Bush v. Gore: The Endless Election

[Lakhota]

The 2000 election, the most controversial in history, is revisited with testimony from key players who helped decide the outcome after botched results. Documentary.

Will air on CNN Monday night, November 2, 2015, at 9:00 pm ET.

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election

Executive Summary

Main

The Florida Recount of 2000 - FactCheck.org

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner | World news | The Guardian

Gore Won Florida - Democrats.com

Yes, Bush v. Gore Did Steal the Election -- NYMag

Who really won Bush-Gore election? - CNNPolitics.com - CNN.com

Gore's Victory - The Consortium

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Rolling Stone

Florida. How Soon We Forget. - The New York Times

Voter roll purge in the 2000 Florida election - SourceWatch

Florida’s flawed “voter-cleansing” program - Salon.com

 

[TheOldSchool]

Let's just put that tragedy behind us. The disastrous Dubya Presidency will soon be a distant memory.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh my. . . . Some facts:

1. The Gore team only asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. If they were so concerned that "every vote be counted," why didn't they ask for a manual recount in every county that had a significant percentage of uncounted votes?

2. The Florida Supreme Court (FLSC), which was composed of seven Democrats, extended the seven-day deadline set by the legislature for certification. The law set a specific deadline for certifying election results. Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that state legislatures are to determine the time, manner and place of elections. State supreme courts do not have that authority. The FLSC overstepped its authority and acted as a legislature, and therefore its decision to order a statewide recount deserved to be overturned. See:

http://reason.com/0103/fe.re.election.shtml

3. The FLSC's decision to order a statewide recount of undervotes in Florida was decided by a narrow 4-3 margin. In other words, even three of the seven Democrats who comprised the FLSC dissented, including the chief justice of the court, Charles Wells. Chief Justice Wells wrote a stinging dissent, in which, among other things, he said the court's ruling had no foundation in Florida law:

I believe that the majority's decision cannot withstand the scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the United States Constitution. . . . The majority's decision to return this case to the circuit court for a count of the undervotes from either Miami-Dade County or all counties has no foundation in the law of Florida as it existed on Nov. 7, 2000, or at any time until the issuance of this opinion. . . . The prolonging of judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis. . . . I have to conclude that there is a real and present likelihood that this constitutional crisis will do substantial damage to our country, to our state and to this court as an institution.​

4. Seven of the nine SCOTUS justices agreed that the statewide recount was constitutionally problematic. Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter wanted to give Florida six more days to complete the statewide recount, but they agreed there were equal protection problems with the recount process. They voted with the minority because the five conservatives insisted on demanding that the statewide recount be completed by December 12. As Joseph Farrah observes,

To remind everyone what happened in that historic ruling, the court ruled 7-2 that the recount system in place did not meet constitutional muster. Seven justices in all found an equal protection violation. Five found three violations of federal law.​

Where the court was split more closely (5-4) was on the remedy. Only five justices agreed that recounts must stop by Dec. 12, the state of Florida's deadline for certifying elections. Two other justices, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, would have given the recounts six more days because Dec. 18 was the federal deadline for certifying the list of electors. ("Setting the Clintons Straight," WorldNetDaily, November 7, 2002, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29576)​

5. The FLSC did not order a statewide manual recount of all uncounted votes, but only a recount of the undervotes, i.e., the ballots that didn't register a vote when they were read by vote-counting machines. Berkowitz and Wittes explain:

It was not a full manual recount of the presidential vote. Nor was it a full manual recount of undamaged ballots that failed to yield a valid, machine-readable vote for president, as would appear to have been required by the Florida Supreme Court's own principle that all votes should be counted in pursuit of a "clear indication of the intent of the voter." Rather, the Florida court ordered a manual recount of a subset of the so-called nonvotes, the undervotes, which are ballots (estimated to number about 60,000) with no machine-readable vote for president. Despite the objections raised by Florida chief justice Charles T. Wells in his dissent, indeed without explanation, the majority excluded from the recount overvotes, an entire class of undamaged ballots (estimated to number about 110,000) that were invalidated because machines detected multiple votes for president. And yet, like the undervotes, they too may have contained (and we now know did contain) discernible choices. ("The Professors and Bush v. Gore")​

6. It wasn't Bush's fault that the four Gore-selected counties couldn't complete their manual recounts prior to the statutory certification deadline. One of the counties that Gore selected, Miami-Dade County, didn't even begin its manual recount until after the statutory certification deadline had passed. Then, Miami-Dade County suspended its manual recount five days after it started it. Another one of the four Gore-selected counties, heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, failed to complete its manual recount even by the extended deadline set by the FLSC because it chose to only work half days and to take Thanksgiving Day off! It wasn't Bush's fault that the Democratic election officials in Palm Beach County were so lazy and inefficient even though the outcome of the presidential election was on the line.

