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To begin with, let me state that I was living in Broward County, Florida at the time of the elections - so this is a firsthand account. Anything in quotes is from the first chapter of "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore, who has done his research.
Also worth noting: The only states with a number of electoral votes significant enough to swing an election are Florida and California. California? Forget it. So Florida. A state that has a major Democratic presence in the south - but good ol'boys in the north.
Lawton Chiles had been governor of Florida for as long as I can remember, and he was beloved - he was pretty much governor for life, would never have been voted out. But he was old, and he died, and within a month of his death, Jeb Bush moved to Florida and started preparing his election campaign. The Democrats ran Buddy McKay, who was an asshole, and Bush won. So George W.'s brother got into position to cover his ass years ago.
I voted right after work. Brought Elayna with me to show her the electoral process. And I went right home and turned on the TV to follow the news, and I, too, noticed the attitude Moore notes below:
"The one moment from the election that I will never forget came earlier in the evening, after the networks had first - correctly - predicted the state of Florida for Gore. The cameras cut to a hotel room in Texas. There sat George W. with his father, the former president, and his mother, Barbara. The old man appeared cool as a cucumber, even though it looked like curtains for Sonny. A reporter asked young Bush what he thought about the outcome. "I'm not...conceding anything in Florida," Junior piped up..."I know you've all the projections, but people are actually counting the votes... The networks called this thing awfully earlier and the people are actually counting the votes have different perspective so..." It was an odd moment in that crazy night of election result coverage. The Bushes, with their relaxed smiles, looked like a family of cats that had just wolfed down a bunch of canaries - as if they knew something we didn't. They did. They knew Jeb and Katherine had done their jobs months earlier."
By "done their job," Moore means the disenfranchisement of minority voters, which I've set forth below. All I knew was that their confidence in the face of the predictions was...odd. And then a local news report came in - 6 ballot boxes from Pembroke Pines, Florida, had turned up missing. Pembroke Pines - *my* town - which had been predicted 96% Gore/Lieberman.
Hm.
Over the next few days, I heard about many ballot boxes gone missing, or just never being picked up. From Liberty City, an overwhelmingly black and Democratic inner-city area. From King's Point, a mostly-Jewish retirement community. Votes that were never counted. And don't get me started on Palm Beach County...
"Much has been made of the "butterfly ballot", which made it easy to vote for the wrong person because candidates' names and punch holes were crammed unevenly onto facing pages. The media went out of its way to point out tat the ballot was designed by one of the county's election commissioners, a Democrat... had anyone bothered to check, they would have discovered that... the ballot's designer, Theresa LePore, had actually been a registered Republican. She switched her affiliation to Democrat in 1996; then, just three months after Bush seized office, she resigned as a Democrat and switched her voter registration to Independent...Thus, the Palm Beach Post estimates that more than 3,000 voters, mostly elederly and Jewish, who thought they were voting for Al Gore ended up punching the wrong hole - for Pat Buchanan. Even Buchanan went to TV to declare that no way...did those Jewish voters vote for him."
I saw this ballot printed in the papers prior to the election. Have you seen it? It *is* confusing, and not only that, the directions were contradictory - they stated that you should punch the hole to the right of the candidate you wished to vote for. Well, thanks to the design of the ballot, half of the holes were on the *left* - and it was difficult even for me to match the candidate's name to the appropriate hole. Imagine the difficulty for the elderly voters of Palm Beach, who did their best to punch the hole to the right of Gore - and ended up with Buchanan.
Moore on the disenfranchisement of minority voters:
"In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris...who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign chairwoman *and* the Florida Secretary of State in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did this with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W.'s brother Jeb Bush - whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it...a felony in its own right."
"Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats - and sure enough, Al Gore received the votes of more than 90% of them on November 7, 2000. That is, 90% of those who were *allowed* to vote. In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the State of Florida, Bush, Harris, and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, they also removed thousands of black citizens *who had never committed a crime in their lives* - along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misdemeanors. How did this happen? Harris's office told Database - a firm with strong Republican ties - to cast as wide a net as possible to get rid of these voters. Her minions instructed the company to include even people with "similar" names to those of the actual felons... the same birth dates, or similar Social Security numbers...And before long, 173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. In Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, 66% of the voters who were removed were black. In Tampa's county, 54% of those who would be denied the right to vote... were black. But culling names from Florida's records alone was not enough for Harris and her department. 8,000 additional Floridians were thrown off the voting rolls because Database used a false list provided by another state, a state which claimed that all the names on the list were former convicted felons who had since moved to Florida. It turns out the felons on the list had served their time and had their voting privileges reinstated. And there were others on the list who had committed only misdemeanors - such as parking violations or littering. What state was it that offered Jeb and George a helping hand by sending this bogus list to Florida? *Texas*."
