Do you think bush* really WON the 2000 presidential election.

[MoonRiver]

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Anybody who says he won honestly is either a liar or a fool

[maggrwaggr]

2. they should have done a re-vote in Florida, overseen

by an outside party such as the U.N. With the purged voters back in, people like Jeb Bush and Cath Harris OUT OF THE PICTURE.

That would have been the only way to actually settle it.

An entirely new election.

If they'd recounted and Gore had won by a few votes, the right wing would be screaming for four years.

I remember hoping that the SCOTUS would order exactly that. Instead, they installed Shrub.

[MoonRiver]

6. I was very naive then. I also thought SCOTUS would do the correct thing.

Then, it was like being violated. My trust in this government was gone.

[Beaker]

57. they would never do a statewide re-vote in a national election

too many complications.

i'm not sure how or if it's allowed for in the constitution, but I'm assuming they would do something like have the florida legislature choose the electors for their state, or just nullify the results of the florida election outright.

what happened in 2000 was no less than a coupd'etat.

[doni_georgia]

66. Since Florida illegally purged voter roles of African Americans

even if they weren't felons - a recount would still be inaccurate. If you've read the truth about Florida's purging of the voter roles (to include people whose names were similar to felons, people with the same birthdate as felons, people who have committed misdemeanors, former Texas residents who had their voting rights reinstated in Texas, etc.) and also the debacle of counting absentee ballots (different standards for different locations) - no one could even begin to say even a recount would be accurate. Florida was wrapped up neatly with a bow for Dubya by his brother and Kathryn Harris. That's why he wasn't worried on election night when Florida was originally given to Gore. He knew that Jeb would come through. It was in the bag.

[kiahzero]

3. Depends on the definition of "WON"

If you go by results, yes, clearly he did.

Did he win 'honestly' - again, we are stuck with a definitional problem.

The facts of the case are pretty clear:
1) Thousands of voters were illegally denied their right to vote. These voters came from heavily Democratic demographics; it is likely that a large majority would be voting for Gore.
2) Gore pursued a bad strategy of not calling for all of the votes to be recounted.

I don't see what good it does to argue over semantics.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

47. "The results..."

As published by the State DOE in Florida and the press are not representative of fact.

In addition the "final results" as certified by the DOE are actually prima facia evidence of fraud.

Can any one tell me why the results certifed by 62 of the 67 counties are different from what the State DOE certified for those same counties?

What SHOULD have happened is that the "Certification" submitted by Florida should have been rejected, and the result of the election should have been determined by the remaining states.

[kiahzero]

48. By results, I was referring to the fact that he's running the country

Looking at that, he clearly won.

[ngGale]

4. Ya gatta be kiddin me...n/t

[qazplm]

7. honestly?

yes. Look sorry but I just dont think Bush went around purposefully trying to disenfranchise votes in Florida.

There really was no indication that Florida was going to be the razor thin state it turned out to be.

I think we can blame several factors, the butterfly ballots, the antiquated voting system in Florida and yes also some improper and illegal acts.


I think he won, I just wish someone could have gone back in time to warn Gore to spend everything he had in Florida.

[yardwork]

9. Bush absolutely purposefully disenfranchised voters in Florida!

His brother the governor had voters purged from the rolls. It was done in Texas and Missouri and other states as well.

No, he didn't intend a razor-thin margin in Florida. The evil chimp intended a fake landslide nationwide.

The morans can't do anything right. They even screwed up stealing the election. If not for their buddies on the Supreme Court, all might have been lost for them.

[MoonRiver]

10. Florida was rigged long before the actual counting of "votes" began.

I have ZERO hope for FL this year either. Fortunately I believe enough honest states will vote for Kerry that FL will be irrelevant. We'll just call (Florida) our token banana republic state. How's that for a consolation prize?

[Mountainman]

13. You and I are having a race. A jugde jumps out and stops you but lets me

run. I won, or did I?

[Cheswick2.0]

64. of course he went around puposely trying to disenfranchise voters

in Florida and TN. It was all part of the game plan.

[JohnLocke]

5. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!

That's hilarious! Bush? Winning honestly? No way.

