posted:: 11-09-00 12:56 PM ET (US)        

What is your opinion of the electoral college system? Does it work?

There have been concerns over the vote in Palm Beach Florida. Should there be a revote there?

Will this election likely be decided by the people or the lawyers?

posted 11-10-00 12:58 PM ET (US)            

I'm gonna have to dig out a copy of the Constitution this weekend to relearn some of the tid-bits from civics classes.

posted 11-10-00 04:06 PM ET (US)            

No revote should be allowed. You can not vote for an election after the fact. We have laws and they should be enforced. It is not uncommon for mistakes to be made. If we recounted every state we would probably get different results.

posted 11-12-00 02:31 PM ET (US)            

Equally important and destructive is trying to change the 200+ year process. The electoral college in my estimation was one of the saving points of this election. The number of problems in this election was probably not any higher than any other election. If that is so, can you imagine the magnitude of the problem of trying to do recounts across the country? Every precinct would now be in question? Every small problem blown out of proportion. Not having the electoral college system in place would have been a national disaster for this election.

posted 11-14-00 10:33 AM ET (US)            

*sigh*

posted 11-15-00 09:57 AM ET (US)            

Trust (he meant his party, not the people);

States' Rights (chose federal court over state court):

Dignity and integrity (he has set loose the same rabid dogs he used against McCain in the primary);

Rule of law (laws apply to his opponent, not him).

Al Gore said, "I will fight for you!" But if he gives up fighting for a Florida recount , we'll know he didn't mean what he said either.

This election is not about their individual futures, it’s about us -- our future. Al Gore cannot and should not give up fighting for the legal recount. He should not take the "high ground" so as to position himself for a run in 2004. Conceding will be an act of selfishness, not selflessness. We need him to fight for the issues this country cares about.

posted 11-18-00 08:39 AM ET (US)            

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Alexander Tyler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomenon:

1. Imagine that we read of an election occuring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (cia).

2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a districtheavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5. Imagine that that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

posted 11-20-00 08:25 AM ET (US)            

If we don't remember history we are doomed to repeat it. Do you remember Watergate, Filegate, Travelgate, and all the other Republican inspired gates? Do you remember they all turned out to be lies?

The following is how millions are led to believe the lies:

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, because the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily decieved than they are consciously and intentionally bad.

The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them more easy victims of a big lie than a small one, because they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.

Such a form of lying would never enter their heads. They would never credit others with the possibility of such great impudence as the complete reversal of facts. Even explanations would long leave them in doubt and hesitation, and any trifling reason would dispose them to accept a thing as true.

Something therefore always remains and sticks from the most imprudent of lies, a fact which all bodies and individuals concerned in the art of lying in this world know only too well, and therefore they stop at nothing to achieve this end.

~ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

posted 11-21-00 12:02 PM ET (US)            

Bush/Cheney is an illegal ticket...both are residents of Texas. Our 12th Amendment:"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for president and vice president, one of whom at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves."

Since Dick Cheney IS a Texas resident -- drivers license, primary residence, recent employment at Haliburton, property taxes, and income taxes listing him as such -- the Texas Electors cannot legally give him their vote...they all know he lives in Texas, not Wyoming (he may have registered to vote in Wyo. in July, but he isn't legally able to apply for as much as a fishing or hunting license for a full year after he makes the state his PRIMARY residence).

If anyone in Congress decides the Constitution is worth upholding, they will have to pick someone else to be V-P.

posted 11-21-00 03:14 PM ET (US)            

Democrats have not followed the law in this election what so ever. What they have done to this country is horrid. It is makes our country look dumb. As far as the military votes go, the democrats did not want to count them. Now the heat is getting extremely hot in the kitchen and they are having a change of heart. I know democrats including family members who can not wait to change their party because of the disgrace this hand counting nonsense has caused. Gore sounds like a small child that cries when they have lost a game and throws it across the room. There are no standards in this hand count scheme and if you watch any of it on t.v. you would see what a circus it all is. One democrat counsel member has even admitted that the people counting are for Gore, and if there is a dimple on number 5 they want to count it but if there is a dimple on number 3 which belongs to Bush then they don't want to count it. He stated that this was a big problem and he was doing his best to instruct counters that they cannot have one standard for one candidate and a different set for the other, but they are still doing it. This came straight from his mouth, I happened to be watching at the time. Again I say if you don't like laws then work to change them for the next election, but to change things during an election is aboslutely absurb.

