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

To: JDN who wrote (103938)	12/7/2000 8:39:49 AM
From: Ellen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

> Is there ANY DOUBT in ANYONE'S mind now that Al Sore would DESTROY this nation in his FEEBLE attempt to be a lousy President? As a FLORIDIAN I DEEPLY RESENT the problems he has caused for us. All these Court actions are UNCONSCIABLE, < I believe you are confused. It is Bush who files endless lawsuits. Every time he sees a county doing something he doesn't like, he files suit. If Bush does indeed prevail, he will have won by suppression. Period. washingtonpost.com In a deposition last week, Goard said she had rejected ballot requests that did not contain voter ID numbers as required by Florida law, but then approved a telephoned GOP plea to let Republican workers add those numbers to Republican applications. Goard said her office sorted out the Republican rejects so they could be revised, but left rejected Democratic and independent applications sitting in a discard box. Goard acknowledged getting a complaint from Seminole Democratic Party Chairman Bob Poe, who called around Oct. 30. She said she couldn't remember what she told him. Poe has told reporters she told him to "go fly a kite."

To: JDN who wrote (103938)	12/7/2000 8:44:13 AM
From: Ellen	Respond to of 769667

Interesting to look back a bit. Note the Republican spin and lawsuits from the Republicans began almost immediately after the election. Oh yes, if Bush prevails he will have won by suppression. washingtonpost.com An Indefensible Position Saturday, November 11, 2000; Page A28 YESTERDAY IT was the Bush campaign that adopted an indefensible position in the Florida election dispute. If there's one principle to which everyone involved in the battle should subscribe, it's that Florida officials should do everything possible to count accurately every decipherable vote cast in Tuesday's presidential election. This is a case where, literally, every vote matters. Yet the Bush campaign threatened yesterday to block such an effort. Former secretary of state James A. Baker indicated on the campaign's behalf that it would "vigorously oppose" further counting, meaning presumably the Gore campaign's proposal that there be hand counts of the ballots in selected counties. There has been a count and a recount, both by machine, and that should be enough, Mr. Baker said. He accused the Gore campaign of seeking "to keep recounting, over and over, until it happens to like the result," and lectured instead, only three days after the election, that there has to be "some finality to the election process." But the absentee ballots won't be counted until next Friday. They alone could be enough to tip the apparent balance. Meanwhile, it is said that there may be thousands of ballots that were apparently punched for one or the other candidate, but not hard enough to make a hole large enough for the machines to read. Those are the ballots a hand count might retrieve. These aren't ballots spoiled by having been punched for more than one candidate. Those aren't retrievable; it's not possible to be sure which punch was intended. Nor are they the ballots the Gore people claim were mistakenly punched for Pat Buchanan. One county has agreed to conduct a hand count; two others have agreed to sample some precincts to see if the machines missed many votes. The county officials who are properly charged under Florida law with making such decisions will determine on the strength of the sampling what to do next. The Bush camp comes perilously close to suggesting that the votes a hand count might detect should be suppressed even if they can be readily identified. That can't be right. The goal has to be to get as accurate a count as possible, one that as many people as possible will in the end regard as legitimate. The Gore people put that legitimacy at risk the other day, when they threatened to sue and suggested with great certainty that they were about to be robbed of a victory that was rightfully theirs. It may be understandable that the Bush campaign responds in kind, but understandable isn't the same as acceptable. The Bush people likewise jeopardize the perceived legitimacy of the end result if they seem to seek to protect their lead of a few hundred votes by turning a blind eye to uncounted others that can be easily found. Count 'em; that's how you decide who won. It bears repeating that the stakes here are larger even than the prize of the White House itself. A breathtakingly close election has put the nation, its electoral system and its two parties under pressure. How the country weathers the challenge depends very largely on the behavior of the two candidates. If they squeeze and manipulate the system for every possible partisan advantage, they damage far more than their own places in history; whoever eventually staggers across the finish line will have damaged his own chance for a successful presidency. If they stand aside as their designees jockey for advantage, the damage is just as grave. Is it really too much to ask that both Al Gore and George W. Bush personally state that they will let Florida count its votes; that they will respect the result; and that they will refrain from inflammatory claims in the meantime? © 2000 The Washington Post Co

To: JDN who wrote (103938)	12/7/2000 8:47:50 AM
From: Ellen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

While immediately filing lawsuits and complaining about recounts, Bush requested his own. Bush threw this to the courts. Bush requested a recount while complaining - already! - about the Democrats' request. Suppression dailynews.yahoo.com [excerpt] Saturday November 11 10:25 AM ET Bush Campaign Seeks Injunction By DAVID ESPO, AP Political Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign has decided to seek an injunction to stop manual vote recounts in Florida, a Republican official said Saturday, throwing the matter of the next presidency to the courts. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker, respresenting the Texas governor's interests in Florida, scheduled a news conference in Tallahassee, Fla., to announce the decision on a day hand counts were planned in two counties where Democrats have challenged ballots. The presidency hangs in the balance, Florida's vote - impossibly close and fiercely contested - is virtually certain to tip the scales. ... At the same time, though, the Bush campaign asked for another machine recount in Palm Beach County.