[MajorFlaw]

8. There is no Constitutional basis for the Supreme Court to

intervene in a state's selection of its presidential electors. If Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and the other "strict constructionists" were at all intellectually honest, they would have refused to hear the case. There are provisions for dealing with competing slates of electors (see JQ Adams v A Jackson), there is a process for solving just about any election issue which may arise. There is absolutely no statutory or Constitutional authority for the Supreme Court to butt in. This, obviously, is an important element of the separation of powers--We don't want judges choosing presidents anymore than we want presidents choosing who gets to be a senator.

Thanks a whole fucking lot. I wonder if they are still proud of themselves.

/rage

[qazplm]

17. I agree on that

it was clearly constitutionally "hypocritical" for the Supremes to get involved as they did or decide as they did.

[MajorFlaw]

72. You are correct to recognize that the SC made not one, but two

grievous mistakes. The written opinion which effectively canceled the election and appointed shrub president has been deservedly recognized as one of the worst decisions ever made by the court.

But the truly egregious error was in agreeing to even grant cert and hear the case. This was a perfect opportunity for the taliban wing of the SC to demonstrate how a non interventionist judiciary should act. The majority justices had spent years telling plaintiffs that they had no standing to sue, that their rights were preempted by some other agency, that the court was not competent to award the relief sought, any old excuse rather than "making" law and granting relief. I hoped that Scalia would set an example by refusing to interfere with a case he had no business hearing in the first place. And it gets worse. Scalia's son worked for one of shrub's law firms, Thomas was appointed by shrub's father and his wife worked for shrub's campaign, yet neither thought it necessary to recuse themselves from the case. You can't get anymore dishonest than that. Obvious grounds for impeachment of both justices, which is provided for in the Constitution.

I expected that any decision from that court would be heavily biased. I didn't expect that the 5 co conspirators would turn their backs on their entire judicial philosophy and bend over for shrub. And some wonder why I don't trust Repugs . . .

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qazplm]

16. whatever

I've been a democrat and a liberal before I even knew what those terms mean.

But apparently, if you dont buy into the conspiracy theory that Florida was a setup then you arent a liberal or democrat or apparently stupid.

nice. I'll refrain from stooping to the same level but will say there is little to no proof that there was a coordinated campaign to disenfranchise voters.

It sickens me to no end that Bush is in office, but I prefer to look to the more obvious answer, that a large percentage of Americans are too lazy to look at the issues and many are unfortunately too easily caught up in visceral and simplistic black and white thinking, and thus are more easily swayed by the stuff Bush spews.

If Nader doesnt run, Gore wins. If the butterfly ballot isnt created, Gore wins, if Gore runs a better campaign, he wins, and if many of the people who voted for Bush actually looked at more than which guy was cooler to have at a barbecue, Gore wins.

[MoonRiver]

18. Whatever, indeed.

[qazplm]

20. nice comeback

your rapier wit has stung me to the core.

Really, I always thought rigid orthodoxy of thought was something that was confined to the conservative side of the spectrum, apparently, I was misguided.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qazplm]

24. so let me be clear on this

apparently, if someone questions the idea that florida was fixed, then they CANT be liberal, is that right?

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qazplm]

28. wow

so EVERY liberal believes that the election was stolen?

really?

Wow, amazing that every last one of a group can believe the same thing.

You'd think that being human there would be differences, I had no idea that as a liberal I had to check that block or lose my liberal papers.

Thankfully, last time I checked, you get to self-identify which group you choose to belong to, even if you do not agree 100% with every axiom of that group.

And the best thing of all is, you can do without worrying one wit what some oblivious person on an internet message board thinks.

Isnt that great? :)

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qazplm]

30. what the hay is a roflay?

ah so no not only am I not liberal, now I am not rational.

Ok, no use talking to you anymore, feel free to have the last word.

[MoonRiver]

33. Here's a link that might help decipher our acronyms

http://www.gaarde.org/acronyms/

Have a nice day and pass it on! :D

[qazplm]

37. pass what on?

oh I get it, its a cute little attack.

Tell ya what, why not look up all the other posts I have made so you can see if there is some hidden "pattern". lol (see, I know that one).

Methinks you do protest too much though, you seem awfully persistent in this whole he is a plant from the dark side thing, makes one wonder about ya...but whatever, realy this time I will give you the last word, not worth it at 1am in the morning.

