Posted on 09/05/2016 6:22:48 AM PDT by srmorton
On November 7, 2000, during the final hour and a half of voting in Florida's most conservative region, the Panhandle, 13 national television journalists, representing all six major outlets, asserted a total of 39 times that the polls in that region closed an hour earlier than they really did.
Not once did anyone on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, or MSNBC inform the audience that Florida has two time zones and two poll closing times. They hammered away that there was only one poll-closing time throughout the entire state of Florida: 7 p.m. Eastern. The polls in the ten westernmost Panhandle counties—all heavily Republican—were actually open until 8 p.m. Eastern.
Hearing these announcements, viewers in the Panhandle would have understood that their own polls closed at 6 p.m. local time. The effect was to shut down voting in those ten Panhandle counties during the final hour. Sworn testimony from Panhandle poll workers confirms that this is exactly what happened. Given that 357,808 votes were cast that day in those ten counties, thousands were surely disenfranchised, the vast majority of them Republicans. Adding those votes (around 11,000) to Bush's statewide tally would have ended the conversation about who actually won the state very early on. Without the media's intrusion into the voting in the Panhandle, it is likely that there never would have been a 36-day Florida recount, or for that matter, a Bush v. Gore.
There were five anchors who handed out this misinformation more than once: ABC's Cokie Roberts, MSNBC's Brian Williams, CNN's Judy Woodruff, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and CBS's Dan Rather. Dan Rather misinformed viewers about the Florida poll closings approximately once every three minutes. For a full, chronological presentation of these statements, see the two video montages at The American Conservative.
In the wake of election night 2000, the media have engaged in a cover-up, aided by a feckless Congress. Specifically, the networks claimed "embarrassment" over their retracted calls of Florida for Gore and then for Bush. They blamed these mistakes on the Voter News Service (VNS), which was the exit-polling consortium formed by the television networks, cable channels, and the Associated Press. The VNS operated as the media's sole source for information ranging from exit polling to poll closing times.
The significance of the VNS is revealed by a brief exchange that reportedly occurred in the White House on the day of the election in 2000. A foreign ambassador told one of us, Boyden Gray, that he had been in the White House on Election Day and had asked a high-ranking political official how the voting was going. That official remarked that they had a real problem in the Panhandle.
Herein lies the danger of creating a monopoly like the VNS. When all of the news channels are drawing their information from the same source, it makes it fairly simple to spread disinformation. The VNS was sued in 2002 because of its status as a monopoly and it quickly dissolved itself, thus terminating the litigation.
Americans' distrust of the major news media is at an all-time high, and yet most can't identify precise incidents that caused them to distrust the news. This case provides a perfect example. The notion of "trust, but verify" with respect to the news media is insufficient. As the next election approaches, voters would do well to be skeptical: distrust, until a story is verified.
It's not a lie. There was no justiceable issue presented in the lawsuit.
What was SUPPOSED to happen was, and is, perfectly clear. The Florida Legislature is responsible for appointing electors, correct? That Legislature was in session, with strong GOP majorities in both houses.
If SCoFLA had ordered a recount, the SoS (also a Republican) should have refused. If SCoFLA had ordered the Governor to transmit letters patent for Gore electors to the President of the Senate, and if he had done so, the sitting Legislature was prepared to, and in fact would have, appointed a slate of Bush electors (which is within their exclusive authority to do).
So, on January 3, 2001, the special Joint Session of Congress, called to count the electoral votes, would have had to deal with competing slates of electors from Florida. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THERE TO BE ONLY GORE ELECTORS FROM FLORIDA, Florida Supreme Court or not.
The special Joint Session on January 3 had 50 GOP Senators and 221 GOP Members of Congress. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS BODY to rule against Bush's electors from the Florida Legislature.
IF they had counted the Bush electors, the election was over. If they chose to count neither, then neither Bush nor Gore would have had a majority, and the new House, voting by states, would have elected the President. The new House had 30 GOP-majority states, 19 Democrat majority states,and one tie. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GORE TO BE ELECTED BY THE NEW HOUSE.
The Founders clearly anticipated the exact situation that arose in Florida on Election Day, 2000, and they wrote into the Constitution CLEAR AND EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS for what was to be done.
None of these instructions mention the Supreme Court, and for good reason.
There was no need for the Court to accept that case, which far exceeded the scope of their authority. George W. Bush was going to be inaugurated on January 20, 2001, with or without the Court's involvement. By hearing, and then ruling, on the case they trashed the Constitution, trashed the role of the people's representatives, and gave the disloyal opposition a grievance that was completely unnecessary.
Dan Rather is an evil man.
Get over yourself. There was no reason for the FL Supreme Court to step into the election. Having done so, it took SCOTUS to shut them down. Again, they adjudicated nothing except to tell FLSC to knock it off.
There ought to be a media blackout on election day.
Wait until the last vote is cast.
What was more significant was the several counties run by Rats that refused to count thousands of military absentee ballots.
A lib I knew quite well at the time (we lived in Central FL in 2000) said he knew it was cheating and denying the rights of members of the armed forces, but that he was fine with that if it got Gore elected. I lost a lot of respect for the man. Never forgave him.
Yep, you remember correctly.
“”Given that 357,808 votes were cast that day in those ten counties, thousands were surely disenfranchised, the vast majority of them Republicans””
Am I reading this right? 357,808 votes isn’t telling us anything without telling us how many registered voters WOULD have voted....if not for the intentional SNAFU....
It’s been a lot of years but for some good refreshing of the memory, the book “At Any Cost” by Bill Sammon is a good read.
The first thing I noticed in the article is that the “ten Panhandle counties were Republican.” That is wrong. Maybe three or four were, the rest were Democrat counties.
In the sixteen years since then, it is slowly changing. Hillary may win some of these counties though.
IOW, heavily discount “breaking news.” Better yet, compare”No News Is Good News” (because good news “Isn’t news")unfavorably withFinally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.. . . and scale the attention you pay to “The News” back.Way, way, back.
What difference, at this point, does it make?
The press only helps democrats. The idea behind ‘the call’ was that north Florida is MORE conservative than the rest of Florida. The idea was to discourage conservatives from going out to vote ‘since it has already been decided’ in Gore’s favor.
Hundreds of examples... to the point that it feels like the press is lying. Just like Hillary lies.
When 'mistakes' only hurt ONE side, it's a scam. Or the press is stupid. Like Hillary's too stupid to know how to read classified markings. Oh, and eff you Washington Post and New York Times.. and NBC and CBS...
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