paul Ross
A more accurate statement about the 2000 election is that the Democrats did not steal it

but boy, did they try! the son of richard daley of chicago knows every vote stealing trick in the book, but it wasn't enough...

59 posted on 05/14/2003 1:36:46 PM PDT by chilepepper (Clever argument cannot convince Reality -- Carl Jung)
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To: Paul Ross
"I believe that Al Gore got more votes both in, obviously the popular vote,"

Keep spreading the big lie Clinton pawn... Albert Gore JUNIOR received 0.52% more of the popular vote (1/2 of 1%) and that is without recounts, waiting for all of the mail in ballots to come into every state, or eliminating illegal ballots. That victory is well within the margin of error for tabulations. They were the numbers that were certified so they are the "legit" numbers but that doesn't mean that they are complete or accurate. There was no need to press for that proof since the popular vote tally does not determine the winner of the election.

The leftists love to cite that in saying the President Bush does not have a mandate however he received far more votes than Bill Clinton did in either election (and a larger percentage of votes).


60 posted on 05/14/2003 1:46:04 PM PDT by weegee (NO BLOOD FOR RATINGS: CNN let human beings be tortured and killed to keep their Baghdad bureau open)
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