Electoral Larceny

The Pattern of Deception, Hypocrisy and Outright Theft
that put George George Bush in the White House

Hail to the Thief!

by Douglas Dunn

George Dubya Bush was not elected President. Whether you are Republican or Democrat, whether you believe he is the rightful president or a thieving pretender, it is NOT CORRECT to say he was "elected." To be "elected" one must win the most votes among the available choices. Even if you believe he is the rightful president because he "won" through an arcane Constitutional fluke (the electoral college), the best you can say is that he won the Electoral College lottery, but everyone acknowledges that he didn't get the most votes, so he was NOT "elected" to office. And those who don't believe he even won fairly in Florida would also say he was appointed to the presidency by a partisan Supreme Court as the culmination of a long campaign, election, and post-election maneuvering all rooted in dishonesty, misrepresentation and, finally, the ultimate grand theft. Specifics about the extent of dishonor and dishonest in the campaign, obstruction of voting rights, illegal voting processes and how the Supreme Court "umpires" made the ultimate "bad call" are detailed in the commentary which follows.

Let's examine the reality, from his dishonesty during the campaign right up through a stolen election in which his brother's cronies in Florida first blocked many eligible Democrats from voting at all, and after the vote manipulated the vote count to squeak by with just enough votes to claim a win in that pivotal state, though still not enough to say that he was "elected" in the nationwide voting, where he lost by more than 500,000 votes!

Campaign Dishonesty and Dishonor

The dishonesty that became so transparent in the post-election power grab (after losing the popular vote) began much earlier, and has been a staple of his campaigning for the office. Some specific examples:

In the third presidential debate of the 2000 campaign, Bush bragged about the Texas "Patients' Bill of Rights," not mentioning that he VETOED it the first time his legislature passed it, and when they submitted a weaker version with a veto-proof majority, he let it become law WITHOUT HIS SIGNATURE. Talk about taking credit for something you didn't do!

Dubya misstated the Texas death penalty record (an area where he really does have some expertise!) for those convicted of Texas hate crimes.

At the end of the first debate, Dubya simply lied outright when he claimed that Gore outspent him (he outspent Gore two to one).

Running mate Dick Cheney claims the government had little to do with his success in the "private" sector, maintaining a deceptive silence about the $3.8 BILLION in GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS that his insider connections brought to his company.

Republicans showed just how desperate they are when they created an ad that tried to use subliminal cues with the word "RATS" to leave unfavorable general impressions of Democrats. This shows just how low they were willing to stoop to try to do anything to win, no matter how dishonorable.

And speaking of "honor," when Dubya mistakenly thought the microphone was "off," he turned to his running mate and pointed out New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, who he referred to as "...a major league asshole." Cheney's reply was, "Yeah, big time." Those were the words from the guy who promised to "restore honor and decency to the White House" and restore a sense of civility in Washington. Or, maybe it doesn't count when the microphone is off. Hypocrisy!

In the same vein, Dubya promised to bring "dignity" to the White House while coming in as the first President with multiple criminal convictions (three: theft, disorderly conduct and drunk driving) along with his hand-picked vice president who has two, both for drunk driving. And Bush evades any discussion of his own past hard drug usage (including his reported cocaine usage), dismissing it as his youthful indiscretions. But these are very relevant since he implemented in Texas a system of life sentences for people who did the same things he did; if the same standard he applies to others (mostly minorities) were to apply to himself, he would still be in jail instead of preparing for an inauguration.

Gore Was the Real Winner

Al Gore won the popular vote by 540,000 (final certified state totals). This is almost FOUR TIMES the margin by which Kennedy defeated Nixon in the popular vote in 1960.

Of course, we all know that the election is not won on the popular vote, but on the electoral vote. Still, Americans are troubled by the idea of having the guy who wins more votes than his opponent called the "loser." To offset a popular vote LOSS with a credible victory, Bush absolutely needed a CLEAN and unquestionable electoral win to have any claim to legitimacy. He didn't get it.