The only one trying to pull the wool over our eyes is Mr. Gore and his team. He wants to keep counting until he gets the numbers he thinks he should have. He was not reaching those numbers yesterday so they again changed the directions of which ones to count. Come on!

And just a reminder. We are not a total democracy, We are a Republic. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to THE REPUBLIC for which it stands, one nation UNDER GOD,with liberty and justice for all.
Of course most schools ar not repeating the pledge any longer because it has the word God in it but that is another fight.

As I said before we have check and balances to ensure that our system works. Our fore fathers knew how people were and could be including cheating and schemes. To change things in mid stream is down right criminal.

posted 11-21-00 04:48 PM ET (US)            

Can't speak for others, but... I'm not a fan, but if the sovereign people of the Great State of New York want her, who are we to argue. After watching the cry baby antics of Fazio-bear, I can understand why Hillary won in a landslide.

And it's spelled "Hillary"

>One democrat counsel member has even admitted that the people counting are for Gore

It's spelled "council", but whatever...it's another lie. There is 1 Dem and 1 republican counting each vote.

>The democrats circulated the five page letter on disqualify the military votes.

Another lie. The memo covered the applicable law on accepting absentee ballots in general. You did want all voting to be in accordance with the law didn't you? The last report I heard 6 (yes that's six) military ballots had been preliminarily rejected for postmark errors. That's out of thousands of absentee ballots.

All the lies, cheap shots and innuendo are just more examples of how the paranoid right-wing is its own worst enemy, and will self-destruct in the face of victory.

posted 11-22-00 09:39 AM ET (US)            

I'm originally from upstate NY, and as with any state it is the governor who "runs" state business. Sen. Hillary Clinton represents the people of the state in the U.S. Congress.

She was elected because she listened to the people and learned what their concerns are now and what they've been in the past...we were always pretty much ignored by those from the city and in Albany. Unemployment is widespread there because upstate areas were never promoted for new business, citizens have to leave the state to find decent paying jobs, tourism isn't pushed for the area even though the central and western parts of the state have much to offer...the list goes on and on.

Lazio, and the majority of his cronies -- Republican and Democrat alike -- never gave a damn about upstaters until the campaign.

posted 11-22-00 09:44 AM ET (US)            

Again,I say, if you want to change the rules you do so for the next time around. You do not change the rules after the fact.

posted 11-25-00 12:21 PM ET (US)            

Playing With Fire
By ANTHONY LEWIS

However this presidential conflict ends in the Supreme Court of the United States, it has taken one dangerous turn: the excoriation of the Florida Supreme Court by George W. Bush and his lawyer, James A. Baker III.

When the court decided on the night of Nov. 21 that hand counting of ballots could continue in three Florida counties, Mr. Baker called the decision a "judicial fiat" that "invented a new system for counting the election results." He suggested that the State Legislature would act to overrule the court.

The next day Governor Bush said the court had "usurp[ed] the authority of Florida's election officials." The court "cloaked its ruling in legalistic language," he said. "But make no mistake, the court rewrote the law."

Those menacing words — usurpation, judicial fiat — recalled a dark episode in our recent history. They were exactly the words used by George C. Wallace and other Southern governors in defying court orders to end racial segregation.

Why do the words matter? Because willingness to abide by decisions of the courts has been an essential element in holding this great, diverse, disputatious country together.

When a court speaks, presidents accept. Harry Truman was unhappy but unquestioningly obeyed when the Supreme Court said he had exceeded his powers in seizing the nation's steel mills to prevent a strike during the Korean War. Richard Nixon obeyed the order to turn over the incriminating Watergate tapes that drove him from the presidency.

