With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story... Friday November 10, 2000; 11:23 PM ET Democrat Mind-Readers Set to 'Reconstruct' Votes for Gore Republicans have good reason to be concerned about the presidential election hand recount set to begin Saturday in four heavily Democratic Florida counties. In Gadsden County, where even Wednesday's initial post-election recount was done by hand, nearly 200 votes suddenly materialized for Vice President Al Gore - while only a handful turned up for George W. Bush. Why the lopsided result? Because Gadsden County Democratic officials decided to use their own psychic powers to determine voter preferences while examining more than 2,000 unclear ballots that had been previously rejected by city voting machines. "Some voters colored in the circle for one candidate, crossed it out and then filled in a circle for another," reported the Palm Beach Post Friday. "Others filled in the circle for a candidate, then wrote the name of the same candidate in the write-in space, as if for emphasis." But the four Democratic officials that make up Gadsden County's election canvassing board decided they could "reconstruct" the ballots by trying to read the minds of the voters who filled them out. "The only ones we reconstructed were the ones we could tell the intent of the voter," Sterling Watson, a member of the canvassing board, told the Post. By the time the Democrat mind-readers were through with their vote recount, they'd conjured up 170 new votes for Gore, a mere 17 for Bush.
