The Gore Bear Market is about to end.
Yes, AlGore and his Corruption team lost the ruling and the election:
Broward Says No
The Gore campaign suffers a setback--and threatens a lawsuit.
Tuesday, November 14, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST
"This is outrageous and illegal," fumed Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch yesterday after Broward County's three election commissioners voted not to conduct a manual recount of last Tuesday's ballots. Democrats immediately vowed to sue to force a hand count of all ballots. The same Democrats who cheered when Palm Beach County voted for a full recount on Saturday blasted Judge Robert Lee, a Democrat, when he joined Republican Jane Carroll in rejecting a manual recount. Unlike Palm Beach County, Broward conducted a smooth hand count of 3,892 sample ballots and found only four extra votes for Al Gore.
The Broward decision severely damages Mr. Gore's efforts to secure enough votes in recounts to overturn George W. Bush's 388-vote lead, which is likely to be bolstered when overseas absentee ballots are all counted on Friday. The only other county that has hand-counted all its ballots is Volusia (Daytona Beach), and Mr. Bush is holding his own there. Officials in Dade County (Miami) will meet Tuesday to discuss a possible sample hand recount, the odds of which have probably declined given that Broward--the county just north--has decided against any more counting. Yesterday, Osceola County, a Democratic stronghold, also reversed its original decision to have a hand recount and has finished its count.
That leaves Palm Beach County as an outlier county in its determination to buck Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who says she must observe today's 5 p.m. deadline for certification of all counties' vote totals. Judge Terry Lewis promises to rule at 10:30 a.m. today on a request by Palm Beach and Volusia counties, joined by the Gore campaign, to set aside the deadline.
The 2 a.m. Sunday decision by the Palm Beach election canvassing board to proceed with a full hand count is already hugely controversial. One of the two votes for a hand count came from Theresa LePore, the elections supervisor who designed the infamous butterfly ballot.
Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of the Republican presidential nominee, recused himself from participating in the state's Election Commission. Yesterday Palm Beach County circuit judge Stephen Rapp recused himself from lawsuits over the butterfly ballot after a lawyer accused him of making disparaging remarks about Democrats in a courthouse elevator. Judge Rapp called the accusations "absolutely false" but still withdrew to avoid an appearance of a conflict.
Contrast that with Ms. LePore's behavior. An elected Democrat, she no doubt wishes to run for re-election, but she is now the subject of numerous lawsuits filed by voters angry over the ballot. A local Democratic state legislator is mounting a recall campaign against her. "She has an electoral gun held to her head," says one local journalist. "If she didn't go along with an aggressive hand count of ballots she wouldn't be able to live in the county anymore."
If Judge Lewis orders an extension of the deadline and allows Palm Beach County to launch a hand count of all its votes, this may prove insufficient to wipe out Mr. Bush's lead. Mr. Gore gained a net of 19 votes after Saturday night's sample recount of 1% of the county's precincts. Democrats extrapolate that a full hand count would yield 1,900 extra votes for Mr. Gore.
Statisticians tell me that is highly unlikely. Palm Beach County has fewer than 10,000 "undervote" ballots--those for which the machine count showed no vote for president. The Gore campaign picked the most Democratic precincts that had the greatest number of "undervote" ballots. So instead of recounting only 1% of the total county vote, Palm Beach actually counted 5% of the undervote ballots. Of those, about a tenth were counted by Ms. LePore and her fellow mind-readers as representing ballots that should be counted. Experts guess than only about 1,000 votes could legitimately be found in the county wide boxes of "undervote" ballots. All in all, this might leave Mr. Gore with only a 200 net gain in votes--a not enough for him to catch Mr. Bush.
If the number of extra Gore votes exceeds 200 in Palm Beach County, it may be time for voters to start wondering exactly how the vote count was conducted and how carefully the ballots had been handled.
I fear that regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's court hearing that will determine if all county vote totals must be turned over to Florida's Secretary of State, the ballot-box chasers rampaging through south Florida aren't packing their bags to leave anytime soon. The country is in the midst of a legal circus comparable to impeachment or the O.J. trial. But the bravery of Broward County officials, including a Democratic judge, in standing up to public pressure for a hand recount shows there are still people in this sad mess who are willing to act with integrity and pay attention to the facts before them.
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