So it is dangerous business when a man who would be president tries to delegitimize a court. And it is despicable when a lawyer as senior and powerful as Jim Baker denounces a judicial decision against him and says it will be muscled in the Legislature.

Would we prefer to have legal disputes settled by politicians rather than judges? Would it be more legitimate for this dispute to be decided by a Republican Legislature and a Republican governor who is the candidate's brother?

Long ago this country decided that the third branch of government, the judiciary, was the right place to resolve questions about the law. In 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall put it: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."
In this case the Florida Supreme Court followed well-established, traditional methods. There was a conflict between two sets of state statutes: one setting times for certifying election results, the other allowing manual recounts that could not be completed within those times. The court resolved the conflict by allowing a limited extension of time to complete the recounts. It was a minimalist decision, going no further than needed to make coherent sense of the statutory provisions.

Even before the decision, the Bush camp and its supporters tried to delegitimize the Florida Supreme Court. Almost all its members, they noted, had been appointed by previous Democratic governors. But anyone who watched the argument or read the exchanges could see that the judges were struggling without partisanship to make sense of the law — as judges do.

This country has all kinds of elections that are decided on hand recounts. Just now a seat in the Texas Legislature was decided after a recount that considered dimpled chads — under a state law, signed by Governor Bush, that says counters should determine the "intent of the voter."

But Governor Bush and his people have acted as if hand counts in Florida were an affront to decency. There has been a sense of Bush entitlement: "Unless I win, it's improper."

Al Gore has every reason to feel morally secure in pressing the recounts. He had more popular votes nationally than Mr. Bush. Probably at least 30,000 Floridians who voted preferred him but accidentally spoiled their ballots. Officials in Miami-Dade County called off their recount after they felt menaced by a crowd of angry Cuban-Americans and Republican operatives.

posted 11-27-00 07:25 PM ET (US)            

2. Repeated anecdotal evidence suggests that in many instances ballots would simply not align properly, or easily---this is not merely 20k stupid people not following instructions---

in a 'backward' state like KY, I can walk away KNOWING that my ballot will be properly tabulated-- if it's bogus, it simply wont be accepted, and I'll have a chance to fix it or redo it---what the H__l 's going on it FLA???

posted 12-03-00 07:33 PM ET (US)            

"Card punching devices of the aforesaid type commonly include a punch
board or die comprising parallel strips of thin, resilient material
that are adapted to provide a firm support for the main body of the
card and to yield wherever necessary to permit the passage of a chip
of card material as the same is pushed out of the card and between
adjacent strips by the punching tool. When such a punch board or die
is utilized, precautions must be taken to insure that all of the
chips punched from the card are expelled from between the resilient
die strips and that none of these chips will remain caught in the
grip of the tightly spaced resilient strips after the punching tool
is withdrawn. If chips are permitted to accumulate between the
resilient strips, this can interfere with the punching operations,
and occasionally it has been observed that a partially punched chip
has been left clinging to a card after the punch was withdrawn,
because the card-supporting surface of the punch board had become so
clogged with chips as to prevent a clean punching operation.
Incompletely punched cards can cause serious errors to occur in data
processing operations utilizing such cards."

posted 12-08-00 04:08 PM ET (US)            

The Center for Public Integrity did some FOIA research and discovered that W repeatedly missed federally mandated deadlines for filing with the SEC, showing he was buying or selling stock when he was a director of Harken Energy Corp. He concealed transactions a normal shareholder uses as an essential indicator of a company's soundness. The FOIA documents show W was notified at least twice during the month he sold his stock that Harken was failing financially. Between the time he became a board member of Harken and the beginning of the SEC probe, he made four transactions, failing to report them immediately as required by law:

November 1986 -- W bought 212,152 shares in Harken - reported 17 weeks late.

December 1986 -- bought 80,000 Harken shares - reported 15 weeks late

June 1989 -- bought 25,000 shares - reported 15 weeks late

June 22, 1990 -- sold more than 200,000 Harken shares, receiving $850,000 only months before the stocks lost 75% of it's value. He didn't file with the SEC for eight months.