If the contested electoral count in Florida were simply tossed out, GORE WON the electoral college vote by 21 votes. If Gore had won Florida, he would have won by 46 electoral votes. By having the electoral vote in Florida awarded to Bush, he received only ONE VOTE more than the minimum number needed to win. And the vote in Florida was NOT clean. According to calculations and estimates by the Miami Herald, if all intended votes were counted based on the voters' intent, GORE WON Florida by 23,000 votes. So if an honest, complete count was done, GORE WON BOTH THE POPULAR AND ELECTORAL VOTES.

Prior to the election, it was widely contemplated that GORE might be the one winning the electoral vote but losing the popular vote. Anticipating his own post-election campaign to overturn an electoral vote loss with a popular vote win, Bush said "It is not what's LEGAL that counts, but what's RIGHT." Of course, after the election we saw precious little of moral concern in trying to reflect the intended will of the voters. Just one more example of Bush hypocrisy in the course of his electoral grand larceny.

The only reason the real winner, Gore, won't be the one sworn into office on January 20, 2001, is because Bush stole the election with a Judicial Coup D'etat that allowed him to block all votes from being counted in accordance with the laws of Florida as they existed on election day. In order to pull of this grand electoral theft, Bush had to be able to pull off EVERY SINGLE ONE of several schemes. If failed in any one of them, the result would have been that Gore would be properly credited with the rightful number of votes to win. Let's examine some of these irregularities in detail:

Who Counts the Votes

The widely-circulated quoted attributed to Josef Stalin says: "Elections are not won by those who cast the votes, but those who count them." In Florida, the deck was completely stacked against Al Gore.

The chief executive officer of the state, the governor, and ultimate overseer of election statutes, was Jeb Bush, younger brother of the candidate. It is relevant to note that the exit polling data from Voter News Service, based on strategically-placed questioning of large numbers of actual voters who just voted, has an incredible record of historical accuracy. If their data shows the election to be excessively close (as in New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin) they say it is "too close to call." Their record is so impressive and reliable that Dan Rather (using their numbers) said that "if we call a state, you can put it in the bank." The data reflecting the intended votes in Florida showed that it was close, but that Gore was the clear winner, which is why the state was called for him early on, and consistent with the calculations by the Miami Herald cited previously. Voter News Service and the networks have been criticized for this rare "mistake" but based on the facts, it appears that Voter News Service and the networks were not wrong at all. When the state was first called for Gore, Jeb Bush and his staff objected, saying they knew there were more votes for Dubya. How did they know that? The actual votes had not been counted yet! If Jeb Bush "knew" something, it could only have been because he "knew" he could control the delivery of enough votes to make the difference. This is the same governor who had previously VETOED a voter education measure passed by his own Republican legislature ... and then joined the chorus of those critical of senior citizen or inexperienced voters who were confused by ballots that clearly violated legal requirements.

The secretary of state, Kathleen Harris, with immediate responsibility for oversight of election procedures, was a partisan Republican loyal to Jeb Bush and a state co-chair of the Bush campaign, who repeatedly disregarded election statutes and judicial decisions made prior to the election to make sure that votes would never be counted if they came from areas that would likely be recorded for Gore.

The state legislature, which claimed the right to simply disregard the election count and disenfranchise voters if their votes were actually counted showing Gore as the winner, was controlled by Republicans in both houses. Their absurd claim for this tyrannical disregard of voters, which certainly would have been challenged if implemented, was from Article II section I of the U.S. Constitution which states: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...." It is important to note that this provision does not say they will choose the electors, but that they will direct the manner of such choosing. Subsequent enabling legislation specified that such procedures must be those in place prior to the election. They could have directed a manner of their own choosing of electors if they had done so prior to the election. However the method they had directed prior to the election date was one of direct election by voters. They did NOT have the right, after the election, to change this manner they had directed for the choosing of electors. Claiming such power was purely an exercise in Republican dictatorship.

The U.S. Supreme Court was made up of seven judges appointed by Republicans. Of these, two had clear familial conflicts of interest which should have required their recusal, and two had expressed conditions of bias which were likely not recusable, but which demonstrated a lack of judicial impartiality. More detail on this near the end of this web page.

