MORNING NOONAN NIGHT
The Donkey in the Living Room
The Democrats want to steal the election. Why isn't that news?
BY PEGGY NOONAN
Friday, November 17, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST
For many years there has been a famous phrase that derives from the 12-step recovery movement. It refers to a thing that is very big, and obvious, and of crucial importance, that people around it refuse for whatever reason to acknowledge. It's called the elephant in the living room.
There is an elephant in the living room in the Florida story. Actually, it's a donkey. And actually, there are a number of them.
When the story of the Florida recounts and hand-counts and court decisions is reported on network and local TV, and in the great broadsheet newspapers, the journalists uniformly fail to speak of the donkey in the living room. They give great and responsible attention to the Florida story. But with a unity that is perhaps willful, perhaps unconscious, perhaps a peculiar expression of an attempt at fairness, they avoid the donkey.
You know what the donkey is. The donkey is the explicit fear, grounded in fact, in anecdotal evidence, in the affidavits of on-the-ground participants, and in the history of some of the participants, that the Gore-Clinton Democratic party is trying to steal the election. Not to resolve it--to steal it. That is, they are not using hand-counting to determine who won, they are using hand-counting to win.
They are attempting to do this through chicanery, and by interpreting various ballots any way they choose. As in, "This ballot seems to have a mild indentation next to the word Bush. Well, that's not a vote. Person might have changed his mind. This ballot seems to have a mild indentation for Gore; the person who cast this ballot was probably old, and too weak to puncture the paper card. But you can see right here there's a mark kind of thing. I think that's a vote, don't you Charley?" "Oh yeah, that's a vote all right."
That's how the chads probably got to the floor in the counting rooms. That is one of the increasing number of stories--none of which are ever the lead, all of which wind up on page 11--indicating the possibility of significant vote fraud throughout the election.
Columnists are writing about it--George Will wrote a great column suggesting what is happening in Florida amounts to an attempted coup, and Michael Kelly wrote suggesting Mr. Gore is not a helper of democracy but a harmer of it; the conservative magazines have weighed in, as has The Wall Street Journal editorial page. You can hear vote fraud discussed on the all-argument political shows on TV and radio.
But it is not reported as news. And it only counts when it's news. And this is most extraordinary because the Republican fear of fraud--the legitimate fear of it--is the major reason the Bush people don't want more hand counts. They do not trust the counters.
This question--the extent of vote fraud in this election, and the fact that the Republicans think it is governing what is happening in Florida--is not the unspoken subtext of the drama. It is the unspoken text.
Republicans are convinced, and for good reason, that Bill Daley, who learned at his father's knee, and Al Gore, who learned at Bill Clinton's, are fraudulently attempting to carry out an anti-democratic strategy that is a classic of vote stealing: Keep counting until you win, and the minute you "win" announce that the American people are tired of waiting for an answer and deserve to know who won.
Could a political party in this great and sophisticated democracy, in this wired democracy where sooner or later every shadow sees sunlight, steal a prize as big and rich and obvious as the presidency?
Yes. Of course. If the history of the past half century has taught us anything it's that determined people can do anything. What might stop it? If the media would start leading the news with investigations into the prevalence of vote fraud and the possibility that the presidential election is being stolen.
There have been a number of shameful public moments in the drama so far--Mr. Daley announcing that "the will of the people" is that Mr. Gore win, Mr. Gore's own aggressive remarks in the days just after the election, Hillary Clinton announcing, in the middle of what may become a crisis involving the Electoral College, that her first act will be to do away with the college. And there is this Internet column from Paul Begala, who prepped Mr. Gore for his debates with Mr. Bush. He acknowledged that when you look at an electoral map of the United States, you see a sea of red for Mr. Bush, and clots of blue for Mr. Gore.
"But if you look closely at that map you see a more complex picture. You see the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart--it's red. You see the state where Matthew Shepard was crucified on a split-rail fence for the crime of being gay--it's red. You see the state where right-wing extremists blew up a federal office building and murdered scores of federal employees--it's red. The state where an Army private who was thought to be gay was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, and the state where neo-Nazi skinheads murdered two African-Americans because of their skin color, and the state where Bob Jones University spews its anti-Catholic bigotry: they're all red too."
It was a remarkably hate-filled column, but also a public service in that it revealed what animates Clinton-Gore thinking regarding their opponents: hatred pure and simple, a hatred that used to be hidden and now proudly walks forward.
It stands in the living room too.
