Hand counting in one county (which strongly favors one candidate) at the exclusion of all the others counties (which may favor the other candidate) is wrong unless evidence of voter fraud exists.
Just because Gore's team of 75 lawyers was quick with the paperwork to demand a re-count, doesn't make it right or just.
Then there is this report which throws another monkey wrench into things...
Legal Opinion: Polls Are Still Open For Absentee Floridians
By Julie Stahl
CNS Jerusalem Bureau Chief
November 10, 2000
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - As if Florida didn't already have enough scrutiny and criticism after Tuesday's presidential elections, a Jerusalem lawyer has suggested that Floridians living abroad could technically continue to cast their absentee ballots, as long as they are received by the cutoff date of Nov. 17.
Citing the wording on a small instruction sheet included with the Florida absentee ballots, attorney David Baskind told a daily newspaper registered voters who are in possession of their ballots may still be able to send them in.
Baskind could not be reached for comment Friday, but was quoted as saying "the voting process, theoretically, is still going on. You can't go now to get an absentee ballot, but anybody who has one and couldn't get it postmarked could go now with their ballot and vote."
The information sheet included with the ballot tells voters that if for some reason they cannot get their ballot postmarked, they can still vote after Nov. 7, as long as the ballot is received by the 17th.
"Please make every effort to see that your ballot is postmarked," it says. "If, however, you do not have a method to show a postmark, and your ballot is received by the November 17 deadline, it will be counted, if otherwise valid."
"Common sense would say that what it refers to is someone during a war, or in the middle of the sea, or something like this," Baskind said. But Floridians in Israel could arguably point to the State Department's warning against traveling around the country as an excuse for a non-postmarked ballot.
"That's rational," said Eliahu Weinstein, head of Republicans Abroad in Israel, on Friday.
Weinstein said he had advised some people to send their ballots by Federal Express, in which case the balloting envelopes would not be postmarked at all.
David Froehlich, head of Democrats Abroad in Israel, said the wording on the instruction sheet was erroneous and against state law, which requires that the ballot be postmarked.
Froehlich, who earlier underestimated the number of Floridians living in Israel, said that he had since learned that there are some 4,000 Floridians living here, of whom approximately 3,000 had voted.
In total, there are some 26,000 absentee ballots yet to be tallied in Florida. With Governor George W. Bush ahead of Vice President Al Gore by a margin of only a few hundred, the absentee votes are bound to determine who the next president of the U.S. will be.
Froehlich said he believed 90 percent of the ballots cast from Israel favored Gore.
But Weinstein noted that most absentee ballots from around the world are cast by military personnel, who usually overwhelmingly vote Republican. |