Obstruction of Voters

In Tallahassee, hundreds of registered black voters were turned away because, despite carrying valid voter registration cards, they did not appear on the voter registration rolls at the precincts. Hundreds more were harassed and stopped by Highway Patrol officers who set up inspection road blocks near polling places in black voting precincts. The Highway Patrol acknowledges this occurred, but say that it was a random placement of routine vehicle inspections which just happened to be near black polling places on election day ... just a coincidence in Jeb Bush's state? The number of formal complaints filed is in the hundreds ... and this is likely just a fractional tip of the iceberg compared to the thousands who were harassed and intimidated but didn't want to go through the hassle of filing formal claims. We've all heard of "Driving While Black" and racial profiling, but Jeb Bush and his jack-booted Florida thugs bring us the new crime of "Voting While Black." And they wonder why 92% of the blacks didn't want to vote for someone named "Bush."

Since the election, the extent of this voter obstruction has become even more clear. The Los Angeles Times (5-21-01), including previous reports in The Nation and their own investigation, reports that many voters had their names removed from the voter rolls before the election in an effort to remove "convicted felons" and deceased voters from the rolls, even though thousands of those deleted had never been convicted of anything, were very much alive, and had registered properly. While it cannot be known who any individual voter would have voted for, a large, disproportionate number of those removed from the rolls were African Americans, from a population known to be voting in large numbers for Democrats in a state where the chief election officers, Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, had pledged to deliver the election for "Dubya."

One such voter, Sandylynn Williams, age 34, a Black Tampa resident and Gore supporter, had voted in every election since she was 18. She had recently passed a government background check for her job with a military contractor. She was not a felon, but was not allowed to vote in the November presidential election because her name appeared on an erroneous list of "felons." Election officials restored her right to vote just ten days after the election, with an apology. The timing of this maneuver, the targeting of Black voters, and its effect in preventing thousands of Gore votes in a close election offer conclusive evidence of an election stolen by election authorities committed to delivering their state to Dubya, by hook ... or by CROOK.

Illegal Ballots and Voting Procedures

An ILLEGAL ballot in Palm Beach County resulted in an extraordinarily high number of mis-votes. Yes, it was designed by a Democrat. But whether Theresa LePore was a well-meaning bumbler or a traitorous turncoat, it doesn't matter: the ballot was ILLEGAL and she had no right to disenfranchise 33,000 Gore voters (19,000 with double-punches, 11,000 "blanks" that the machine could not read and 3,000+ that were erroneously voted for Buchanan, as Buchanan himself -- no ally of Gore -- admitted. Statistical analysis absolutely confirms this level of misdirection in voting: for example, the number of "under votes" (ballots the machine couldn't read) were EIGHT TIMES higher than in counties that did not use punch cards. Further, the ballot machines had not been cleaned in EIGHT YEARS, causing chad build up that made it difficult or impossible to punch all the way through -- even for young, strong, healthy voters, much less the many Senior Citizens and Holocaust survivors who have been cruelly ridiculed by insensitive "compassionate" Republicans for something they had absolutely no control over.

And yes, once again it can be noted (as the Republicans keep reminding us) that the illegal Palm Beach ballot was designed by a Democrat. However, up until 1996 Theresa LePore had always been registered as a Republican. After the 2000 election she quit the Democrats and re-registered as an independent. She was only a "Democrat" through the one election cycle in which she designed the illegal ballot that made the difference. Pretty convenient, huh? (Orlando Sun-Sentinel, 5-9-01.)

Absentee Ballot Irregularities

Republicans have tried to disseminate a very dishonest myth: that Gore and the Democrats tried to block overseas military absentee ballots that were expected to go strongly Republican. Despite this expectation (which proved to be correct), Gore and the Democrats did NOT try to block those votes from being counted and, in fact, actively campaigned for full inclusion. Gore and Liebermann both spoke out in favor of including all such ballots, even if it required flexibility with official Florida voting regulations (after all Gore is the one who is actually a Vietnam veteran). Furthermore, the Florida state Attorney General, Bob Butterworth, a Gore elector and co-chair of the Gore campaign, issued an OFFICIAL Attorney General opinion stating that all such ballots should and could be officially included. However, the final decision was left with individual county canvassing boards and many of them who were Republicans did not include such ballots because they did not want to establish a precedent of including additional vote counts or allowing any flexibility in determining voter intent. Still, it is Gore and the Democrats who get tagged unfairly with the charge of blocking military votes that were actually obstructed by Republicans.

