Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Articulate conservative response politely requested. Florida election debacle.
Gregpalast.com ^ | March 1, 2002 | Gregory Palast

Posted on 04/17/2002 10:57:50 PM PDT by smaturin

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-68 next last
To: RLK
What do I think should have been done? Wow, if I was in charge of the universe, or at least the Oval Office, I would have "lanced the boil" as soon as possible.
*Deplore the irregularities in the Florida election. Seems like Bush could have defanged a lot of adversaries by addressing the appearance of impropriety, saying "This will not stand", and then make FL a poster state for electoral reform. Not "giving in", but showing that he has nothing to fear from the searchlight of truth, etcetera.
That's what I would have done!
21 posted on 04/17/2002 11:41:28 PM PDT by smaturin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: bjcintennessee
I agree with you about setting aside votes, figuring out some way to put them "in escrow". This would make sure that people get their voice heard.
I'm very glad about the not-being-sheeple stuff, and thanks for the welcome to FR. The reason I'm here is because I'm trying to figure out some things that have always baffled me about conservative politics. Seems like a lot of the positions I have seen that don't make sense to me have to do more with solidarity than with principle, so trying to pierce the veil. (Um, that's liberal positions as well as conservative positions, by the way ;)
22 posted on 04/17/2002 11:46:09 PM PDT by smaturin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
I'd like to discuss this article about the mistakes that were made in stripping voters from the rolls in Florida.

Are you talking about the Absentee Military voters who's ballots were targeted by The DemocRAT operatives?

23 posted on 04/17/2002 11:48:01 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
".Seems like a lot of the positions I have seen that don't make sense to me have to do more with solidarity than with principle, .."

Like what? Union teachers that send their children to private schools? 50 years of urban "renewal"? Total abandenment of military service by democrats?( eveen though they want to send them everywhere) How about a little welfare will get people on their feet? Or lets have tax shakedowns and environmentalists and thus we will keep our manufacturing jobs instate.< sarcasm off > Or the phrase "Taxes are Investments In Our Future." Or "No smoking in smokey bars, but condoms for middle schoolers" I could go on.

24 posted on 04/17/2002 11:58:55 PM PDT by Leisler
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
OK. Let me be breif and blunt.

We believe it was GORE who tried to steal the election. How can you explain CNN & CBS calling Florida for Gore WHILE THE POLLS WERE STILL OPEN IN BUSH'S STRONGEST COUNTIES?

I'm sorry to yell, but you liberals refuse to consider this. If the shoe was on the other foot, would you have endured this attrocity as stoicly as Bush basically did?

How could VNS projections have been so far off on Florida, when they were correct in every other state of the union? Why did CNN (mis)call FLorida for Gore so quickly?

With 6 million votes cast, it takes 60,000 votes just to eke out a ONE point squeaker win. Such tight races routinely go into the wee hours of the morning before the networks call them, yet CNN, CBS and other networks, (the ones who have been criticized for years for having a profound liberal bias) called for Gore IMMEDIATELY. WHY??????

Here's my theory. I believe Gore got hold of the VNS exit-poll locations, then flooded those polls (via the democrats patented "knock & drag" techniques) with Gore voters. This fooled the VNS computer models into thinking Gore was winning by landslide. All media outlets shared the same projections so no-one was shocked when pro-Gore media liberals made the call for him. I believe the CNN election night producer, who authorized the (mis)call first, knew that the VNS data was false.

The media has meticulously counted and re-counted every single ballot. No matter who you think won, the margin was within a few hundred votes. There is no mathematical way that Gore had a margin big enough to call the race for him before the polls even closed. Impossible mathematically. IMPOSSIBLE!

Frankly, when you liberals say that Gore won, and Bush cheated, you lose every shred of credibility with us, because of your ostrich-like refusal to deal with the actions of CNN & CBS. You should spend your rage more profitably by insisting the networks refrain from rigging our precious elections in favor of the candidates THEY want to win.