"This assault on the voting rights of minorities was so widespread in Florida that it even affected people like Linda Howell. Linda received a letter informing her that she was a felon - and therefore advising her not to bother showing up on Election Day, because she would be barred from voting. The only problem was, Linda Howell wasn't a felon - in fact, she was the elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida!"
"In a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police to block anyone on Katherine and Jeb's "felons list" from voting. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens looking to exercise their consitutional right to vote, mostly in black and Hispanic communities, were sent away - and threatened with arrest if they protested. George W. Bush would officially be credited with receiving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. Is it safe to assume that the thousands of registered black and Hispanic voters barred from the polls might have made the difference if they had been allowed to vote - and cost Bush the election? Without a doubt."
I don't have first-hand information on the minority-voters thing - I only heard that it happened, I didn't see it happen; I voted in a white Jewish area. They didn't blockade us or pull us over on mocked-up traffic violations to delay us, they just "lost" our ballot boxes. :)
Read the whole book, there's more to piss you off. But my experience alone made it totally clear that the Bush family stole this election. I didn't vote for him. Florida didn't vote for him. The country DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM.
And now Time and Newsweek are reporting that the government had advance notice of 9/11. When this was first theorized, I didn't want to believe it. I said that no one would go that far, would sacrifice all of those lives, to bolster their approval ratings (approval ratings *always* go up in wartime. Always. It is a certainty like death and taxes). But now... now that we have a Department of Homeland Security, now that our constitutional rights and civil liberties are being quietly removed, now that shit like what happened at OSU (see the link in my "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" post) is happening *and not even getting major media coverage*... I'm not so sure.
So. There you have it.
Also worth noting: The only states with a number of electoral votes significant enough to swing an election are Florida and California. California? Forget it. So Florida. A state that has a major Democratic presence in the south - but good ol'boys in the north.
Lawton Chiles had been governor of Florida for as long as I can remember, and he was beloved - he was pretty much governor for life, would never have been voted out. But he was old, and he died, and within a month of his death, Jeb Bush moved to Florida and started preparing his election campaign. The Democrats ran Buddy McKay, who was an asshole, and Bush won. So George W.'s brother got into position to cover his ass years ago.
I voted right after work. Brought Elayna with me to show her the electoral process. And I went right home and turned on the TV to follow the news, and I, too, noticed the attitude Moore notes below:
"The one moment from the election that I will never forget came earlier in the evening, after the networks had first - correctly - predicted the state of Florida for Gore. The cameras cut to a hotel room in Texas. There sat George W. with his father, the former president, and his mother, Barbara. The old man appeared cool as a cucumber, even though it looked like curtains for Sonny. A reporter asked young Bush what he thought about the outcome. "I'm not...conceding anything in Florida," Junior piped up..."I know you've all the projections, but people are actually counting the votes... The networks called this thing awfully earlier and the people are actually counting the votes have different perspective so..." It was an odd moment in that crazy night of election result coverage. The Bushes, with their relaxed smiles, looked like a family of cats that had just wolfed down a bunch of canaries - as if they knew something we didn't. They did. They knew Jeb and Katherine had done their jobs months earlier."
By "done their job," Moore means the disenfranchisement of minority voters, which I've set forth below. All I knew was that their confidence in the face of the predictions was...odd. And then a local news report came in - 6 ballot boxes from Pembroke Pines, Florida, had turned up missing. Pembroke Pines - *my* town - which had been predicted 96% Gore/Lieberman.
Hm.
Over the next few days, I heard about many ballot boxes gone missing, or just never being picked up. From Liberty City, an overwhelmingly black and Democratic inner-city area. From King's Point, a mostly-Jewish retirement community. Votes that were never counted. And don't get me started on Palm Beach County...
"Much has been made of the "butterfly ballot", which made it easy to vote for the wrong person because candidates' names and punch holes were crammed unevenly onto facing pages. The media went out of its way to point out tat the ballot was designed by one of the county's election commissioners, a Democrat... had anyone bothered to check, they would have discovered that... the ballot's designer, Theresa LePore, had actually been a registered Republican. She switched her affiliation to Democrat in 1996; then, just three months after Bush seized office, she resigned as a Democrat and switched her voter registration to Independent...Thus, the Palm Beach Post estimates that more than 3,000 voters, mostly elederly and Jewish, who thought they were voting for Al Gore ended up punching the wrong hole - for Pat Buchanan. Even Buchanan went to TV to declare that no way...did those Jewish voters vote for him."
