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Politics : Why is Gore Trying to Steal the Presidency? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom D who wrote (3277)	12/3/2000 1:47:45 PM
From: The Duke of URL©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3887

But an analysis commissioned by The Herald of voting patterns in each of the state's 5,885 precincts suggests The difference between information in court and information in newspapers and threads, is that the later can be wild BS assertions not based on ultimate facts.

To: Tom D who wrote (3277)	12/3/2000 1:54:02 PM
From: Ellen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3887

salon.com Out of control Why have conservative journalists lost it over the perfectly predictable battle in Florida? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Eric Boehlert Dec. 1, 2000 \| For George Will, the syndicated columnist and former Republican speechwriter, the cheese fell off the cracker on Nov. 11. That's when the mass-market intellectual, who prides himself on occupying a plane above the noisy fray, uncorked a column in the Washington Post that rattled with a peculiar hostility. The topic, of course, was the unfolding Florida recount of presidential ballots. The average American, Republican or Democrat, may have thought what was happening in Florida was a predictable, if highly contentious, legal battle to decide one of the closest elections in American history. But Will saw much more. He detected the remnants of Monica Lewinsky's "stained blue dress." He saw Gore's "serial mendacity." He spied a "corrupting hunger for power," a selfish attempt to create "postelection chaos" and "delegitimize the election." That was just the beginning. In weeks to come, as the recount battle was played out in Florida's courts, Will, coming across less as the Montesquieu-quoting sage he fancies himself and more a foaming GOP attack dog, spouted on about "Gore's attempted coup," "slow motion larceny," "manufactured votes" and a "stolen" election. The rest of the respectable conservative press brayed just as loudly. Michael Kelly, whose animus against President Clinton (forged in the Lewinsky scandal) cost him his editor's job at the New Republic, insisted in his Washington Post column that Gore's "revolting" campaign was littered with "hacks and political thugs." At the Weekly Standard, a magazine that referred to the vice president of the United States as "the jerk" during the campaign, editors could barely contain their spleen. According to their current cover story, Gore is "self-obsessed, conniving and dangerous." He's "certainly divisive and ruthless, and wholly obsessed with achieving his ends," a man "seen as compulsively mendacious. Politicians lie, but few do so as audaciously and with such self-satisfaction as Gore." The more rabid right-wingers, of course, were positively apoplectic with rage. To Ann Coulter, who has made a career out of loudly hating Clinton since the Lewinsky sex scandal first broke, the confused voters in Florida were "stupid," "feeble-minded" "jackasses," while the Florida Supreme Court represented "a kangaroo court." Just what was Gore's unspeakable sin? What did he do that caused the entire conservative press to lose its moorings at once? The winner of the nation's popular vote, he aggressively, but lawfully, contested a crucial state race so close -- the difference in Florida represents just .01 percent of the statewide vote -- that if the election were a 100-meter dash at the Olympics, both Gore and Bush would have been declared winners in a dead heat. Even Bush supporters find it hard to argue with a straight face that the Texas governor wouldn't have done pretty much the same thing if their situations were reversed. Of course, you expect partisans to be partisans. Republicans have enough bottled-up impeachment frustration to power a locomotive, and conservatives haven't been locked out of the White House for this long since the Beatles invaded America. No one thought that the vein-bulging right-wingers were suddenly going to call for national patience with their horse in the lead, even if only by a ten-thousandth of an inch. Still, their all-out, no-holds-barred assault on Gore is so wildly disproportionate to its putative cause as to be almost surreal. And what's even more remarkable is that their lock-step rantings don't even raise eyebrows anymore. It's as if the impeachment debacle created a minimum standard for conservative bile, and now everyone simply takes it for granted that the right-wing press will serve up bitter, resentful, ad hominem attacks on the flimsiest of pretexts. For the more thoughtful of conservative critics, this can scarcely be cause for rejoicing. Next page \| Could conservatives really be mad at ... Bush? 1, 2, 3, 4

