November 20, 2000

Republican, Democrat Electors Divided Over Electoral College
The Associated Press
More than a third of this year's Democrat presidential electors say they want to re-examine or scrap the Electoral College that takes the final vote on the next person in the White House, while fewer than 1 in 10 Republicans think the nation should even consider tinkering with the system, an AP survey found. The partisan breakdown is not surprising, given that the Democrat candidate, Al Gore, may lose the presidency while winning the popular vote. Republican George W. Bush, if declared the victor in Florida, would win the electoral vote.

Florida AG Rules On Overseas Ballots
By Brent Kallestad / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Democrat Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a top Florida supporter of Al Gore, Monday urged county elections officials to go back and count overseas military ballots that bear no postmark. "No man or woman in military service to this nation should have his or her vote rejected solely due to the absence of a postmark," Butterworth said in the letter to the state's 67 county elections supervisors and other canvassing board members. He has no statutory power to have the votes counted, but his letter said they "should count."

Florida Supreme Court Hearing Ends
By Anne Gearan / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- With the race for the presidency in the balance, Florida's Supreme Court peppered lawyers with questions Monday on the legality of manual recounts under way in selected Democrat-leaning counties. "We have a longstanding policy ... that says the real interests here are the voters," declared Chief Justice Charles T. Wells, who asked repeatedly how long the state had to certify a winner and still have its voice heard when the Electoral College meets to pick a president.

Judge Refuses Palm Beach Revote
By Anne Gearan / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga said he did not have the authority to order a Palm Beach County revote. Several voters had filed suit for a new county election, saying they meant to vote for Democrat Al Gore but may have voted twice or for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan because of the ballot's design. "There is one day set aside for the presidential election. That occurred Nov. 7," said Jay Sekolow, head of the right-leaning American Center for Law and Justice, which opposed a revote.

Miami-Dade Hand Recount Begins
By Catherine Wilson / The Associated Press
MIAMI -- Miami-Dade County began a recount of 654,000 presidential ballots by hand Monday despite contentions by Republicans that the process was unfair and subject to tampering. "Inevitably these counts alter, change, put at risk the actual ballots each time they are counted," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said before the county canvassing board reconvened. "It is extremely disturbing." A hearing was scheduled in circuit court Tuesday morning where Republicans again will argue against the recount.

Bush Camp Moves Forward With Appeals
By Chad Roedemeier / The Associated Press
ATLANTA -- While the Florida Supreme Court considers whether hand recounts of ballots will matter in that state's disputed presidential election, Republican George W. Bush pushed ahead Monday on a second legal track: federal appeals to stop the counts. Bush supporters proposed that the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta hear oral arguments as early as next Monday in two separate but related cases aimed at stopping the ballot recounts.

Earlier News Articles...

Democrat Memo On How To
Disqualify Military Votes Published
DRUDGE REPORT
The Drudge Report has obtained -- and is now releasing worldwide -- a memo circulated to Democrats throughout Florida detailing how to disqualify overseas military ballots! Mark Herron, a Tallahassee lawyer helping shepherd Democrat presidential election lawsuits through the local courts, sent the five-page letter to Democrat attorneys across Florida giving them tips on how to lodge protests against the ballots which heavily favored Republican George W. Bush.

Gore Campaign 'Trying To Block Military Votes'
By Stephen Robinson And Toby Harnden / Electronic Telegraph
The painfully slow manual recount of Florida ballot papers took its most acrimonious turn yesterday when Republicans accused the Gore campaign of deliberately excluding servicemen's postal votes to fix the election. Governor George W Bush comfortably won the overseas absentee vote by 1,380 votes to Vice-President Al Gore's 750 but, after vigorous challenges by Gore canvassers, 1,527 of the postal ballots, many of them from soldiers and sailors on active service, were rejected.

General Norman Schwarzkopf's Statement
Newsmax.com
Statement by retired General Norman Schwarzkopf regarding the denied overseas absentee ballots: "It is a very sad day in our country when the men and women of the armed forces are serving abroad and facing danger on a daily basis in places like Bosnia, Kosovo or on ships like the USS George Washington, yet because of some technicality out of their control they are denied the right to vote for the President of the United States who will be their commander in chief."

Cohen Wants Military Ballots Counted, Considering Legal Options
By Pamela Hess / UPI
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (UPI) - Defense Secretary William Cohen called it tragic that many U.S. service members' votes were thrown out in the Florida election for lack of post marks and is looking into what legally can be done to get them into the count. "I think this is very unfortunate. The last thing we want to do is make it harder for those who are wearing our uniform and serving overseas to be able to cast a ballot," Cohen said at a press conference in Kuwait.

The War On Military Ballots
The Washington Times
From Al Gore down, the Democrat campaign to overturn the Florida election has been consistent in its expression of the purest of principles — every vote should count. These assertions have been designed to obscure the most contaminated of procedures: namely, the selective, subjective and chaotic hand-count in several of Florida's Democrat counties orchestrated to re-evaluate previously invalidated ballots as new votes for Mr. Gore. Furthermore, the Gore campaign does not mean all the votes.

Talk Shows Focus on Military Ballot Issue
UPI
WASHINGTON (UPI) – Sunday talk shows provided a platform for Democrats and Republicans to debate whether presidential ballots – including absentee ballots – were being counted fairly in Florida, as lawyers from both sides prepared to take the controversy before the Florida Supreme Court on Monday. After the tabulation of absentee ballots, the Florida total showed Bush with a 930-vote lead over Gore. But nearly 40 percent of the overseas ballots had been rejected.

