MUST READ: John Ellis, hired as an analyst for Fox TV News, knew exactly what margin was needed in order to call the 2000 presidential race for George W. Bush. He was privy to the Voter News Service data, and he spoke several times during the evening to his two cousins: Jeb and George W. Bush.
At 2:09a.m., the required vote margin appeared from Volusia County, Florida. At 2:10 a.m., this margin was enhanced by a 4,000-vote bump in Brevard County, and at 2:16 a.m., Ellis called the race for George W. Bush. Within four minutes, NBC, CBS, and ABC followed suit.
Precisely the right margin appeared on a Volusia County machine (Global Election Systems, now Diebold), amplified by a Diebold/Global Election Systems machine in Brevard County. Unfortunately, these vote totals were incorrect and soon disappeared, along with a “card no. 3” which helped to create them.
If Al Gore had publicly conceded on election night, would we ever have learned that these votes were bogus? Would there have been a recount, and could the “Help America Vote Act” have passed, triggering the rush to touch-screen machines?
We’ll never know, but thanks to an internal CBS report and a memo written by Talbot Iredale, vice president of research and development at Diebold Election Systems, we now know that the unexplained replacement of a set of votes on a Diebold optical-scan machine in Volusia County triggered a premature private concession from Al Gore to George W. Bush and resulted in TV networks’ erroneously calling the election for Bush instead of deeming it too close to call. The final “official” tally showed Gore losing by 527 votes, though the hand recount stopped by the Supreme Court later gave the election to Gore.
Black Box Voting
by Bev Harris |
