Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:18:40 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > By contrast - I think John and Doug are both right, to > an extent. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but > so far as I can tell, the only fair interpretation of > what happened in Florida is that _both_ sides tried to > steal it.
I can agree with that. > > The Gore campaign attempted to exclude military > ballots unfairly, called for highly selective recounts > in only a few Democratic areas (while chanting "count > every vote" with a straight face, something _I_ > couldn't have managed), and relied on a highly > partisan Florida Supreme Court (the marvelously > acronymed-SCOFLA) to rig the recounts. Oh yes, it > also took advantage of a highly-partisan media's early > declaration in favor of Gore to suppress turnout in > the Republican panhandle. THE GOP rolled the Democrats on the military ballots and then instructed the GOP military GOTV to go to a maximum effort to push all military personnel who had not voted to vote after the election as they would still be counted no matter when they were postmarked. There was a coordinated Bush media campaign to say that somewhere the Dems were denying the military the vote, (where? saying ballots weren't signed or were postmarked too late), and the Dems, in the person of Lieberman, rolled over. "Highly partisan media", the So Called Liberal Media had been bashing Gore in a pattern of lies all election. I guess I also agree with you on the highly partisan media. But gee, I search and search and can't find a study that says the GOP lost votes by the networks calling the Florida election early, which they did. The media sucked. Maybe you can provide a link to this study for the Florida 2000 election and how calling the state election early depressed the GOP vote? The media wanted Bush to win. > > On the other hand, the Bush campaign tried to get > military ballots counted in places where they > shouldn't have been, _also_ tried to claim recounts > only in favorable areas, and accepted an (at best) > highly dubious US Supreme Court decision redeemed only > slightly by the fact that it was slightly better than > the one it overturned. Dubious decision, something else I agree with, when the Supreme Court says never use this decision as a precedent you know it must smell pretty bad. I disliked the decision it overthrew as well. > > We are lucky only to the extent that, according to the > recounts conducted by _every_ non-partisan > organization (to the extent that the Washington Post > and New York Times can be called non-partisan > organizations) the side that should have won (under a > full state-wide recount) actually did, in fact, win. BS, total BS, under a full-recount scenario Gore wins even with the extra military vote, even with tens of thousand of eligible black voters prevented from voting, even with the Gov. and the head of elections being the President's brother and the head of his Florida Election Team, even with the other suppresion of black voters, they still win under a full recount.. Then the SCLM buries this detail down in the story and for the headline says Bush would have won (Read down to see under what scenario).. The GOP currently has both houses, the presidency, the judiciary and the media and whines and whines "oh, we just can't catch a break from those damn liberals. They just must be unpatriotic you know." Gary Denton -- #2 on google for liberal news "I don't try harder" _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