7. The Gore campaign targeted military ballots for rejection on any technical grounds no matter how trivial. Gore lawyer Mark Herron sent a five-page letter on November 15, 2000, to Democratic attorneys throughout Florida, detailing how to challenge military absentee ballots. This certainly didn't seem to be in keeping with the Gore team's battle cry of "count all the votes" and "every vote should be counted."

8. One of the Gore-selected counties, Broward County, changed the criteria for determining votes from manually counted ballots in the middle of the first manual recount. Broward County began their recount using a strict standard for determining votes, which primarily required clear punches or chads hanging by one or two corners in order for a vote to be counted. About midway through the process, the standard was changed to a more liberal standard, which allowed dimples and pregnant chads to be considered primary evidence of voter intent. This change gave Gore an extra 884 votes. Changing the rules in the middle of the game is not usually viewed as fair or proper.

9. Another one of the Gore-selected counties, Palm Beach County, also changed vote-counting standards during the manual recounts. Before the recount got under way, the canvassing board set a hard, clear policy on "how to judge invalid ballots." According to those rules, a vote could be counted from a ballot only if the ballot's chads had two or three corners disconnected. But, just hours into the recount, the canvassing board, which was controlled by Democrats, changed the standard to a more liberal one in which only one corner of the chads had to be disconnected.

10. One can make the perfectly valid argument that Bush won the Florida election among votes that were properly and legally cast. It wasn't his fault that so many Democratic voters in Palm Beach County couldn't figure out the butterfly ballot, which, after all, was designed by a Democrat. Nor was it Bush's fault that so many Gore voters made extra marks on their ballots, which caused them to be disqualified (as overvotes).

11. There would have been more time for a court-ordered recount in the contest phase if Gore hadn't challenged the certification of the election results, as Katherine Harris points out in her new book, Center of the Storm. Some of Gore's legal advisers urged him not to challenge the certification but to focus on the contest phase that would follow certification. If Gore had done this, there may have been enough time to complete the manual recounts. But, Gore chose to listen to his political advisers rather than his legal advisers. Gore's political advisers were afraid that if Bush were "certified" as the winner, this would create the impression that the election was over. So Gore chose to contest the certification. He failed, and in the process he used up precious time that could have been used for the manual recounts. That wasn't Bush's fault either.

12. Bush may have received several thousand more votes in Florida if the TV news networks had not prematurely projected Florida as going to Gore even though he had only a razor thin lead and even though the polls in the heavily Republican Florida panhandle region were still open. The Florida panhandle is in the central time zone, an hour behind the rest of the Florida. There were reports of long lines at the polls in that area, and of people leaving when they heard the state had been called for Gore. Some analysts suggest the media's premature projection of a winner in Florida may have cost Bush as many as 10,000 votes from the panhandle. Other analysts put the number at around 5,000 votes. If this is true, the recounts may never have been requested in the first place because Bush would have had a much larger lead from the first machine count.

13. Bush may have won a statewide manual recount. An independent accounting firm studied over 20,000 of the Florida undervotes and concluded a manual recount of the undervote ballots would not have produced a Gore victory. Studies have also shown that Bush would have won if the first manual recounts had been allowed to continue (i.e., if the recounts in the four Gore-selected counties had been completed). Another study found that Bush would have won in three of nine recount scenarios. In an article titled "Under the Two Most Likely Scenarios, Bush Wins Florida," Palm Beach Post staff writers said,

Al Gore was doomed. He couldn't have caught George W. Bush even if his two best chances for an official recount had played out, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of 175,010 uncounted Florida ballots from last November's chaotic presidential election.​

 

[regent]

. The people that voted in that election have a right to know, and for the rest of us, It is part of our history and we should know.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

It's not endless, Bush won. Stupid thread

 

[Lakhota]

Let's just put that tragedy behind us. The disastrous Dubya Presidency will soon be a distant memory.