In Seminole and Martin Counties, Republican partisans were granted preferential access that was NOT equally offered to Democratic officials, to complete missing information from absentee ballot applications. The same Republicans who whine that senior citizens should get no consideration whatsoever in having their intended votes count if they can't follow every single little rule (even if it is an illegal ballot and chad buildup they have no control over), now holler about "technicalities" when it is pointed out that Florida law is explicit that only the voter or an immediate family member can complete certain pieces of information. In Seminole County, AFTER the improper applications had been rejected, unauthorized outsiders from a specific political party were invited to come and complete the applications, and were provided illegal unsupervised access. In Martin County, Republican partisans were actually allowed to take the applications off premises! These are hardly "technicalities." More importantly, the fact that the Democratic party was given no equivalent invitation, and hundreds of incomplete Democrat applications were simply tossed in the trash, means that this is a clear violation of equal protection of the laws. The only recourse, under Florida law (and which was done in the 1997 Miami mayor's race) is to void all absentee ballots (since after the votes have been processed it is no longer possible to separate the tampered applications from the valid ones. Yes, it is a drastic remedy (but, again, one that has been used before). But if the Republicans aren't smart enough to fill out their applications correctly, then do we really want them voting for President?

Injustice from the Supreme Court Justices

While no one would dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court was the rightful final arbiter of any dispute (thus making Bush the LEGAL appointee if not the rightful winner), it is also appropriate to point out the ways in which the Supreme Court erred, not only as to the points of law, but in its ethical breaches and violations of standard judicial neutrality.

This distinction is analogous to an umpire's bad call on the decisive play in the deciding game of the World Series. If an umpire made a clearly erroneous call, obvious when the call was made and even more so when viewed on video replays, there would still be no doubt or dispute that the umpire is the legitimate authority to make that call, even if he is wrong. While there might be howls of protest (especially from the losers) and disputes about the legitimacy of the newly-crowned "World Champions," we would all have to accept that the wrongful winner is still the "official" winner. It is not likely that anyone would want to change the system in which umpires have the final word on calling balls, strikes and outs, but that would not prevent us from calling attention to bad calls and other mistakes and trying to improve the quality of the umpiring for the future. The howls of protest would be especially ferocious if the bad call were made by one of the best umpires in favor of a team where is own son (or other close relative) were involved in the questionable play.

When the Florida Supreme Court decisions deciding state procedures were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, most expert observers almost universally agreed that the U.S. Court would refuse to hear the appeal, as the ultra-conservative 11th District Court of Appeals had already done (anticipating that they would be overruled by the U.S. Court if they did). All these experts were shocked and surprised when they did agree to hear the case, but rationalized that they just wanted to accept final review on an issue of national importance and interest, but that they would uphold the Florida Court. After all, this was a court that had ruled consistently in favor of states' rights and especially the right of state supreme courts to have the final word in the interpretation of state legislation and procedures. As to the question about "equal protection" that had been raised by the Bush appeal, this was a court that had repeatedly and consistently held that their view of "equal protection" was to apply a standard requiring malicious intent in determining a violation of equal rights.

In order to confound all the experts and violate two principles for which they had become famous (or infamous), there must be another explanation, especially since it was the most conservative justices who had fought hardest in favor of states' rights and against applying the "equal protection" clause who were the ones who applied an "equal protection" claim without even an allegation of malicious intent and overruled a Florida Supreme Court decision about a Florida law.

Equal protection clause: This allegation was based on the fact that different counties were allowed differing standards on which to interpret their manual counts of ballots. There was no allegation of malicious intent to discriminate. But the Florida Supreme Court's hands were tied because the U.S. Supreme Court had already made it clear they could not change the rules after the election was over, and the election rules in force on election day clearly specified that the standard for interpreting each ballot was "intent of the voter" as determined by each county's canvassing board. This was the legal standard in 33 states. It was determined both by statute as well as in the 1917 Florida Supreme Court case of Darby vs. State and, whether we like it or not, it was the law in Florida on election day. If the Florida Supreme Court now tried to designate a new standard to be universally applied, then they would have been accused of changing the laws after the election and overruled on THAT basis. And George Bush had a lot of nerve claiming inherent unfairness of a manual count when HE was the one, as governor of Texas, who in the cool dispassion of objective neutrality, when his own behind wasn't on the line, signed a law that not only specifies manual counts as the standard for resolving disputes in machine counted ballots, but which is also the ONLY law in any state that specifically requires that "pregnant" or "dimpled" chads be accepted (the wording in Dubya's Texas standard is "any partial indentation").