[MoonRiver]

71. Pass on the good day, dude!

:hi:

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qazplm]

25. nice

more personal attacks...that's cool.

like I said, I refuse to stoop to that level.

If anyone has some calm, rational points to be made, great, otherwise, why bother?

[Jack Rabbit]

31. How is that a personal attack?

minkyboodle directed you to Greg Palast's website, where the story of the election theft in Florida is well documented.

Here is an article written by Palast that appeared in the London Observer in December 2000. This one appeared in The Nation. Palast won an award for this piece that first appeared on Salon.com.

I also recommend Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The true story is that voters were targeted for removal from Florida's voter roles. They were Afro-Americans voters who had names similar to convicted felons in other states. There names were provided to Katherine Harris, then Florida's Secretary of State and also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida. Ms. Harris simply had the voters removed without critically reviewing the list. She knew exactly what she was doing.

[qazplm]

36. easy

the part about if someone disagrees they are blind.

Look, I have no doubt that people in power were casually indiscriminate.
My first inclination in fact would be that it was racist in nature (black people dont vote, and when they do they vote democrat, and hey most of them are felons anyways is probably what they were thinking)

I also have no doubt that later when it became apparent what had happened she dragged her feet.

That does not a coordinated conspiracy make.

Thats an extraordinary claim, and as with all other extraordinary claims, requires a LOT more evidence than Mr. Palast provides.

[camero]

50. well

My first inclination in fact would be that it was racist in nature (black people dont vote, and when they do they vote democrat, and hey most of them are felons anyways is probably what they were thinking)

It is illegal to discriminate against voters based on race or ethnicity. Laws were broken.



I also have no doubt that later when it became apparent what had happened she dragged her feet.

Catherine Harris knew there was only a certain amount of time for the recount. Hence the dragging of feet.

Those two certainties made for a good game plan and they are doing it again.

[qazplm]

52. sure

it is, that doesnt make it a conspiracy. I suspect that EVERY election has blacks unfairly targeted in this manner...in many states.

Catherine Harris doesnt strike me as being smart enough to know what she is doing beyond knowing when her butt could be in a sling (i.e. the way she handled the felon thing).

That doesnt make it a conspiracy...just makes it normal racist behavior.

[AntiCoup2K4]

61. You contradict yourself

"That doesnt make it a conspiracy...just makes it normal racist behavior."

Deliberately removing citizens of the state of Florida from the voter rolls due to race, on the presupposition that they "might be felons" is by it's very definition a conspiracy to influence the outcome of an election.

And let's not forget that Kate was the state chair of Junior's campaign. Clearly she had a personal interest in the outcome of the election, and should have never been the one in charge of the process to begin with. The governor of the state of Florida should have demanded that this blatant conflict of interest be resolved.

Except the governor in question was the brother of the candidate. Another blatant conflict of interest! How could anybody possibly believe that Jeb Bush would be impartial in an election involving his own brother?

You think if Roger Clinton had been in charge of the Arkansas vote count in 1996, the Republicans wouldn't have raised unholy Hell??

[noiretextatique]

62. you have just described a conspriracy

to disenfranchise black people. that is essentially what institutional racism is...a conspriracy, that far too many dismiss as a mere collection of individual behaviors. it's no coincidence that rhenquist participated directly in disenfranchisement efforts in arizona.

[Jack Rabbit]

54. I disagree

Harris's crew lit this database fuse, then acted surprised when it blew up.
-- Greg Palast, London Observer, December 10, 2000

Let's leave conspiracy aside for the time being. Let's look at criminal behavior first, and then go to conspiracy to commit criminal behavior. After all, there is no mere accusation that a bunch of people just got together and plotted a crime. A crime was actually committed.

Even if every name on the list Ms. Harris received from ChoicePoint was a felon, it was the name of a felon convicted in a state other that Florida. Under the law, Florida may ban a felon from voting only if that person was convicted of a felony under Florida law. Ms. Harris had no right to remove any voter from the roll merely because that voter had been convicted of a felony in Texas or Illinois. Yet that is exactly what she said she was doing.