As does the unstated but implicit message of the hatred: that extraordinary means are understandable when you're trying to save America from the terrible people who would put George W. Bush in the presidency so that they can kill more homosexuals and black men and blow up federal buildings and kill toddlers. Really, if Republicans are so bad it's probably good to steal elections from them, don't you think?
I never thought I would wind up nostalgic for the days when I merely disagreed with Democratic presidents. But whoever doubted the patriotism, the love of country, of John Kennedy or Jimmy Carter?
This crew we have now, Messrs. Gore and Clinton and their operatives, they seem, to my astonishment as an American, to be men who would never put their country's needs before their own if there were even the mildest of conflicts between the two. America is the platform of their ambitions, not the driving purpose of them.
Another donkey in the living room: the sense that Republicans are no match for the Democrats in terms of ferocity, audacity, shrewdness, the killer instinct. Republicans seem incapable of going down to the level of Gore-Clinton operatives. They think that you cannot really defend something you love with hatred because hatred is by its nature destructive: It scalds and scars and eats away.
Republicans seem to be losing the public relations war. The Democrats have David Boies and Bill Daley, each, forgive me, smooth as an enema, in Evelyn Waugh's phrase. The Republicans have James Baker, who seems irritated and perplexed. Perhaps he is taken aback by how the game has changed, how the Democrats he faces now operate by rules quite different, and much rougher, than the ones they played by 20 years ago.
Now the game for the Gore camp is to win any way you can in Florida, and if you can't win delay, and in the delay maybe you'll win when the Electoral College comes together, or maybe at the very least even if someone stops you, you'll have ruined the legitimacy of the man who does win, which will make it easier for you as you wait in the wings for the rematch in 2004.
There are a lot of donkeys in the living room in Florida, and maybe the Bush people should start to talk about them. Maybe that will make them news. It can't hurt. It's a circus down there anyway.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" (Regan Books, 2000). Her column appears Fridays.
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The Trouble With Hand-Counting
Even Democrats acknowledge it's not necessarily accurate.
Friday, November 17, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST
Florida's Supreme Court yesterday approved manual recounts of ballots in the state's counties. This decision will no doubt be used to assert that manual counting is the gold standard of accurately determining an election result. The notion seems to be that if you let individuals look at the ballots and record what they see, the result will be as accurate as knowing that a playing card with the number 2 and two red hearts on it is in fact the two of hearts. This is not true. Hand counting is not as infallible as cable news viewers are being led to believe. The problems with hand counting are very well known to professional election supervisors.
In Florida itself, Hillsborough County's Democratic Supervisor of Elections, Pam Iorio, has been quoted to this effect several times the past week. "Hand counting is not always the most accurate indicator of voter intent," she was quoted as saying by the wire services.
In a Washington Post story earlier in the week, Ms. Iorio said: "Oh, no, to start manually recounting millions of ballots in the state of Florida would cause more problems than it would solve. The norm is, 'What do the machines count?' You vote a ballot, and it's what the machine counts that counts. With a manual recount, each ballot is at the discretion of a human being. . . . You're going to get mired in problems."
The St. Petersburg Times this week wrote about the accuracy of hand counts and described the opinion of Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning: "Browning, who is also a Democrat, recalled the 'good old days' of hand counting ballots and said the system was far less accurate than the machines that count punch cards."
Bear in mind that the object being tabulated here is a machine punch-card; it is not a piece of paper that says "Bush" or "Gore." Hand counting these chad-filled cards is laborious, tedious work performed under time pressure. The people doing it have come off the street and in general have not done it before. Mistakes are inevitable.
The ballots, normally stacked and run through the machine, are handled, and every time they are handled, it is possible to alter the ballot, accidentally or intentionally.
But perhaps the worst aspect of hand counting, as it has been proposed in this instance, is that there are no uniform, common standards among Florida's counties for conducting a recount by hand. Thus in one lawsuit, circuit Judge Jorge Labarga said he would leave it to the discretion of the local county election officials to decide if, and how, they would count "dimpled chads." In the absence of uniform standards, and with the standards for this particular recount left to discretion, the incentives to let politics influence interpretations and judgment calls are very strong.
We are not arguing that recounts are impossible or should never be done. We are pushing against the conventional wisdom just now that the manual counts of Florida's punch-card ballots will produce the gospel truth about who won in these counties.
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Appeals Court Moves Quickly on Brevard County, Falwell Suit
NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 17, 2000
A federal appeals court has been taking swift action in a legal case that could stop the manual recount under way in several Florida counties.
