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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (3376)	11/25/2000 8:20:50 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6710

Gore’s Brazen Lunge for Power 12/18/2000 the last word By Paul M. Rodriguez, Managing Editor rodriguez@insightmag.com Gore’s Brazen Lunge for Power WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — If ever there was a stunning example of the need for judicial restraint, one need only look to the Florida Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to get to the result sought by the Gore camp: Allowing the results of postdeadline recounts, conducted without common standards, to be included in the final certification of votes tallied in selective Democratic counties for the office of president of the United States. Beyond the surreal nature of the two weeks following the Nov. 7 presidential election that has shown how local and grubby politics really is, the opinion of the Florida high court is practically an acid trip to the moon. Consider the following: Big Al Gore and the mob have whooped and hollered about how important it is to have a fair and accurate count of the ballots in Florida rather than disenfranchise voters by setting arbitrary deadlines on manual recounts. Forget Florida laws that require such tallies to be held within seven days after the election. Forget that scores of counties in Florida met their deadlines. Forget that only the three heavily Democratic counties opted to delay counting of the votes. Forget that Florida law gives the ultimate discretion of when to certify ballot counts to the duly elected secretary of state, in this case Katherine Harris. And forget that despite repeated official warnings by state election officials that they must move quickly to conduct any manual recounts, the three Democratic counties approached the matter like WPA leaf rakers. Forget even the precedent in which a black woman who ran as a Republican for local office was denied a manual recount by the West Palm Beach election board because, despite her 11-vote loss, deadlines had been passed and the board held that only in cases where there is a single-digit difference would it consider a recount. Rules, you know. Now comes the state’s supreme court opining that some nebulous “will of the people” is the only thing that matters and that Harris relied on a super-technical reading of the Florida election laws in rendering a decision that only those votes tabulated by the statutory deadline would count toward the total certified. Holding that seven days was an unreasonable time limit for large counties to conduct such massive recounts, the state court decided in a unanimous opinion that the counties conducting manual recounts could continue to do so for another five days. Consider this gem from a senior West Palm Beach administrative officer working at the epicenter of the election recount: “Why we didn’t hire an outside contractor or bring in trailers and hundreds of workers doesn’t make sense. We could have avoided this. It’s a bunch of crap.” The crap the administrator was talking about involved decisions by the three-member West Palm Beach County canvassing board (the election officials) who made the decisions not (repeat: not) to work 24 hours a day for the seven days allowed by Florida law to conduct any and all recounts of the votes. “They screwed this up royally,” the dyed-in-the-wool Democratic administrator said. “I wanted Gore to win, but not this way,” the Democrat continued, echoing the sentiments of election-board officials who also have spoken to Insight, albeit outside the earshot of their bosses. “I’m embarrassed,” he said. But the Democratic bosses were beyond embarrassment. They went right on espousing one thing in front of the cameras and doing entirely the opposite behind the scenes — such as circulating a memo on how to challenge overseas military ballots, filing court briefs suing their own Democratic canvassing boards, challenging the rules and then, when the vote totals weren’t enough for Gore, challenging some more. The whole concept of the rule of law — a phrase heard over and over again during the impeachment trial of President Clinton — fell to Democratic sentiment and emotion. Forget “controlling legal authority.” Forget the definition of what “is” is! You won the state lottery but misplaced your ticket and found it a mere day after the legal deadline for claiming the prize. Forget the rule of law, you say, the money should be yours. Under the Florida Supreme Court decision of Nov. 21, you should not be held to the mere technicality of a hard deadline. To recap: There was an election. There were automatic machine recounts. There were optional manual recounts. There was a state law that said those votes needed to be certified after seven days, with overseas ballots allowed an extra 10 days. Then the secretary of state would certify the combined tallies, send them to the governor for affirmation and Florida’s 25 winning electors would vote in the Electoral College for their candidate, winner take all. But in the new world order of Gore and Daley and Democratic activist judges, none of this is important. The only thing important is winning the election, even if by fraud, trickery, deceit and brazenly open dismissal of laws of a kind that every other state follows and most of the counties in Florida. Disenfranchisement indeed! One doesn’t have to be a partisan to see how crooked this has been. Every American can see it plainly now — raw political usurpation as in the old days in Chicago, just as it happens in the banana republics. It began with Clinton. Who could doubt now how determined Gore is to give us more of the same? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document was printed out from InsightMag.com. You can find the original at insightmag.com

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (3376)	11/25/2000 8:28:34 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 6710

ANd you are right of course, CYBERKEN....In fact, my guess is that MOST of the SI folks aren't the "march in the street" types... On either side of the fence... But perhaps this has finally awakened all of us to the realization that perhaps this is FINALLY the time to "Stand UP and Be Counted"...Internet is going to make that happen!!!

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (3376)	11/25/2000 8:32:54 PM
From: TraderGreg	Respond to of 6710

<<Clinton/Gore Nazis >> ????? Hitler must be turning over in his grave...last week they were Communists, now they're Nazis??? Better eat your whole grain, better eat your Wheaties...and don't forget the Lithium. TG