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


To: Srexley who wrote (132190)3/16/2001 4:55:01 PM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667
 
I don't have a position. I have said about ten times that I find privatization of SS a doubtful proposition; that's not the same as being opposed. What I am opposed to is the let's-pretend accounting being used for the Social Security trust fund (which was started under Clinton), and which Bush is making worse, not better, with his proposed tax cut.



To: Srexley who wrote (132190)3/16/2001 9:03:57 PM
From: Thomas A Watson  Respond to of 769667
 
Recount of old news.
newsmax.com
ount Couldn't Elect Gore

Reed Irvine
March 2, 2001

To borrow a phrase from Dan Rather, you can take it to the bank that
CBS, NBC and ABC would have led their evening news shows on Feb. 25
with reports on the results of the Miami Herald/USA Today recount of
the votes for president in Miami-Dade County IF it had shown that Al
Gore got enough votes to win Florida. The New York Times and the
Washington Post would have put it on page one. Editorials and columns
would have cited it as proof that the wicked Bush people and the
partisan U.S. Supreme Court had stolen the election from Gore.

We were spared all that because the recount showed that Gore picked up
only 49 additional votes in Miami-Dade. He needed 930 more votes to
just draw even with Bush when the hand recounts began. When the
Miami-Dade canvassing board voted not to proceed after a manual
recount in 20 percent of its precincts had produced a net gain of 157
votes for Gore, the Democrats spread the story that a Republican mob
had intimidated the canvassing board, forcing it to call a halt
because Gore was sure to pick up enough votes to win if the remaining
80 percent of the precincts were counted.

There had been no intimidating mob. There were a number of young
Republicans who noisily protested the fact that they were being barred
from observing the recount. The board explained that it had decided
not to proceed because it had taken them four days to recount 20
percent of the precincts and they did not believe they could complete
the count in the four days remaining. The precincts already counted
were predominantly Democratic, and as the Herald/USA Today recount has
shown, it was not realistic to assume that Gore?s net gain in those
precincts would be replicated in the rest of the county.

There were 10,646 ballots in Miami-Dade that had shown no vote for any
presidential candidate when counted by machine. There were over 60,000
of these "undervotes" in all of Florida, 28,000 of them in Miami-Dade,
Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Gore campaign believed these
three counties, whose canvassing boards were controlled by Democrats,
would easily find enough Gore votes in their large undervote pools to
overcome Bush?s narrow lead. They requested manual recounts there and
in Volusia County, where there had been a major anomaly in the vote
count. The Broward canvassing board managed to give Gore a net-gain of
567 votes from its pool of 6,716 undervotes.

Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, with more than 10,500 undervotes each, were
expected to help Gore as much as Broward, but in Palm Beach his net
gain was only 215 votes. If they had not been submitted too late to be
counted and if the Miami recount had been completed with the same
results produced by the two newspaper recounts, first the Palm Beach
Post and then by the Miami Herald and USA Today, Gore would have lost
by 99 to 142 votes.

The Palm Beach Post manual recount of Miami-Dade produced a net gain
for Bush of six votes. It got less attention than the Miami Herald/USA
Today project which covers the whole state and is being conducted by
the national accounting firm of BDO Seidman. As of March 1, they had
examined the undervotes in all but two of Florida?s 67 counties, but
the totals will not be made public until all 67 are completed.

Maybe the votes needed to justify the claim that Gore really won
Florida will be found in the other counties, but Mark Seidel, the
Miami Herald city editor who supervised the project, says that the
Miami-Dade results show that Bush would have won if manual recounts
had been completed and the results counted in the four counties
targeted by Gore. Millions of disappointed Democrats must come to
grips with the fact that the evidence is now in: Bush won
legitimately. The news media should report the evidence.

NBC's Nightly News ignored it. CBS and ABC gave it 30 seconds. Dan
Rather used his time to cast doubt on the integrity and significance
of the recount. He said the "study" by "what are called independent
accountants" "suggests" that Gore "still might have lost the election"
if the hand count had been completed in Miami. ABC was brief, but
straightforward. Fox News and CNN provided good coverage, as did the
Miami Herald, USA Today and the Washington Times. The New York Times
and Washington Post, which are backing a rival recount, relegated the
story to the inside pages. Terry McAuliffe, the Clintonoid chairman of
the Democratic National Committee, still insists that the election was
stolen.

tom watson tosiwmee