...contact Bush.....contact Florida, U.S. officials... ...GORE 50,140,140 VOTES (49%)...BUSH 49,782, 288 (48%)...CNN, 11/28/00 'toons... news... stories... cheney... gore... nader... archives... site map... us... e-mail... SATURDAY'S TIMELINE 7 a.m. EST: Written briefs on Bush appeal of Florida Supreme Court decision due at 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Court may conduct hearing at that time, too. 8 a.m. EST: Recount begins in Tallahassee of "undervotes" from Miami-Dade County. 9 a.m. EST: U.S. Supreme Court justices arrive in Washington, may conduct hearing or accept briefs on Bush appeal of Florida Supreme Court ruling. Noon EST: All other counties in Florida have been directed to decide their plans for their recounts and fax the details to Tallahassee. HYPOCRITE BUSH HAS BENEFITED FROM NON-STANDARD HAND COUNTS ALL ALONG. NOW, HE WANTS TO PREVENT GORE FROM RECEIVING THE SAME BENEFITS Based on his argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, Bush has received votes in violation of the federal voters' right to equal protection. If he really believes what he is saying, he should give those votes back and declare Al Gore the winner. In their appeal to the US Supreme Court, Bush's lawyers ironically make a strong case for why all the 40,000 under votes that have yet to be canvassed from across the state (in Republican and Democrat-leaning counties) should be canvassed when they quote a 1980 Circuit Court decision. "Moreover, as the Fifth Circuit stated in 1980, �qualified voters have not only a constitutionally protected right to vote, but also have the concomitant right to have their votes counted. These rights can neither be denied outright, nor destroyed by alteration of ballots, nor diluted by ballot-box stuffing.� Gamza v. Aguirre, 619 F.2d 449, 452 (5th Cir. 1980) (citations omitted)." They argue that commencing a manual count of Florida's undervote using the state's statutory standard of "clear indication of voter inent" will lead to a violation of this equal protection standard. "By ordering that votes in different counties should be counted differently, this standard has been violated." I got bad news for them, this has already happened. A dozen or more counties have already manually canvassed returns rejected by machines using this standard. A quick overview of quotes from various news sources confirms both the canvassing of ballots rejected by the machines in some counties and that such canvassing was based on the "voter intent" standard established by Florida statute. Based on Bush's argument, Florida has already violated the voters right to equal protection. Orange County (http://orlandosentinel.com/automagic/news/2000-11-10/ASECelrecount1111000.h tml) Most of the "new" votes in Orange came from ballots that simply weren`t counted Tuesday night, mostly because the machines couldn`t or wouldn`t read them. Seminole County (http://orlandosentinel.com/elections/1110sem.htm) The margin preserved Bush�s tenuous hold on Florida, giving him a 327-vote lead in an unofficial tabulation of the recounts in all of Florida's 67 counties. The process is far from over, however. Democratic offiicals have demanded manual recounts -- such as the type that took place in Seminole -- in four counties, including Volusia. Polk County (http://www.theledger.com/local/elections/12pore.htm) Some ballots were improperly marked and had to be examined by the canvassing board. Some voters marked the oval on the ballot but didn't darken it enough to be counted. Some voters wrote in the name of Bush or Gore in addition to darkening the oval. Those ballots would have been considered invalid by the machine on the first count. But many were counted Saturday and added to the candidate totals. Under Florida law, a canvassing board is to determine the intent of a voter where that is clear and award the vote. Each of the Polk ballots in question were examined by Republican and Democratic party monitors, who got to look but not touch. Gasden County (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/11/politics/11REPU.html) But in Gadsden County, the canvassing board decided to examine 2,124 ballots that had been rejected by a counting machine because more than one candidate had been chosen on each. Here, as in a handful of other counties, voters marked paper ballots with a pencil. The canvassing board did not examine the rejected ballots on election night. The next day, when they sorted the rejected ballots, the canvassing board counted 188 new votes: 170 for Mr. Gore, 17 for Mr. Bush, and 1 for a local write-in candidate. Members of the canvassing board insisted they had complied with Florida law. They said they had only counted those ballots on which the intent of the voter was absolutely clear. "We were trying to determine the intent of the voters," said Judge Richard L. Hood, the chairman of the canvassing board and a Republican. "As far as I was concerned, the election was fair." Various Counties (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/16/politics/16HAND.html) Limited hand-counting did take place in at least some of the seven counties Democrats cited: Franklin, Gadsden, Hamilton, Lafayette, Seminole, Taylor and Washington. In some of the cases, election officials counted by hand only the ballots that counting machines had rejected, usually a