Feedingseagulls said:
So they're only entitled to feel aggrieved at the corrupt systems that prevented the vote counts, at the disenfranchisement of numerous voters who weren't even allowed to use the ballot machines - and now at the selling of the capacity to register electoral votes (via electonic voting machines) to companies that are contributors to the Republican party.
I'm sure they'll feel much better.
This is more of the nonsense conspiracy shit they spread around.
1) No one who was registered and attempted to vote at the proper polling place was denied the right to vote. In almost all states, in order to prevent voter fraud, you have to turn up at the polling place designated as being closest to your house.
Tons of college kids who were too stoned or too stupid to figure this out turned up on election day at the wrong places and were not allowed to vote. It's not like it doesn't say this on your registration card, and it's not like this was some new Republican rule. That's the way it has been since Florida became a state! I knew that, and it was my first Presidential election as well. If you can't follow the two simple rules (photo ID, show up at your polling place) then you can't vote.
Also, in Florida felons do not have the right to vote unless they petition to have their right restored. The Democrats want to change this now, but it's a law they enacted more than half a century ago.
2) There were no electronic voting machines in Florida in 2000. We were criticised for relying on the paper ones and told to switch by the Democrats.
3) For all those claims of racism and voter intimidation, the Clinton justice department investigated the shit out of them, and found absolutely no evidence of voter intimidation or racism.
4) The places where all the supposed wrongs occured were counties run by Democrats - primarily Palm Beach County. Surely the Democrats were not denying their own people a chance to vote, or trying to trick their own people?
5) The vote count was done over and over again. That's the point. The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2, including two of the liberal members of the court, that the new standards where a tiny mark or dent on the card equalled a vote were against the law. The law was set before the election - 30 years before - by the Democrats. It must be a demonstrable removal of the Chad, or hanging by one strand. It was 5-4 on whether to set a cut off date for counting, or let the Florida Legislature do it.
Even after the election, using every possible standard, the votes have been looked over again and again, and in no count does Gore win. Not a single one. No further counting could have or would have changed the result. In fact, further counting violated Florida law, which demands an election be certified by a certain date, and the ballots sealed off in case a court wants to demand a recount.
6) The only evidence at all of disenfranchisement is that Democratic Attorney General Bob Butterworth ordered that military absentee ballots which arrived after the election could not be counted. There was a supposed ambiguity in the law where supposedly every absentee ballot had to be in, but the practice was that ones delivered by the US military were counted when they arrived. This was contrary to the intent of the law, and to all past readings of that law. This disenfranchised thousands of voters, 70% of whom voted for Bush.
I come from Florida. I was home following events on a minute by minute basis in 2000/early 2001. I know how this state works, and I know what happened in 2000. Bush has done a number of stupid things since he was elected. But he most certainly was elected.
I think you should send this script the man himself GWB...
