-Caveat Lector- RadTimes # 99 November, 2000 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --Voters Take to the Streets --Judge freezes ballots until next week --Volusia officials find two suspect bags of ballots --Duval tosses 22,000 votes: Unusually high rate to draw closer look --Miami Haitians say they were unable to vote Tuesday --Gore Campaign Sharpens Legal Demands and Tone --Bush is behaving like the U.S. version of Milosevic ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begin stories: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Voters Take to the Streets <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/ELECTION_PROTESTS001110.html> Grass Roots Effort of Nationwide Protests Planned By Robin Eisner Nov. 10 - Americans will take to the streets all over the country Saturday in a show of outrage over possible ballot irregularities in Florida that could, they feel, keep Al Gore from becoming president. A grass-roots effort promoted online lists the locations of the protests, ranging from the Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, N.M., to the Federal Building in Baltimore, Md., to New York's Times Square and downtown Madison, Wis. While local organizers of the rallies said they wouldn't speculate on expected turnout, they said the protests were just the beginning. Gov. George W. Bush is leading Vice President Al Gore by fewer than than 1,000 votes in Florida, according to a recount of votes in 66 of 67 counties. But Democrats are collecting affidavits about alleged problems with up to 20,000 votes that had been disqualified in the state, and are supporting legal challenges. If either Bush or Gore wins in Florida, the state's 25 electoral votes would make them president - as long as each man's current electoral count holds despite any challenges or recounts in other states. Gore won the nationwide popular vote, according to results tallied so far - some of them unofficial - while Bush is poised to win the Electoral College tally. Web Used To Organize While the administrators of the protest Web site, named "Countercoup," <http://geocities.com/countercoup/> would not return repeated e-mails for information about what kind of organization it was, Bob Fertik, 43, of New York City, a spokesman for <www.democrats.com>, said he was familiar with the group, and called it a grass-roots effort. His organization also is using the Web to collect affidavits about possible ballot irregularities. The Democratic committee is not organizing these protests, Democrats' spokesmen said. Repeated calls to Portia Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida, for comment about the protests or whether the party was planning protests itself, were not returned. Pro-Republican protesters have been positioning themselves behind TV reporters, holding up signs that said things like "No Re- Vote, Gore Concede" and "Rule of Law: Bush-Cheney" Bill Stevenson, 44, of Tallahassee, Fla., a supporter of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader who has been following the e-mail string for organization of the demonstrations said he disagreed with the idea of the protests. "Rather than spending time protests, they should just give the system a chance to work," he said. Regardless of potential fallout, protesters are still planning to show up. Charlie Harger, 25, a computer consultant who lives in Jersey City, N.J. says he is going to Times Square on Saturday at 1 p.m. and hopes other people will be joining him. "I am getting friends involved to come to the protest," Harger said. "I believe there was an injustice in Florida and we have got to take a stand." Major Cities Targeted Andy Olsen, county supervisor for Dane County, Wis., and a Gore supporter, said he is helping to organize the rally on the capitol steps in Madison on Saturday. Scheduled to speak, he said, is Ed Garvey, former progressive Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state, a representative from a local union, and others. "We are protesting the heist of the presidential election by the Bush brothers," Olsen said, referring to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Olsen compared the underground protest effort in the United States to the elections in Yugoslavia, where the people took to the streets to make sure the democratically elected candidate took office. Chris Monelli, 22, a customer service manger at an Internet company, who is a Gore supporter, said he is going to Seattle Central Community College Saturday for a rally there and is calling for a revote in Palm Beach County. Monelli said it was important that whoever gets into the White House got there legitimately. "The way it is now is not right," Monelli said, "Whether Gore wins or not is not important. I am in favor of a recount in other states, if that is necessary. What is important is that it is done right reflecting the will of the people." Not a DNC Effort Democratic National Committee spokesman Jamal Simmons says the DNC was not planning any rallies. "We are here to gather information," Simmons said speaking from Florida, adding that the DNC has collected approximately 5,000 to 7,000 affidavits of ballot problems in Florida. A local Democratic club run by Herb Epstein had organized a rally in Delray Beach Local today to demand a recount of the vote in Palm Beach County because his group had received so many phone calls about the possible ballot problems there. "We did this on our own," Epstein said. "The DNC was not involved." People did, however, fill out affidavits that the club provided at the rally, Epstein said. Thursday, Rev. Jesse Jackson, of the Rainbow/Push Organization led a rally across from the Palm Beach County Governmental Center where the votes are being recounted, demanding a new vote in the county. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judge freezes ballots until next week By Scott Hiaasen, Marc Caputo and Joel Engelhardt Palm Beach Post Staff Writers Friday, November 10, 2000 WEST PALM BEACH -- A circuit judge seized control of Palm Beach County's presidential ballots Thursday, bringing the courts into an election that has made the county the epicenter of a growing political crisis. Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll issued a temporary injunction Thursday night preventing the county's elections canvassing board from releasing the ballots before a court hearing next week. The injunction was requested by Beverly Rogers and Ray Kaplan, two Boca Raton voters who filed a lawsuit saying they and thousands like them were cheated out of their right to vote because the county's two-sided ballot was illegally confusing. Challenges from voters, protests in the streets and a request by Vice President Al Gore pressured the canvassing board Thursday to agree to a manual recount of more than 4,600 votes on Saturday. This, after a state-mandated, electronic recount on Wednesday discovered 865 votes that went uncounted on election night. The board also agreed to George W. Bush's request for an electronic recount of all 461,000 ballots. That count, also set for Saturday, will mark the third time the ballots have been run through the machines. The need for a recount became even more apparent when it was discovered in the first recount that votes from one precinct were not counted on election night. An elections worker hit the wrong button, erasing the results. On Thursday, the three members of the canvassing board -- Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, County Commissioner Carol Roberts and County Judge Charles Burton -- met before a dozen television cameras and decided not to send any of the county's votes to the state for approval until the many challenges to the ballot are heard. The hand count could reveal discrepancies that would help Democrats attack the Palm Beach County ballot in court. It also could validate ballots previously considered invalid. Meanwhile, more than 19,000 votes in the presidential election were declared invalid because people voted for two presidents. So this weekend, with the whole world watching and the balance of a presidential election potentially at stake, teams of people selected by the board will eyeball thousands of ballots, literally holding them to the light to check for irregularities. The teams -- which should have Democrats and Republicans -- will pull ballots from at least three precincts, representing 1 percent of the ballots cast. The precincts will be chosen by the Democratic Party, which filed the protest. The canvassing board must decide today the number of people for the hand counting and who they will be. LePore, who has become the target of national scrutiny over the ballot questions, is a Democrat, as is Roberts; Burton is a Republican recently appointed judge by Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The canvassing board agreed Thursday to allow two members each from the Republican and Democratic parties to observe the elections in the manual- and machine-counting rooms. Any confusing ballots found in the hand count will be given to the board members, who could be asked to look at ballots and decide for whom they were cast. If discrepancies are found that appear to threaten the integrity of the election, the canvassing board could request a hand count of every ballot in the county. After the hand count, all of Tuesday's 461,000 ballots will be rechecked by machine at the request of the Republican Party, suspicious because most of those newfound votes went to Gore and carved into Bush's narrow lead in Florida. One reason for that, a county employee pushed the wrong button while recording votes from precinct 29E, west of Lake Worth, where voters favored Gore over Bush 368 to 23. "The `clear' button was hit instead," said LePore. "It was just an operator error." The Gore campaign also requested manual recounts in Volusia, Miami-Dade and Broward counties, hoping to make up ground in an agonizingly close election. Broward's canvassing board will meet today to discuss the request by the head of the county's Democratic Executive Committee, who said 7,000 votes there went uncounted. According to an unofficial Associated Press estimate, Gore trailed by just over 200 votes after a recount of about 6 million ballots in the state. Officially, however, Gore trails by 1,784 votes after state officials confirmed the results from 53 of 67 counties. Palm Beach County was among the 14 counties that have not submitted their totals, and now the county can't approve the vote for state officials before Tuesday's hearing in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. Secretary of State Katherine Harris said all counties must submit their ballots by Tuesday, with absentee ballots from overseas being collected until next Friday. After its Thursday meeting, the canvassing board received a hand-count request in the U.S. House race between incumbent E. Clay Shaw Jr. and state Rep. Elaine Bloom. Democrat Bloom asked for it after a recount of 210,827 votes gave the Republican Shaw a victory by 599 votes. Leon St. John, a senior assistant county attorney, said it apparently means the board will have to count three additional precincts by hand on Saturday. These requests, he said, can continue until the vote totals are certified. "We're talking at least five, six hours to get through all this. All I can tell you is it's going to be a long, really long day." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volusia officials find two suspect bags of ballots By Sandra Pedicini of the Olando Sentinel Staff Election officials in Volusia County have halted their search for write-in votes after finding two bags of ballots that were not properly sealed. The bags were discovered shortly after noon Friday. Officials now must count the ballots in each bag to make sure the numbers agree with precinct results that were recorded on election night. The count is expected to be completed later this afternoon. Because of discrepancies, Volusia's election canvassing board decided Thursday to hand count all 184,000 ballots cast in the county, a task that won't be completed until next week. The problems included a faulty memory card on a polling machine that on election night showed a negative 16,022 votes for Vice President Al Gore. Unofficial results in Volusia show Gore with 97,063 votes and Texas Gov. George W. Bush with 82,214. Volusia is one of four Florida counties where Democratic Party officials have demanded a full recount ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duval tosses 22,000 votes: Unusually high rate to draw closer look Saturday, November 11, 2000 By David DeCamp Staff Writer Florida Times-Union Nearly 22,000 Duval County votes for president were nullified after voters chose more than one candidate, the supervisor of elections confirmed Friday, resulting in an unusually high strikeout rate. Supervisor John Stafford and his spokeswoman, Susan Tucker Johnson, attributed the voided presidential votes to a ballot listing 10 presidential candidates over two pages. Voters, they said, probably picked a president on page one, then voted again on the second page. Just the presidential portion of the ballot would then be thrown out, not the entire ballot. The ballots tossed were more than found in Palm Beach County where the focus has been intense. Another nearly 5,000 Duval presidential votes didn't count in the race because they "undervoted," Johnson said, meaning a candidate wasn't selected or voters didn't punch a hole in the ballot hard enough to mark their choice. How the disqualifications affected votes for Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore is uncertain, Stafford and Johnson said. The election office's computer apparently can't separate votes by ballot page. A hand count would be needed, and Stafford said a few precincts may go through such a count next week to judge the voided votes' effects. Though Bush won Duval by about 44,000 votes, the high-stakes contest for Florida's 25 Electoral College votes and the presidency teeters over a few hundred votes and numerous charges of irregularities. A handful of lawsuits have been filed protesting the Palm Beach County vote, in which voters said they were given a confusing ballot. While Republican Stafford and a GOP leader backed the Duval County ballot as legitimate, a local member of Gore's campaign reacted with harsh questions. "John Stafford, in the presence of our lawyer . .. told me there were 200 to 300" votes disqualified, said Mike Langton, Northeast Florida chairman of the Gore campaign. "Now all of the sudden there are 22,000. . . . This stinks all over the place." Stafford, reached last night, denied making such a statement -- and Langton's suggestion that partisan politics may be at play. Langton said he would advise upper leadership of the Gore campaign of the disqualified votes. "I definitely want to see hard evidence of this." Attorney Mark Herron of the Democratic National Committee said last night that the deadline for requesting a manual recount passed at midnight, and the party had learned just hours earlier of the number of nullified votes. Previously, Democrats thought the number was in the hundreds, he said. As more information arrives, Herron said, Democrats will begin to decide their move. Options include contesting the vote, which could effectively give them the same results as a recount request, he said. The total rejected votes -- more than 9 percent of the total Duval voter turnout of 292,000 -- more than tripled the 7,800 votes that were struck from a 1996 election, when there were six fewer presidential candidates. Four years earlier, nearly 6,100 ballots were bounced. That equates to between 2 percent and 3 percent of the ballots being disqualified from the previous two elections. Generally, 2 percent or less of ballots are disqualified for over- or under-voting, said Rob Richie, executive director of the non-profit Center for Democracy and Voting in Takoma Park, Md. "It sounds pretty irregular to me," Richie said of Duval's vote disqualifications this week. "Out of [nearly] 300,000 votes, that's extremely high." The disqualified votes for president didn't necessarily ruin all ballots. Indeed, the nixed votes also raised eyebrows because they left the lower-profile U.S. Senate contest with nearly 10,000 more total votes than the presidential race, which historically is the big draw to the polls. Stafford said the high number of disqualified votes were discovered Wednesday. They were reported to the state along with problems with voting access related to the motor-voter law and difficulty with a counting machine as part of the vote certification process. "It puts us under scrutiny. I don't like it when anybody loses their votes," Stafford said. ". . . Bottom line is, I feel like we had a fair ballot and so does the canvassing board." Mike Hightower, chairman of Bush's Northeast Florida campaign, suggested the problem was voter error, not misdeed or mistake over the ballot by election officials. "We make the assumption that all of our voters read directions," he said. Langton pointed to a parallel between the disqualified votes in Duval and the ballot strife in Palm Beach County. There, 19,100 votes were rejected by voters picking more than one candidate for president. "We'll probably be the next Palm Beach County," Stafford rued. The Palm Beach ballot, however, ran the names of candidates on facing pages with voter punch holes in the middle, which voters say confused them. In Duval, all punch holes ran along the right side of each ballot page. "It says clearly at the bottom of our first page 'continued on the next page,' " Johnson said, adding that only four or five complaints about overvoting were logged at the elections office. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miami Haitians say they were unable to vote Tuesday by Ray Sánchez Staff Correspondent (NEWSDAY NY) Miami-For Merleine Bastien, the presidential election was an education in Miami-style democracy. She remembered an old Haitian immigrant who called her on Tuesday,crying like a baby, because he was unable to cast his first ballot ever.There was no one at the polling place who spoke Creole, no one to help guide him through the voting process. When Bastien, 41, president of the activist organization known as Haitian Women of Miami, visited a polling station in Miami's Little Haiti section, a local election official got in her face and demanded that she leave. "I thought she was going to assault me," Bastien said. "She yelled at me, 'You Haitians come here and think you're entitled to special treatment.'" All day Tuesday, she said, Haitian immigrants were calling her to complain about being turned away from the polls because of long lines or identification problems. "Some people just handed the incomplete ballots back," Bastien said. "They just didn't vote." At one elementary school, a Creole-speaking volunteer was told to sit in a corner and wait for the polls to close. "She was ignored," Bastien said. "She couldn't help anyone." Some, she said, were even threatened with deportation, although they were American citizens. Voting irregularities are nothing new in South Florida, and no one is seriously charging-at least not yet-that the fix was on Tuesday. But prominent black leaders, including members of the NAACP, are compiling a litany of complaints they said could force the U.S. Justice Department to hold a revote here. Rep. Carrie Meek (D-Fla.), who said she is aware of hundreds of complaints from black voters, said the national Voting Rights Act,guaranteeing minorities the right to vote, was thrown out for Election Day in South Florida. "The system is not working for us-again," she said. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume was expected to lead a meeting Saturday morning during which officials will formally compile complaints from black people who say they were not allowed to vote. While NAACP officials and other black leaders would not estimate the magnitude of the complaints, they described cases in which blacks were harassed by police at the polls, turned away for various reasons and were not allowed to sign affidavits giving them the right to vote without having to provide identification. "There are credible charges which need to be looked at," Meek said. Jacques Ricot Mazarin, 57, a bus driver, said his name disappeared from the records at the Opa-Locka elementary school where he had been voting for the past decade. He said his wife and one of his daughters were registered to vote there, but not him. "I am not dead yet," he said. "My name disappeared. I am a registered Democrat. I don't think it was a mistake." Bastien said the approximately 170,000 Haitian immigrants living in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties have always taken a backseat politically to the Cuban-American community here. There are roughly 800,000 Cubans in Miami-Dade. Tuesday's irregularities, she said, amounted to a wholesale disenfranchisement of one segment of South Florida's black community. "It's a continuation of years of gross abuse and neglect," she said. "Imagine that in a country like ours, which supervises elections throughout the world, the rights of voters could be trampled like they have been here." She remembered the bodies that used to turn up on the side of dirt roads in Haiti at election time. "I think about Haiti and all the people who died with a ballot in their hands,all the people who voted while bullets were raining down on them," Bastien said. "Here, on Election Day, intimidation and threats and fear rained down on the people." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gore Campaign Sharpens Legal Demands and Tone November 9, 2000 By DANIEL J. WAKIN Reuters Vice President Al Gore's campaign announced an all-out effort today to contest Florida's presidential election result, demanding a recount by hand in four counties and promising to support legal challenges as the dispute grew increasingly bitter. The Bush campaign responded that Democratic officials were politicizing events "at the expense of our democracy," in contrast to what it called its own calm and responsible approach. In issuing one of the strongest statements yet from the Gore campaign, William Daley, the campaign's chairman, said, "If the will of the people is to prevail, Al Gore should be awarded victory in Florida and become president." Mr. Daley spoke at a news conference in Tallahassee, the Florida capital, where the nation's focus has turned now that the election hinges on the state. Adopting a markedly more combative tone, Mr. Daley accused George W. Bush's camp of riding roughshod over