The U.S. Supreme Court claimed that the differing standards for vote counting set by individual county canvassing board constituted a violation of "equal protection" of the laws (although that was the legislative and judicial standard on election day), but they refused to allow the Florida courts to order a remedy if it would mean changing the rules. This hypocritical Catch-22 by which they ensured the presidency to the guy with the fewer votes failed to apply the same standard of "equal protection" to the voting process itself. If votes could be disallowed from counting because the counting was not standardized, then why should the votes of the entire state be disallowed because the voting process was also not standardized? Could it be because one ruling would favor Bush but applying the same concept to an earlier and more fundamental stage of the process would have promoted an outcome that didn't satisfy their partisan, pre-determined outcomes? In wealthier counties with higher ratios of Republican registration, optical scanning systems and other objective methods were in place that resulted in much smaller percentage of ballots being rejected from counting than the punch card systems used primarily in less affluent urban areas with higher concentrations of Democratic votes. As noted earlier, punch card counties had eight times the number of uncounted ballots than those using optical scanners. It is not statistically credible to assume that eight times the number of people chose to case blank ballots where another key variable -- the voting method -- suggests another explanation for this difference. The result is that thousands of ballots in DEMOCRAT areas went uncounted and that if all the ballots were counted, the result would be an increase in Democrat votes. The denial of counting these votes based on flawed and faulty equipment while others with better equipment get their votes counted is the real denial of "equal protection," but that would not provide the outcome desired by biased Supreme Court judges so they refused to apply the same standard to voting as to counting.

Overruling of a ruling on a state law by a state court was based the claim that it was superseded by the federal law that prohibited changing the election rules after the election was over. But the Florida Supreme Court made it clear that they were NOT changing the laws, but rather interpreting the existing laws which were in conflict. One law specified a deadline of seven days for certifying the election and the other mandated the allowing of a manual count if requested by the losing candidate within the statutory period, which implies that the right to such a manual count also includes sufficient time to complete the legally-allowed count. The Florida Supreme Court was NOT changing laws, but interpreting a conflict. And it was not doing so in an arbitrary fashion -- it was following standard protocol for resolving such conflicts. Where two laws are in conflict, the one that is LATER in date is presumed to amend the one that is earlier. In this case, the law authorizing the manual count was passed more than ten years after the law setting the deadline for certification. While one might raise legal questions about whether the Florida Supreme Court made the right legal decision, it was (as they specifically noted in the text of their opinion) based NOT on changing the laws or developing new rules, but was a judicial remedy to resolve a statutory conflict according to standard protocols. This is exactly the kind of state court review of state court statutes that the court has consistently left to the states as a matter of state jurisdiction.

The only possible explanation for why the U.S. Supreme Court would violate its own long-established standards in both "equal protection" AND states' rights is that the justices voted contrary to their judicial history because they were motivated by other interests as evidenced by several key observations:

The nine justices represented a 7-2 majority of those appointed by Republicans vs. those appointed by Democrats, and most of the Republicans could not resist casting their final "super vote" for their fellow Republican.

Two of the justices had clear conflicts of interest involving immediate family members which, by all standards of judicial ethics, should have required that they recuse themselves from the current case. Antonin Scalia has two sons who are working as lawyers: one is a partner of Ted Olson, who represented Bush in his federal appeals and argued the case before the Supreme Court (and Scalia, father of his partner), and the other who works for the law firm that was representing Bush's interests in the Florida state courts. These were the only two law firms representing Bush in the post-campaign strategies, and Scalia had a son working for each firm -- immediate family members representing a clear conflict of interest. Additionally, because the presidential and vice-presidential ticket is inseparably linked because of the 12th Amendment, although the name on the suit to stop the vote count was "Bush," Dick Cheney as V.P. candidate was also a direct party to the case, and Scalia has had a long time very close and personal friendship with Cheney that goes far beyond the routine Washington D.C. social circuit. Clarence Thomas' wife Virginia was working for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative "think tank" which was handling screening of applicants for jobs in a potential Bush administration. Again, an immediate family member (wife) working directly for one of the litigants and therefore representing a clear conflict of interest. If these two justices had properly recused themselves the vote would have been different and the vote count in Florida as required by law would not have been stopped.