Thus, even by Harris' own admission, she was violating the law. There was nothing casually indiscriminate about this. The fact that most of those on Ms. Harris' scrub list were guilty of no felonies is irrelevant. As long as they were not suspected of being felons convicted in Florida courts, Ms. Harris had no right to instruct county officials to remove their names.

There was also something about this list that targeted Democratic voters. As one learns in PoliSci 101, Afro-Americans vote for Democrats 90% of the time. That's not a exaggeration; that's a verifiable statistic. We also know that Afro-Americans are convicted of crimes out of proportion to their percentage of the population. Consequently, if one has a list of names of felons and starts to associate those names and other characteristics, such as race and gender, with real voters in Florida, guess what? You're going to scrub a lot of Afro-American voters from the rolls.

It is difficult to conceive how such a scheme could have carried out innocently. Harris isn't a stupid as you say she is. She scrubbed the names of people from the list knowing that they represented a demographic that is associated with voting for Democrats and knowing that she had no legal cause to scrub them.

It is a federal crime to deny citizens their right to vote based on race. That is what Harris did. She did this deliberately and with malice aforethought. She had means, motive and opportunity. Federal prosecutors should make the decision, but I believe Palast presents enough in his writings, if his facts stand up under a legal investigation, to begin criminal proceedings against Katherine Harris.

At this point, we don't need to ask if there was a coordinated effort to steal the election. We could state a hypothesis based on what has been presented so far that Katherine Harris single-handedly
stole the election from Al Gore and presented it to G. W. Bush. Even if Harris did this all by herself, it means that Bush did not win the election honestly.

Thus, I will stand by my statement in post number 1, above: Anybody who says Bush won the 2000 election honestly is either a liar or a fool. I believe it is absurd to go as far as to say, as some have here, that one cannot believe that Bush won the election honestly and still be a liberal or a progressive. Liberals and progressives are human beings and capable of being fooled. However, if one is a fool, it may simply be because he is misinformed, not because he is just stupid. Hopefully, efforts made by me and others on this thread will leave you better informed.

So far, I have attempted to demonstrate two things: First, that Katherine Harris is a criminal; second, that it is possible to state otherwise and not be thought a vicious person. I think I have successfully demonstrated both.

That leaves the question of whether Katherine Harris committed her crimes alone or with the active assistance of others who were also aware that they were engaging in a plot to illegally deprive Afro-Americans of their right to vote.

It is very unlikely that Harris could have carried out this scheme without active assistance. Palast names some others who may have assisted her who were also in a position to know that as elections officers in Florida they had no right to scrub voter rolls of those convicted of felonies in other states.

While Palast makes suggestions, he doesn't go further that stating what he knows. Just because ChoicePoint's corporate officers contribute to GOP campaign coffers does not mean that they would do something as unprofessional as engage in a criminal conspiracy to rob citizens of the right to vote. However, this should be the subject of a wider investigation that is yet to take place.

The results of that investigation aside, should it ever take place, Mr. Palast's writings demonstrate to my satisfaction that G. W. Bush is in the White House as the result of deliberate election fraud perpetrated by his campaign co-chair in Florida.

[JohnLocke]

74. In addition:

In an independent analysis by several newspapers, Gore won in six out of the nine situations, including the most sensible ones.

[spotbird]

76. What would it take?

If an elected official betrays a her sworn duty with the effect of enormous personal gain, who cares whether she did it on order from someone or figured out just what she had to do all by herself? Conspirators don't need to be in contact with each other to act in concert (although she, Jeb, et. al. were in constant contact). If each actor knows what needs to be done and each does his fair share you have the basis of a conspiracy.

Good God, they didn't even try to give it an impartial face, they did it right out in the open.

It is just like the war, all one needs to do is read the words of those in power to know that the war was planned long before 9/11. But they say otherwise now when asked now, so the public, led by the press, blindly follows.

To understand what happened in Florida you would have to look at the whole picture, not just the parts that reinforce your opinion. If you did look at it objectively there is only one conclusion.

[DieboldMustDie]

40. See "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy..."

by Greg Palast along with various other things he's written. More than 90,000 Floridians were unjustly disenfranchised in 2000. :grr:

[libhill]

44. But -

them thar commie Demmycrats gonna take my guns, an` con-vince my woman to get one of them A-bortions.