25 posted on 04/18/2002 12:00:18 AM PDT by berned
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
I've been politically involved for some 43 years since the Kennedy-Nixon period. I'll give you my observations over the years. Politics is a dirty business. On occasion there is vote fraud. The Democrats are a little better at it than the Republicans because the Republicans, in their snobbishness consider it somewhat beneath them.

John Kennedy personally sent $250,000 sacks of money to mob figures to fix elections. Records of it are on government crime task force phone tap tapes.

For years, it was known Chicago's Mayor Daley could summon the dead to vote in elections. He threw Illinois for Jack Kennedy with the Cook County Democratic machine. Richard Daley, was still the best mayor Chicago ever had.

There is no doubt in my mind that had the electon been honest Nixon would have won and the history of this country would have been entirely different.

There is irrefutable evidence that Lyndon Johnson was first elected to office through voter fraud. It's a fact of life.

The military tends to be Republican. There was no stampede to see military votes were counted in Florida. With all the fanagling, the Florida election probably came out just about the way it went down on paper.

My belief is that Gore won the popular vote nationally. He probably didn't win it by as much as was reported. There was some fanagling. But he probably won nationally by 100,000 votes or so.

According to the U. S. Constitution, Bush won the electoral vote and that still made him president quite legitimately.

At the rate Bush's support was deteriorating almost linearly, had the election been held two days later, Bush would have lost and Gore would have become president. However, the election wasn't held two days later, so Bush won. That's the way we all are going to be required by reality to live it.

Elections may be swayed by weather or flue epidemics. So be it. They come out the way they come out. Would have, should have, doesn't count.

26 posted on 04/18/2002 12:03:01 AM PDT by RLK
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
Seems like Bush could have defanged a lot of adversaries by addressing the appearance of impropriety, saying "This will not stand"…"

He did even more. He addressed the impropriety directly. And it did not stand.

I've worked in many elections. Many very close ones. It's a far from perfect process, particularly given the shoddiness in the democrat counties that Gore went for recount, recount again, recount again. The more local, the more vicious and the more easily they can be stolen. This was textbook on the part of Gore's team: How to steal a close election. Keep counting til you get ahead; then yell "stop the counting".

The rules on what to do in a close election are: Follow the rules. It's very important. The rules were run the machines twice, from there on the count becomes less and less accurate. And the more human's subjective involvement, the less accurate the result.

Ask yourself a question: Why is that Republicans are the ones usually calling for strict enforcement of voting registration laws and polling laws? And why is it the democrats oppose it as "intimidation"?

Who is intimidated by a legal voting process?

27 posted on 04/18/2002 12:07:26 AM PDT by D-fendr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
Sorry, I left out an important part of the book for how to steal a close election: Keep counting in YOUR precincts.

If you truly thing fraud is committed, you examine where you LOST. The dead give-away in Gore's method was he wanted recounts in counties where he won overwhelmingly, and ONLY in those counties. Who contests the vote only in places he won overwhelmingly? It would be like the Yankees contesting the games they won. Only someone looking to steal votes uses this tactic.

If your looking for the real debacle in Florida, look there - and the Vice President whose career was worth more to him than playing by the rules and accepting the outcome - and at the embarassment of a state supreme court that darn near let him get away with it.

28 posted on 04/18/2002 12:14:01 AM PDT by D-fendr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: berned
The poster is referring to the new static Greg Palast's is pushing about the election. Unfortunately, Palast is getting some traction with the great unwashed by kicking up minor election non issues that weren't important at that time. He knows the old major Democrat Florida election talking points were thoroughly discredited, so he has to raise new tin foil hat conspiracys. I think the Dems are also upset that Bill Sammons got there first with his well put together book "At Any Cost". Any thing else written about the election is now just whining.

I saw Palast on "Politically Incorrect", he made Bill Maher look smart in comparison, not an easy thing to do. Palast is now the new lib poster boy, along with Michael Moore.

29 posted on 04/18/2002 12:19:30 AM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Hillarys Gate Cult
It always amazes me that the outrage of the liberal media calling Florida for Gore while the polls were still open gets "lost in the sauce" when people discuss Florida 2000. These same democrats are screaming bloody murder right now because the media isn't crucifying Bush enough to suit them.

