Post by Just Here on Aug 24, 2004 12:56:03 GMT -5
In a closed thread Inatent posted:
This is the message that most people took away fron the investigation. Anyone who bothered to read a little more than the headlines would have found the following:
"A revision of Florida's election code in the 1970s calls for county officials to inspect any 'damaged or defective' ballot that cannot be tabulated by machine. In 1998, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that 'defective' includes a ballot 'marked in a manner such that it cannot be read by a scanner.'"
This requirement does not apply to recounts following legal challenges filed by one candidate or the other. It applies to the procedure election officials must follow ON ELECTION DAY as they count the votes. In plain English: if a counting machine spits out a ballot, election officials are required to examine it to determine the intent of the voter.
As legal questions go, this one isn't ambiguous. A "scanner" is the optical reader used to tally the SAT-style optical ballots. According to the Herald, Gore gained 319 votes from optical ballots - more than enough to overcome Bush's 154 vote lead as determined by the Florida Supreme Court. If the "scanner" principle is extended to punch-card counters - which is perfectly obvious as a matter of legal analysis - then Gore gains another 1,004 votes.
So why didn't county officials manually count these machine-unreadable ballots on election day, as the law requires?
Because they simply ignored the law, with the blessing of Republican election officials.
As to the election officials being democrats I think Katherine Harris was the one pulling the strings. As time has shown she will do anything for Bush. Her latest effort was a story about a plot to blow up a power grid.
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/05/politics/main634122.shtml
"She told the audience that while in the Midwest recently, the mayor of Carmel told her how a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested and hundreds of pounds of explosives were found in his home.
"He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid," she said, according to the newspaper.
City officials in Carmel said they know of no such plot.
"We're aware of the comments we read in the paper," said Tim Green, assistant chief of police in Carmel, a town about 10 miles north of Indianapolis. "We're not aware of any plans to blow up Carmel's power grid."
Nancy Heck, a spokeswoman for Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, said, "The mayor never talked to Katherine Harris. They never had that conversation."
So did she lie or leak classified information in her effort to support Bush?
And just exactly what did George W. Bush do to "fix" the election? At least four independent (and somewhat hostile) organizations tried to find some error in the results and could not do so.
inatent
inatent
"A revision of Florida's election code in the 1970s calls for county officials to inspect any 'damaged or defective' ballot that cannot be tabulated by machine. In 1998, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that 'defective' includes a ballot 'marked in a manner such that it cannot be read by a scanner.'"
This requirement does not apply to recounts following legal challenges filed by one candidate or the other. It applies to the procedure election officials must follow ON ELECTION DAY as they count the votes. In plain English: if a counting machine spits out a ballot, election officials are required to examine it to determine the intent of the voter.
As legal questions go, this one isn't ambiguous. A "scanner" is the optical reader used to tally the SAT-style optical ballots. According to the Herald, Gore gained 319 votes from optical ballots - more than enough to overcome Bush's 154 vote lead as determined by the Florida Supreme Court. If the "scanner" principle is extended to punch-card counters - which is perfectly obvious as a matter of legal analysis - then Gore gains another 1,004 votes.
So why didn't county officials manually count these machine-unreadable ballots on election day, as the law requires?
Because they simply ignored the law, with the blessing of Republican election officials.
As to the election officials being democrats I think Katherine Harris was the one pulling the strings. As time has shown she will do anything for Bush. Her latest effort was a story about a plot to blow up a power grid.
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/05/politics/main634122.shtml
"She told the audience that while in the Midwest recently, the mayor of Carmel told her how a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested and hundreds of pounds of explosives were found in his home.
"He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid," she said, according to the newspaper.
City officials in Carmel said they know of no such plot.
"We're aware of the comments we read in the paper," said Tim Green, assistant chief of police in Carmel, a town about 10 miles north of Indianapolis. "We're not aware of any plans to blow up Carmel's power grid."
Nancy Heck, a spokeswoman for Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, said, "The mayor never talked to Katherine Harris. They never had that conversation."
So did she lie or leak classified information in her effort to support Bush?