Article...Panhandle Bushies want second shot Pensacola officials say early, wrong call by networks affected turnout..
ELECTION 2000 worldnetdaily.com
By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- Officials in the Pensacola, Fla., elections office say they've been flooded with calls from irate voters who claim they were discouraged from voting for George W. Bush Tuesday when the New York-based TV networks called Florida for Al Gore before polls closed in the state's western panhandle, which is in an earlier time zone.
Also, a Republican state lawmaker from Pensacola is rounding up voters who apparently "walked away" from poll lines when they heard the premature news, which turned out to be wrong. Some voters have told the lawmaker they are willing to sue for another chance to cast their vote for Bush, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Republican Party in Escambia County, Fla., has asked his precinct leaders to identify potential Bush voters who reportedly left poll lines because of the erroneous network announcement. Pensacola, home to a Navy base and the Blue Angels, is the county seat.
Hosts of two talk-radio shows broadcast on local WEBY and WCOA planned Thursday night to help round up discouraged Bush voters by exhorting them to call into their conservative programs.
Escambia County Republican Party chairman Tom Gilliam says he's investigating whether the early network call dampened Republican turnout there.
"There could have been people in line around 7 p.m. central time waiting to vote when the call went out by the networks that it was over in Florida," Gilliam told WorldNetDaily. "They may possibly have gone home because of the incorrect call made by the networks."
Some local Republican voters were so confused by the announcement that they thought election officials had "closed the polls early," said Brenda O'Gwynn, an aide to the Escambia County elections supervisor in Pensacola. Her nonpartisan public office handles balloting for the county.
"They thought the media discouraged them from casting their ballots," she said, adding that she's been flooded with angry calls.
"We have nine lines coming into our main number and then six other lines that other people answer," O'Gwynn said. "They are getting complaints about that as well."
"It's been crazy," said a phone operator in the elections office.
At 7:49 p.m. Eastern time, MSNBC led the network pack in declaring Gore the winner in Florida. ABC, CBS, Fox and Atlanta-based CNN quickly followed.
News first reached voters in Florida's panhandle at 6:49 central time -- with 11 minutes left before polls closed. The news could also have affected those waiting in line after 7 p.m, Gilliam says.
Most of the Florida peninsula is in the Eastern time zone. But 10 counties, including Escambia, are in the central time zone. They are located west of the Apalachicola River in the state's panhandle. See county breakout in Florida map.
Escambia County, which voted about 2-to-1 in favor of Bush, has 69,724 registered Republicans, O'Gwynn says. She's says it won't be known for another week or so how many of them did not vote.
Bush leads Gore by 1,784 votes in the overall Florida tally. The state, which is now in the process of recounting all votes, will decide the outcome of the national election for president, since its 25 electoral votes will put either candidate over the 270 total they need to win.
While discontent grows among voters in the GOP-heavy Florida panhandle, the networks have focused on the more vocal elderly voters in the Democratic stronghold of Palm Beach County. They insist they were cheated out of voting for Gore by a confusing ballot.
The Gore campaign has seized on their complaints, threatening to sue the state to prevent it from certifying any winning tally for Bush until voters in Palm Beach can recast their votes. Gore has sent a team of nearly 50 lawyers to Florida.
Though there are no signs the Bush campaign is cultivating Republican voters around Pensacola as possible litigants, voters there are willing to sue, says Suzie West, a legislative aide for state Rep. Jerry Maygarden, R-Pensacola.
"Some have called and said, 'If there's going to be lawsuits, then we want to be named, because this is ridiculous,' " West said. "We've got people calling left and right who are so upset."
She says some suggest suing the TV networks for voter fraud, which they hope might force the state to give any discouraged Bush voters in Florida's central time zone another chance to vote.
West says an unidentified voter who stood in line at a Pensacola polling place around 7 p.m. Tuesday left a phone message claiming he witnessed people "walking away" from the same line after they heard the network announcements.
"People walked," West said.
Gilliam says he's suspicious of not only the timing of the networks' early call for Gore but also their belated retraction -- which came two hours later and after the last polls had closed in California.
"The announcement was made at 6:49 p.m. local time, which means it was 4:49 (p.m.) in California, where they still had two hours and 11 minutes to vote," he said. "If I'm going to the polls in California and I hear it's already over and that the big battleground states have already gone for Gore, then why would I want to go and vote for Bush?"
The networks' correction came far too late for Gilliam.
"It was suspicious," he said. "People I was with on election night here looked at each other with a knowing smile because it was just after 9 o'clock our time, 7 o'clock California time when they corrected it.
"It was almost as if after the California polls closed, there was no need to continue the charade that Gore had won, if they were attempting to affect voters," Gilliam added. "And only then did they go back to the true story that it was too close to call."
Conservative media critics noticed that the tote boards displayed that night by the networks showed a 51 percent-to-46 percent Florida lead for Bush not long after they had checked off Gore's name as the winner. Yet none of the anchors or analysts drew attention to the discrepancy.
Watchdogs also have complained that while the networks were quick to declare Florida for Gore, they were slow to call other states in the Eastern time zone for Bush. After polls closed in Georgia and Virginia, for instance, MSNBC and CNN claimed the winner was "too close to call" in those states. Yet both went big for Bush.
In projecting the Florida winner early, Gilliam suspects that the networks "didn't forget" that the state has two time zones.
"It seems like every election the network news want to say it's over based on voting in almost completely liberal, completely Democratic Eastern Florida, which is in the Eastern time zone, when our polls haven't even closed here," he said.
"They've done this before," he added, citing the 1988 coverage of Republican Connie Mack's Senate race.
Appearing on CNN the night of the election, Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove complained, "You all called Florida before the polls were closed." He contends that the early projection had harmed turnout in the more conservative Florida panhandle.
CNN anchor Bernie Shaw explained that races aren't called in a state until "75 percent of the precincts are closed." Rove replied, "That's one criteria you might think about changing."
Bush aide Mark McKinnon went on ABC News and scolded the networks for "an unfortunate rush to judgment." He pointed out that polls were still open in the panhandle when the call was made.
After McKinnon's appearance, ABC News commentator George Stephanopoulos quickly dismissed his complaint by noting that all the polls in Florida close at the same time. They do, but not all in the same time zone. Apparently, Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Clinton, wasn't aware of that fact. |