The VNS-CNN thing has never been adequately explained. We know that the election boiled down to a few hundred votes. Nobody won that state by a landslide. There is no imaginable, possible, conceivable way to justify the actions of the media that night. And yet, it's never been explained or investigated.

Calling a race while the polls are still open is something we might see in the Phillipines or Uganda, but even there, we would expend barrels of ink comdemning it to the high heavens. When it happened here, the liberals expect us to just "walk it off". Amazing to me.

30 posted on 04/18/2002 12:31:17 AM PDT by berned
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
In this day and age it is difficult to believe any politician, considering that most will appear to support issues depending upon which crowd they are speaking to. In part, I understand this -- in order to get elected politicians are often forced to compromise their beliefs. What bothers me the most about the Dems, is that they seldom have a solution, yet they bash the Reps with half-truths and out-right lies.

Take social security for example. For years the Dems have been scaring the elderly into believing that the Reps intend to cut off their social security and put them out on the streets. The latest scare to the elderly involves Bush's plan of giving workers the option of putting a small portion of the payments they make to social security into the stock market. Any company with an invested pension fund would tell you that in the long term, such investments would draw at least 10%, compared to the 2% interest these funds now draw. And it is optional!! Yet the Dems never mention that, and further imply that all of what workers pay into social security would go into the stock market, rather than a small, optional percentage.

The Reps are not very good at getting their message out and this is often compounded by the liberal media, who chooses what to report.

Scaring one the most sacred -- and yes, sometimes demented -- groups of our society, our elderly, into believing that the Reps would cut back on their social security and leave them eating dog food, goes way beyond fair politics as it plays on the minds of society's most beloved, yet most susceptible groups of voters.

The Dems maintain their support by offering more government hand-outs, which builds their constituency, as they play the rich against the poor. Their tactics are devisive, always pitting the poor against the rich, blacks against whites. Those who succeed in society are penalized, while those who do nothing are rewarded with government hand-outs.

O-kay, got on a bit of a rant here that you didn't ask for, but those are my views.

31 posted on 04/18/2002 12:36:26 AM PDT by bjcintennessee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: GeronL
"Well, it all started when Gore-funded lawyers descended to every registriar office in Florida with a memo asking them to boot off members of the military serving oversea's. "

No, it all started with a telemarketer that was calling all of the little, old Jewish people asking if they had voted for Buchanan. There were a whole bunch of people screaming that these people couldn't understand a the "butterfly" ballot. That evolved into the "hanging chad" debacle...
the military ballots were not even on the radar at the time.
Readers Digest condensed version...

32 posted on 04/18/2002 12:45:55 AM PDT by dixiechick2000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
What do I think should have been done? Wow, if I was in charge of the universe, or at least the Oval Office, I would have "lanced the boil" as soon as possible. *Deplore the irregularities in the Florida election. Seems like Bush could have defanged a lot of adversaries by addressing the appearance of impropriety, saying "This will not stand", and then make FL a poster state for electoral reform. Not "giving in", but showing that he has nothing to fear from the searchlight of truth, etcetera. That's what I would have done!

Bush was not in the White House at the time of the election.

He will sign the voter reform law going through Congress, but the state and the counties have to do their part.

we can't be making the rules for an election AFTER the vote

33 posted on 04/18/2002 12:50:56 AM PDT by GeronL
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
Talking abiut "lancing the boil" is very dynamic sounding, but diesn't offer much specific content. Would you bring criminal charges against the authorities who were determined to deep six the Republican military ballots? Then their lawyers would attempt to counter and obstruct your legal action. We'd be lucky to have an elected president by the year 3000. The law, and the world, doesn't work the way you assert in your "lancing."
34 posted on 04/18/2002 12:51:59 AM PDT by RLK
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: smaturin;JohnHuang2
Seems like a lot of the positions I have seen that don't make sense

did you know that 76% of dollars budgeted in welfare never gets to the poor people? Its called bureaucracy... means paper-pushers, chair warmers, desk jockeys and people who never answer voice mail.

