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Red Flags - Proof Bush Did Not Win the Popular Vote in Florida
Irregularities,
strategic voting hindrances, illegal ballots, intimidation, collusion,
obstruction... Nice way to be a "uniter, not a divider"!
What's going on? There are so many anomalies now that the probability
of simple coincidence or bad luck is dwindling down to nothing.
On Election Day, November 7, some strange things happened in Florida.
Let's put the puzzle pieces together.
Early Calls
1) Major pre-election
polls had Gore leading in Florida the night of Nov. 6
http://www.zogby.com/features/featuredtables.dbm?ID=30#Anchor-Florid-922
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001106/ts/election_leadall_dc_11.html
2) On Election Day, November 7, Voter News Service correctly
predicted through exit polls that matched with early results that Gore
won the state of Florida by a safe margin of 5%. At 7:53PM VNS issued
the bulletin: FLORIDA PRESIDENT RACE - GORE WINS. The networks immediately
called the state for
Gore.
http://www.herald.com/content/tue/business/florida/digdocs/045599.htm
3) A mortified Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, shortly
thereafter left his family in Austin to make some calls. Then George
W., after consulting with his advisors including his brother Jeb, called
reporters to his hotel suite and told them the networks had made a mistake
in calling Florida. "I'm upbeat," he said. At 10:13PM the
networks recalled the state and put it back into the "too close
to call" column.
http://www.herald.com/content/tue/business/florida/digdocs/045599.htm
4) At 2:18 AM the networks began declaring George W. Bush the president.
They had done so after Fox News called Florida. Who made the decision
to incorrectly call Florida for Bush over at Fox, thereby creating the
lasting myth that Bush won? John Ellis, who also happens to be George
W. Bush's first cousin.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/15/ellis/index.html
Irregularities
- Palm Beach County
5) An illegal ballot design (the infamous "butterfly
ballot") confused many residents of Palm Beach County into undervoting,
overvoting, or accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan. Regarding the spin
about how it's because they are stupid old people: voters started complaining
about this at 7:05 AM on Election Day. DNC HQ calls were jammed due
to the high volume of calls. Rep. Robert Wexler, the local Congressional
Representative, received a deluge of calls, and on Election Day, even
VP Candidate Joseph Lieberman called the local office to see what was
going on down there. The elections supervisor issued a warning midway
through the day warning people of the confusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Florida-Ballot-Confusion.html
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/09/lapore/index.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000123102,00.html
6) The odds that all those Palm Beach County residents
voted for Buchanan intentionally rather than Gore is approximately a
trillion to one. Statistical models bear this out when you compare them
to the Buchanan vote in other counties. Looking at any graph you see
a huge, disproportionate spike in Buchanan votes. Pat Buchanan himself
agrees that the majority of these votes were not cast for him.
http://www.bestbookmarks.com/election
http://madison.hss.cmu.edu
7) Many Palm Beach county voters who mis-voted but caught it immediately
and asked for another ballot were told they could not have another ballot
by poll workers, in violation of county rules.
NPR, 11/10/00
8) Socialist Party candidate David McReynolds received
abnormally high vote totals in Palm Beach County. His name appears directly
below Buchanan's name on the butterfly ballot, in a position that could
potentially draw erroneous votes from Democratic votes. McReynolds received
302 votes in PBC. Statewide, in the other 66 counties, he received 316
votes combined. McReynolds got virtually as many votes in Palm Beach
County as he did in the entire rest of the state of FloridaŠnearly
50% of the statewide total!
http://www.bestbookmarks.com/election
9) After the handcounts were completed, after using a
stricter standard than neighboring Broward County, the deadline was
missed by an hour or two. Could the count have been delayed because
of stall tactics used by overzealous GOP observers?
http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/324/nation/Democrats_accuse_GOP_of_stalling_for_time+.shtml
Irregularities
- Miami-Dade County
10)
Miami-Dade has a recent history of election fraud. In 1998, Mayor elect
Xavier Suarez was stripped of his election victory by a Florida appeals
court, reinstating Joe Carollo as mayor of Miami, finding that massive
fraud had robbed him of victory at the polls four months prior. A trial
court judge had previously ruled that the election was tainted by "massive,
well-conceived and well-orchestrated" absentee ballot fraud in
which even a dead man voted.
