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As we knew, Al Gore won Florida in last year’s
presidential election.
Last night and this morning, the members of the newspaper
Consortium who hired the National Opinion Research Center of the University of
Chicago to classify the 176,000+ ballots that were never counted in the
presidential election in Florida last year, published their interpretations of
the results.
What the results show unequivocally is that Al Gore won the
state of Florida. The wrong man was
inaugurated on January 20.
However, most of the headlines published last night and
today about the ballot study say that the study proves Bush won.
Here are some examples:
Associated Press, as published in
The New York Times, “Vote Review: Bush Would Have Won Fla.”
The New York Times, “Study of
Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding
Vote”—yeah, got to let those guys off the hook!
CNN.com, “Florida recount study:
Bush still wins”
Washington Post, “Florida
Recounts Would Have Favored Bush : But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won
Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots”—well, yeah!
Los Angeles Times, “Bush Still
Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds”
At least the Chicago Tribune said,
“Ballots, rules, voter error led to
2000 election muddle, review shows”
When you read further, however, all of the articles
admit that if all overvotes and undervotes that showed the clear intent of the
voter, which are required to be counted under Florida law, Al Gore won
Florida, and therefore the presidency. And
this study doesn’t even consider the fact that 16 counties did not perform
their legally mandated machine recounts due to the machinations of Florida
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, whose office, according to Jeffrey Toobin
in his new book, Too Close To Call, acted as a “wholly owned subsidiary
of the Bush campaign.” Nor does
the study include the thousands of votes for Pat Buchanan, which were clearly
not meant for him, and were most likely meant for Al Gore.
There can be absolutely no question, then, that Al Gore
won.
Even right winger Matt Drudge used the headline, “BIG
MEDIA FLORIDA RECOUNT: GORE TOPPED BUSH IF ALL UNDER/OVER VOTES COUNTED,” but
then, unable to let Gore get away without a jab, Drudge had to add, “LEGAL
STRATEGY DESTROYED CHANCES.”
The
Houston Chronicle, alone among mainstream newspapers that I’ve seen, carried
the headline, “Statewide
Fla. recount might have won presidency for Gore.”
How did this happen? How
did the wrong man get into the White House?
The best book on how the Republicans prevailed in Florida, despite the
fact that more voters there wanted to and even tried to elect Gore, is Jeffrey
Toobin’s new book, Too Close To Call.
Be sure to listen to my interview of Toobin on the Caro’s Commentaries
page, MakeThemAccountable.com/caro. The
interview will also be played on RadioLeft.
We can be very proud, friends, that our messages and
letters may well have been the reason why the Consortium decided to finally
release the data, after they had said at the end of September that the release
would be “indefinitely postponed.” They’ll
never admit we had an influence, of course.
If you’ve read my website and listened to my
commentaries, then you know that I’m a results-oriented person. There are some things we can do to make certain this kind of
travesty never ever happens again. Call
us a republic or call us a democracy. What’s absolutely essential is that the person
elected by us, the people, is the person who takes office.
Democrats.com has a list of things we can do.
Go to their website and click the “More” button under the article,
“Democrats.com Declares Gore the
Winner, Launches ‘Democracy in 2002’ Campaign.”
That’s “Democrats.com
Declares Gore the Winner, Launches ‘Democracy in 2002’ Campaign,”
at Democrats.com.
And don’t forget that there’s another way to thwart the
media conglomerates and the rich families like the Scaifes, the Olins, and the
Coors, to get our government back. The
Supreme Court told us that our votes don’t count. We see from the results of the definitive study of the
Florida ballots that they really did damage our ability to elect our president.
Only money counts in Washington. So
please help me form an organization to collect small contributions from ordinary
citizens to fund organizations, publications, and candidates that represent the
views of us, the people. Help me
start an organization to Buy Back Our Government.
To read the proposal and join the discussion group, go to
MakeThemAccountable.com/buyback. That’s
MakeThemAccountable.com/buyback.
Democrats won big last Tuesday. We must make certain that impetus carries forward to 2002, and
to 2004. We must vote these
Republican thugs out of office.
Statewide
Fla. recount might have won presidency for Gore
Democracy
in 2002: We
Will Never
Get Over It!
Recount Spin: First They Are Stealing the Election, Now They are Stealing the Truth
Vote Review: Bush Would Have Won Fla.
Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote
Florida recount study: Bush still wins
Ballots, rules, voter error led to 2000 election muddle, review shows
Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds
An Outline of Recount Strategies
Battle
Cries for Voting System Reform Go Largely Unheeded
Report of the Special Committee on Election Reform
