The last one from The Times. I need to emphasize that I am NOT agreeing with the characterization of Mr. Buchanan as described, but the article does express why the level of emotion in Palm Beach County is as high as it is; for the voters in that county it's more than who one or lost.
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 10 2000 COLIN BRALEY/REUTERS
Cynthia Banks, a Palm Beach voter, demonstrates for a new ballot in the county
US Election 2000
How Liberal Jews voted for Hitler admirer
FROM DAVID ADAMS IN WEST PALM BEACH
CONFUSION at the result of the vote turned into frustration and anger yesterday over the implication that a liberal Jewish neighbourhood had voted for Patrick Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate, who has expressed admiration for Hitler.
Car horns honked and placard-bearing protesters marched through streets known for their genteel wealth in one of the most desirable corners of America.
Palm Beach County, normally a liberal Democratic stronghold, returned a stunning 3,407 votes for Mr Buchanan’s party on returns that otherwise voted straight Democrat. “I don’t think we have 3,000 Nazis in Palm Beach County,” said Ron Klein, a Democrat senator for Boca Raton.
Local Democratic Party leaders are veering towards supporting a new mini-election for the county. “We have an electoral catastrophe. I saw a couple of hundred people come out of the election booths on Tuesday in hysterics,” said Robert Wexler, the Democratic member of Congress for Boca Raton.
“Ballot Bedlam”, read a banner headline in The Palm Beach Post, the main newspaper. In an editorial the paper said local residents did not want to be responsible for electing the wrong President. “It should be historic to be the county and state that put a President over the top. It would be no honour to crown America’s Accidental President,” it said.
The street outside the Palm Beach County government offices was closed off by police early in the day as word spread that the rally would be led by the Rev Jesse Jackson, the black civil rights activist.
Earlier Mr Jackson spoke to a mainly black audience at a Miami Baptist Church. “We do not know who won, but we know all votes did not count, and we can’t know who won until all votes are counted,” he said.
“I don’t think a recount adequately addresses the issue of the 19,000 Palm Beach residents who have been disenfranchised,” said Oliver Melvin, manager of the county’s Equal Opportunity Office. He was holding a placard that read Demand a Re-vote Now.
“The right to vote is the most important right that we have as American citizens, and the selection of the President of the greatest nation in the world is the most important choice we have,” he said. “The magnitude of this issue clearly requires a re-vote.”
Some residents complained, however, that Mr Jackson, other local activists and some in the media, were deliberately trying to stir up the situation. “They are just cry-baby Democrats if you ask me,” said Scott Blake, a passer-by. “They are just upset Gore lost and they’ll do anything to try to change that.”
Fred Chatos, a computer programmer who voted for Mr Gore, worried that the situation was getting out of control. “There is mass hysteria taking effect,” he said. “I’m more offended that Jesse Jackson is here than I am about the election itself.”
Mr Chatos said he was confident that the state recount would be enough to defeat Mr Bush. “You can’t have another vote. It would never work. If Bush wins, so be it. You can cry over it but that’s the way it goes.”
However, even members of Mr Buchanan’s family recognised an injustice had been done. In an interview with The Palm Beach Post, Mr Buchanan’s sister, Bay Buchanan, who also headed his presidential campaign, agreed that the ballot was confusing and said her brother probably did not deserve the 3,407 votes he got in Palm Beach County. “There has clearly been a problem,” Ms Buchanan said. “As good citizens, this is not something we expected. This vote is much larger than one would expect for us.”
Mr Buchanan made no campaign appearances in Palm Beach County and the Reform Party has only 336 registered voters. Yet Palm Beach County residents cast more votes for him than any county in the rest of Florida. In fact, of the 16,962 votes for Mr Buchanan across the state’s 67 counties, a disproportionate number — 20 per cent — came from Palm Beach County.
Statewide, Mr Buchanan garnered 0.3 per cent of the vote, yet in Palm Beach County he was credited with 0.8 per cent of the 432,000 votes cast.
To make matters worse, it is hard to imagine anywhere less likely to be considered a Buchanan bastion than Palm Beach County, which has a large Jewish and black population. The Reform Party candidate is considered by many to harbour racist sentiments. He once praised Hitler as “an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe”.
In 1992 the Anti-Defamation League charged that Mr Buchanan had shown “a disregard or hostility toward those not like him.”
Helen Halperin, 81, said she was certain her poor eyesight and the wrong advice in the voting booth led her to vote for the wrong man.
“There is no one I detest more than Buchanan. I think he’s pure evil,” she said. Mrs Halperin said she considers herself a Democrat but had voted in the past for Republicans, including Ronald Reagan. Although she called Bill Clinton “the lover”, she thought him a good President and had planned to vote for Mr Gore. Now she is angry and upset and angry.
“My precious vote is lost. I lost it on that devil.”
thetimes.co.uk |