http://www.income-online.com/content/news/NEWS/MIAMI.html
11) The very same scandal-tainted Xavier Suarez currently
sits on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade Republican Party and
was specifically involved this year in helping to get out the Republican
vote. He admitted on November 8th that "he helped fill out absentee
ballot forms and enlist
Republican absentee voters in Miami-Dade County"
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1389
12) Despite tough rules put in place after the fraud-plagued
Miami mayoral election, rules designed to keep absentee ballots out
of the hands of campaign operatives, GOP workers obtained hundreds of
them from voters during their aggressive drive to increase turnout for
George W. Bush. An estimated 500 to 600 completed ballots were collected
by Bush volunteers or dropped off at campaign offices in Little Havana,
Westchester and Hialeah, according to GOP campaign officials in charge
of the absentee vote.
http://www.herald.com/content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/018937.htm
13) The Miami-Dade Canvassing Board decided to abruptly
stop the hand count after mobs of Republicans paid for by Bush and other
GOP operatives including that of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay stormed
their building. Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., was one of the ringleaders
of the Miami fight against the recount, and after hearing the decision
to change a vote tally, Sweeney uttered a three-word order to his troops:
"Shut it down."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63455-2000Nov27.html
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/28/miami
http://www.msnbc.com/news/494375.asp
14) Gore gained
157 more votes than Bush in the partial hand recount, which were not
added to the tally by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
Irregularities
- Volusia County
15) On Election Night, a computer glitch showed a Socialist
Party candidate had more than 9,000 votes, while Vice President Al Gore
had minus 16,000. Those numbers were sent out over the Internet, picked
up by local newspapers and subsequently reported by major networks on
Election Night. The socialist eventually ended up with 9 votes in the
county.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/11/volusia/index.html
16)
Then, during Wednesday's recount, a forgotten ballot bag emerged from
a county poll worker's trunk. Two days later, three other ballot bags
emerged later from the county vaults without their tamper-proof seals
intact.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/11/volusia/index.html
Irregularites
- Seminole County
17) 2,100 incomplete GOP absentee ballot requests were
selectively fixed/altered by GOP workers invited into election offices
by the GOP elections supervisor while similar Democratic absentee ballot
requests were rejected.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/28/seminole/index.html
http://www.campaignwatch.org/update.htm
Irregularities
- Broward County
18) Broward County elections officials are investigating
the possibility that a handful of voting machines malfunctioned Nov.
7, now that the hand recount has been completed.
http://www.herald.com/content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/042862.htm
Irregularities
- Duval County
19) A 40,000-vote error in the Duval count was one of
two significant miscalculations the Voter News Service made in Florida
on November 7.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/111300/met_4597444.html
20) Many of the 27,000 presidential ballots in Duval County that were
disqualified were in predominantly black areas. Nearly 42 percent came
from four districts alone, ones that are overwhelmingly Democratic,
where voters there favored Gore by about 80%.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/111300/met_4597444.html
Irregularities
- Hillsborough County
21) VNS Reported higher than usual numbers for Bush in
six precincts in the Tampa area which was one of the reasons they pulled
the state from Gore to the undecided column on Election Day. An exit
poller said that a sampling of six precincts in Tampa included "too
many Democrats".
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Nov 9,
2000
Irregularities - Martin County
22) Martin County Supervisor of Elections Peggy S. Robbins allowed GOP
operatives to take flawed absentee ballot forms home and correct them.
Altering an absentee ballot application is a third-degree felony in
Florida.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/decision2000/lat_absent001202.htm
Irregularities
- Nassau County
23) Predominately Republican Nassau County inexplicably
decided to report its original election returns rather than its recount
tally to the secretary of state for certification, thus stripping Vice
President Al Gore of 51 votes.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/24/deutsch/index.html
Irregularities
- Bay County
24) A Bay County resident alleged the Republican Party
of Florida used "unlawful and heavy-handed actions" to encourage
people to vote by absentee ballot. The GOP apparently used the state
seal, in violation of state law, on letters urging voters to seek absentee
ballots.
