Surprise, surprise.
Posted on 09/10/2002 12:00:03 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
Yes, the Democrats manufacture problems on election day. It's all in their instruction manual. While patriotic citizens in other nations may walk a day or risk their lives for the privilege of voting, our American Democrats are primed by their "leaders" to see trouble where only human error exists, encouraged to see every imperfection of every part of the voting process as a potential legal claim in a potential lawsuit...to blame their opponents, the machines, the weather, the neighbor's dog...whatever will deceive, divide, excuse....ultimately bring in votes for Democrats or undermine honest Republican victories.
Thanks to Freeper BobX for this post. Every Republican needs to know what every Dem. pol and pundit already knows...the Dems. dirty tricks....press ownership-assistance required.
Gore's advisers had actually begun preparing for a recount battle even before Election Day. Weeks before November 7, Joe Sandler, the Democratic National Committee's general counsel and the lawyer who helped defend Maryland Governor Parris Glendening against a recount challenge in 1994, had convened a team to draft a memo on recount laws in every state that might be close. Late on election night, in the Nashville campaign bunker dubbed "the boiler room," Sandler's memo became Team Gore's initial operations manual. "We knew that [Florida] was going to be a battleground," says one Gore recount staffer. "We knew that the law required the canvass to start the next day. We knew that we needed people there to watch the canvass." Working from a Rolodex of Democratic faithful, Gore staff began putting together a team of field operatives and lawyers to fan out across Florida in search of voting irregularities. "We got as many down there as quick as we could," says one coordinator of the effort. Many of the Gore campaign's get-out-the-vote personnel moved instantly to the recount effort. Jill Alper, the former DNC political director who helped mastermind the Democrats' successful voter-turnout program in 1998, sent dozens of lawyers and get-out-the-vote operatives to Florida on Joe Lieberman's campaign plane. (The plane touched down in Tallahassee at the same time as Florida Governor Jeb Bush's plane from Texas.) A trio of operatives from national field director Michael Whouley's hometown of Boston also pitched in. John Sasso, once Michael Dukakis's chief strategist, is leading recount efforts in Broward County, while Dukakis's former field director, Charlie Baker, is working in Gore's Tallahassee recount headquarters. Jack Corrigan, a Gore campaign lawyer and another former top Dukakis aide who has witnessed several election recounts, is in Palm Beach. Having failed to take back the House or the Senate, many Democrats see the Florida mission as a final crusade. "You pick up the phone and say, `We need you to get on the plane, we need you there now,' and they are there," says one of Whouley's aides. "It was really quite moving." The Gore campaign didn't just send people to Florida fast; it sent the party's top recount experts. In preparation for the incredibly close election, the DNC's Sandler had kept several recount specialists on call for election night. Robert Bauer, who worked on the contested elections of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu in 1996 and Nevada Senator Harry Reid in 1998, was immediately dispatched to the Sunshine State. Another recount expert, Chris Sautter, had been asked to spend election night in Nashville in preparation for just such an eventuality. He ended up staying in Washington, but at 4 a.m. on November 8 he got a call from campaign headquarters. "They told me to take a 7:30 a.m. flight to Tallahassee," Sautter recalls. He dropped everything and packed his bags for Florida. Sautter is a veteran of some of the nastiest and most famous recount battles of recent years. He represented Democrat Frank McCloskey in a recount effort in the 1984 race for Indiana's eighth congressional district against Republican Richard McIntyre. The contest became known as the "bloody eighth": Although the Indiana secretary of state declared McIntyre the winner, Congress, which has the final word in congressional recounts, seated McCloskey. Sautter also helped Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder fend off a recount challenge in his 1989 election, and, along with Bauer, Sautter defended Representative Sam Gejdenson in a 1994 recount that Gejdenson ultimately won in the Connecticut Supreme Court. Sautter also helped California's Loretta Sanchez after defeated Republican Representative Bob Dornan challenged her victory in 1996.
Along with Timothy Downs and Jack Young, both attorneys now working for the Gore recount committee, Sautter wrote a book in 1994 called The Recount Primer in which he laid out strategies for just the kind of battle now occurring in Florida. "It's been pretty much the recount guide for Democratic candidates since then," says Sautter. He has been passing out numerous copies of the guide to operatives since he arrived in Florida, and it has served as the political corollary to the DNC legal memo the Gore campaign relied upon on election night.
The Gore campaign's efforts have closely tracked Sautter's recommendations, which he summarized in a 1990 article for Campaigns and Elections that later served as the basis for his book. "The best advice to give any candidate unlucky enough to be caught in a recount is to hire a good lawyer," Sautter wrote then. "But you can't conduct a recount without organization. Many recounts--like many close campaigns--are won in the trenches with dedicated, low-paid field staff and volunteers fighting for votes one at a time." That's exactly the kind of minutiae the Gore campaign has been focusing on in Florida--for instance, going to court in Palm Beach this week to demand that "dimpled" chads be counted as votes after the county adopted a stricter standard. "Practically every recount turns up missed ballots," writes Sautter, who advises candidates to search for signs of voter intent.
Other advice from Sautter's 1990 article is also clearly being followed in Florida. He wrote, presciently, "When razor-thin margins separate candidates on election night, the final outcome often turns on complex legal maneuverings and an arduous vote recount conducted in the weeks that follow. If your campaign is unprepared to challenge results, it doesn't stand a chance." "If you are behind," he continued, "and there are reliable reports of problems--such as fraud or eligible voters being turned away--which could affect the outcome, invite the press to investigate complaints." Sound familiar?
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
Surprise, surprise.
Democrat this morning: "Jerry Springer or go vote but, I don't know who to vote for, so I'll just wait for November." ELECTION DAY - NOVEMBER: "It's raining. I'm not goin' out in that."
IMO, they aren't getting out their vote.
Meanwhile, all the broken glass Republicans and other conservatives have been waiting for this day and are ready for November! FV
I'll see if I can find a picture of him. We may be seeing him a lot after tomorrow if he makes legal challenges in court now or after November. I'm still not sure McBride has it sewn up. I am not a betting gal.
I'm glad Reno's going down quickly and without support from Clinton....that has to hurt after all the kneepads she wore out over that man.
I will gladly work to defeat McBride...and his army of Florida press agents. The deceitful Dems. and their anti-family, anti-God, anti-American agenda are toast. 
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