the will of the electorate. "I believe their actions to try to presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition, run the risk of dividing the American people and creating confusion," Mr. Daley said. At the same time, he said the Gore campaign would "honor and obviously respect" a Bush victory if that should be the case once the dispute is resolved. More specifically, he accused the Bush side of resisting efforts to make sure the outcome in Florida is accurate. "They blithely dismiss the disenfranchisement of thousands of Floridians as being the usual sorts of mistakes made in elections," Mr. Daley said. "They put a demand for finality ahead of the pursuit of fairness," he said. He added, "Technicalities do not determine the presidency of the United States. The will of the people should." Bush campaign officials responded by fully joining the public relations battle, Jim Yardley a correspondent for The New York Times, reported from Austin, Texas. Bush campaign officials held a news conference there suggesting the Gore campaign was overstating election irregularities. In some of their more pointed comments, the Bush officials implied that Mr. Gore was being a sore loser, without quite saying it, he said. "The Democrats who are politicizing and distorting these events risk doing so at the expense of our democracy," said Don Evans, the Bush campaign chairman. Referring to Democrats' suggesting a new vote should be held in one Florida County, he said: "The democratic process calls for voting on Election Day. It does not call for us to continue voting until someone likes the outcome. "Throughout this process it is important that no party to this election act in a precipitous manner or distort an existing voting pattern in an effort to misinform the public." A Bush spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, said that in contrast, the Bush campaign had acted in a "calm, thoughtful and responsible manner." And Mr. Evans said it was "only appropriate" that the Bush campaign start thinking about the transition to the White House. Reporting from Tallahassee, David Firestone of The Times said Mr. Daley's comments made it clear the Gore campaign had abandoned any worries that by prolonging the contest the Vice President Gore would go down in history as a sore loser. The campaign stressed that Mr. Gore did not fear his efforts would pose a risk to the electoral process or to the country's prestige abroad, Mr. Firestone noted. Warren Christopher, whom Mr. Gore dispatched to oversee his efforts in Florida, said, "Let me assure you that the presidency goes on until Jan. 20 in a vigorous way." Florida's 25 electoral votes would push either candidate over the 270 mark needed for the presidency. The narrowness of the tally after Election Day 1,784 votes, with the edge to Mr. Bush meant a recount had to proceed under state law. Democratic officials have raised a series of what they said were irregularities that the assert denied Mr. Gore victory. They included the suspicion that many voters had been confused by ballots in Palm Beach County, a stronghold for Mr. Gore, and mistakenly voted for Patrick Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate, when they intended to vote for Mr. Gore. Mr. Daley said those Buchanan votes far exceeded the total in other counties with larger populations, and that 2,000 of the 3,400 marked for Mr. Buchanan should have gone to Mr. Gore. The Bush campaign countered that the high Buchanan vote in Palm Beach County had come as no surprise. Karl Rove, a Bush campaign strategist, said 16,695 voters in Palm Beach registered to vote for the Independent, Reform or American Reform parties, an increase of 110 percent over the 1996 election, and that the number was far higher than in nearby counties. And Mr. Rove criticized Mr. Daley, who had said the two-sided ballot paper used in the county was confusing and led people to vote for Mr. Buchanan inadvertently . Mr. Rove said the same ballot paper was used for a judicial elections in Cook County, Illinois, Mr. Daley's home base. Mr. Rove also noted that many absentee ballots in Colorado, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and California were still being counted, suggesting that the balance could be tipped toward Mr. Bush outside of Florida. Democratic officials also have pointed to 19,000 ballots in Palm Beach County that were disqualified on Election Day because voters marked them for both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush. A lawyer for the Gore campaign, Kendall Coffey, suggested today that one legal remedy could be a new election for the county. Florida Democratic officials will be asking for a hand count in Palm Beach Dade, Broward and Volusia counties, Mr. Daley said, because elections officials there said it was merited. Otherwise the recount has been progressing electronically. "In addition today I am announcing we will be working with voters from Florida in support of legal action to demand some redress for the disenfranchisement of some 20,000 voters in Palm Beach County," Mr. Daley said. The campaign would not immediately file law suits of its own, he said. Mr. Evans pointed out that in 1996, 14,872 ballots were also disqualified in Palm Beach County for being marked twice. He said Gore supporters were collecting reports of other irregularities such as "voter intimidation," which if substantiated would become part of legal action. The Democratic National Committee has set up extensive field operations around Florida to gather intelligence about any other voting problems, Mr. Firestone reported. He added that the Daley family a political dynasty in Chicago has a heritage of baring its knuckles when it comes to employing election laws in political battles. A suit in federal court in Florida was filed by Democrats but withdrawn, though two state cases were being pursued. "All we are seeking is this: That the candidate who the voters preferred becomes president," Mr. Daley said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bush is behaving like the U.S. version of Milosevic By Bev Conover Online Journal - <http://www.onlinejournal.com> November 10, 2000 George W. Bush is telling Al Gore "to hurry up and concede before the people find out I really lost the election." And Bush is getting plenty of help from his supporters and the major media in the effort to force Gore to quit. Never mind that Gore leads in both the popular and electoral vote, and the nightmare that occurred in Florida has yet to be resolved. The man who says he wants to be "a uniter, not a divider" and that he "trusts the people," doesn't give a damn that some 20,000 voters in Florida were disenfranchised one way or another - and the numbers keep rising. Or is it that he figures if the country's and world's eyes are diverted away from Florida, he can somehow save his baby brother [Florida Governor] Jeb's hide? Jeb seemed mighty uncomfortable as he stood before the cameras at a press conference Wednesday, rolling his lower lip over his upper, his beady eyes darting about as he announced he was recusing himself from the election certification commission. State Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, was visibly shaken. Does Butterworth know something we don't? As the state's chief law enforcement officer, could he be wrestling with bringing charges against Jeb and all the constitutional officers engaged in this debacle? Jeb promised George W. that he would deliver Florida to him. What he left out of that statement was how he planned to accomplish that. An investigation and a reform of Florida's election law are surely in order. Florida has a long history of election fraud. So it takes a grand stretch of the imagination to believe that so many Florida voters and election officials are bumbling idiots, when the funny business stretched from north to south and east to west. Perhaps Floridians and the nation should have paid more attention to the 1997 election fraud in Miami. That ended when Mayor Xavier Suarez's election was overturned because of fraud involving absentee ballots. City Commissioner Humerto Hernandez, along with 13 other elected officials and volunteers, were convicted and sentenced to 364 days in prison for their roles in helping to steal the election for Hernandez. Now we learn that Suarez sits on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade Republican Party and, in this year's election, was specifically involved in recruiting absentee voters and helping to fill out absentee ballot forms. Do you smell something rotten here? But are the Bush shills in the major media asking hard questions about what actually happened in Florida? No. They are marching in lockstep with George W. to get Gore to concede before the machine recount is finished, a hand inspection of ballots in a number of counties get underway, and all the absentee ballots from overseas arrive and are counted. Interestingly, while George W. had the audacity to declare himself the winner today, Reuters was reporting that reporters and all other "unauthorized" people - meaning the public - were kicked out of the main Capitol building in Tallahassee by police, "cutting off access to the office responsible for overseeing a recount of the state's nearly 6 million presidential ballots." The police then sealed the building. Reuters quoted a policewoman as saying "We've been told to secure the building." But the fun doesn't stop here. The Orlando Sentinel has reported that Volusia County officials found three suspect bags of ballots as the prepared to move all the ballots to the county administration building to do a manual recount of all 184,000 ballots cast. All three bags were improperly sealed. One bag had split open and some ballots had spilled out, but election workers contended none were missing. Quick, get Gore to concede to give legitimacy to Bush's claim of victory! Bush, with his infantile and unseemly behavior, is already showing the country and the world the colors that some of us saw long ago. Is this the man Americans want as their country's leader? Is this the man who would have a shred of credibility on the world stage? A few weeks ago, Bush and his advisers, thinking that Gore would lose the popular vote but win the electoral vote, were plotting ways to have such a Gore victory nullified. But now that Bush has lost both and hopes the outcome in Florida will give him the electoral, he has declared himself the winner, whining, "Gimme, it's mine!" And to prove it, he has set about choosing a cabinet and planning the transition. If that weren't galling enough, former Secretary of State James Baker, G.W.'s point man in overseeing the Florida vote count, is threatening to call for recounts in Iowa and Wisconsin in retaliation if the Democrats don't behave themselves. Can you imagine how they are going to react if enough more Gore votes are found in the hand count and overseas absentee ballots to put Big Bad Al over the top in the electoral vote, too? Actually, this goes beyond Slobodan Milosevic's refusal to acknowledge he had lost Yugoslavia's election for president, until the people took to the streets. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ===================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <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