In addition to the outright conflicts of Scalia and Thomas, two additional justices had expressed reasons for bias that tainted any sudden departure from their traditional positions on states' rights and equal protection. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had both indicated their desire to retire and be replaced by a Republican president. In fact, on election night, O'Connor and her husband were at a party. When Florida was initially called for Gore, she said, "This is terrible!" and with an expression of distress wandered off to get some food as her husband explained that she wanted to retire and be replaced by a Republican, which would not be possible if Gore won, which would be likely if Florida were called for Gore. In other words, not realizing that the case would be coming to her desk within a few weeks, she was commenting on a matter that would soon be brought to her for judgment. She expressed a specific desire for Bush to win, and then (like Rehnquist) violated long-held views on states' rights and equal protection to make sure he did. While this does not rise to the level required for recusal (since everyone is entitled to vote for a candidate and hold political opinions), it was a clear indication of non-objective bias, especially in light of their departure from previous positions. In order to at least reduce the taint of politicizing the judicial process with which Rehnquist and O'Connor are now stained, they must at the very least agree that they will NOT retire during the current term, but if Dubya can win on his own in a clean victory in 2004, then they can retire and be replaced by a Republican.

Evidence of the corruption can be further verified in the payback: within the first six months of his illegitimate presidence, Dubya appointed Eugene Scalia (son of Antonin Scalia) to be the Labor Department's top lawyer, and Janet Rehnquist, daughter of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department. Does anyone really think these appointments would have been made if their last name's were Smith and Jones instead of Scalia and Rehnquist?

In contrast, we can consider differences with the handling by the Florida state courts. Trial court judge Nikki Clark who decided the Seminole County absentee ballot challenge in favor of Bush is a Democrat who was passed over by Governor Jeb Bush (brother of the candidate) for a promotion that had been recommended by a state judicial council and was perceived to have a bias against Bush, but did not allow any such personal feelings to color her judicial objectivity. Similarly, the Florida State Supreme Court (all Democrats) did NOT violate any previous decisions, and out of the various opinions they issued, more rulings were in favor of Bush than against him, AND the Democrats divided instead of holding together with any partisan unity. If the U.S. Supreme Court had held to the same standard, the vote count would not have been stopped and Al Gore would likely be preparing for his inauguration today.

The Supreme Court was not required to accept this case. The lower court (even more conservative) had already made its ruling which, based on Supreme Court precedents, upheld the right of the Florida state Supreme Court to decide a state matter. Any other dispute regarding electors was a political matter and, as the Constitution specifies, should have been handled by elected political bodies: either the Florida state legislature to certify their own electors, or the final decision made by the U.S. Congress. Due to the political makeup of both of these bodies (both Republican), it is unlikely that the outcome would have changed. But the legislators, answerable to voters, would have to face political consequences, from which they were spared by the unelected Supreme Court when it breached the Constitutionally mandated separation of powers and made the electoral decision it was not empowered to make. These judicial and jurisdictional issues are covered more fully in the book Accidental President, by David A Kaplan (2001: William Morrow publishers), and in Newsweek magazine dated September 17, 2001 (pages 28-34). Note the date of the Newsweek report: newsstand date of 9-17-01, actually going on sale September 10, 2001 -- just one day before September 11, 2001, which would divert the nations attention and cause this report to go substantially unnoticed.

The U.S. Supreme Court betrayed their duty to justice and helped George Dubya Bush steal an election that he did not win in either the popular vote (by 540,000 votes) OR the electoral votes, if all the votes were counted according to the statutory rules in place on election day. We wuz robbed!