http://www.newsherald.com/articles/2000/11/14/lo111400g.htm
St. Petersburg Times, Nov 30,
2000
Irregularities
- Escambia County
25) A forged absentee ballot may have been part of an
broader voter-fraud scheme.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/111000/Election2000/Forged_ballot_in_Esca.shtml
Irregularities
- Overseas Ballots
26) Some Florida residents serving at a U.S. Air Force
base in England received two absentee ballots for this year's presidential
race.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/09/duplicate/index.html
Irregularities - Statewide
27) The distribution of archaic voting machines were
in predominately Democratic Counties. At least another 4,942 votes would
have been registered for Gore if the punch-card and mark-sense voting
machines had been randomly distributed throughout Florida.
http://www.dshields.net/randomvotingmachine.htm
28) When the first machine recount was completed on Nov. 9, there were
highly non-random corrections to the vote count for Gore, but just in
the counties which were already voting heavily for Gore. Graphs showing
this discrepancy indicate that there may have been an undercount of
the votes for Gore in those counties in the initial machine count. The
re-count corrections in the Republican show a nice bell-shaped curve,
which is what you would expect if the distribution of corrections was
random, which is expected if the original count was strictly fair. The
distribution of the corrections in the Democratic is lop-sided on the
right, indicating the magnitude of corrections went heavily towards
Gore. This is NOT what you would expect if the corrections were due
to random errors, and indicates some other factor is involved which
is not random (i.e. fraud).
http://www.dshields.net/floridaelectionrecountstats.htm
29) Hand recounts, while denounced exaustively by the Bush campaign
and the GOP, were used in certain Republican counties that favored Bush.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/28/hand/index.html
30) A Miami Herald analysis suggests Gore would have won Florida by
23,000 were it not for statewide irregularities.
http://www.herald.com/content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/104268.htm
Voter Intimidation
and Jim (Jeb) Crow
31) Black votes statewide have been disproportionally
tossed, in some county precincts in Duval County the ratio is as high
as one in three.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/497956.asp#BODY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/29/politics/29MACH.html
32) A disproportionate
number of rejected presidential votes in South Florida came from African-American
and Caribbean neighborhoods, according to an analysis of election data
from Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/ws/item/0,1308,46649-46819-48438,00.html
33) A disproportionate number of black votes were tossed in Glades County.
http://home.netcom.com/~mecowan/glades.htm
34) Registered black
college students at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach and Tallahassee's
Florida A&M University said they were turned away from the polls
even though they had signed up in fall registration drives.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000133020,00.html
35) In Leon County,
highway patrol troopers set up an unauthorized checkpoint near a polling
place in the town of Woodville.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000133020,00.html
36) Many black voters
were inexplicably not on the voter lists at the polling locations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/politics/30BLAC.html
37) Many reports
of voter intimidation surfaced in Hillsboro County.
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3WRE3NLFC&live=true&tagid=ZZZOMSJK30C&subheading=US
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/11/naacp/index.html
38) The FBI has
been investigating allegations that some voters, primarily Haitians
with limited or no English speaking or reading ability, were duped into
voting for Bush by misleading "palm cards" that made them
think they were voting for Gore.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000126886,00.html
39) In Miami, Haitian-Americans
said they weren't given mandated ballots in Creole, or were denied help
from poll workers.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000133020,00.html
40) In Healdsburg
County, police were stopping African American voters, asking for ID's
and asking, "What are you doing here?"
http://www.allegedirregularities.com/profiling
41) Many were asked
a litany of questions even though they were on the voting rolls and
had ID's. The questions had to do with whether they had been convicted
of a felony, when was the last time they voted, etc. Only African Americans
appeared to be asked these questions.
http://www.allegedirregularities.com/profiling
42) Four ballot
boxes in heavily black precincts were alleged to not have been picked
up.
http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/335/nation/NAACP_says_it_will_sue_over_alleged_flaws_in_Fla_voting+.shtml
43) A polling place
was demolished without notice.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/11/naacp/index.html
Racist and Hate Group Intimidation
44) Protesters
have been infiltrated by Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups. A
major Neo-Nazi website encourages people to attend its "No More
Gore" rallies.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0047/ladd.shtml
www.stormfront.org
Other Intimidation
45) Several Democrats were punched, kicked and trampled
by Republican goons during the court-ordered Miami-Dade recount. Death
threats and other assaults have also occurred, specifically towards
Rep. Robert Wexler, and Palm Beach commissioner Carol Roberts. A certain
website also published the home phone numbers of the Florida Supreme
Court Justices, and one can assume the possibility of death threats
may have reached even to that level.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/494375.asp
Cyber Jim Crow
46) Due to a "computer glitch", approximately
12,000 voters across the state were mistakenly identified as having
out-of-state felony convictions, thereby making them ineligible to vote.
