It is entirely possible that Al Gore really is entitled to be the new president

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Why Al Gore is cooked

© 2000

It is entirely possible that Al Gore really is entitled to be the new president. But somehow fate seems to have intervened and Mr. Gore is now behind the power wave. The judges in Florida, of course, are very aware that the world is watching them and to allow three counties controlled by Democrats to decide the presidency in the year 2000 seems to be inconceivable. George W. Bush won the machine-counted vote in Florida and, since that is the standard nationwide, it is enough to give the governor the White House. That was the message that the United States Supreme Court sent to their Florida counterparts -- don't allow partisan politics to call the race. That signal was coded and cloaked with all kinds of legal mumbo-jumbo, but those of us who study power for a living heard it loud and clear and so did the Florida Supreme Court. They will go through the motions but I believe they will not dare defy their more powerful brethren in Washington and reverse the rejection of the hand count made by a judge in Leon County.

Al Gore should understand what is going on, but he might not. The true powers that be in America simply do not want the system uprooted. They don't want the economy depressed, and they don't want the dreaded lawyers calling electoral shots. The few powerful men who really run this country like things just the way they are and don't really care if Al Gore won the popular vote or anything else.

America is run by members of the federal reserve board, by a few powerful senators and congressmen who chair important committees and by the sitting president and his close advisers. The Supreme Court Justices also have some say, especially if any of the power brokers get out of hand and start wielding too much influence.

This system works very well as long as the basic infrastructure remains intact. The folks vote, machines count the votes, and unless there's fraud or malfunction the winner wins and the loser goes home. The system was not designed for a tie vote, which is what we essentially had, so here comes the chaos.

Chaos is what the powerful in America fear the most. Belief in the system is what they want the most. Jesse Jackson and his merry band of agitators are trying to make a racial issue out of the election. You may have noticed the silence from the establishment media, which usually can't get to Jackson fast enough, is deafening.

You may also have noticed that chaos feeds on itself. The more confusion, the more unsubstantiated charges, the quicker things become so unclear that no solution is possible. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a perfect example of that. There was so much confusion after the murder that an effective investigation was impossible. I believe this was by design.

Likewise during the Vietnam War. The American government lost control of the citizenry because so many chaotic demonstrations were taking place that no effective dialogue or course of action was possible. Riots do not lead to reason. That was the one time in our lifetime where the power structure in America was defeated by the whim of the people. Not the will of the people because the people really never knew what the hell was going on in Southeast Asia. What they did know is that the government couldn't explain any of it, and lots of young Americans were coming home dead or maimed.

The current chaos in Florida is by design in my opinion. The Democrats wanted to demolish the initial vote tally and almost succeeded in doing so. But the rank unfairness of that was obvious to some of us in the press and most of the regular folks. Why should those Democrat-run counties carry so much weight and get preferential treatment? That is the key question that the Democrats could not answer.

So Al Gore is cooked. The power elite have subtly turned against him. He is now bad for business, and that is death in America. The vice president isn't a bad man, as some of his detractors would have you believe. He is simply an unlucky man. And try as he might -- his luck is not going to change anytime soon. The power elite will see to that.

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Veteran TV news anchor Bill O'Reilly is host of the Fox News show, "The O'Reilly Factor," and author of the new book, "The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous," available at the WorldNetDaily storefront.

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), December 06, 2000

Answers

The ironic thing is that there WAS such a fight to stop the hand recounts-especially the 9,000 ballots that the machines did not read in Florida. If the Bush team was so sure they won FLorida, why were they so afraid of the recounts. WHy did they oppose a recount of the whole state?

The first machine recount showed us there is definately a margin of error with using these machines. It change the overall difference in the vote from 1,780 to 930. That is a wider margin than the certified margin in the state.

The margin of victory, in other words, was smaller than the margin of error in the myriad of machines used. To me, this is enough evidence, partisan politics aside, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 07, 2000.


… stop the hand recounts-especially the 9,000 ballots that the machines did not read in Florida. Correction, the machine did read them and found (according to the election rules) that they were either an undervote or overvote. Meaning the voter didn't punch for any presidential candidate or punched for more than one presidential candidate.

If the Bush team was so sure they won FLorida, why were they so afraid of the recounts. Correction, Bush was not afraid of recounts, he was afraid of the changing of the vote casting rules. How does a canvassing board count an undervote or overvote. It seems the counties did this differently and they changed the rules as they went along. Also, handing these ballots causes them to become spoiled. By that I mean that these cards are fragile, one little bend and chads pop out. They are not sturdy enough to hold up to the kind of treatment they have endured with the manual counts.

WHy did they oppose a recount of the whole state? Because Bush won. Winners don't ask for a recount. I don't think I've ever seen a game where the winner went back to the ref to ask for a replay on a call against the other team.

The margin of victory, in other words, was smaller than the margin of error in the myriad of machines used. That's the way it goes sometimes. Some elections have been won on one vote.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 07, 2000.


Maria:

Is it your contention, then that no state, no city, no county in our nation should ever manually examine supposed "undervotes" or "overvotes"? This would be contrary to many election laws in many states. In case after case rulings of judges have been upheld, even in FLorida, after examination of the evidence(ballots)-Just like the law in Texas, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, just like the republican party is asking a county to do in New Mexico.

Hey, we are all hypocrites, myself included.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 07, 2000.


No, just don't make up the rules as you go along. If laws are in place on how to do manual recount, have a good time. In Florida, they had no clue, asked for opinion, and followed different "guidelines" in each of the counties. The "intent" of the vote must be defined first. How do you measure intent? It must be consistent across the board. Judge Burton (Dade canvassing board) admitted he didn't know if it meant one or two or whatever number of dimpled chads. This just leads to "casting" votes after the election.

I don't get NM. Ballots were cast on machines with touch screen displays. A manual recount consists of a printout of the votes. Don't understand what that would prove or disprove.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 07, 2000.


Right. Exactly. And in every contested election in every county that ever had an election with these type of machines the undervotes were counted-usually by a judge.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), November 29, 2000.

FACT: ~ Every ballot in Miami-Dade was counted at least twice - once on election night and again during the automatic recount.

~ In every election, there are a significant number of ballots that are cast by voters without choosing a candidate in every race on the ballot, including races for President.

~ For example, in this election, 5% of the voters in Idaho, 3.9% of the voters in Illinois and 3.6% of the voters in Wyoming cast a ballot without registering a vote for President.

~ The 10,000 votes (actually 9,000 according to their filing) about which the Gore campaign has been complaining constitute only 1.6% of the ballots cast in Miami-Dade. These ballots were counted - twice; they merely registered no vote for President.

~ This reality reflects common sense: a voter may want to vote for a candidate for the Senate, House or other office, but be undecided about the choice for President. In particular, a voter who usually votes for candidates from one party may vote for local or statewide candidates, but be uncomfortable with his or her party's choice for President and yet unwilling to vote for the other party's candidate. So he or she might cast a ballot without marking a choice for President.

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), November 29, 2000

The FACTS of Undervotes

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 07, 2000.



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