W also dumped MidAmerica Waste System, Greenwich Financial Corp., and United Bank stocks at about the same time. He explained his selling spree as a way to pay off a loan he'd taken in order to buy into the Texas Rangers.

How does a man who is a Harvard Business School graduate, serving on Harken's internal audit committee claim ignorance of his company being on the verge of bankruptcy? W has been quoted as saying he had no knowledge of that, and claims he filed on time but the SEC must have misplaced his files.

He wasn't fined or jailed.

SEC Chairman: Richard Breeden -- G.H.W. Bush's friend

General Counsel: John Dory -- once G.H.W Bush's private attorney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1986 -- W and his partners bought the Rangers. They then persuaded the city of Arlington and the Texas legislature to create the Arlington Sports Facilities Development Authority, a pseudo-governmental body which would have the power to condemn land surrounding the proposed stadium site. 270 acres of privately owned property were selected. Only 17 acres were needed for the stadium, the rest would be used for parking, restaurants, office towers, and shops, which would produce more income for the partners.

Some of the landowners sold almost immediately, but three owners refused to sell their land. The Bush group warned them that if they didn't sell, the group would use the Sports Authority to invoke the power of eminent domain to clear them from their land, condemning the property and seizing it for public use. Law suits followed, with the Bush group claiming they were justified because this would benefit the city. A state judge ruled that the authority had properly exercised its power, but said the prices offered to the landowners had been well below market value.

To date, the stadium has not had the promised "significant financial rewards" promised to the citizens of Arlington.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, he wants votes counted if are favorable to the governor brother of a governor whose state has been historically rife with voting irregularities and fraud. A state where you can be turned away from the voting booth because your skin isn't white or your name can be added to a "cleanse" list.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The "uniter" allows mob rule (Miami-Dade) and jokes about the order to "shut it down." He also allows his most ardent supporters to denigrate the courts, an institution he claims to believe in.

He allows his attack dogs to malign the integrity of Judge Nikki Clark prior to her hearing the Seminole County case.

He accepts votes, which had been previously thrown out and then added to the total just prior to the second certification.

He and his supporters believe character assassination of anyone who gets in the way is justifiable.

The list goes on and on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

According to the 12th Amendment, Texas cannot legally cast electoral votes for both Bush and Cheney...Cheney is, and has been, a resident of Texas for the last five years. He lived there throughout the campaign and has only recently put his Texas house up for sale. Wyoming does not recognize anyone as a permanent resident for a full year after they make the state their primary residence. So, allowing him to vote there this year means he cast an illegal vote in the presidential race (this is a man who admits he has not voted in years). But that doesn't seem to bother either of them or the Republican judges who threw out the cases. More cases are pending against Cheney, one is currently on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court...where it will most likely be avoided due to the fact that many of the Supremes were appointed by Republican presidents.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If all of the above doesn't remind people of certain warning signals seen in the past, then they weren't paying any attention during history class. If he wins the White House, we could very well be entering into a period of our own version of fascism.

The warning signs to date:

posted 12-11-00 03:39 PM ET (US)            

Studio, there is no evidence that anyone was turned away from voting due to the color of their skin. This statement really gets under mine. Jessie Jackson and his crew do nothing but continually divide this nation on false accusations, instead of doing something positive of bringing it together.

I have worked as an election offical, and you would not believe the people that try to vote and that for one reason or the other cannot. It is the duty of election officals prior to the election to go through their records and purge names of deceased people, along with people that have moved,etc.

What some voters fail to realize is, if they have moved it is their responsibility to re-register with their new address. They have been purged off the list, or should have been purged. You cannot vote in you old precinct if you have moved. If people voted on a consisted basis they would know if they were registered properly. Everybody always wants to blame someone or something else instead of taking personal responsibility.

All that rift raft you site sounds to me like you are in total desperation. If your guy can't win then try to discredit the winner as much as you can, again we need to get on with it and start healing this nation.

If you even watched one presidential debate you would know that your guy, G has the biggest record of NON truths this country has ever seen.

Why is it so hard to understand, that the rules do not change after the fact?

