From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed Aug 08 2001 - 11:36:11 MDT
Mike Lorrey wrote,
> Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> > Wrong. The Republicans only followed the law and election
> procedures where
> > they wanted to. They rejected the law that required postmarks on all
> > absentee ballots because the military votes did not have
> postmarks. They
> > counted these votes "to be fair" even though it violated the law.
>
> Specifically because PRIOR court precedents said that military ballots
> did not have to have post marks on them. Therefore, they did NOT violate
> the law.
Sources please? The Florida Legislature is wasting time changing this law,
because they seem to be under the same opinion I am that the law is still
valid and should be changed.
>
> >
> > They also allowed the Republican party to "correct" 20,000
> absentee ballots
> > that did not include the required identification numbers on
> them. By law,
> > these votes should have been excluded. By law, these votes
> should not have
> > been in possession of Republicans outside the election system. By law,
> > these votes should not have been altered. But the Republicans did it
> > anyway.
>
> a) the 'corrections' were not in the way the voters voted, but in that
> the ballots were supposed to be printed with their voter ID numbers on
> them already. Most voters voting in absentia have no means of
> determining their voter ID numbers, it is the responsibility of the
> state to provide them. To penalize the voters for the actions of the
> state is an illegal disenfranchisement, as the courts ruled.
> b) the ballots were never outside the election system. The GOP provided
> staff to write in the voter ID numbers on government premises.
> c) Votes were NEVER altered.
I agree, with a couple of clarifications. They did not change the votes (as
far as we know), but it was still illegal. The votes were cast and then
given to the Republican party which then later resubmitted them to be
counted. They were originally rejected as invalid and then after being
changed, were accepted. This is illegal. Votes, even outer envelopes,
cannot be changed after a voter submits it. Votes also cannot leave the
control of the election system, go to one political party, and then be
recast. Also not that they only did this with Republican votes, not
Democratic votes. The reason is that the voting materials were provided by
the Republican Party which left of the voter ID numbers. Had they been the
real ballots printed by the State of Florida, they would have been valid.
The State did not screw these ballots up, the Republican Party did. I agree
that the votes were probably not altered because they were Republican voters
only and presumably voted for Bush.
>
> >
> > The Republicans also fought "for" recounts in some counties where they
> > thought they would improve, like Volusia county, and "against"
> recounts in
> > other counties where they thought they would win.
>
> Yes, but in no instance did they insist on ballot counting rules that
> deviated from those in place on election day, as I said before and you
> ignored.
Yes they did. They argued that the State Law called for a recount on the
day of the election, but that Harris was not bound to use these recounts
later. They reverted back to the original counts for some counties where it
benefited Bush. Although state law required the recount on the day of the
election, they changed the requirement for the recount later.
> Yes, somewhere between 4-6 million ballots were thrown out, including a
> couple hundred thousand alone in the Illinois County that is home to
> Gore's campaign chairman, old 'Two Vote' Daley.
You must not be aware that many of the Republican ballots that were fixed
duplicated votes. When the ballots were thought to be invalid, many
republicans went to the polls and voted in person. These voters got to vote
twice. When they accepted the fixed ballots later, there were computer
problems with the Republican party records of the fixed votes, such that
they couldn't verify that Republican votes didn't count twice. Rather than
throw out some valid votes, they won a court case to allow all the votes,
including duplicate Republican votes, to count in the system.
> > > The spoilsport antics of the rent-a-riot left wing at the inauguration
> > > and since have continued to help Bush by casting the left as too
> > > immature to lead, and too shrilly extremist to represent the people.
> >
> > This is too funny. The Republicans did the same thing in Miami
> when they
> > flew in paid participants for their riot. Both sides do the exact same
> > thing, and yet most people only recall the poor behavior on one side.
>
> Show me footage of a republican 'riot'. Only one instance did they stage
> a peaceful protest, outside the Dade recount places, where the
> republicans in the room noticed no disturbances. The democrats claimed
> it was a 'riot' only because they didn't like the fact that someone was
> demonstrating 'against' them, which was 'obviously' staged by 'racist,
> bigoted, sexist, right-wing wackos'.
Mike, you can nitpick words all you want. The Miami county officials tried
to move the ballot boxes through the hallway with all the yelling
protestors. They could not get through. They crowd was not outside, they
were physically blocking the hallway where the ballots were being carried.
They refused to allow the officials through. After repeated requests to
allow them through, the officials gave up and said that they could not
finish the recount because the yelling crowd of paid republican
demonstrators were physically blocking their access to the recount room.
This may not have been a riot, but it was a physical disruption of the
election process by paid members of Republican congressional staffers who
were flown down specifically for this purpose. Nitpicking on whether it was
a riot or not misses the point. They paid protestors and flew them in to
disrupt a legal process, and it worked. You can't blame Democrats for
paying protestors and claim that Republicans don't do the same thing.
> This is one more instance of a liberal claiming a crime occurs only
> because they 'felt intimidated', not that any actually intimidating
> behavior actually occurred. Much like blacks protesting police checking
> for outstanding warrants on the election day. Since felons can't vote,
> its obvious that only those who are felons should be worried about their
> ability to commit vote fraud being impaired.
The problem wasn't that felons were kept from voting. The problem was that
many non-felon blacks were mistakenly marked as felons and kept from voting.
This was done by a Texas right-wing group that worked for Jeb Bush who came
in and volunteered to mark black felons in the computer systems. They
screwed up and blocked all blacks with any police record, not just felony
records. Many blacks, including state legislators(!) were denied their
right to vote because they were marked as felons. This is a valid complaint
for them to make. It is not just that they felt intimidated.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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