Re: I have been following this closely but never came across the above item. Did Bush go to court to have some 5000 votes counted?
Florida rules on absentee ballots are very difficult to adhere to (as has been noted elsewhere). Quite a bit of information must be supplied on the ballot for it to be accepted. Because of this, both parties have programs to help voters prepare their absentee ballots (much more activity in this area from Republicans than Democrats, mainly because there are more Republican absentee voters). It is legal for party workers to fill out information on these ballots in advance, and this is sometimes done. Then the party workers mail the ballots to the voters (this sounds a little iffy to me, but evidently it is legal).
In one of the counties, the party workers didn't fill out all the required fields (and neither did 5,000 Republican voters who voted using those ballots). Republican workers filled in the missing information from voter registration records that may have been limited to lists of registered republicans after the signed ballots were received (which isn't legal, unlike doing this before the ballots are sent out).
These are the votes that are in dispute, and since they are from registered republicans, they are most likely almost all Bush votes. So far, these votes have been included in the state total counts.
Just as the hand counts will probably be accepted by the supreme court (of Florida), so will these. The court hates to disenfranchise voters for mistakes that are "technical" when the intent of the voter is not in dispute. Just like when a card has been punched, but the chad is still stuck on by a corner or two.
Dan |
