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Why Didn't the Media Report the 30,000 Reform Party Votes for State Senate in Palm Beach?
Other Reform Candidate Votes Indicate Butterfly Ballot is No Problem
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)
November 1, 2000
Update: 9:12 AM - Sunday - November 12, 2000 - The Gore strategy to steal the election appears is becoming increasingly evident. Palm Beach County in Florida is the only county in the State that has not completed its recount. While its machine recount HAS been completed, the Democrat controlled leaders of the county refuse to admit it in order to be able to substitute their results of a hand count, in which the outnumbered Republican judges are powerless to stop votes from being counted that are double marked or for other reasons being thrown out by the counting machines. Since the 72 hour limit is passed, the predominately Republican counties will not be able to recount by hand in the same manner as Palm Beach County because they already have announced their recount is completed.
A far higher percentage of ballots from heavily Reublican counties have been uncounted by the machines than in Palm Beach County. Unless stopped by the courts, the West Palm Beach hand count could very well change the results of the election, enabling one county in America, Palm Beach, a wealthy community which boasts of over 150 golf courses and providing the "Best of Everything" in entertainment, will decide the presidency of the United States of America. So much for the Democrats pretense at being the party of the "people!"
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It has to be said. The television networks have created chaos and have tainted this election. The Television networks are where most of the people of the world, not just Americans, get their information about what happened in the election this week,. First they began announcing that Al Gore had carried the State of Florida at 7:50 Eastern Standard Time, 10 minutes before the polls closed on the East Coast, an hour and ten minutes before the polls closed in the Florida panhandle, where many of the State's Republicans live and THREE hours and ten minutes before the polls closed in California, making sure that the millions of commuting Californians were told that, in effect, they may as well not bother to vote for the president. The decision had already been made for them in Florida, New York and Pennsylvania.
Since then the chaos has gotten worse. In the last several days Democrats have claimed that the vote in Florida was not "fair" because of the butterfly ballot which was so "confusing" that many voters in the Palm Beach area punched a vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. What the public has not been told is what the votes in Palm Beach was for OTHER Reform candidates. Those figures are revealing.
In Palm Beach the votes for Reform candidates were as follows:
President: Pat Buchanan - 3407 or .8% of the Presidential vote of 431,995 in Palm Beach
U.S. House of Representatives - John McGuire - 7,546 or 2.6% of the Congressional vote of 291,934 in the 16th Congressional District in Palm Beach area.
Florida State Senate - Desere' Clabo - 30,457 or 17.3% of the Florida State Senate -27th district in the Palm Beach area
Florida State Senate -Sherree Lowe - 6, 167 or 4.8% of the Florida State Senate - 35th district in the Palm Beach area.
With one Reform Party candidate receiving 30,457 people voting for the Reform candidate in a State Senate district in Palm Beach, it should be obvious that there is a pocket of Reform Party voters in the area. Why would it be so surprising to find 3,407 people voting for Pat Buchanan?
We have heard two days of argument about that butterfly ballot. We even have the Democrats insisting that we have a third recount with counters trying to determine the "intent" of the voters whose ballots could not be counted by machine. So, how come none of the networks have pointed out the number of votes received by Reform Party candidates in other races received even higher rates of the vote in Palm Beach than Pat Buchanan? Is it incompetence or is it part of an effort to help Al Gore steal an election?
According to the Division of Elections, which reports the status of the count (see: http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/StatusRpt.Asp?ElectionDate=11/7/2000) there is only one county in Florida that has not completed its recount - Palm Beach. Most people think of Palm Beach is the playground of wealthy senior citizens. In fact, in trying to explain the reason why so many Palm Beach voters voted for two presidential candidates or voted for Pat Buchanan or didn't punch the ballots for ANY candidate, the Democrats have blamed the design of the ballot.
The Associated Press quoted Kenneth Rijock, a consultant to law enforcement agencies and a longtime Miami resident, as suggesting a different problem:
The large number of older people in Palm Beach County also likely played a role, (Rijock) added, with many elderly voters perhaps ``not as sharp as they used to be.''
Four years ago, 14,872 Palm Beach County ballots were thrown out either because they lacked a vote for a presidential candidate or because they had two such votes.
On Tuesday, about 30,000 faulty ballots halted the selection of the nation's 43rd president and brought heavily Democratic Palm Beach County to the world's attention.
On Saturday there was endless discussion of the contested "hand recount" which would enable the precinct workers to count the many faulty ballots by attempting to "determine the intent" of the voter when they had failed to properly mark their ballot. This effort is being contested in court by the Republicans.
Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to lead a protest march through West Palm Beach on Monday -- the day before a circuit court judge is scheduled to have a hearing on whether to lift an injunction, issued Thursday, that prevents the results from being certified from the recount of Palm Beach ballots.
State officials said their recount showed Bush leading by 960 votes with 66 counties reporting. The 67th county, Palm Beach, is under a local court order not to certify results after a hearing on Tuesday. The order, handed down by Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll, is the result of one of eight lawsuits filed by voters who say a faulty ballot design may have caused them to inadvertently vote for Pat Buchanan rather than Gore.
Gore supporters say the number of discarded presidential votes -- 29,502 -- in Palm Beach County is clear evidence the ballot was flawed. In the 1996 election, about half that amount was thrown out. However, Duval County, which voted heavily for George Bush, announced yesterday that in Tuesday's vote, 21,942 ballots were nullified when voters punched their ballots for two candidates for president. An additional 4,967 did not vote for president or did not punch the ballot hard enough for their vote to be registered, said Susan Tucker Johnson, a spokeswoman for Duval County Supervisor of Elections John Stafford.
The disqualified ballots represent about 9 percent of the 291,626 cast Tuesday.
The ballot Duval County used was of a different design than the disputed ``butterfly'' ballot used in Palm Beach County. In Duval County, 10 presidential candidates and one write-in candidate were listed on two pages. At the bottom of the first page, in larger, bolder type, voters were instructed to turn the page for more choices in the presidential race.
Voters, Johnson said, probably picked one candidate on the first page and then voted for another presidential candidate on the second page.
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