small percentage of the total. The hand counts were done not necessarily at the request of the Republicans, but as part of the county's vote-counting procedures. In six of the the seven counties, the Republicans picked up votes. But the Democrats also picked up votes, and in one case, they picked up far more. A similar hand count was conducted in Lafayette County in northern Florida. Though nearly 90 percent of the county's 4,040 registered voters are Democrats, the county voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Bush. Officials tried to decipher some 220 ballots the machine had rejected. Lana Morgan, the county supervisor of elections, said officials were able to determine the voters' choices on about 50 of 220 rejected ballots. In an interview today, Ms. Morgan said no one kept track of how many of those votes were for Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore. Various Counties (http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/28/hand/index.html) In Republican Seminole County -- where local Democrats are suing because Republican election officials allowed GOP party volunteers to correct absentee ballot applications that had been filled out improperly -- the canvassing board decided to manually examine unreadable ballots during the county's electronic recount. Seminole's recount yielded an additional 98 votes for Bush. A similar procedure was followed in Polk County, where a partial manual recount resulted in Gore losing 90 votes that had apparently been counted twice. Canvassing board member Bruce Parker classified his county's actions as "a mini hand count." In Taylor County, where Bush picked up four votes, Supervisor of Elections Molly Lilliot said all ballots were re-fed through the tabulating machine for the recount. "All ballots kicked out were examined individually by the canvassing board," she said. "We ran all the ballots back through the machine," said Carol Tolle, supervisor of elections in Hamilton County. "Every time you had an overvote or undervote, we inspected it. If we could determine the intent of the voter, we counted those votes." In Hamilton, Gore ended up picking up seven votes. Polk County (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/florida_election_recount_ 001116.html) A similar sort of review benefited Bush in the more Republican Polk County, where Bush appeared to post his largest gain over Gore in a Florida recount, 108 votes. Canvassers discovered some voters had improperly voted twice on some of their ballots by both voting for their candidate, Gore or Bush, and writing-in that candidate�s name, says Polk elections Vi Thornburg. The vote reading machines had rejected those votes altogether, spitting the ballots out into a special container. Since those voters clearly wanted to vote for just one candidate, canvassers added the votes to the candidates� tallies, one per voter, with more ultimately going to Bush, she says. --Bush Watcher, 12/9/00 UNDERVOTES FAVOR BUSH COUNTIES, 26,000 TO 18,000 WHY, THEN, DOES BUSH WANT TO STOP THE COUNTING OF THE UNDERVOTES THROUGHOUT FLORIDA? According to Bush Watchers, the majority of the undervotes in Republican counties are found in minority precincts which are predominantly Democrat. PENSACOLA COURT DECISION WILL GAIN BUSH OVERSEAS VOTES CNN REPORTS BUSH THUGS ON PLANES BACK TO FLORIDA. MORE BUSH RECOUNT RIOTS? (See Below) BUSH ASKS ATLANTA FEDS TO STOP THE MANUAL COUNT AT ONCE JUDGE SAULS DELAYS MIAMI-DADE RECOUNT HEARING BY RECUSING HIMSELF GORE LAWYERS DEMAND THAT RECOUNT BEGIN AT ONCE BUSH APPEALS FLORIDA DECISION TO U.S. SUPREMES FLORIDA SUPREMES FAVOR GORE BUSH LEAD CUT TO 154 VOTES MIAMI-DADE MANUAL COUNT OF 9,000 UNDERVOTES TO BEGIN AT ONCE GORE AWARDED 383 PREVIOUSLY COUNTED VOTES FROM PALM BEACH AND MIANI-DADE THE VOTE STANDARD IS WHAT THE LEGISLATURE HAS PREVIOUSLY DEFINED ALL OTHER COUNTIES WITH UNDERVOTES SHALL BE MANUALLY COUNTED (170,000 IN ALL) JUDGE SAULS' LOWER COURT DECISION HAS BEEN OVERTURNED THE SUPREME COURT VOTED THE ABOVE 4-3 TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- In a split decision, the Florida Supreme Court on Friday ordered an immediate manual recount of presidential election undervotes in Miami-Dade county and all Florida counties "where such a recount has not occurred." "Because time is of the essence, the recount will commence immediately," said the court's spokesman, Craig Waters. The court also added 383 votes to Al Gore's total, from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. The court ruled 4-3 in favor of an appeal filed by the Gore campaign regarding a dispute of hand counted votes. The high court said the standard to be used to count votes "is the one to be provided by the legislature," which requires the ballot to show "a clear intent of the voter." 12/8/00 SEMINOLE AND MARTIN CASES FOUND IN BUSH'S FAVOR CASES WILL NOW BE APPEALED TO THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE SEND MATERIAL FOR OUR NEW PAGE...JEB WATCH 2002 Have you considered making yourself eligible to vote in the Florida 2002 elections? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A BUSH WATCHER...How come you guys have been so right about GWB from the beginning. Do you all know something the rest of us don't? POLITEX...Yes, we do, and some of it will eventually be in the novel that, little by little, we've been posting... WHO'S WHO IN THE BUSH FLORIDA THUG MOB 1. Tom Pyle, policy analyst, office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). 2. Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director, House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice. 3. Rory Cooper, political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee. 4. Kevin Smith, former House Republican conference analyst and more recently of Voter.com. 5. Steven Brophy, former aide to Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), now working at the consulting firm KPMG. 6. Matt Schlapp, former chief of staff for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), now on the Bush campaign staff in Austin. 7. Roger Morse, aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.). 8. Duane Gibson, aide to Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee. 9. Chuck Royal, legislative assistant to Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). 10. Layna McConkey, former legislative assistant to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), now at Steelman Health Strategies. (see below) FLORIDA ELECTION UPDATE...Everything you want to know is here TOM DELAY BEHIND BUSH MIAMI-DADE BROWNSHIRTS "When outraged Republicans raised a ruckus outside the Miami-Dade County elections office last week, some protesters at the door weren't local citizens. They were Capitol Hill aides on all-expenses paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign. Right up front on television images of the event last Wednesday were Thomas Pyle, an aide to GOP Rep. Tom DeLay, and Michael Murphy, who works for a DeLay fund-raising committee. Doug Heye from California Rep. Richard Pombo's office also was in the fray....Behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida....The biggest contingent appears to have hailed from within the marbled walls of the Capitol complex in Washington.... "In Washington, several GOP aides say the office of Mr. DeLay, the House Republican whip, took charge of the effort on Capitol Hill, passing on an offer many staffers couldn't refuse: free air fare, accommodations and food in the Sunshine State -- all paid for by the Bush campaign. Aides who accepted took advantage of liberal congressional workplace rules that allow them to jump from government jobs to political tasks at a moment's notice by declaring themselves on vacation or temporary leave. "Once word leaked out, everybody wanted in," says one GOP operative involved in the effort. Participants estimate that more than 200 staffers signed on, some spending more than a week in South Florida. Many stayed in Hiltons by the beach and received $30 a day for food, as well as an invitation to an exclusive Thanksgiving Day party in Fort Lauderdale.... "Staffers who joined the effort say there has been an air of mystery to the operation. "To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shots," says one aide. Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events. On Friday night, one aide received notice that he and his colleagues were welcome to stay in South Florida until "further notice." Bush supporters sometimes outnumbered Gore backers by 10 to one outside the Broward County Courthouse in the Democrat-leaning community. A block to the north, a recreational vehicle festooned with Bush-Cheney signs served as operation central, having recently been transferred from similar duty in Miami....[GOP] camaraderie was on full display at the glitzy Thanksgiving night party featuring free food and libations at the Hyatt on Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale -- "a festive family mood," says one protester. Entertainer Wayne Newton crooned the song "Danke Schoen," until a group of frenzied female fans rushed the stage. The night's highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, which included joking references by both running mates to the incident in Miami." --WSJ, 11/27/00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tell Al Gore He Should/Should Not Keep Fighting ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TODAY'S BUSHISM (DURING QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD)....."The legislature's job is to write the law, the executive branch's job is to interpret it." (VIDEO) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ YESTERDAY'S BUSH WATCH ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BUSH WATCH: THE NOVEL by Jerry Politex I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Chez Zee. Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car, the turbines winding down, and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait. He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms. "Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Politex. Good description." ...click here to continue the novel. 'toons... news... polls... stories... cheney... gore... nader... archives... site map... us... e-mail... taxes ... education... health... environment... foreign policy... social security... supreme court... other issues... Nader..... Flynt, CNN, Drudge..... More Flynt, BBC... Daily Headlines Page. 30-50 New Stories Each Day. Today's Electoral College Map.... '76 DWI.... '96 License.... '96 Statement.... Jury Duty.... Military Records.... AWOL ------------------------------------------------------------------------
