| So far in conservative Tavares County, an optical scanner system, Gore has gained almost 200 votes in a manual inspection of scanned ballots. They were ballots where the circle next to Gore's name was filled in, and the circle next to "write in" was also marked in, with Gore's name spelled out in the space provided. Before you talk about how this type of voter error does not reflect "clear intent" (which I would think an honest republican would acknowledge it does) or should be punished by overlooking the votes (or that it could not have been caught prior to the certification), you should note the following: First, there were over 100 votes for Bush with the same problem -- marked twice, once for "Bush" and once for write-in with "Bush" written in. All of these "overvotes" were "thrown out" because Gore had about 200 more than Bush did, by (oddly) a republican controlled canvassing board. Second, the optical scanning machine automatically spits out any no vote or overvote. An election official must then look at it to see how and whether to process it. This happens during the initial count and in any machine recount. So they HAD to have seen this, and still thrown out these votes which were clearly marked for one candidate, which is nefarious. If this is true, and it appears from initial media accounts that it is, it is nothing less than cheating, and the anger you have seen to date will be nothing compared to what you will see now. |
