[Robert A Cook PE]

Oh, true - "Number two" IS on the separated ballot, after it is removed from the voting machine.

What I meant was, the "name" of the person who is "number two" is NOT on the separated ballot.

An operator told to double-punch "number two" in a stack of ballots, can't independently tell that he is punching a Buchanan ballot spot.

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You seem rather sensitive about the "Bush brother" image ... Careful. Democrats use that as a false implication Jeb was influencing LOCAL election ballots, counts, and certification.

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Likewise, the local democrat operator in those four counties Gore chose to re-re-re-recount WERE the source of the fraud. Palm Beach, Broward, Miami are ALL have individually and specifically well-earned reputations for fraud, bribery, and local scandals.

The fraud is perpetrated at the local level. And effective fraud doesn't need to be widespread to be effective in a close race. You need o cheat in only a relatively few precincts in each county to get 1500 votes across the state.

Palm Beach democrat election agents were seen crying, screaming, yelling in their jealous, hate-filled rage at failing to produce enough votes for Gore.

In the manual recounts in these democrat counties, every controversial ballot reviewed by two democrats and one republican was counted by that review 2-1 that it was a Gore vote.

The fraud IS local.

It was stopped in Miami when the poll watchers were denied their legal right to look at the counting method.

[Tall_Texan]

See the numbers adjacent to the holes? That's the number corresponding to the computer card ballot. Bush/Cheney is #3, Buchanan/Foster (I still enjoy calling them Bananas/Foster) is #4 and Gore/Lieberman is #5. #1 and #2 are on the card but they are not associated with *any* race on the ballot.

There is no #2 to punch on the machine and if the fraud specialists were jamming coathangers into the #2 hole on a stack of ballots, it would only prove to the world that these were all fraudulent ballots. If you don't pop the computer card into the machine well enough, the only result is that your intended vote would go to a candidate *lower* on the ballot, not higher. That means a vote for Gore where the voter didn't push their card in deep enough would have counted for the Socialist McReynolds, not Buchanan.

So telling the old ladies to "vote Number Two" would make no sense unless that was shorthand for voting for the second name on the ballot - a command that still would have confused someone who saw two names that might possibly be the second name (the one underneath Bush or the one to the right of Bush).

Maybe I'm belaboring a point that is not necessary but the fraud would have been to punch hole #4 when they meant to punch hole #5, both in the butterfly ballot and on the computer card.