[saracat]

49. Wow! Are you strange or what?

In a race that was decided by 500 votes you honestly need more proof than the Palm Beach Jewish vote going to Pat Buchanan ? You have to ask if anyone thinks Bush won? Buchanan admits those weren't his votes.The voters admit they didn't cast those votes.They voted for Gore.Or thought they did.How can you possibly come to the conclusion that more people voted for Bush in Florida? There were more than 8000 votes in Palm Beach alone that would have tipped the scale. And its not like the"obvious answer that a large percentage of Americans are too lazy to look at the issues and many are unfortunately too easily caught up in visceral and simplistic black and white thinking, and thus are more easily swayed by the stuff Bush spews".Excuse me, but informed voters went to the polls and voted for Gore. They admit it and the other candidate admits it. The problem is NOT that they were lazy or didn't vote for Gore , but that their votes were not counted. How hard is that for you to understand?

[qazplm]

51. so who made the butterfly ballots?

It was a decision made by democrats unfortunately, and that decision led to Buchanan getting those votes, had nothing to do with Bush.

How hard is it for you to understand that those votes were marked for Buchanan? I mean now you are saying that Buchanan and Bush were working together along with the democratic official who came up with the butterfly ballot?

Geez, come on. Informed voters? They didnt pay attention to the ballot and marked the wrong spot. And many of the swing/independent voters who DID vote for Bush werent informed either or they wouldnt have voted for him.

The voters who voted for Nader werent very informed either IMO since they didnt see what Bush was about and where things would get much worse with him in charge than Gore (but bought into the whole, there isnt a bit of difference between the two parties spiel that Nader sold them on).

Yes, laws may have been broken, and they should be investigated, but sorry I have never been one for grand conspiracy theories, and I see nothing that would make me think that there was a grand one to insure Bush victory in Florida.

What I DO see are the standard kind of shenanigans that go on in a fairly inefficient and antiquated election system like Florida had, with partisan control of the process, old and wildly varied systems of voting in various counties, and a whole lot of other problems, but not some grand unholy conspiracy to steal an election.

Thats a HUGE charge and one that requires iron-clad proof.

[saracat]

53. You are right. Many of us do think it is not possible to be a liberal

and think Bush won. This post is a perfect example of the mindset that proves one could not be a democratic liberal and interpret the facts with such a callous disregard of the victims.
What you refuse to comprehend is that it doesn't matter by whose fault the election was stolen. Those voters did NOT mark their ballots for Buchanan.You obviously have not had any personal experience with butterfly punch card ballots or you wouldn't be so quick to judge those voters. I was the judge at a poll during one election where we used such a ballot and I realized that there was almost no way one could vote for the Democrat! And I ran four test ballots. It took such an effort the average person could not do it.And as for paying attention ,it was almost impossible to see a mistake being made.You would be very lucky to see it upon removal from the machine.I only noticed the problem because my stylus jammed.I discovered more problems when I tested again and compared the other machines.
You seem to express contempt for the voter and lay all the blame on them. I remind you that the majority of American's voted for Gore.And the majority of Floridians did so as well.Any Democrat who believes that the Bush Junta was just a normal election and did not deprive thousands of Americans of their civil rights is not a Democrat.Our official party position is that the election was stolen!

[Alerter_]

59. you are purposefully ignoring the voter purges, why?

People illegally taken off the voter rolls, recounts being stopped, hired goons sent to FL to intimidate people, and thousands of ballots for Gore spoiled, and YOU want to blame it on dumb voters?

The butterfly ballot "controversy" was pure disinfo, and here you are repeating it.

"Thats a HUGE charge and one that requires iron-clad proof."

There was ONE hand count of the ballots, done by NYT/WP/WSJ/MH, and LAT. The recounts showed Gore won.

[Cheswick2.0]

65. Who made the butterfly ballots is a right wing argument, you shoud be

warned on that point because people will assume you are a freeper. The person who approved that ballot was a democrat for a short time, she has since switched her registration back to either republican or independent.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

78. She worked for Adnan Khashoggi during the Iran-Contra operation...

<http://hackenbush.org/hackenblog/blogives/00000138.htm>

[noiretextatique]

67. you admit that black people have been targetted for disenfranchisement

but you still dismiss that as plain old racism. let me ask you: does systemic racism (business as usual racism) qualify as a conspriracy, in your opinion?