On Wednesday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta agreed to expedite an appeal filed by three residents of Brevard County, Fla., who claim the hand counting of ballots in select Florida counties – all of which have canvassing boards controlled by Democrats – is unconstitutional.
The suit of the Florida residents has gotten little press notice but is apparently being taken more seriously by the federal appeals court than a similar appeal made by the Bush campaign this week.
The three Florida residents are represented by Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based religious freedom law firm affiliated with Jerry Falwell Ministries. Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, and Jerry Falwell Jr. serve as co-counsel of the organization.
The appeal asks the court to immediately halt the manual recounts of ballots, arguing the selective recounting undermines the constitutional right of all citizens to have their votes count equally.
The federal appeals court has moved quickly to make a judgment on the case.
On Wednesday, the court directed the counties of Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Volusia, along with the secretary of elections, to file briefs by 7 a.m. Thursday. All counties except Miami-Dade responded to the court’s order.
In another sign the court is moving expeditiously on this case, the appeals court also agreed to impanel the entire court to hear the appeal, which means that the full 12 members of the court will sit, rather than the typical three-judge panel.
The appeals court put this case on a fast track, unlike the federal case filed by the Bush campaign late last week, which is before a three-judge panel.
Harvard attorney Lawrence Tribe, representing the Gore campaign, has filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the suit.
Already four attorneys general from several states, including Connecticut, Iowa and Oregon, have filed amicus briefs in support of the Liberty Counsel suit.
In a press release issued late Thursday, Dr. Jerry Falwell said: "Liberty Counsel has been involved in some crucial religious freedom cases in recent months; this appeal could very well be the most significant one they ever present in court. In fact, this case could be historic in that it actually determines who will sit in the Oval Office as our nation's president."
He added, "The manner in which the manual recount is being handled violates the equal protection of the voters in counties where there is no manual recount. In a statewide election, it is patently unfair to select only those counties for a manual recount where the county popular vote sided with one candidate."
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Floridian Has Trouble Voting for Bush in Broward County
Stephan Archer
Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000
When Broward County, Fla., resident Willi Hetzel went to Cresthaven Elementary School on Nov. 7 to vote for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, he expected to punch a hole for his candidate and be done with it. But when he got to his booth, he was surprised at what he found.
"I walked in and went to a table to show my driver's license," Hetzel told NewsMax.com. "I then went straight ahead from the table to the first machine, and I couldn't get a hole in it."
Hetzel further explained he pulled the card out and pushed it back in but still couldn't get the needle to punch a hole through for Bush, so he went to a second machine. There he experienced the same problem.
"Perhaps they were blocked," Hetzel said, trying to understand what happened.
Determined to vote for Bush, however, he went to a third voting booth and found that it worked.
Although he didn't tell those in charge of Precinct 6C what had happened, he was convinced something was wrong with the machines and believes that anybody else who tried using the two machines would have had the same problem. He was quick to add that he was well practiced in punching holes in the ballot.
"You couldn't make a mistake," Hetzel said. "Any child could get a hole in the card. I mean, I'm voting every four years."
But could Hetzel have been a victim of voter fraud?
"It's pretty hard to prove, but it's suspicious at least," he said.
Regarding the media frenzy in his area, Hetzel said the whole debate over who won "is ridiculous" and thinks Bush is the clear victor.
"Even the butterfly ballots they had in Palm Beach – I cannot see any reason why something should go wrong either," Hetzel said.
"If you can't see right, you shouldn't vote, or you should have eyeglasses. Either one."
"If you don't know the difference from what's up or down, you shouldn't vote, right?"
Indeed.
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Bush Up Two; Last Stand This Weekend
Christopher Ruddy
Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000
George Bush still has a good shot at winning the presidency, again.
This week Bush has had two good breaks.
Earlier this week a Florida state judge said the Florida secretary of state could, using her discretion, refuse to include votes from manual recounts.
While the judge left some opportunity for appeal, it did give weight to the decision of the secretary of state, Katherine Harris.
The second good thing to happen was Bush’speech to the nation last night.
He was cool, calm and collected. He looked presidential. This was in stark contrast to earlier press conferences.
How Gore and Bush are perceived is critical, because this election may be decided by public opinion.
All the politicians are watching the polls, and whoever starts gaining the support of swing voters will be the likely winner. When the poll shifts happen – and it could come quickly – you’ll see party members deserting their camp in favor of the public interest.
Bush is betting everything on this week’s absentee ballot count. He absolutely believes he will win that count – and thus the state of Florida. At that point Harris will certify him the winner.
No doubt, her certification will be open to challenge and could be overturned.