Since Bush's installation as president, there have been a variety of unofficial media counts. Depending on the standard used for counting undervotes, varying results have shown that either Gore or Bush should have won the Florida count. Whether or not a full recount would have changed the outcome is not the issue. The real issue is twofold:
1. The requested recount was only of undervotes. All the other voting irregularities such as overvotes, disputed ballots, illegal ballot design and properly registered voters being turned away were not covered in any of the recount requests. If all of these factors are taken into consideration, neither Bush nor Gore wins by a few hundred votes, but Gore wins by tens of thousands of votes.
2. At the time of the requested recounts, as prescribed by Florida law in force at that time, the outcome was not known. The only determination was the preliminary count with all its known flaws, which showed a small lead for George Bush. Those requesting the proper manual recount did not know what the outcome would be. Those trying to block it were trying to lock in a predetermined outcome that was already known, however flawed it might be and however much it might violate Florida law. Even if the final proper count would have confirmed their victory, by preventing it they interrupted the legal process and stole the election to obtain a predetermined outcome. The fact that the Republican legislature was also poised to override the result of any proper recount they disagreed with merely confirms that this electoral larceny was intentional and willful.

Unity vs. Sore Loser

During the post-election protest and contest periods, Republicans in their divisive hostility kept calling Al Gore a "sore loser" who refused to concede. Of course, they knew this was a LIE since Gore was quite willing to concede on election night as soon as the networks projected Bush as the winner (he didn't have any secret stash of "hidden" votes like Gov. Jeb promised earlier in the evening). Gore immediately called Bush to concede and was on his way to concede publicly when the actual numbers again showed that Florida was NOT going in the Bush column.

Based on factual information showing a concession was inappropriate, Gore withdrew the concession pending a final and accurate count. As it became apparent that he had won the national popular vote by a substantial margin and that he was also the likely winner in Florida if all votes were counted, it was natural that he would withhold any concession until all issues were resolved one way or another. And, in fact, after the Supreme Court's flawed and biased (but legal) decision to prevent the lawful manual vote count, Gore again immediately conceded and pledged an effort for national unity. Based on the initial reactions to a projected Bush loss and his pre-election threats about fighting an electoral loss if HE had won the national vote and his vast efforts to prevent registered voters from voting and having legally-cast ballots counted, does anyone seriously believe that Dubya would have been as gracious if the outcome had gone the other way? The degree to which he made sure it did NOT, even though Gore actually won, shows who is the sore loser ... who will go to any lengths to lie and cheat and steal to snatch a victory away from the rightful but more gracious person who actually got the most votes (both popular and actual electoral votes if all were counted).

During the campaign, Dubya promised he would be a "Uniter, not a divider." This was just lip service. By excluding all but token participation by the Democrats who actually won more votes and with his divisive, extremist cabinet nominations that are sure to excite vigorous and divisive opposition, Dubya has again proven the extent of his hypocrisy.

But Republican complaints of Democratic divisiveness ring especially hollow. In 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton won decisive victories (both times by about six million votes over his nearest rival). The legitimacy of his victory was never in doubt, yet the Republicans did not united behind him or support him. They fought everything he did and dragged private, personal foibles into public fights even to the point where they tried to steal Clinton's elections by blocking numerous administrative and judicial appointments and with an especially nasty trumped-up impeachment campaign designed to overturn Clinton's victories. And this was for a President with a huge popular vote margin! Republicans tried to thwart the will of the electorate in electing Clinton and have now succeeded in usurping power by stealing an election from the rightful winner of the popular vote and of the electoral vote if all voters were allowed to vote, all voting procedures were followed according to law and all votes were counted. When Dubya talks about restoring "civility" to Washington, he has to remember that it was his own party who dragged the level of discourse and acrimony down into the sewer. Now that he comes to power without getting the most popular votes, without a clean electoral college victory, and bringing divisive and extremist appointments guaranteed to be divisive, he has a lot of nerve to expect that the rightful winners will just roll over and play dead.

Asking the rightful winners to "unite" behind the rightful loser is like the case of someone whose house is burglarized. He calls the police and reports the crime. The next day he sees his property and personal belongings in his neighbor's yard. He calls the police to let them know he has solved the crime, but they tell him, "Oh, don't be such a sore loser."