To: Tom D who wrote (3277)	12/3/2000 1:56:15 PM
From: Ellen	Respond to of 3887

herald.com Type of voting machine used may be clue to undervotes BY STEVE HARRISON sharrison@herald.com Since election day, a nagging question has been why a handful of Palm Beach County precincts had high number of undervotes -- some more than 10 percent. The answer may lie with the type of voting machine that was used. Of the 10 precincts in Palm Beach County with the highest percentage of undervotes for president -- ballots on which a machine couldn't read a vote for any candidate -- eight precincts used the Data-Punch voting machine, a lesser-used clone of the Votomatic machine. Overall in Palm Beach County, voters using the Data-Punch were more than 2.5 times as likely to have an undervote as those using the Votomatic, Herald research shows. The county's 3,770 Votomatics produced 5,317 undervotes, while the 1,360 Data-Punch machines produced 4,994 undervotes. Democrats, who are contesting the results in Palm Beach County, say the Data-Punch is flawed, and caused hundreds of dimpled and dented chads. Undervotes accounted for as many as 10 percent of all ballots cast in some Palm Beach precincts. Countywide, undervotes made up 2 percent of all 462,644 ballots cast. DEMOCRATS TARGET In making their case against the Data-Punch machine, Democrats are focusing on precincts like 162E in west Delray Beach where 11 percent of all ballots cast were undervotes, 148D in Boynton Beach with 10 percent undervotes, and 193 in Boca Raton with 12 percent undervotes. All three went heavily for Gore. All used the Data-Punch machine. Palm Beach County voting equipment coordinator David Moore can't explain the high number of undervotes with Data-Punch machines. The Data-Punch machines were used in 75 of 531 precincts, mostly clustered in heavily Democratic sections of Boynton Beach, Delray Beach and Boca Raton. No precinct had a mix of Data-Punch and Votomatic machines, Moore said. ``[The machines] are virtually the same thing,'' Moore said. ``Maybe it's the demographics. Maybe there are older voters who have problems punching through.'' But while Precinct 162E is comprised of mostly elderly voters, other Data-Punch precincts with high numbers of undervotes include a mix of young and old voters. Moore's boss, Tony Enos, wasn't available Thursday -- he was driving the county's ballots to Tallahassee. NEARLY IDENTICAL The machines are almost identical, except that Votomatics come enclosed in a metal suitcase, which, when opened, becomes a mini-voting booth. Data-Punch machines are portable, allowing voters to pick them up for convenience. Data-Punch is a clone of the Votomatic, except that the Data-Punch uses a different type of plastic or rubber backing -- called a ``T-Strip'' -- behind the paper ballot. The T-Strip allows chads to fall into a collecting bin. Democrats have speculated that some machines were clogged with chads, or that T-Strips were either too stiff or weak, making it difficult for chads to fall through. Dennis Newman, an attorney for the Democratic Party, said he wasn't surprised by the apparent problem. ``The Data-Punch is a newer but less reliable machine.'' On Nov. 24, in an effort to make the canvassing board count more dimpled chads, Democrats summoned the inventor of the Votomatic, 83-year-old William Rouveral. MACHINES RETURNED Rouveral told the canvassing board that Data-Punch machines used plastic T-Strips instead of rubber strips in the Votomatic, adding that the plastic strips are more likely to become worn down after heavy use. That could force cards to bend, which could create dimpled chads, Rouveral said. Moore said that the county returned its Data-Punch machines in the late 1980s because the plastic T-strips were too stiff. The manufacturer replaced the strips, and Palm Beach County had no more problems, he said. Lora Lee Stephens, owner of San Diego-based Election Data Corp., Data-Punch's manufacturer, said she doesn't believe the machines are the problem. ``Maybe the people at those precincts had bad instructions from poll workers,'' Stephens said. She said Data-Punch machines are used throughout the United States, including San Diego County in California, and Dupage and Cook counties in Illinois. ``This is a lot of hot air. Voters aren't taking responsibility,'' she said. Her husband, Richard Stephens, was in Tallahassee earlier this week at the request of Republicans, who asked him to explain how the two machines worked.

To: Tom D who wrote (3277)	12/3/2000 2:03:24 PM
From: Ellen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3887

dailynews.yahoo.com Friday December 1 2:51 PM ET Fla. Vote Difference Is Miniscule By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - If George W. Bush (news - web sites) and Al Gore (news - web sites) were Olympic bobsledders, they'd both get a gold medal and a pat on the back for their dead heat. If they were precision car parts, they'd both make the grade. Few familiar things in life are judged to such a fine point as the difference in votes in Florida. Out of 5,825,043 Florida votes, Bush was awarded 537 more than Gore. Rounded off, that's one in 11,000. A person is slightly more likely to be born with cataracts or win the big prize in the Pick 4 lottery. Put another way, Bush's certified Florida win - giving him the presidency if it holds up against Gore's legal challenges - amounts to a margin of 0.00009, just short of one ten-thousandths of a point. In many aspects of life, that's not just splitting hairs, it's splitting split ends. They say baseball, for example, is a game of inches. If the Florida vote were a game of baseball, Bush's margin would amount to less than half an inch around the base paths. They also say it isn't over until the fat lady sings. If the contest were Richard Wagner's 17-hour ``Ring of the Nibelungen,'' Bush and Gore would be separated by about 5.6 seconds of song, hardly time for the lady to clear her throat. Laurence Tribe, arguing Gore's side in the Supreme Court on Friday, said the outcome was ``a kind of photo finish'' and what's going on now ``is rather like looking more closely at the photograph.'' It may not have been the most helpful analogy for Gore; if he and Bush were horses, the Republican's lead, while very small, would be discernible. Bush would be ahead by just under nine inches, for example, in the 1.5-mile Belmont Stakes. What courts are deciding, in essence, is where to draw the finish line. The ratio of Bush's edge is equivalent to a half inch up the Washington Monument or a nearly 13-foot win in a marathon. It's about half the size of Leon County - home of the Florida Legislature and busy courts - in an area the size of the United States. It's as if three fewer Americans stabbed themselves with scissors, something that more than 30,000 people seek emergency room treatment for in a year. Time-measured Olympic events don't dip into the realm of ten-thousandths. Most settle for hundredths: U.S. swimmers Gary Hall Jr. and Anthony Ervin shared gold in the 50-meter freestyle with a 21.98-second performance. Even critical car parts pass muster if they are just one-ten thousandths off, engineers say. ``Anything mechanical that has wear and tear would be within that range,'' says Patrick Berzinski of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. This is, of course, democracy, not ball bearings. It doesn't matter how small the edge in Florida, only that there be an edge of one vote. But that assumes certitude in counting and a fixed finish line. Florida's twists and turns have been enough to send David Murray, director of the Statistical Assessment Service, into metaphysical musings. It's like a journey that begins with one step covering half the distance, he says excitedly. Each succeeding step also covers half the remaining distance. You always get closer but you never arrive. ``Don't go there,'' Murray says, as if to himself. ``That's the abyss.'' To be sure, some things other than Florida elections matter by the tiniest of bits. Pollutants are measured in parts per billion. Then there is perhaps the most perfect measuring thing of all, the cesium clock. The U.S. Naval Observatory uses about 70 of them along with other instruments for the nation's Master Clock. Accurate to one second in 1.4 million years, the cesium clock ``is the most accurate realization of a unit that mankind has yet achieved,'' the observatory says. Gore lives in the vice presidential mansion on the observatory grounds, working these days for a more favorable realization of a Florida unit. - EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press Writer Randolph E. Schmid contributed to this story.