From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed Aug 08 2001 - 15:31:51 MDT
Mike Lorrey wrote,
> As I said, this is NOT what happened. NO VOTES CHANGED. Get it yet?
> Nobody's ballots changed who they were voting for, so therefore no votes
> changed. Nor did any ballots leave the control of the election system.
> All work done to add the proper voter ID numbers to ballots was done on
> premises.
Yeah, I get it. No votes changed.
Do you get my point? Votes that were not counted were modified so that they
were later counted. The total number of votes for Bush was increased. The
voting envelopes were modified by someone other than the submitting voter.
This breaks the law that voting materials cannot be modified after they are
submitted. The materials were changed by the Republican party and not by
election officials. This also breaks the law.
Although the Republicans are technically correct when they say "no votes
changed", they broke the law to change the total number of votes. They
reapplied the votes that the voters intended to cast and ignored the fact
that these votes were technically illegal and legally should not have been
counted. This sounds exactly like what the Democrats were doing.
> This is incorrect. Both GOP and Democrat registered ballots were printed
> without voter ID numbers, and they were 'real ballots'. Moreover, the
> Democrats did correct some democrat votes, but gave up and decided to
> instead insist all ballots without ID numbers be rejected.
Sorry, but I stand by my version. This occurred less than 100 miles from my
house. There were local court cases about it. Only Republican ballots were
corrected. Only Republican ballots were printed incorrectly. Only
Republican volunteers were involved in modifying these absentee ballots.
> If a recount does not change the result of an election, then whether the
> winner wins by 1 million or just 1,000 ballots is irrelevant.
Agreed. But why did Harris change only the recounts that helped Bush (but
did not change the winner) and refuse to change recounts that helped Gore
(but did not change the winner)? I was not arguing that it would have
changed the outcome. I was countering your claim that the Republicans did
not change their counting methods just to suit their own needs. In fact,
both Republicans and Democrats did.
> If the Democrats paid for the protesters BEFORE the election started,
> indicating they were planning on trying to steal the election by riot
> before it even happened, then any counter-action to set things to right
> is perfectly justified. Who initiated the violence? It was the
> Democrats. Its who initiates it that counts.
Please, this is getting ridiculous. I am not arguing that one side is
better. They both played the same sort of games. You seem to be admitting
that both sides did this, but you think the Democrats planned this all along
because they are cheaters, while the Republicans are only responding in kind
because they are fair.
This seems to be a bit of a stretch. Both sides pulled the same sort of
tricks. Why not agree that they both are despicable?
> I've heard nothing about this. All I've heard is that some felons who
> had had their felonies expunged or gotten petitions of relief from civil
> disability granted wound up being wiped from the rolls when they should
> not have, which included one felon who sat on an election board.
It was worse than that, Mike. We had whole towns left out of voting, which
happened to be black, because of computer errors. We had three black
colleges in Orlando have all their black students turned away at the polls
due to the errors. They had a voter registration drive and bussed all the
students to the polls. Not one was allowed to vote. The problem with
blacks being denied votes in Florida was a huge problem. It has been
belittled and ignored by the newspapers, because their numbers were so small
compared to the Palm Beach problems and the recount problems. We even had
one black women legislator denied the right to vote. She spoke on CNN and
said that her voting record showed her to be a convicted felon and she was
turned away until they found out she was a congresswoman.
In summary, I am not saying the Democrats were superior, although it may
seem that way since I am countering your arguments that Republicans were
superior. I think both sides played dirty tricks because they perceived the
other side of playing dirty tricks. Both sides were despicable as far as I
can tell. I'm not sure there is much point into continuing to argue whether
one side was worse, or if they were both bad. I do think you are a little
myopic when you think all cheating was done by Democrats, and all
controversial moves by Republicans were justified.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:09:36 MST