In other words we could cut the welfare budget in half without reducing benefits. Would you be for that? Do you think the Democrats would ever allow that out of committee since unions are their power base?

35 posted on 04/18/2002 12:54:30 AM PDT by GeronL
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr
If you truly thing fraud is committed, you examine where you LOST. The dead give-away in Gore's method was he wanted recounts in counties where he won overwhelmingly, and ONLY in those counties. Who contests the vote only in places he won overwhelmingly? I know we gave Gore enough rope to hang himself in Florida, but it took me a while to notice that the Dems are blaming Bush and us for not telling him how and where to do the recounts and legal challenges. It's like we were Monty Hall and Gore wanted us to tell him which door to choose.
36 posted on 04/18/2002 1:02:16 AM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: berned
Possibly. Nationally there were discrepancies that were not investigated (many states were not in contention so those states chose not to focus funds on detailed investigations that wouldn't change their results; I think that the candidate has to request a challenge as well).

Total votes: 105,405,100

George W. Bush 50,456,002 47.87% of the vote
Albert Gore Jr 50,999,897 48.38% of the vote

The "official" difference between the 2 candidates 543,895 votes out of a total 105,405,100 votes is 0.51% (roughly half of 1% of the vote). This election was as close to a coin toss landing on its edge as it could have come in the official count. I can guarantee you that the national vote was well within the margin of error for the election (generally 3%). As is was 0.51%, we can never truly know if Gore even won the popular vote. Official tallies as signed off in each state do ascribe him that distinction but as it is well within the margin of error, again I say we will never know for sure.

37 posted on 04/18/2002 2:33:57 AM PDT by weegee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: RLK
At the rate Bush's support was deteriorating almost linearly, had the election been held two days later, Bush would have lost and Gore would have become president. However, the election wasn't held two days later, so Bush won.

Perhaps, but to round out the discussion, I'll add two points.

(1) Gore clearly gained ground following the DUI "late hit" on the Thursday prior to the election, but I don't know how long that bounce would have persisted. Given a week or two, I suspect Bush would have bounced back. Had the election been held two days later than it was, you are probably correct that Gore would have won. A week or two later, possibly/probably it would have been Bush again. Close elections are like that.

Indeed, FWIW (almost nothing), there was substantial "dirty trick" backlash potential in the DUI matter, especially given the opportune midyear change in Maine's records release statute. That, of course, is why Gore timed it as he did. (Had Gore been leading down the stretch, I doubt he would have raised it at all given the downside risks.) That aspect of the matter was never thoroughly pursued because it was superceded by the recount drama, but the backlash could have been substantial. In addition, Gore's heavy drug use in younger years, which was not exactly a secret, could hardly have been ignored any longer by the mainstream media once they got into the analysis stage concerning decades-old improprieties.

(2) Also, the early call in Florida certainly depressed GOP turnout in western states. The estimate I recall (Sammon's, I think) is that the swing was about two million votes. Take away the early call and Bush wins the popular vote and very possibly a couple more close states. The GOP also wins a few more close congressional races and possibly retains control of the Senate.

What if's don't count in the real world, but there's no reason to concede the cosmic equities argument to the dems on the 2002 election.

38 posted on 04/18/2002 3:41:52 AM PDT by sphinx
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr
The rules on what to do in a close election are: Follow the rules

Exactly. I was radicalized on this subject by McIntyre-McCloskey. One of the lessons from that fiasco is that Democrats cheat -- and not just the Boss Hogg local politicos, but the very top leadership. A second lesson was that the national news media will not call them on it.

All we can do is fight like hell to defend the preexisting rules and hope we get an honest judge in court.

39 posted on 04/18/2002 3:48:21 AM PDT by sphinx
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: smaturin
Welcome to the forum. While this is a conservative site, you will find a large variety of opinions on countless issues. It's the best resource around, IMHO.
40 posted on 04/18/2002 6:15:40 AM PDT by Coop
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-68 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson