Before you accuse Gore's party of "disingenous double-speak" you should read the following.
They just completed a hand count of 379 ballots in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, and Bush now leads in New Mexico by four votes. That state is worth five electoral votes.
Here's the kicker... John Dendahl, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, "said today that he found no inconsistency in policies toward hand counting in Florida and New Mexico. 'In Florida,' he said, 'there were no allegations that voting machines were unable to read ballots. Here, ballots are designed to be machine readable, but if they can't be and we didn't hand count the votes, those voters would be disenfranchised from the process.' "
See <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/12/politics/12RESU.html>.
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But of course, that's exactly what the problem is in Florida. They are doing a hand recount of those ballots that were incorrectly read by the machine.
This national election has been a joke. The New Mexico election was handled even less professionally than the Florida one. In New Mexico county officials actually "found" 67,000 absentee and early ballots by late Wednesday.
After tabulating those 67,000 ballots, Gore was still in the lead. But by Friday, they had found 257 more votes. Get this:
"As county officials began reviewing the 257 found ballots, which produced 152 votes for Mr. Bush and 97 for Mr. Gore, Judy Woodard, the Bernalillo County clerk, said the rejected ballots would not be counted in the state totals.
"Minutes later, she told reporters they would be. About five hours later they produced a net gain of 81 votes that helped Mr. Bush move closer to claiming another state in the attenuated struggle for the presidency."
What the hell? And these same Republicans are complaining about Florida? Obviously the vote-counting system "needs fixed," as they say in Bush's state. Any state whose results might be changed from one candidate to another by counting and recounting until they get it right, owes it to Democracy to do so! If that means that Bush wins, or that Gore wins, so be it, but it would be a absurd not to at least try to get it right!
Dave |
