"Determining the Intent of the Florida Voters"
  12/01/2000

The fighting and suing in Florida continues to worsen with each passing day. I originally wrote this column on November 29, and updated it on December 1, following another TV circus. In fact, O.J. Simpson was even in the news because of this chase. Unlike the motorcade that chased Simpson years ago on the L.A. highway, this motorcade was assigned to provide an escort for a rented yellow truck carrying thousands of ballots from Miami to Tallahassee.

As most everyone in America is now aware, Vice President Al Gore, who is also the still-Democratic presidential candidate, is demanding manual recounts of about 10,000 votes from the South Florida community. On the flipside, Texas Governor George W. Bush, the still-Republican presidential candidate, is demanding an end to the entire election fiasco.

You see, I'm calling Bush the still-Republican candidate because Al Gore conceded the presidential race to Bush on November 7 - that means Gore dropped out of the race because he knew that he'd been beaten - he quit. A short while later, Gore un-conceded - un-quit. I never knew you could renege in anything in life once you said you quit. Obviously Gore is showing Americans that he can, and will, do anything in his quest to become President of the United States - the ultimate political title.

The dilemma facing the nation - not just Florida - is that someone needs to be ready to raise their right hand on January 20, 2001 and take an oath of office as President of the United States. That person, at least for now, is Bush, who has been busying himself with assembling his cabinet and advisors over the past few days - including calling in Colin Powell, in a long expected move.

Bush is the only one who is now qualified to be moving forward with transition planning. That planning would involve naming cabinet official and other advisors. That team would also be responsible for working closely with the out-going Clinton administration, ensuring that information on behind-the-scene details on key issues is transferred to the in-coming Bush administration. That also means daily FBI and CIA briefings will soon begin for Bush's top-level advisors, including Powell.

Why is Bush the only one qualified to be naming people to his transition team, as well as making administration appointments? That's simple: Florida's Electoral College votes were all handed to Bush on November 26, which made Bush the winner of the election. 

As the fights continue - in several courts - county, circuit, and in the Florida Supreme Court - as well as in the U.S. Supreme Court - things are becoming clear to me. Al Gore probably would be the official winner in the election - if only the votes he wants recounted are recounted.

Gore's legal team is too adamant in their assertions of knowing Gore had enough votes to win the election in Miami. If his legal team of hyenas is so gung-ho and all-knowing that Gore had enough votes to win the election - without explaining **how** they have that knowledge, then yes, I suspect Gore would be the winner - by a wide margin - should the votes be manually recounted. There are two points to this statement of mine, though.

First, if Gore's team is so certain he had more than enough votes in Miami-Dade to win the popular votes, which would then have resulted in him being awarded Electoral College voted, then things are clear. Crystal clear. Gore had the votes tampered with, ensuring his win. In plain words, Gore's team planted votes. 

Second, for Gore's team to demand recounts - under Florida law - they have to produce credible evidence that shows tampering occurred, which kept votes for Gore from being counted. So far, in all the arguments Gore's team has made to each court - in Florida, as well as to the U.S. Supreme Court - no evidence of this nature has been presented. Why? Because there isn't any, would be my guess.

Another aspect of this entire fiasco is Gore's demand for "another recount." Every time you turn around, the Gore team wants a new recount - and even a recount of the recount. This is just incredulous, but it also shows one tactic being employed by Gore's people to ensure he wins the election.

To date, the ballots in question, as well as some not in question, have been run through an electronic counting machine anywhere from twice to four times. Perhaps some ballots have been run through the machines more than four times. In addition to the machine counting, the ballots were then subjected to picking, pawing, poking, feeling, touching, and flipping and snapping on tabletops - much in the same way you handle playing cards - and then they have been gather up into stacks and placed back into their metal boxes for storage. In Miami, however, this last packing was to ship them up to Tallahassee to possibly be examined - yet again - by hand.

During some of the manual recounts, allegations flew about chads being on the floor and tables during counting. That's wrong. If even one chad is found to fall from the ballots now, the stack of ballots the chad fell from - or the ballot, if it can be positively identified - needs to be disqualified from counting. Chads, which are rectangular pieces of cardstock that should have been punched out of the ballot on Election Day, and fallen free on Election Day, as well, should not be seen during counting -- especially not this late in the counting. If there are chads falling from the ballots, it's because the ballots are being handled too much and the ballots are now being adulterated by all the recounting.

It's interesting to note that CNN conducted a study - using 100 Florida ballots. The purpose of the study was to determine how often they could produce ballots with hanging chads, dimpled chads, or pregnant chads.

The results of the CNN study demonstrated that the only way to produce a pregnant chad was to wet a finger, wipe it on the ballot, let it air dry, and viola! - a pregnant chad. Amazing! 

During the Palm Beach recount, an election official attempted to produce pregnant and hanging chads. That test found that hanging chads were produced when several ballots are punched simultaneously.

What do the results of these two tests show, in my opinion? It shows there very well could have been fraud in the election process - and it seems all in Gore's favor. Isn't that interesting, especially in light of unsubstantiated arguments from his legal team that they know Gore would have enough votes to claim the popular vote in Florida? It's real interesting to me. It confirms my suspicion that Al's folks have tampered with the presidential election.