Although 8,000 of these so marked were able to fix the problem through
an arduous process of restoring their rights through the Florida Office
of Executive Clemency, 4,000 remained ineligible to vote by Election
Day. Those falsely marked as felons included a disproportionate number
of African Americans, more disproportionate than the standard ratio
of conviction rates between blacks and whites would allow.
www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,402957,00.html
http://home.netcom.com/~mecowan/voter_rolls.htm
47) The source of
this so-called "glitch": Database Technologies, a division
of ChoicePoint; hired by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
Harris hired Database Technologies to identify people registered in
other counties, those who have died, or those who are felons. In 1999
the FBI suspended their contract with DBT because of suspected ties
of the company founder to drug smugglers, despite the fact that one
year prior, a respected former DEA agent and narcotrafficking specialist
was hired as Vice President.
http://geocities.com/glitchgate
48) ChoicePoint's
founder, Rick Rozar, died from an accident in 1998.
According to Guardian Observer reporter Gregory Palast, he was "under
fire for
misuse of personal data in state computers." ChoicePoint is a very
private
firm with tight Republican ties.
www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,402957,00.html
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html
49) The computer
glitch that disenfranchised the 4,000 Floridians stemmed largely from
Texas state records that erroneously included people with misdemeanors
as having felonies.
http://home.netcom.com/~mecowan/voter_rolls.htm
Collusion
50) The Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, is George W. Bush's
brother.
51) Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State and the person in
charge of certifying Florida's electors, was George W. Bush's Florida
co-chairwoman as far back as October 1999.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/13/harris/index.html
52) George W. Bush is son of the former President who was head of the
CIA.
The CIA has experience in overturning elections and pulling off coup
d'etats
in third-world countries.
http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/policy/church-chile.htm
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/chile/index.html
Scorched Earth
and Other Endgames
53) Despite the fact that Gore most likely won, if he
succeeds is any of his legal battles and wins the popular vote in Florida,
the Florida Legislature may decide to ignore this fact and railroad
through their own set of Republican electors, in violation of the will
of the voters and perhaps the will of the State Supreme Court of Florida.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/electors18.htm
54) If this fails, Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House whip Tom
DeLay will initiate what he calls a "doomsday scenario" whereby
they would attempt to reject Florida's electoral votes if they feel
it is tainted (i.e. belonging to Gore), in violation of the will of
the voters in Florida and the rest of the country. Some Republicans
have even called for a boycott of the Inauguration should Gore prevail,
in an apparent scorched-earth policy aimed at crippling the Presidency
right from day one.
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/congress20.htm
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=136895
Relevant Character
Issues (Aside from the Obvious Ones)
55) Bush won't accept defeat. "Even if he loses, his friends say,
he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or
make his opponent play until he can beat him" as reported in Gail
Sheehy's "The Accidental Candidate" in the October 2000 issue
of Vanity Fair.
http://gailsheehy.com/Politics/politicsindex_bush3.html
Doomed Anyways
56) Al Gore was character assassinated by a powerful Bush campaign opposition
machine which utilized a database of every public utterance in Gore's
26 years in public service with which to twist every variance and use
it to tarnish him as duplicitous and untrustworthy. Opposition research
has never been used to this magnitude before.
http://www.time.com/time/campaign2000/story/0,7243,59665,00.html
Vendetta, Inc.
57) In many respects this whole election is about payback for a hatred
for Clinton (and by proxy, Gore) and what they have done to the "Bush
stocks". The corporate power players abide and abet, because they
are delighted at the prospect of grand-scale deregulation of business,
services and industry, 'bringing the business special interests into
politics so they can take over the regulatory bodies of government and
regulate themselves'.
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,406082,00.html
Something is Rotten in the State of Florida.
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