No thanks! I'm in no hurry to have it swept under the rug. I'll never forget it during my lifetime. Younger voters should also be reminded of how Dubya became president. There is one thing that no one can dispute - Al Gore won the popular vote. Many experts also say that Gore won Florida. At the time, Florida was controlled by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

 

[Lakhota]

As a great American patriot, Al Gore conceded, rather than have the nation torn apart.

 

[Pogo]

​

 

[Lakhota]

There were many voting irregularities during the 2000 Florida election.

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

Executive Summary

Main

 

[SwimExpert]

 

[Hossfly]

Let's just put that tragedy behind us. The disastrous Dubya Presidency will soon be a distant memory.

No thanks! I'm in no hurry to have it swept under the rug. I'll never forget it during my lifetime. Younger voters should also be reminded of how Dubya became president. There is one thing that no one can dispute - Al Gore won the popular vote. Many experts also say that Gore won Florida. At the time, Florida was controlled by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

Don't forget the military absentee votes that were trashed and not counted.

 

[Rustic]

The 2000 election, the most controversial in history, is revisited with testimony from key players who helped decide the outcome after botched results. Documentary.

Will air on CNN Monday night, November 2, 2015, at 9:00 pm ET.

Not the crack of daylight difference between the two...

 

[Unkotare]

Not "endless" at all. Bush won, Gore lost. End of story.

 

[jknowgood]

There were many voting irregularities during the 2000 Florida election.

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

Executive Summary

Main

Actually people were tired of the trailer trash Clinton's and wanted change. That's why Hillary will lose. People will remember the lying they do.

 

[Lakhota]

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election

Civil rights commission says minorities were disenfranchised by governor's 'gross dereliction' in ignoring problems

Thousands of black electors in Florida were disenfranchised in last November's election by an electoral system tainted by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" a leaked report by the US civil rights commission says.

It accuses Governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother, and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of "gross dereliction" of duty, saying they "chose to ignore mounting evidence" of the problems.

Barbara Arnwine, who runs the Lawyers Committee of Civil Rights Under Law, said the report confirmed her organisation's findings.

"I was absolutely shocked by the scale of voter denial and the disenfranchisement of black voters." The action of the state authorities was "a violation of the fundamental trust that we all give to state-elected officials to protect our right to vote".

More: Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Al Gore was clearly cheated out of the presidency - by then Governor Jeb Bush.

 

[Auld Phart]

Let's just put that tragedy behind us. The disastrous Dubya Presidency will soon be a distant memory.

No thanks! I'm in no hurry to have it swept under the rug. I'll never forget it during my lifetime. Younger voters should also be reminded of how Dubya became president. There is one thing that no one can dispute - Al Gore won the popular vote. Many experts also say that Gore won Florida. At the time, Florida was controlled by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

There is one thing that no one can dispute - Al Gore won the popular vote.

Awarding him the Miss Congeniality crown.

Unfortunately, for democrats, Electoral Votes determine who becomes president.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

LOL Gore didn't carry his home state. That spoke volumes

 

[LordBrownTrout]

This is hilarious.

 

[Pogo]

LOL Gore didn't carry his home state. That spoke volumes

Neither did Romney -- neither his base state nor his birth state.

So what?

 

[Rustic]

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election

Civil rights commission says minorities were disenfranchised by governor's 'gross dereliction' in ignoring problems

Thousands of black electors in Florida were disenfranchised in last November's election by an electoral system tainted by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" a leaked report by the US civil rights commission says.

It accuses Governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother, and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of "gross dereliction" of duty, saying they "chose to ignore mounting evidence" of the problems.

Barbara Arnwine, who runs the Lawyers Committee of Civil Rights Under Law, said the report confirmed her organisation's findings.

"I was absolutely shocked by the scale of voter denial and the disenfranchisement of black voters." The action of the state authorities was "a violation of the fundamental trust that we all give to state-elected officials to protect our right to vote".

More: Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Al Gore was clearly cheated out of the presidency - by then Governor Jeb Bush.

Washington redskin, you ever hear of the electoral college?? dumbass...