-Caveat Lector-
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 12:27:35 -0800
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: SNET: Newspaper studies confirm Democrat Gore won Florida vote
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copies to: Cosmic Comentary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Politics
Newspaper studies confirm Democrat Gore won Florida vote
By Patrick Martin
5 February 2001
Two newly published studies of the ballots cast in the US presidential
election confirm that Democrat Al Gore was the choice of more Florida
voters than Republican George W. Bush, who was installed as president
after an unprecedented and anti-democratic intervention by the US
Supreme Court.
One study was conducted by the Washington Post, the other by Tribune
Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Fort
Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The Post endorsed Gore editorially in the
November election, while the Tribune endorsed Bush.
The Post reviewed computerized records of 2.7 million votes in eight of
Florida's largest counties to examine the pattern of the so-called overvotes,
those ballots on which computer scanners or other vote-counting machines
detected votes for more than one presidential candidate and discarded the
ballots as invalid. The newspaper did not recount individual ballots, but
relied on reports from county officials based on machine tabulation of the
invalid ballots.
The analysis found that of the more than 60,000 ballots in the eight counties
showing overvotes—the bulk of the statewide total—Gore's name was
marked on 46,000, while Bush was marked on only 17,000. This includes
several thousand ballots in which both Gore and Bush were marked.
The 3-1 Democratic to Republican ratio among the overvotes was
confirmed in the analysis of other votes cast by those voters further down
the ballot. Three quarters of those who improperly cast a presidential
overvote marked their ballots correctly for US senator. Of these, 70 percent
voted for Democrat Bill Nelson, only 24 percent for Republican Bill
McCollum, while 6 percent voted for third-party candidates.
The nearly 30,000-vote margin for Gore among the overvotes dwarfs the
537 votes which was Bush's official margin of victory in Florida. On the
basis of that minuscule and highly dubious number, the Republican-
controlled state government, headed by his brother, Governor Jeb Bush,
awarded him the state's 25 electoral votes and a four-vote margin in the
Electoral College nationally.
The eight counties examined by the Post included Miami-Dade, Palm
Beach, Broward (Fort Lauderdale), Pinellas (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough
(Tampa), Marion (Ocala), Highlands and Pasco. Four of these counties
went for Gore and four for Bush. The pattern of more overvotes for Gore
prevailed in all the counties, however, regardless of who won the county
overall.
The notorious “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County accounted for 8,000
of the Gore overvotes, most of them double votes for Gore and far-right
Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan, who was listed across from
Gore on the ballot, with his punch-hole close to the names of Gore and
Lieberman. Gore-Buchanan voters in Palm Beach County voted 10-1
Democratic in the US Senate race.
In the other seven counties, the largest group of overvotes were for Gore
and the candidate who followed immediately after him on the ballot,
Libertarian Harry Browne. Such a combination is incomprehensible as a
protest vote, especially one supposedly chosen by 6,800 voters. It more
likely reflects confusion among voters who thought they had to cast votes
for president and vice-president.
Confirming the notion that the overvotes were largely intended for Gore is
the fact that most of the third-party candidates on the ballot for president
received more votes paired with Gore as overvotes than they did in their
own right. In the eight counties, Socialist Workers Party candidate James
Harris received a total of 300 votes, but his name was punched 12,600
times on ballots with Gore, Bush or another presidential candidate—42
inadvertent votes for each intentional vote.
The Republican head of the Florida Division of Elections, Clay Roberts,
dismissed the Post analysis with an argument of stupefying cynicism,
claiming that overvotes were intentional political choices. “People who are
engaged in politics can't understand why people would overvote,” he said.
“But there are valid reasons for undervotes and overvotes. For some
voters, that undervote or overvote is their decision.”
The Post also found more than 15,000 voters in the eight counties who cast
no recorded votes for any office or referendum. This suggests widespread
difficulty with voting equipment, or major errors in the computerized count,
or both, since it is impossible to believe that so many people turned out at
the polls, many of them waiting hours in line, only to cast a blank ballot.
The Tribune Co. study examined ballots in 15 smaller counties—not
including any of the eight in the Post study—that used paper ballots that
were marked in pencil and then read by optical scanners.