[Jack Rabbit]

69. Irrelevant

If the butterfly ballot in Dade County was the only thing wrong with the Florida 2000 election, I'd write this off. It was designed by an elections official who claimed to have voted Gore. As a computer programmer, I can easily see this kind of mistake being made. They should have "user tested" it weeks before the election, but it probably didn't occur to them to do so.

However, the butterfly ballot wasn't the only thing wrong with the Florida election. I still maintain that Katherine Harris willfully disenfranchised voters with malice aforethought by illegally scrubbing the voter rolls prior to the election; had she not done so, Al Gore would have carried Florida by a margin wide enough to preclude the need for a recount and would be President today.

[jeff30997]

14. No he didnt won !

:grr:

[pinniped]

15. All 50 states + US territories and FL has the problem.

With *'s POS brother as the gov. that alone should tell you something is up.

This $hit was definitely "orchestrated".

[qazplm]

21. dont agree with you

but gotta say, that is one cool pic!

(and Omen III was an underrated movie IMO)

[pinniped]

41. Thanks, and I just finished reading the * anti-Christ thread too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1690904

[PartyPooper]

19. Are you kidding me? What kind of question is this?

Of course, Junior did NOT win the 2000 election...he STOLE it!

:evilfrown:

[stickdog]

27. The Ballad of the Dubya Bush (to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies)

Come listen to a story of a man named Jeb,
who deceived the whole nation when he weaved his tangled web.
He and his brother were laughing at us dolts,
when up from the ground came a load of Gore votes.

(Misplaced ballots, lost returns.)

Well, the next thing you know, ol' Pap's throwing a fit,
'cus Jeb promised Pap that he'd get away with it.
As the vote got closer, Jeb tried his best to please
so he bribed GIs in Europe to predate their absentees.

(The CIA ain't MIA.)

The race was still so close that ol' Pap started to heave,
but little bro' Jeb still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Even Pappy was impressed that Jeb was such a rat
that he got 3,000 Jewish folks to cast their votes for Pat.

(No voter's rights, unless you're white.)

[rexcat]

32. Jeb put the fix in and he is doing it again!

[Octafish]

34. Why d'ya think he gets mad when people call him "Governor Bush?"

Smiko knows it's accurate.



There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend.

[MoonRiver]

35. Wow! I'm impressed!

Did he actually "win" the governor's office? If so (and, honestly, I've got my doubts) that's gotta be a first and last personal achievement for AWOL! Should have stopped while he was A HEAD. :D

[robbedvoter]

56. Many Texans voted for him thinking it was Poppy

So it was impersonation, stupidity and who knows what else?

[Skarbrowe]

42. Chiming in

The state of Florida was called, by at least NBC, for Gore at 7:50 PM on the night of the election. I was happy. I knew if Gore got Florida then he had the election. Tim Russert was driving me crazy with his chalkboard. All I needed to know was that Florida went to Gore.

WELL, it is true that the northeastern panhandle part of Florida happens to be on Central Time and the networks called the election 10 loooong minutes before the polls closed in that part of the state. To this day, I believe that if NBC and other networks had just waited that 10 minutes before they called it for Gore the following would not have happened.

BUSH AS A CANDIDATE, got on all the news channels, sitting there with George Sr. and Barbara, and ACTUALLY QUESTIONED THE CALL FOR FLORIDA. This had NEVER been done before. The state was called for Gore using the same criteria that had always been used, exit polling.

Bush MUST HAVE known that his brother was going to deliver by having all those voters knocked off by the felonious voters list and Bush MUST HAVE KNOWN that his brother Jeb made sure a large chunk of Democratic votes would be found "spoiled". Otherwise, he would have never dared go on all the news channels obviously KNOWING that his brother had PROMISED him the state of Florida and even though exit polls were showing more people voted Democrat than Republican, ONLY George and Jeb and Katherine knew those Democratic votes weren't going to count. Also, a Bush cousin or something was running FOX NEWS at the time and he is the one who had his station finally give Florida to Bush somewhere around 2 in the morning. The other Networks just fell in line.

