Ann, I guess you didn't bother to read what I said about all those points you brought up since you seem to think that your accusations of unfairness were still true. Just because Jeb Bush was governor didn't mean a thing towards the ballot. I even identified the person who created the butterfly ballot that you think cost Al Gore the election. It was the Democratic Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County, Theresa Lapore. It was unlikely Jeb Bush ever saw the ballot because it isn't his job according to Florida law. Every single county is different and each supervisor of each county is responsible for drawing up its own ballots. The ballot is then voted on by the county elections board, of which two were Democrats and one was a Republican in Palm Beach. On top of that, each and every county was responsible for its own voting equipment. Did you know that some Florida counties used optical scanners? Others used the old tried and true punch card ballots. Some even used those old fashion levers. Florida did not have a uniform method of voting. My own state used punch cards in 2000. Jeb must have been very busy going around Florida's sixty-seven counties, trying to make sure each and every ballot favored his brother.
Did you also know state law decreed that the first ballot slot of any ballot had to be the candidate from the party of the state governor? If a Democrat had been governor, Gore's name would have been in the top slot and Bush would have been in Gore's slot. That's about as close as Jeb Bush ever got to influencing the ballot design through his voter registration card.
Falsely accusing Jeb Bush of favoritism without a shred of evidence isn't being very fair to him, is it? And when it came to the recount, he recused himself from being on the three-person Florida State Elections board. He wanted to stay as far away as he could.
There were no irregularities in the voting, except for accusations from the Gore camp that held no water and could never be proven, such as people keeping blacks from voting. The press never could find anyone who didn't vote who wanted to and they interviewed a lot of people. If you want any kind of irregularity, they favored Gore. He tried to keep the ballots of overseas military personnel from being counted since the military always votes heavily Republican. He tried to cherry pick counties that had mostly Democrats because he figured if he needed to manufacture a few votes, those were the places to do it. He wanted no part in recounts of Republican counties. Just look at what happened in the Washington State governor's election four years later. Despite all deadlines having passed, the Republican Dino Rossi led the whole way. Yet, King County kept coming up with new ballots that unsurprisingly favored the Democrat, Christine Gregoire. Long after the election, by state law, should have been settled, King County still kept finding new ballots, some of them in unprotected areas where there were no guarantees they had not been tampered with. Eventually, Gregoire was declared the winner. Talk about stealing an election.
You'll talk about hanging chads. Studies have shown that Palm Beach's hanging chads were no different than those used in the rest of the country. All ballots, even optically scanned ones, have a rate of failure. It's when the election is very close that candidates can ask for recounts. But do you think it was fair to ask for recounts in only Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Volusia Counties? Who was really trying to break the rules of the election?
Then you still go and accuse the Supreme Court of trying to crown a king. Talk to Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, who voted to say that Gore's recount was unconstitutional and a violation of the equal protection clause for trying to cherry pick counties (I know liberals love that phrase, "cherry pick," especially when it comes to war intelligence). I know Clinton and Gore were never really best buddies, but you think Clinton called up Breyer to tell him to vote for Bush?
Then there's the vote to stop the recount. If the recount had gone forward, Florida in all likelihood would have lost its electors since the vote could not start until after the safe harbor day. If the election had gone to the House of Representatives, Gore would have lost anyway.
Then the press went to try and recount the vote to see if Gore could have won. The conclusion: Bush would have still been president. Any way you look at it, Gore was a loser. There wasn't any chance of him becoming president when playing by the rules.
What's your complaint? That you don't like the electoral college? Nobody on the Bush team did anything untoward but defend their right to a fair election played by the rules set down before election day. Gore was trying to change the rules along the way to favor himself in any way he could. Picture yourself as an Army soldier sitting in the Balkans casting a vote for George Bush only to find out Al Gore tried to have your vote thrown out. Is that fair?
And just what the heck does oil have to do with the Florida elections?
What does Bill Clinton have to do with the Florida election? As a technicality, you say he was smeared and almost impeached. Umm, it isn't a smear if it's true and he admitted to lying in court and lost his law license. He wasn't convicted but he was impeached, btw. Impeachment is the accusation. Conviction on impeachment is removal. It wasn't the sex that lost him his law license. It was that little matter of perjury. You don't mind if a president lies under oath? But what did Bush have to do with Bill Clinton? Why was oil or Bill Clinton a part of your story? Too much oil on the ballots spoiled them?