But Bush may take the gold ring this weekend if, following the certification, his team makes a strong public relations effort to have Gore concede in the best interests of the country.
Bush’s team needs to be lining up big names, people who rise above party politics, to call on Gore to concede as soon as Bush is certified this weekend. If that happens, public support may swell for Bush, and that will be his last opportunity to force Gore to concede.
If public support doesn’t move behind Bush immediately following the certification, Gore’s team will delay and continue its legal efforts. In this case, Gore has stronger legal arguments to have the manual recount included. But this legal effort may take time.
Clearly Gore’s team has prepared several strategies and may be thinking already about taking its campaign to the Electoral College, which meets on Dec. 18.
One possible sign of this tactic was the disturbing report in the Rocky Mountain News about a strange call made by ABC News to Colorado presidential elector Mary Hergert.
Hergert told the paper she found the "questions from ABC News more like veiled intimidation than journalistic inquiry."
She checked her caller ID to make sure it was ABC News.
The caller, "Ed from ABC News," asked her if she would ever consider voting for Gore, and claimed it was unconstitutional for state law to require her to follow Colorado voters' choice of Bush, Hergert said.
I wouldn’t put it past the Gore team to have friendly media calling electors, pretending to be neutral but really on fishing expeditions to see what electors might want to "vote their conscience" – ones who could be persuaded to change their vote if Gore is still ahead in the popular vote.
If Gore is not stopped this weekend, expect the mud to fly for a while. That’s why it’s critically important for the Bush team to make its stand this week.
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Posted Friday, Nov. 17, 2000 12:15 a.m. EST
Democrat Investigates GOP Electors, Seeks Converts for Gore
A powerful Democrat is investigating the background of Republican electors and hopes to "persuade" them to vote for Al Gore when the Electoral College meets, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
"It is information-gathering on my part, using my own network," said Democrat consultant Bob Beckel, admitting that he launched this strategy shortly after the Nov. 7 election.
"I call on mostly Democrats, but some Republicans, too, and ask, 'Who are these electors, and what do you know about them?' I just wanted to know who these electors are," said Beckel, who ran Walter Mondale's disastrous 1984 Democrat presidential campaign and has close ties to Gore adviser Warren Christopher.
If Bush eventually triumphs in Florida but wins none of the other closely contested states, he would have 271 electoral votes. Three GOP turncoats could make Gore president, the Journal pointed out.
Beckel, who owns a political-analysis business in Arlington, Va., claimed he was working independently, "on an ad hoc basis," and had not contacted any electors directly - yet.
"I wouldn't do that without first informing the Gore campaign," he said.
The Gore campaign has claimed it has no intention of trying to win over Republican electors.
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Thursday November 16, 2000; 11:47 PM ET
Gore Campaign Threatens Harris with 'Whitewater-Style' Investigation
The Gore campaign ratcheted up its attempts to intimidate Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris Thursday, with chilling new threats of a "Whitewater-style" investigation should she succeed this weekend in certifying George Bush as the winner of the state's vote.
MSNBC reporter Chip Reid explained the Gore campaign's plan to blackmail Harris to the network's Brian Williams Thursday night.
"Let me tell you, though, Brian, if they do not succeed here, there was some interesting, even chilling, talk today from the Gore campaign. I talked to some aides there.
"One said that if George Bush does win and wins with the help of Katherine Harris - and Katherine Harris, they believe, will throw more roadblocks in the way and will do everything in her power to certify the election in favor of George Bush and do everything in her power to make sure that that happens. They said that if George Bush does get into office with her help, the investigation into her role in this entire situation will make Whitewater look like a picnic.
"So they are already planning for the possibility that they lose here and this turns into some kind of massive investigation after the fact. So the ugliness would continue long after this is over."
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Gore Crosses the Rubicon
Paul Craig Roberts
Nov. 16, 2000
Karl Marx said it best: "Audacity is 90 percent of the battle." Lenin showed that he had learned this Marxist lesson well when he declared his tiny band "the majority" and seized power in Russia in the name of a non-existent proletariat.
It is the year 2000 in the United States, not 1917 in a Russia convulsed by war and the abdication of the Tsar. Nevertheless, on November 8-10, the entire world watched as Al Gore and the Democratic Party deliberated an American coup d’etat.
The Party of Corruption (a k a the Democratic Party) considered obtaining a restraining order from a Democratic judge. The order would bar Florida’s Governor from filing Florida’s Certificate of Ascertainment by December 18, the date set by federal law for the Electoral College to announce the vote. Without this certificate, there would be no electors from Florida present when the Electoral College tallies the vote.