History of Republican Power Grabs

More than merely serving as the organized voice of opposition to the Democratic Party, the modern Republican Party has become the opponent of democracy itself. Seeking to represent only the voices of the wealthy special interests who bribe them with millions of campaign dollars, we have seen over the past several decades a pattern of trying to undermine the legitimate electoral processes and disregard the will of the people when it doesn't go their way. Some examples:

1972 -- Republican Richard Nixon establishes a criminal enterprise to break into the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Hotel to steal documents, install illegal wiretaps, and commit burglary and theft in an effort to undermine the legitimate free speech and electoral opportunities of the challenger. Nixon also ordered break-ins of other individual political enemies (and their doctors), and illegally used pressure from the FBI and IRS to intimidate and harrass political opponents. As a result of this, Nixon faced impeachment but resigned in disgrace to avoid the certainty of being ousted.

1998 -- Faced with stinging back-to-back defeats in which popular Democratic President Bill Clinton won elections by margins of six million votes, Republicans sought to drum up an old land deal from 20 years earlier to drive him from office and overturn his rightful double victories. But when it turned out that Clinton had no involvement and actual lost money as a victim, they turned to digging up dirt from his personal life, and actually managed to use their legislative majority to pass impeachment charges based on ... lying about oral sex with a consenting adult ... which, of course, were promptly dismissed in the Senate. Many key Republican leaders of the failed impeachment effort were quickly humiliated when it found that many of them had far more egregious violations of their marital vows.

2000 -- The most egregious electoral theft of all ... see above.

2003 -- Texas: after legislative Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on redistricting boundaries following the 2000 census, the boundaries were drawn by impartial judges in one of the most equitable redistrictings ever done (perhaps the process should always be removed from partisan legislators). When the Republicans won a sufficient legislative majority after the 2002 elections, instead of properly waiting for the next census (in 2010) to redraw the boundaries, they developed their own heavily gerrymandered districts, reversing one of the most balanced divisions with one of the most extremely partisan divisions, and tried to pass it immediately. The plan was engineered by Texas congressman Tom DeLay (many suspect with strong influence from the Texas Republican president's advisors skilled in such manipulations) with the goal of picking up seven new seats in congress without having to wait for the next scheduled redistricting. Only the courage of Texas Democrats in utilizing parliamentary strategies to block this action has kept the Texas Republicans in check ... so far.

2003 -- California: barely a few months after a Democratic governor was re-elected, a Republican millionaire hires out-of-state professional petition-circulators (in violation of state law) to get enough signatures to get a recall on the ballot. With no criminal charges or other malfeasance other than differences in policy that should have been addressed during the recent campaign, they unleash a circus-like recall campaign, introducing economic and political chaos. Their strategy: they can't win the governorship outright in a normal election when the top vote-getter wins, and so they will have a recall in which the governor could conceivably get 49% of the vote and thus lose the recall question, and then they get their candidate elected with a plurality, say 20% or 25% in a field with lots of candidates to divide the vote among, so that, as with the presidency, the governor could get the most votes but be replaced by someone who gets far fewer votes. The campaign is based on charges of policy mis-management (not malfeasance or criminality), but disregards the fact that California's budget meltdown and energy crisis was the direct result of market manipulation by large energy companies who had strong personal, political and financial ties to George Bush, whose puppets on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission refused to intervene in their regulatory role to enforce laws to protect Californians. Meanwhile, Bush's national economic collapse (which afffects all states, not just California) coupled with the energy crisis caused by his cronies, is the real cause of California's problems as Bush seeks to punish Californias for giving Al Gore (who spent no money at all campaigning in California) a margin of more than a million votes over Bush (who did spend money on campaign trips in California).

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References and Recommended Readings:
Bugliosi, Vincent, "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President." New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001. Excellent analysis of the legal aspects of the Supreme Courts usurpation of power by a well-known attorney (prosecutor who handled the Charles Manson conviction and outspoken legal critic of how the O.J. Simpson prosecution was bungled).
Dershowitz, Alan M., "Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked the Election." Oxford University Press, 2001. Excellent analysis of the legal issues by a well-known trial attornery.
Moore, Michael. "Stupid White Men." Regan Books/HarperCollins, 2002. Provides many excellent insights into the stealing of the November 2000 election and other socio-political anomolies.
Franken, Al. "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -- a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Dutton Books, 2003. General expose of right-wing dishonesty, with Chapter 7 specifically focusing on how the Florida election was stolen by the Bushies.
More Articles:
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--Dazhan.
--Extro-Dynamics.
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