I saw this ballot printed in the papers prior to the election. Have you seen it? It *is* confusing, and not only that, the directions were contradictory - they stated that you should punch the hole to the right of the candidate you wished to vote for. Well, thanks to the design of the ballot, half of the holes were on the *left* - and it was difficult even for me to match the candidate's name to the appropriate hole. Imagine the difficulty for the elderly voters of Palm Beach, who did their best to punch the hole to the right of Gore - and ended up with Buchanan.
Moore on the disenfranchisement of minority voters:
"In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris...who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign chairwoman *and* the Florida Secretary of State in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did this with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W.'s brother Jeb Bush - whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it...a felony in its own right."
"Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats - and sure enough, Al Gore received the votes of more than 90% of them on November 7, 2000. That is, 90% of those who were *allowed* to vote. In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the State of Florida, Bush, Harris, and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, they also removed thousands of black citizens *who had never committed a crime in their lives* - along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misdemeanors. How did this happen? Harris's office told Database - a firm with strong Republican ties - to cast as wide a net as possible to get rid of these voters. Her minions instructed the company to include even people with "similar" names to those of the actual felons... the same birth dates, or similar Social Security numbers...And before long, 173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. In Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, 66% of the voters who were removed were black. In Tampa's county, 54% of those who would be denied the right to vote... were black. But culling names from Florida's records alone was not enough for Harris and her department. 8,000 additional Floridians were thrown off the voting rolls because Database used a false list provided by another state, a state which claimed that all the names on the list were former convicted felons who had since moved to Florida. It turns out the felons on the list had served their time and had their voting privileges reinstated. And there were others on the list who had committed only misdemeanors - such as parking violations or littering. What state was it that offered Jeb and George a helping hand by sending this bogus list to Florida? *Texas*."
"This assault on the voting rights of minorities was so widespread in Florida that it even affected people like Linda Howell. Linda received a letter informing her that she was a felon - and therefore advising her not to bother showing up on Election Day, because she would be barred from voting. The only problem was, Linda Howell wasn't a felon - in fact, she was the elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida!"
"In a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police to block anyone on Katherine and Jeb's "felons list" from voting. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens looking to exercise their consitutional right to vote, mostly in black and Hispanic communities, were sent away - and threatened with arrest if they protested. George W. Bush would officially be credited with receiving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. Is it safe to assume that the thousands of registered black and Hispanic voters barred from the polls might have made the difference if they had been allowed to vote - and cost Bush the election? Without a doubt."
I don't have first-hand information on the minority-voters thing - I only heard that it happened, I didn't see it happen; I voted in a white Jewish area. They didn't blockade us or pull us over on mocked-up traffic violations to delay us, they just "lost" our ballot boxes. :)
Read the whole book, there's more to piss you off. But my experience alone made it totally clear that the Bush family stole this election. I didn't vote for him. Florida didn't vote for him. The country DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM.
And now Time and Newsweek are reporting that the government had advance notice of 9/11. When this was first theorized, I didn't want to believe it. I said that no one would go that far, would sacrifice all of those lives, to bolster their approval ratings (approval ratings *always* go up in wartime. Always. It is a certainty like death and taxes). But now... now that we have a Department of Homeland Security, now that our constitutional rights and civil liberties are being quietly removed, now that shit like what happened at OSU (see the link in my "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" post) is happening *and not even getting major media coverage*... I'm not so sure.
So. There you have it.
no subject
And you know I agree with the rest of what you said, too.
no subject
None of this stuff is new, it's just a new tack in the war on rights. It used to be the war on some drugs, now it's the war on terrorism. Some of it was hidden in the war on kiddy porn. Some of it in the quest for "gun control". Some of our rights went away in the name of politcal correctness. Some of it it other politicaly happy labels, but the war on terrorism is nothing new.
As for the election, it was too close to call. Both parties tried to steal it, the media skewed it, the process is screwed up, and almost no one votes anyway. So we looked at the flaws in the system more cloesely in florida this time and we were shocked to find (if we were niave) that the system is screwed up. It's not about convincing anyone to vote for your guy in this country, it's getting the people who support your candidate to vote, and those who support the other guy to stay home. I wonder what our elections would be like if we required everyone to vote? Before anyone says thats unworkable, look at the countries that do it....
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Re:
yay for Broward Cty!
Re: yay for Broward Cty!
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