I've always wondered if Bush would have done that if the Networks hadn't left the door open by calling the state before all polls had closed. Even if it was only 10 minutes.

Was Gore's campaign a mess? Yes
Are there always voting problems in every election? Yes
Was this an obvious, well documented theft of a state's electoral votes and a Presidency? HELL YES.

I've even had one or two Republicans tell me they felt Gore won Florida. Two people happened to be very religious, intelligent young people from Texas who deeply loved and love George W. Bush. But they knew.

It really is well documented and the fact that Gore had more than 500,000 popular votes than Bush makes it burn into the psyches of Democrats, liberals, thinking people of world, more than ever.

And look at all the damage that has been done by that theft.

Skarbrowe

[Virginian]

38. Duh, what do you expect the results of your poll to be?

I am really surprised you got those 2 or 3 votes for "yes".

[minkyboodle]

39. kick

wasn't this the genesis of the DU site after all??

[Finbar]

45. I remember in 2000 Driving in my car and listening to NPR. When Florida

was callrd for Gore, I remember the station reported that Bush and his crew were at a dinner, and all got up and excused themselves to go figure out what to do. It was odd, and I thought they had reacted like the just got re-negged . The rest is sad sad History.

[minkyboodle]

46. I remember every station except fox calling it for Gore

then i woke up the next day and the nightmare really got started...

[Jack Rabbit]

58. Yes, it is

!!

[sampsonblk]

43. The media recount was pretty clear...

that more Floridians voted for Gore than for Bush. I am saddened to see that some Dems haven't looked into it, or have bought the post-9/11 headline that Bush won fair and square. The numbers don't lie.

[AudreyT]

55. ban the people who voted yes on this poll

[in_cog_ni_to]

60. No. He didn't win.

He was installed by his RW SCOTUS. He's illegitimate and will go down in the history books as such. First President of the United States to be PUT in office by the Supreme Court.

[napi21]

63. I didn't vote in this poll. The answer is we'll never know.

I don't think we'll ever know. I'm still pissed at both parties and the SCOTUS for not doing a statewide recount. Somebody with some balls should have set up the rules and just conpleted the task. I blame both parties because both tried to slant the vote in their favor, and SCOTUS because none of them had the balls to make the rules, do the recount, and live with the results!

[liberalron]

68. Under our system,

he "won"; but he wasn't elected.

[MoonRiver]

75. Well, I would debate that he "won".

But, if being the beneficiary of a rigged game means one "wins", I think you may have nailed it.

[liberalron]

77. Pretty much

what I meant.

[Bridget Burke]

70. Hunter S. Thompson saw it happen....

This eerie Presidential election has been a painful experience for Gamblers. Almost everybody Lost. Even if you were crazy or dumb enough to bet on a dead-even Tie, you Lost, because it was 537 votes short of it. The many Losers don't feel the pain yet, because they are still in Shock & Denial...... George W. Bush is our President now, and you better start getting used to it. He didn't actually steal the White House from Al Gore, he just brutally wrestled it away from him in the darkness of one swampy Florida night. He got mugged, and the local Cops don't give a damn.

Where did Gore think he was -- in some friendly Civics class? Hell no, he was in Florida, arguably the most Vicious & Corrupt state in the Union. ... Not only that, but he was brazenly invading Florida, trying to steal it from right under the noses of the whole Bush family. It was a bold move & brilliantly done, in some ways -- but then so was Lee's decision to invade the North & attack Gettysburg......

There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. ...

The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's. ... Everything since then has been political flotsam & Gibberish.

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/001127.html

Despite JEB's voter purge, despite the illegal butterfly ballot designed by a temporary Democrat, despite Idiots for Nader--if only the votes in Florida had been counted. Just the ones cast--counted per the laws of the State of Florda, without unprecedented interference by the Supreme Court; how different might things be? (Still--rival panels of electors might have arrived in Washington, with Congress forced to actively choose whether or not the elected President should take office.)

How many people would not have had to die?

[Zynx]

73. Certainly not.

That's because I think, for one thing, that the electoral college is uselss and that it should be a straight popular election.