Bush Argues That Florida High Court Should Halt Hand Counts
By Ronald Powers / The Associated Press
Lawyers for George W. Bush asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt the continued hand recount of ballots in the state's disputed presidential election, arguing in a court filing Sunday that state law sets out a clear deadline for vote returns. Bush argued ahead of a showdown hearing Monday that Florida election law provides for one week of ballot counting after the election. That deadline passed Nov. 14 and Bush argued that the state's top election official was correct when she stuck to the deadline.

GOP Protests Closed Miami-Dade Recount
By Howard Kurtz / The Washington Post
The Miami-Dade canvassing board voted unanimously yesterday to bar reporters from watching the recount that is scheduled to begin this morning. The three-member board rejected a request by Republicans to allow a pool reporter representing the press corps to watch the process of reviewing the 654,000 ballots, as has been the case in the Palm Beach County recount. The board offered no public explanation.

Angry Hill Republicans Would Reject Gore Presidency
By Eric Pianin and Juliet Eilperin / The Washington Post
Growing GOP anger about the recount in Florida could make it much more difficult - if not impossible - for Vice President Gore to forge consensus on Capitol Hill even if he were to gain the presidency, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Vote Overseer Finds Biblical Guidance
By Malcolm Balfour / The New York Post
WEST PALM BEACH -- Embattled Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris revealed in an e-mail to a well-wisher yesterday that she is relying on the biblical Queen Esther "for comfort and guidance." According to the Old Testament parable, the beautiful Jewish Queen Esther of Persia risks her life to thwart a plot to destroy the Jewish people.

Broward Flip-Flops and Accepts Pregnant, Dimpled Chad
NewsMax.com
In a stunning reversal, the Democrat controlled Broward County canvassing board voted unanimously to accept "dimpled" or "pregnant" chad as actual votes. Counters are allowed to determine the "intent" of the voters.

Latest Charges Include Eaten Chads
By Steve Miller / The Washington Times
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- More affidavits have been filed in a federal lawsuit challenging hand counts of presidential votes in three South Florida counties, with at least one claiming ballot counters have been eating chads. "One of our guys observed another guy licking his finger and putting chads in his mouth," said George LeMieux, a Republican observer who is watching the hand count of 588,000 Broward County ballots.

Hot Buy: Voting Machine On eBay
By Manny Garcia And Caroline Keough / The Miami Herald
Mark B. Richter and Steven R. Solomon thought they could cash in on the post-election craze in Florida, police say -- by auctioning on eBay a stolen voting machine, complete with the controversial Palm Beach County butterfly ballot. Richter, 41, and Solomon, 43, both of Palm Beach County, went to jail, charged with a felony count of dealing in stolen property and a misdemeanor count of unlawful possession of a voting machine.

Bush Won't Get Keys To Transition Office Yet
By George Archibald / The Washington Times
The White House has ordered the General Services Administration not to turn over keys of the presidential transition office to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, even if he is declared the winner in Florida. The White House has ordered GSA and other federal agencies not to proceed with any transition activities "until the time when the election is decided," presumably by the Electoral College on Dec. 18. "We're not going to decide who the president is," says a GSA official, who asked not to be named.

Election Battle Is 'Not A Crisis', Says Clinton
TheTimes.uk
President Bill Clinton said today that the hotly contested battle to succeed him not only was "not a crisis," but could turn out to be "quite good" for the United States. "It might be quite good, because it might be sobering for the country to realise we’re in a completely new era," he stressed.

Gore Leaves No Room For Appeal To Supreme Court
By Frank J. Murray / The Washington Times
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Vice President Al Gore appears to have staked the presidency and his future political career on today's all-or-nothing legal strategy of attacking Florida's state government and its lower courts. His legal briefs to Florida's seven Supreme Court justices — each of whom reached the court with backing by Democrat governors — did not appear to raise a federal issue that would allow appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court should his argument be rejected. Instead, the vice president and his huge legal team pinned everything on the single question of whether Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris broke state laws by excluding late recounts from certified election totals, and by issuing binding opinions that ruled out hand recounts.

Retired Justice Sees Fla. Court Acting by Wednesday
By Carol Giacomo / Reuters
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida's Supreme Court can be expected to move expeditiously in the high-stakes legal dispute over presidential balloting, likely ruling within 48 hours, the court's former chief judge said on Sunday. Justice Ben F. Overton told Reuters in a telephone interview that death penalty cases have prepared the seven-member court well for the pressure. Such appeals are considered after a death warrant has been signed by the governor. Asked when he thought the court might rule in the legal dispute between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, he replied: ``I'd be surprised if it went beyond 48 hours.''

Electors Want To Re-Examine System
The Associated Press
More than a third of this year's Democrat presidential electors say they want to re-examine or scrap the Electoral College that takes the final vote on the next person in the White House, while fewer than one in 10 Republicans think the nation should even consider tinkering with the system, an AP survey found. The partisan breakdown is not surprising, given that the Democrat candidate, Al Gore, may lose the presidency while winning the popular vote.

Election Giving A History Lesson
By Lawrence L. Knutson / The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - As one of history's most suspenseful political thrillers unfolded in Florida, presidential scholars got a lesson from the turbulent present and measured it against the dusty but durable benchmarks of the past. ``Right now we've got the most extreme situation you can imagine,'' said historian Michael Beschloss, recounting difficult presidential transitions at a conference last week sponsored by the White House Historical Association.

Web Gives Quick Access to Court Election Documents
Reuters
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida's State Supreme Court, nerve center of the presidential election battle between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, is so Internet savvy that crucial documents can be read on-line, often before they are distributed in paper form.

Smithsonian To Add Election Exhibit
The Associated Press
The now infamous chads, butterfly ballots and other election memorabilia will be preserved for posterity at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Last Update: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 10:34 AM EST

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