-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/9699/2/_/1406/_/973944145/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com Wednesday November 8 6:06 PM ET The Story Behind the Near-Concession By SANDRA SOBIERAJ, Associated Press Writer NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Al Gore (news - web sites) set aside the stoic valedictory written for him by an aide and picked up the phone. George W. Bush (news - web sites) did not take his call happily. ``You don't have to get snippy about this,'' Gore spat. The acid of their yearlong fight - character assaults and name- calling, layered onto the Clinton-Gore defeat of Bush's father in 1992 - boiled over as Gore, in an underground office at the War Memorial, insisted that Florida's decisive 25 electoral votes remained in limbo. ``Let me make sure I understand,'' protested Bush, his victory speech in hand. ``You're calling me back to retract your concession?'' Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, chastened on Election Night when it appeared Bush had lost the state, had just assured his brother it was a done deal. And the TV networks had already declared Texas Gov. George W. Bush the 43rd president of the United States. ``Let me explain something,'' Gore lectured in a stony tone, ``your YOUNGER brother is not the ultimate authority on this.'' The conversation, quoted to The Associated Press by two of the 20 or so people in the room with Gore and confirmed by a Bush aide, ended abruptly. Outside, thousands of supporters, sick from the night's roller- coaster drama, shouted ``Stay and fight!'' and ``Recount!'' While campaign chairman William Daley announced, ``Our campaign continues,'' the vice president marched unseen from the Memorial through a side exit. Stranding dozens of friends, family and VIPs in the drizzle, he ordered his motorcade back to the hotel suite where no more than 60 minutes earlier he had telephoned his congratulations to Bush. ``He's fine,'' said Gore's brother-in-law, Frank Hunger, on the sidewalk and looking for a ride. President Clinton (news - web sites) called Gore to second his decision, praise him for a good night and note consolingly that Gore had won the nation's popular vote. On Wednesday, the picture of morning-after confidence, Bush invited news photographers into the dining room of the Governor's Mansion as he, wife Laura, running mate Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and Cheney's wife, Lynne, sat down to a lunch of chilled soup. He recalled his exchange with Gore: ``I felt like I was fully prepared to go out and give a speech and thanking my supporters. ... I thought it was an interesting comment he made and listened to what he had to say and didn't have much to say.'' Gore and most of his family stayed in bed well past noon then waited out the day at a hotel across from Vanderbilt University, where years ago he enrolled in Divinity school to sort out inner conflicts over the five months he served as an Army journalist in Vietnam. Son-in-law Drew Schiff slipped out with the vice president's 16-month- old grandson for some air. ``It's been so emotionally draining,'' Schiff said. With most of his aides barred from the ninth floor, cordoned off for the family and under watch as always by the Secret Service, no one knew for sure what Gore was thinking or planning. Chief strategist Carter Eskew announced Gore would go to headquarters to thank the crew then escape to nearby Center Hill Lake while lawyers sifted through the Florida recount. Press secretary Chris Lehane and others said nothing had been decided. The Secret Service ordered a hotel banquet room cleared for bomb-sniffing dogs and an imminent Gore news conference. They called it off within minutes. At mid-afternoon, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, summoned to help oversee the Florida recount, slipped toward the elevators and up to meet with Gore, running mate Joseph Lieberman (news - web sites) and Daley. They monitored recount reports from the legal team dispatched to Tallahassee, Fla., by charter jet that morning, and prepared press statements delivered before the Secret Service had a chance to redeploy their aborted security sweep. ``Because of what is at stake, this matter must be resolved expeditiously, but deliberately and without any rush to judgment,'' Gore said from an armored ``blue goose'' lectern brought from the White House but missing its presidential seal. He left without taking questions, the comforting and approving hand of Lieberman on his back. The night before, it was a pager vibrating on the belt loop of Gore aide Michael Feldman that set the Election Night drama careening toward dawn: ``Call switchboard. Call holding with Mike Whouley. ASAP.'' Feldman was several vans behind Gore's limousine in the ``mournful motorcade'' to the vice president's concession speech. On his cell phone, Feldman patched Whouley through to Daley in yet another van. Hunkered down at headquarters, in a command central dubbed The Boiler Room, field commander Whouley was watching the Florida election commission Web site. Gore's 50,000-vote deficit in the decisive state had suddenly narrowed to 900 votes, then 500. For a seemingly interminable space of minutes, the VIP entourage huddled beneath the Memorial's towering stone pillars while Daley conferred with Gore in a small office. ``We had no TVs. Everyone was on their cell phones,'' recalled policy adviser Greg Simon. ``People were calling us from everywhere, telling us, 'Don't concede.''' ***** Friday November 10 11:48 AM ET Bush Camp Says Gore Should Drop Legal Challenges By David Wiessler WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign said on Friday Democrats should drop legal challenges in Florida now that a recount showed the Texas governor had been elected president but Al Gore (news - web sites)'s camp said they would not give up until the legal system had ``run its course.'' ``The vote count on Tuesday night showed Governor Bush won Florida's election, and a recount has now confirmed his victory,'' Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said. ``We hope Vice President Gore and his campaign will reconsider their threats of lawsuits or still more recounts, which could undermine the constitutional process of selecting a president and has no foreseeable end,'' Hughes said in a statement released from Austin, Texas. The Associated Press, quoted by CNN, said that with all 67 counties in Florida recounted, Bush was ahead of Gore by a mere 327 votes out of an estimated 6 million in the state. Under Florida law the state has until next Friday to certify the final election totals, giving officials time to count ballots mailed in by Florida voters living abroad. With a week to go before the state's votes will be official, several lawsuits have been filed in courts over the makeup of the ballot in Palm Springs County as well as other alleged irregularities. Lawsuits and disputed votes threatened to drag out the electoral process and throw the whole legitimacy of the next presidency into question. There were calls from many areas to resolve the issue peacefully and relatively quickly. Warning Calls The New York Times and Washington Post among others warned against making the process too acrimonious and spoke of the dangers of tying up an election in the courts. Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey urged Gore not to force a rancorous court battle that could harm the political system. But Gore campaign chairman William Daley said it was necessary to make sure that the will of the people was assured. ``Contrary to claims being made this morning by the Bush campaign, this election is not over,'' said Daley, citing several reasons including that results from hand recounts and absentee ballots from overseas were still unknown. ``Again we want the true and accurate will of the people to prevail and that means letting the legal system run its course,'' he said. Florida's 25 electoral votes are key to both camps winning the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president. Gore won the popular vote by a slim margin but it is the majority vote in the Electoral College that decides who becomes the next president. The focus was on Florida but a winner still had not been declared in Oregon and recounts were possible in some areas of Iowa and New Mexico, won by Gore, and New Hampshire, taken by Bush. Florida officials said their latest tally on Thursday showed Bush leading Gore by 1,784 votes with 53 of the states 67 countries reporting their recounts. Another Recount Starts Saturday The other 14 counties have until Tuesday to record their votes. Palm Beach County which has become the focal point of much of the battle over the state's votes planned to begin another recount on Saturday. The Associated Press canvassed all 67 counties and included in its total the 14 counties that have not reported certified results to the state. In addition, a court hearing was scheduled for Monday on a lawsuit seeking a new election in Palm Beach on grounds that the county's ballot was misleading. The two men vying to be president-elect were going about their business out of sight of the news media extravaganza swirling around the election confusion. Gore was back in Washington, D.C., where he planned to attend a high school football banquet with his son and Bush stayed in the Texas capital of Austin working on state business and planning a transition. Hughes said Bush was ``in very good spirits'' and was meeting with his vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney (news - web sites), whom he has chosen to head his transition team in Washington, and others ``to discuss preparations for a possible transition.'' Democrats have criticized Bush for arrogance in going ahead with plans for assuming the White House before the result of Tuesday's presidential election became final, but Hughes said Bush had ``a responsibility to begin some discussions.'' Daley cited several reasons why the election was not over, saying votes still had to be counted by hand in Palm Beach or Volusia counties in Florida and this would begin in the next few days. In addition, a hand count of votes had been requested in Broward and Dade counties. Secondly, overseas ballots had not been counted and there were more than enough of these to make up the ``scant difference'' between the candidates, he said. But Hughes said absentee ballots from overseas favored Republican candidates in the past, such as in 1996, when Bob Dole carried them by a 54 percent to 40 percent even though he lost Florida to President Clinton (news - web sites). ***** Buchanan camp: Bush claims are "nonsense" The governor's camp calls Palm Beach a Buchanan "stronghold," while Buchanan forces insist it's not. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jake Tapper Nov. 10, 2000 | TALLAHASSEE -- The Bush campaign's repeated assertion that Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold is untrue, according to both the Florida state coordinator for Buchanan's presidential campaign and the chairman of the executive committee of the Reform Party in Palm Beach County. Attempting to squash any effort by the campaign of Vice President Al Gore to call into question the legitimacy of the vote count in Florida, the campaign of Gov. George W. Bush has made assertions that look to be at best misleading and at worst demonstrably false. And perhaps the most disingenuous claim involves the disproportionate number of votes that went to conservative Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach County, generally considered to be a liberal part of the state. Thousands of voters in that county seem to have been misled by the county's "butterfly ballot," in which the alignment of the holes and the candidates' names was apparently confusing. The ballot is being used to explain the 3,407 votes in the county for Buchanan, as compared with the 561 votes for Buchanan in Dade County, which is much larger than Palm Beach County, and the 789 votes for him in Broward County. The Bush campaign claims that the number of votes for Buchanan in Palm Beach County is perfectly accurate. "New information has come to our attention that puts in perspective the results of the vote in Palm Beach County," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Thursday. "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there." When asked about the Bush campaign's statement, Buchanan's Florida coordinator, Jim McConnell, responded: "That's nonsense." McConnell says he and Jim Cunningham, chairman of the executive committee of Palm Beach County's Reform Party, estimate the number of Buchanan activists in the county to be between 300 and 500 -- nowhere near the 3,407 who voted for him. "Do I believe that these people inadvertently cast their votes for Pat Buchanan? Yes, I do," said McConnell. "We have to believe that based on the vote totals elsewhere." Says Cunningham of Buchanan's numbers in Palm Beach County: "It's in the hundreds; it's not a significant amount." Asked if the county is "a Buchanan stronghold," as the Bush campaign has asserted, Cunningham said: "I don't think so. Not from where I'm sitting and what I'm looking at. "They can say that because they would like to believe that," Cunningham said, "because the votes we received they would like to believe were not mistaken votes." Asked how many votes he would guess Buchanan legitimately received in Palm Beach County, Cunningham said, "I think 1,000 would be generous." Both McConnell and Cunningham say that they agree with the comments of Buchanan himself on Thursday's "Today" show: "When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night ... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore," Buchanan said. Because they did not consider Palm Beach a Buchanan stronghold, McConnell said, the campaign decided not to advertise in the area, nor in most of southeast Florida, adding that "the percentage of people down there who would be receptive to our message is much smaller than in other parts of the state." In addition, McConnell says that the Bush campaign's assertion that there are 16,695 voters belonging to the Independent Party, the Reform Party or the American Reform Party, an increase of 110 percent since the 1996 presidential election, is similarly irrelevant. Bush strategist Karl Rove cited those figures Thursday to argue the point that the area was a hotbed of third-party politics. "The Bush campaign is inflating the numbers of Reform Party members to the limits of gullibility," McConnell said. "They're including everybody that can in any way be assumed to be members of the Reform Party." Members of the American Reform Party and the Independent Party "are absolutely not Buchanan supporters." The American Reform Party "is largely made up of people who supported Dick Lamm against Ross Perot for the 1996 nomination," McConnell said. "I don't know what the Independent Party is." Cunningham says that the Independent Party didn't even have a presidential candidate on the Palm Beach County ballot. Actually, the Independent Party endorsed Buchanan's Reform Party rival, John Hagelin. And the American Reform Party split with Reform, and this year endorsed Ralph Nader for president. Buchanan wasn't even on the ballot in November 1996, when President Clinton overwhelmingly carried the county. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot received 30,739 votes for president, 7.75 percent of the vote. But that's lower than the 9.1 percent of the vote Perot received statewide. Buchanan did receive more than 7,000 votes in the Republican primary in Palm Beach County that year, but he was a far more viable candidate then, having won the New Hampshire primary. salon.com - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Jake Tapper is the Washington correspondent for Salon News. ***** Reno Will Review Request For Florida Vote Probe By James Vicini 11-9-00 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Janet Reno said on Thursday she would carefully review complaints of voting irregularities in the presidential election in the decisive state of Florida before deciding whether to get involved. ``I'm going to try to do everything I can to move fairly, carefully, thoughtfully and look to see whether there is any basis for federal action before I jump in,'' she told her weekly briefing. Reno said she will review a request from the NAACP for a federal investigation into what the nation's largest civil rights organization described as ``numerous complaints of election day irregularities'' that deprived blacks in some parts of Florida of their right to vote. As Florida officials continued to recount ballots in 67 counties, Democratic Vice President Al Gore had cut the lead of Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush from its already razor-thin margin. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent Reno a letter on Wednesday asking that the Justice Department "conduct a full and independent recount of Florida's precincts and investigate the reported large scale Election Day improprieties.'' NAACP Wants Marshals Sent To Florida The group requested that Reno send federal marshals to oversee the recount process. The NAACP has said some black voters were turned away at one Florida polling place because of an alleged shortage of ballots, some received inoperable ballot cards and others were disqualified by election officials who claimed their race did not match official voting records. In other alleged instances, the NAACP claimed sheriff's deputies demanded identification from black men and then refused to let them vote, claiming the men were convicted felons. At another location, black voters signed in with pencils, which could be erased, instead of pens. Reno said the NAACP letter was among the numerous complaints the Justice Department had received since the elections on Tuesday. But she emphasized the conduct of an election was primarily a matter of state law and the responsibility of the states. Reno said a number of questions must be answered before federal government can investigate voting rights allegations. ``The issue is what are the remedies available and how should it be addressed, and whether it was intentional or whether it was not. There are just a variety of issues that must be considered before one passes judgement,'' she said. A Justice Department official said it has received ``hundreds of complaints'' nationwide about the election. A number of the complaints dealt with Florida, the official said. ``We take each one (complaint) and look at it and make an appropriate determination as to whether there would be civil rights implications or otherwise,'' Reno said. The official said the Justice Department's criminal and civil rights divisions have yet to open an investigation into any of the complaints. The Justice Department plays a substantial role in enforcing Americans' voting rights, often sending federal observers to election sites where there have been problems with discrimination in the past. Reno said she has not received any inquiries from the Gore or Bush campaigns about the Florida vote. Reno, a Florida native and Democrat who was appointed by President Clinton pledged to keep politics out of the presidential election controversy. ``I'm going to do my level best to make sure that politics is not a part of this; that we do this fairly, carefully, thoughtfully; (and) that we don't interject ourselves when it's not right,'' she said. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) 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