Arguments from Gore supporters are that many people mispunched their ballots. Would the true number of people - all in Miami - who mispunched their ballots - total up to 10,000 people? Even if that many people did mispunch their ballot - or even double-punch their ballots - and fail to mention it to an Election judge before leaving the polling place - that still amounts to less than 1.7 percent of the total votes cast in Miami - is insignificant. Sure, they are votes, but they are improper?

When it comes time to count the votes cast in any election, the time will come, at the close of the day, to tabulate the votes. It's that tabulation - the vote counting - that is the key part of Election night. Machines have been designed to count votes for every specific type of ballot used. The machines don't see names on a ballot. The machines count holes. The machine could care less if the hole represented Gooley Fadooley or Horatio Hacker. The machine isn't going to get weak in the knees - or the wallet - should someone offer $500 or more to not count votes for Horatio Hacker. The machine could care less about Horatio Hacker. The machine's been programmed to run a specific task - count all holes on a piece of paper. The machine will do that, without bias, mind you. The machine isn't Republican, Democrat, or a member of the Communist party. The machine doesn't even know what it's doing. The machine, in fact, isn't human. It has no emotion. It has no thoughts, no rationalizations, and no argument. It will perform its function and end the task - with arguing that two votes for Fadooley weren't counted because of a pregnant chad. 

Did you watch any of the televised hand counting in Florida? It was pathetic. 

I haven't heard any Democrats - voter, candidate, legal team member, or other - carry on about any of the voting machines being defective. If they did start to clamor about defective machines, the obvious question would then be, "Why recount a few of the areas rather than the entire county?" Of course, that's an argument that Gore's attorney, David Boies laid to rest with his simple statement: "We are contesting the results, and we can pick and choose which ballots we want recounted." 

To see where politics comes into play during the hand recounts, all you have to do is watch some of the footage from the recounts. One judge says, "No discernable vote," and another judge says there is some kind of mark indicating the voter wanted to vote for a specific candidate.

What is a "discernable vote," exactly? Well, meaning I never served as an election judge, my view would be skewed. My view would be based on making decisions on black-and-white issues. My view would be to look at a ballot and decide, while looking at the card, what the voter wanted to do. 

Sounds pretty much like what was going on in Florida, right? Wrong. When you look at a ballot, the little rectangular blocks are either punched out or they are not. My view of a vote being cast is if the block, you know, the chad - is gone. If it is dimpled, well, sorry, that's not a vote. If you went into an election booth, cast your vote, and your vote wasn't counted because the chad for your candidate wasn't punched out of the card, that's just too bad. It takes about six ounces of pressure to punch out a chad. Six ounces. My children, at birth, could have cast a vote. My dead grandmother, when she was in the nursing home dying in 1983 could have punched out a chad on the ballot. That's my standard.

There's another group of people in Florida that worry me. Those people are the ones who claim to have voted for the "wrong" candidate. That's just too bad, folks. You had you chance to review a sample of the ballot. You could have asked questions, but you chose to vote without clarification.

There's a maxim that's reinforced in the U.S. Army. It says, "The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked." Well, guess what, folks? You truly do have a stupid question. Perhaps the question wasn't stupid. Maybe, instead, it's the voter who gets to claim the title of stupid - for plain stupidity.

Should another recount be ordered, which I hope isn't the case, a clear and consistent pattern for counting the votes needs to be defined by the courts. Anything less than a fully punched hole on an election ballot should be declared a non-vote at this point. The ballots have been so bastardized by all the handling, counting, recount, manual counts, shuffling, stacking, and recounting again, that any loose chads have had plenty of time to be displaced. Should a chad fall off a ballot during a new recount, that ballot ought be disqualified entirely, as it cannot be determined what the original intent of the voter was, as a chad fell out of it's fragile place on the ballot card.

Ballot cards, you see, aren't meant to take the constant abuse they've been receiving. Ballots are designed to endure very little handling. The life of a ballot is supposed to be simple. They are first given to a voter, then inserted into a ballot machine, and then removed and placed into its envelope. Later that evening, the ballots are removed from the envelopes, shuffled, fanned out to remove any loose or hanging chads, and then inserted into the voter counter. The machine then counts all the holes on the ballot. Simple. The ballot's then spend the rest of their days in a locked box. No more handling for those cards. 

Voting isn't a complicated process. You go in, read the candidate names, find the person's name for which you want to vote, cast the vote, and go home. Fairly simple, right? Well, if you want to complicate things, watch the news and find out who the winner is, even though no one is saying he's the winner. Just because Bush received more than the needed 270 Electoral College votes, and just because the state of Florida has declared Bush the winner of its 25 Electoral College votes, and just because all the votes needed to be elected president in these United States were received by Bush doesn't mean a thing. You see, the institution apparently in charge of the election now, the media, has failed to hail the new president-elect, which is wrong.

My conclusion: If a 67-year-old Floridian woman can go into a bingo hall and play more than one bingo card at a time, everyone in Florida should be able to understand a simple ballot.

  - by Dave Jackson (Scoop0901)