Why is it a deminstration when democrats protest and it is called a mob when republicans protest? Everything the protesters did , "the Mob", where within their rights and within the law. No charges were filed against anyone for doing anything that they were not suppose to do. All officals including the canvasing board publicly stated that neither were they intimidated nor effected by any protesting that went on.

posted 12-12-00 11:44 AM ET (US)            

So what if someone intended to vote one way and then voted another. It is their responsibility to make sure that they do it correctly, and yes I would say that ,no matter who the dimple, pimple, hanging or dangling chad was for. I do not believe that the people of Florida are stupid. I believe that there were a lot of people that do not vote on a regular basis and perhaps they were confussed. But that they should have ask for help and if they messed up their ballot then it was their responsibility to get a new one. We have to be accountable for our actions. That is one problem we have in this country now, no one wants to be accountable for what they do.
The new media should not have called the state of Florida until all polls were closed, period! We can blame most of this nonsense on them for being so irresponsible.
Predictions are just that, they are not full proof and neither are exit polls.
Bush being the calm man that he is, simply stated that he felt that it was to early for the stations to put Florida in Gore's column because the poles were still open, and a majority of the poles that were still open were heavy republican counties. Gore called Bush to concede after all poles were closed and counted and the state of Forida went into Bush's column.
The butterfly ballot was not an illegal design and it was prepared and approved by democrats.

Handcounts- not only are there no standards from county to county but from table to table. How honest and fair is that?
Dimple, pimple, hanging, dangling, pregnant chads. How can anyone determine what someone else intended to think? How scary that so many people think we can decide an election on mind reading. There are many people that did not vote for either canidate on purpose but voted for other races. But Gore's team wants someone to decide how that undervote should be counted and if they voted for democrats else where on they ballot then surely they INTENDED to vote for Mr. Gore. How crazy is that. It's insane.
Katherine Harris has done a wonderful job. She has been scrutinized and put under a microscope. She has followed the letter of the law to the letter and sould be applauded.

Everything this far you've listed is nothing but bad sportsmanship. Bush has won according to the law. This country is based on law and order. This should have never gone this far. Gore should concede immediately - again, and we should get on with the business at hand.

posted 12-13-00 01:08 AM ET (US)            

The only good thing to come out of this election is that people will demand better more accurate ways to vote and have that vote counted. Had that been in place in the great State of Florida - Gore would be President.

What a shame to win this way.

posted 12-13-00 10:52 AM ET (US)            

Nobody has to keep explaining that the president isn't elected by popular vote, we all know that. But there is something to be said for intent and truth.

posted 12-14-00 02:18 PM ET (US)            

Your friend,

posted 12-15-00 04:33 PM ET (US)            

A LAYMAN'S GUIDE TO THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IN BUSH V. GORE
by Mark H. Levine, Attorney at Law.

Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me?

A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got the most votes.

Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right?

A: Right.

Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal?

A: Oh no. Six of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the hand-counts were legal and should be done.

Q: Oh. So the justices did not believe that the hand-counts would find any legal ballots?

A. Nope. Five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine justices agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the voter." So there are legal votes that should be counted but can't be.

Q: Oh. Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't conservatives love that?

A: Generally yes. These five justices, in the past few years, have held that the federal government has no business telling a sovereign state university it can't steal trade secrets just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does the federal government have any business telling a state that it should bar guns in schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection clause to force states to take measures to stop violence against women.

Q: Is there an exception in this case?

A: Yes, the Gore exception. States have no rights to have their own state
elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This decision is limited to only this situation.

Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating.

A: Nope. They held "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, or the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities."

Q: What complexities?

A: They don't say.

Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes can't be counted because the Florida Supreme Court "changed the rules of the election after it was held." Right?

A. Dead wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme Court did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court found the failure of the Florida Court to change the rules was wrong.

Q: Huh?

A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for not adopting a clearer standard.

Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's law after the election.

A: Right.

Q: So what's the problem?

A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining what is a legal vote"

Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law.

A: Right.

Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been overturned.

A: Right. You're catching on.

Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for changing the rules. And if it didn't, it's overturned for not changing the rules. That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, legal votes could never be counted.

A: Right. Next question.

Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem?

A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties record 99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely Democratic-leaning counties record only 97% of the votes. So approximately 3% of Democratic votes are thrown in the trash can.

Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!!!

A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 3% of Democratic ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" was not a problem.

Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked more than 20,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or Gore and Buchanan.

A: Nope. The Supreme Court has no problem believing that Buchanan got his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Hitler.

Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem?

A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 3% of Democrats (largely African-American) disenfranchised. The problem is that somewhat less than .005% of the ballots may have been determined under slightly different standards because judges sworn to uphold the law, and doing their best to accomplish the legislative mandate of "clear intent of the voter," may have a slightly different opinion about the voter's intent.

Q: Hmmm. OK, so if those votes are thrown out, you can still count the votes where everyone agrees the voter's intent is clear?

A: Nope.

Q: Why not?

A: No time.

Q: No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agree the intent is clear? Why not?

A: Because December 12 was yesterday.

Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes?

A: No. January 6 is the deadline. In 1960, Hawaii's votes weren't counted
until January 4.

Q: So why is December 12 important?

A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the results.

Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court?

A: Nothing.

Q: But I thought ---

A: The Florida Supreme Court had earlier held it would like to complete its work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United States Supreme Court is trying to help the Florida Supreme Court out by forcing the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not binding.

Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the votes counted by December 12.

A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped the recount last Saturday.

Q: Why?

A: Justice Scalia said some of the counts may not be legal.

Q: So why not separate the votes into piles, indentations for Gore, hanging chads for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate or the other so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out, the American people will know right away who won Florida.

A. Great idea! The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held that such counts would likely to produce election results showing Gore won and Gore's winning would cause "public acceptance" and that would "cast a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy" that would harm "democratic stability."

Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory?

A: Yes.

Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? or a political one?

A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, this reason has no basis in law. But that doesn't stop the five conservatives from creating new law out of thin air.

Q: Aren't these conservative justices against judicial activism?

A: Yes, when liberal judges are perceived to have done it.

Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the votes?

A: The US Supreme Court, after admitting the December 12 deadline is not binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12.

Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for arbitrarily setting a deadline?

A: Yes.

Q: But, but --

A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it sets for other courts.

Q: So who caused Florida to miss the December 12 deadline?

A: The Bush lawyers who first went to court to stop the recount, the mob in Miami that got paid Florida vacations for intimidating officials, and the US Supreme Court for stopping the recount.

Q: So who is punished for this behavior?

A: Gore, of course.

Q: Tell me this: Florida's laws are unconstitutional, right?

A: Yes

Q: And the laws of 50 states that allow votes to be cast or counted differently are unconstitutional?

A: Yes. And 33 of those states have the "clear intent of the voter" standard that the US Supreme Court found was illegal in Florida.

Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out?

A: Um. Because...um.....the Supreme Court doesn't say...

Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won the election there, right?

A: Right. Though a careful analysis by the Miami Herald shows Gore won Florida by about 20,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors).

Q: So, what do we do, have a re-vote? Throw out the entire state? Count all ballots under a single uniform standard?

A: No. We just don't count the votes that favor Gore.

Q: That's completely bizarre! That sounds like rank political favoritism! Did the justices have any financial interest in the case?

A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers working for Bush. Thomas's wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush administration. [And what other way is there to assure that conservative justices will be selected to replace retiring conservative justices?]

Q: Why didn't they recuse themselves?

A: If either had recused himself, the vote would be 4-4, and the Florida Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed.

Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way.

A: Read the opinions for yourself:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/supremecourt/00-949_dec12.fdf
(December 9 stay stopping the recount), and
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/00pdf/00-949.pdf
(December 12 final opinion)

Q: So what are the consequences of this?

A: The guy who got the most votes in the US and in Florida and under our Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America's second choice who won the all important 5-4 Supreme Court vote.

Q: I thought in a democracy, the guy with the most votes wins.

A: True, in a democracy. But America is not a democracy. In America, in the year 2000, the guy with the most US Supreme Court votes wins.

