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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (64433)	11/8/2000 4:43:35 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

11/08/00 4:00 p.m. The Buchanan-Votes Hoax Desperate spin from Florida Democrats. By Jay C. Robbins, a writer from Florida Anyone who actually votes in Florida knows that Rep. Robert Wexler's claim that over 3,000 voters accidentally voted for Buchanan instead of Gore is at best a Gore-style exaggeration. More likely, it is a deliberate lie, calculated to cast a shadow over what is so far a calm, orderly, and by-the-book election recount. Truth be told, the mere fact that we can conduct this process without guns, tanks, and violence is proof positive that democracy is the ambrosia of all human political systems. First the facts. In Florida we vote with old-fashioned punch ballots. No fancy bells and whistles in the voting booth. No levers to pull. No buttons to press. No voting machines and curtains. It is just a card that you stick into a slot. After you do that, you secure the cardstock ballot on two unmistakable red pins that make it next to impossible to improperly position your ballot. Finally, you start punching away with what looks like a long push pin. I'll admit, when you are finished voting with a punch ballot, you do not come away with the spine-tingling feeling that this strip of cardstock, which still looks exactly as it did before you performed your civic duty, has attained some sort of legal significance. It just has a few holes now. Since I'm a bit of a control freak, this worries me sometimes. Therefore, like most voters, when I'm finished I inspect the numbers of the punched holes on my ballot and compare them to the numbers assigned to the candidates. It takes about 10 seconds. I've never known this simple process to fail. Ever. There are no moving parts. The push pin thing always perforates the card. And the print is large enough for even the visually impaired to read with ease. Once you are finished punching, the last step is even easier. You put the ballot in a box. It's like mailing a letter. And if you have any trouble, there are people at the polls to help you. These attendants are so good at what they do that I watched one yesterday stop a soccer mom who almost walked out of the polling place with her ballot, purse, and car keys in the same hand. Whoops. That said, if Mr. Wexler is telling the truth that he saw "about 3,000" Floridians vote for the wrong man "with my own eyes," he must have either 1) been a partisan illegally watching the polls from inside, which is a serious crime in Florida 2) have x-ray vision; 3) be fibbing to the country. I'll let you, the reader, decide what's most likely the truth here. Why Mr. Wexler would even do this is beyond me. He knows that there is no way to document his accusations. And any hearsay evidence he could bring forth is beyond suspect, and bordering on laughable. Why, then, is he trying to muddy up the water? The answer probably is to set Mr. Bush up for future accusations that the Democrats really won this unprecedented race. And perhaps the move is also calculated to steal from the soon-to-be president elect the strong moral position and mandate that a clean and clear victory in Florida will necessarily carry. In any event, it is not going to work. And that's not because Mr. Wexler doesn't have the will to try. He surely is doing everything he can to confuse and skew this issue. The real reason that he will fail is because our system and our voters are too strong and too wise to swallow his type of ill-conceived poison. nationalreview.com