This plan has been put into effect in one county. Democratic activists, posing as civil rights litigants, have convinced a judge to prevent certification of the county’s vote until allegations that voters were confused by the ballot and deprived of their civil rights are heard.
A number of liberal "constitutional scholars" and, of course, reliable Democratic operatives in the media, such as Adam Clymer, are showing the Democrats the way and egging them on. Why give up power if you can stage a coup? Preventing Florida’s electors from being certified means that Gore would be elected.
That Democrats would entertain a constitutional crisis as a means to power reveals their ideological character. No politician would be so audacious unless he believes that his ends justify the means. For ideologues, only their causes count.
How many Democrats are alarmed by Gore’s indication that a Florida vote recount is not enough and that he will be satisfied with nothing less than the presidency?
Could Gore succeed in derailing the Electoral College? CNN and the three television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS have been preparing the way since the first returns began coming in on election night. The media are the Jesuits of the Democratic Party. The media believe that no choice other than Gore is a moral choice.
Convinced that George Bush’s edge in electoral votes (with Florida) is offset by Gore’s edge in popular votes, Democrats and the media rationalize a coup with the argument that it is time to yield to the popular will. Sticking with the Electoral College, says William Daley, rejects "the will of the people."
Will Republicans have the determination to defend the constitutional process? Normally, Republicans are namby-pambies, anxious to show how nice they are. Gov. Jeb Bush has already recused himself from certifying Florida’s electors, a needless concession to audacious Democrats.
So far Republicans have done nothing about the Democratic Judge in St. Louis, who illegally kept the polls open while ballot boxes were stuffed with votes for a dead man, thus depriving a Republican U.S. Senator of his seat. The senator, tearful, has vowed not to make an issue of the fraud.
In the panhandle of Florida, there are reported cases of Bush supporters failing to receive requested absentee ballots. The ballots were voted nonetheless with forged signatures.
Democrats have demonized President Richard Nixon. But Nixon was a better man than Al Gore. When Democrats stole the election for John F. Kennedy with vote fraud in Texas and Cook County, Illinois, Nixon acquiesced rather than shake the confidence of Americans in the democratic process and the Democratic Party.
Three decades later we watch Al Gore and William Daley test the waters: Is the election close enough that a decision to provoke a constitutional crisis would not shake the confidence of Americans in the Democratic Party? Would indifferent Americans and pusillanimous Republicans accept a coup d’etat dressed up as civil rights and constitutional reform?
Right now Democrats in Palm Beach County are counting votes a third time, this time by hand relying on the subjective judgment of partisan Democrats. The votes are being counted in a way that can only increase Al Gore’s total. Under the rules set by partisan Democrats for the third count, it is not possible for Al Gore’s vote count to go down or for any other candidate’s to go up.
Who are we, what are we that Al Gore and William Daley have no more respect for us than to consider a Putsch?
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Judge Terry Lewis has upheld the Law (a big suprise for Dems) and stated Secretary Harris has the legal authority to deny the hand recounts from being included in the final certified vote since they missed the tuesday deadline.
Some quick talking points about this:
--One hand recount was included in the certified vote, Volusia County. They are big county that worked like dogs to finish their recount before the deadline. Harris did not have the authority to deny that county, but does have the authority to deny Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach.
--Broward County Election Supervisor even admitted (saw it on FoxNews) that these ballots were not meant for hand counting, since they are so fragile.
--Palm Beach could have been counting for days, but continued to take days off with the deadline looming. They took Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off from Recounting Votes.
--Five people have signed affidavits stated Carol Roberts, a member of the Palm Beach Election Commission (she is the one that always votes for Gore's side), stating they witnessed her tampering with ballots and even moving ballots from the questionable pile to the Gore pile.
--Carol Roberts once stated she would do whatever it takes to get Gore elected (thank Paula Zahn for finding that our). Roberts is certainly doing her best. To date, the Election commission has changed their view of what constitutes a vote about 4 times now, each time getting more loose in their definition.
--The Palm Beach Election Commission denied a hand count in a state legislature race 8 weeks ago. The difference in that race was 11-13 votes (dont know which). The decision of the commission was that only races with a difference of single digits can be counted by hand. Again, the Dems have a big problem being consistent.
Hang in there. Hopefully, we will officially have President Elect GW Bush sometime tomorrow.
When Harris certifies the Florida vote, Bush will officially have 271 electoral votes.
Gore can keep the votes stolen in Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and
elsewhere, and it won't matter.
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