Q: Is there any way to stop the Supreme Court from doing this again?

A: YES. No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic Senators stand up to Bush and his Supremes and say that they will not approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be democratically elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror can end... and one day we can hope to return to the rule of law.

Q: What do I do now?

A: E-mail this to everyone you know, and write or call your senator, reminding him that Gore beat Bush by several hundred thousand votes (three times Kennedy's margin over Nixon) and that you believe that VOTERS rather than JUDGES should determine who wins an election by counting every vote. And to protect our judiciary from overturning the will of the people, you want them to confirm NO NEW JUDGES until 2004 when a president is finally chosen by most of the American people.

-- MarkLevineEsq@aol.com

posted 12-23-00 11:12 AM ET (US)            

In 1555, Nostradamus wrote:

posted 12-26-00 12:08 PM ET (US)            

The whole [electoral] system functions essentially as a system of control rather than of democratic participation. We shall never know how many abuses took place in the past. Two per cent of the US population owns 80 per cent of the wealth, and to continue maintaining this disproportionality, the majority has either to be kept under control ideologically or kept out of the system, preferably both. No more than about 35-40 per cent of eligible citizens vote, because the remainder senses, correctly, that their vote does not mean what it should. What counts is that wealthy candidates can manipulate both the mechanisms of voting and/or the media (preferably both) and guarantee the absence of change that has kept the US a country of the very rich supported by a middle class that aspires, or believes that it can aspire, to the American "dream." And it is the survival of this dream with its underlying belief in the need to perpetuate the system that has kept this country so extraordinarily anachronistic by comparison with other industrial democracies. No wonder then that the US has effectively dismantled most of the attributes of the welfare state (absence of health insurance, social security and labor unions under constant attack, badly funded educational system, unceasing complaints about "government spending" on welfare even as the defense budget has exceeded $350 billion, the largest ever in history, extraordinarily punitive prison and police systems). The market rules over everything without regard for the justice and security to which each citizen should be entitled.

I do not want to be misunderstood as saying that everyone in the US is brainwashed. Far from it. What I do want to point out is that a) the system favors the rich and powerful (one of the reasons why Bush won was that he spent far more money than anyone), and in effect works to preserve their ascendancy through a multiplicity of means, including the electoral and ideological systems, at the same time that the whole world is filled with the rhetoric of American democracy and freedom, most of it misleadingly propagandistic; and b) that in reality there is a constant struggle in America which the disadvantaged, including women, racial minorities, and underpaid workers like teachers and nurses, try to wage against the system, with varying degrees of success, but which at present is mostly a discouraging struggle as the eof the "free" market undermine labor in favor of the largest employers who are coddled by the government through favorable tax laws, loopholes in social security payments, and unfair labor practices.

To me, the ideological system is the most interesting case of all. Not having come to this country until most of my secondary schooling was over I was first struck and have continued to be fascinated by how the powerful presence of violence and conflict in this society is routinely masked and covered up with a more overwhelming rhetoric and unending stream of pacifying thought, stressing the country's unity, the perfection in it of democratic practice and theory, the animating and always benign influence of the Constitution (which although a secular document reflecting the wealthy, white, slaveholding, Anglophilic men who wrote it, is treated with the reverence accorded to scripture by any good fundamentalist anywhere), the completed fulfillment of public idealism, and the utter benignity of everything about America, always the most exceptional country that ever existed. I suspect that all this is ingrained in school children, so that by the age of 12 or 13 -- barring the birth of a critical sense in the individual -- most mature Americans tend to believe all this, or at least have little opportunity in the public domain to voice different sentiments. Certainly it is absolutely true that in the mainstream, discourse is heavily policed: alternative or radical or dissenting voices are either kept out completely or sent to the margins where they have no chance at all of gaining acceptance. So it was with the elections during the past month. No sooner did the Supreme Court make its scandalous decision than the commentators began to put the spin out that American democracy has been restored, national unity established, and so on and on ad nauseam. As if the flaws in the system were forgettable accidents, and therefore not worth dwelling on.