Quote:
Originally posted by Alex H@19 August 2004 - 18:06
Bullshit!
Florida was NOT fair in any respect - a woman working for the Bush campaign was in charge of kicking convicted felons off the voting role, and just to be on the safe side she removed people with similar names or the same birthdates as the nasty criminals. She also had lists of felons imported from other states, of which Texas (suprise, suprise) was a big contributor. Thousands of black voters, who traditionally vote Democrat were not allowed to vote bacause they may have been a convicted criminal.
The postal vote scam was another tactic: When it became obvious that it was going to be a close election, the Bush campaign started calling up soldiers based overseas asking them to vote for Bush and to send their votes in by post. Many were not registered to vote, voted AFTER the closeing date for postal vote (and didn't even bother to back date them) and some voted twice and got both votes counted.
Two of the Florida court judges had conflicts of interest, i.e. they or their wives had worked for the Republican party.
The whole thing was a farce. The districts may be of equal size (but the old, broken voting machines somehow ended up in the stong Democrat areas) but the point is that Bush's people rigged the election. The rightwing Justice Scalia even said:
"The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to petitioner (i.e. Bush), and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election."
Which means if we count all the votes and it turns out that Gore got the most, Bush will look like a fraud. Gee, REALLY? If he didn't win of course he isn't the "legitimate" President.
It's not just "grabbed from thin air", it happened and a lot of people are petty pissed about it.
Well put, great post. :D