While much public attention has been given to the punch card ballots that
proved so defective in major urban counties, the rate of invalid votes was
actually higher in these 15 counties, ten of which are predominately white
and rural areas in north Florida. The reason is that these counties lacked
the financial resources to have an optical reader in each precinct.
In the 26 counties that did have scanners available in each precinct, voters
were instructed to put the ballot in the scanner themselves. In the event of
an improper vote, the scanner rejects the ballot and the voter corrects the
mistake and resubmits it. In the poorer counties, the ballots from each
precinct are delivered to a central counting location. Voters who mark their
ballots improperly have no chance to correct an error, since the mistakes
are not detected until the ballots are fed into the scanner at the county seat.
Their votes are simply discarded.
Counties with optical scanners in each precinct had a vote error rate of less
than 1 percent. By comparison, punch-card counties had an error rate of
3.9 percent, and counties with optical scanners only in a central location
had an error rate of 5.7 percent. In Gadsden County, the only black majority
county in Florida, which used optical scanners at a central location, the
error rate was 12.4 percent, and in some precincts as many as one vote in
four was ruled invalid.
The poorest and least educated voters were obviously those most likely to
make a mistake in casting their ballots. These voted overwhelmingly for the
Democratic Party. As a result, the Tribune Co.'s recount of the 15,596
invalid ballots showed a gain for Gore of 366 votes, even though Bush
carried 14 of the 15 counties.
A key factor in overvoting errors was the design of the ballot, almost as
confusing as Palm Beach's butterfly ballot. In 13 of the 15 counties, the
candidates for president were divided into two pages. Eight were listed on
the first page and two, Monica Moorehead of the Workers World Party and
Howard Phillips of the Constitutional Party, on the second.
Some 4,252 voters cast ballots for Gore or Bush on the first page, and then
for Moorehead or Phillips on the second page. If those votes had been
counted for Gore and Bush, Gore would have gained 564 votes, more than
Bush's statewide margin.
It is a curious fact that the designer of the two-page ballot, Hart InterCivic, is
a consulting firm based in Austin, Texas, headquarters of the Bush
presidential campaign. The company said it followed a format sent out by
the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, Florida co-chairman of the
Bush campaign and a member of the cabinet of Governor Jeb Bush.
There were other anomalies. Officials in Lake County, who are Republican
loyalists, ruled that a presidential ballot with two marks on it—one by the
name, the other a write-in for the same candidate—was invalid, although
state law allows them to be counted. The result was that 628 legal votes
were discarded, votes which went disproportionately to Gore. Including
these votes would have cut Bush's lead by 122 votes. Gore would have
gained another 72 votes from similar double votes discarded in several
smaller counties.
Lake County also printed the name of Joe Lieberman in small type directly
above the word Libertarian in the party label on the line below. As a result,
nearly 300 voters in Lake County cast ballots for Gore and Libertarian
Harry Browne, which were ruled invalid.
The Post and Tribune studies have gone virtually unmentioned in the
America media, except for the newspapers that commissioned them. Not a
single prominent Democratic Party politician has taken note of their
findings.
Speaking on a television interview program January 28, House Minority
Leader Richard Gephardt repeated what has become the standard
Democratic refrain. He said that in his opinion, Gore had won the most
votes nationally and the most votes in Florida. But, he added, his opinion
no longer mattered, and he accepted the legitimacy of Bush as president,
following the Supreme Court decision of last December 12.
Such comments, and the ongoing silence over the evidence trickling in
from Florida, demonstrates how far the Democratic Party is from any
principled defense of democratic rights. Prostrate before the right wing,
this big business party is incapable of defending its own immediate
electoral interests, let alone the social and political interests of working
people.
Copyright 1998-2001 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved
__________ EcoNews Service - Always online for Ecology,
Consciousness & Universe Exopolitics. EcoNews
http://www.ecologynews.com/ Prague http://mujweb.cz/www/ecologynews/
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/Vancouver, BC V6M 1V8
------- End of forwarded message -------
ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES
http://www.anomalous-images.com
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
