With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...

Saturday November 18, 2000; 8:44 p.m. ET

Witness to Gore Vote Fraud Goes Public on National TV

Explosive charges of Democratic vote fraud leveled Saturday afternoon by Montana Republican Gov. Mark Racicot were corrobarted hours later by Jennifer Garcia, a Palm Beach County recount observer who gave her eyewitness account to MSNBC host Forest Sawyer:

SAWYER: You've heard these charges ... Karen Hughes, Bush spokesperson, and others have been making about irregularities in the vote counting?

GARCIA: Yes, I have.

SAWYER: So, you were in there for how long, would you say?

GARCIA: We started counting about 7:45 and finished up about 12:45 and we counted one precinct.

SAWYER: One precinct. So you've been in there a pretty good while. Have you seen these irregularities?

GARCIA: Yes, I have.

SAWYER: What have you seen?

GARCIA: I've seen tape on the back of ballots covering up holes where the Bush hole would have been punched. On several occasions the counter on the Democrat side placed a ballot which we had designated as a Bush ballot in the Gore pile. And actually the first time that happened the Democrat observer who was with me pointed it out and we had to stop the counter and have them put it into the Bush pile. And it happened on four other occasions.

SAWYER: So you've seen a total of what - about six problems so far?

GARCIA: Six just with them putting them in the wrong pile. We've seen tape. We've seen ballots that had markings all over them, ballots that just looked as if they'd been folded and not in good shape.

SAWYER: Now, are you seeing this only on the Democratic side or are you seeing some problems on the Republican side as well?

GARCIA: We've seen ballots with markings on them on the Republican and Democrat side. But most of the problems were with ballots that did have the Bush hole punched.

SAWYER: That is to say that they were trying to prevent them from being counted?

GARCIA: Well, I would say that when a ballot is designated as a Bush ballot and it's placed in the Gore ballot pile, once that ballot is placed in that pile it gets counted as a Gore ballot. It never gets looked at again. So I would definitely count that as a problem. And it never happened where a Gore ballot was placed in the Bush ballot pile or any other pile.

SAWYER: There are suggestions now, as you know, coming from the Bush camp and other Republicans that this is not a simple matter of human error or mistake or problems of confusion but this is, shall we say, a matter of motivation. That they want to do this.

GARCIA: Well, based on my experience, what I'm seeing is a Democrat ballot counter placing a Bush ballot into a Gore pile, being told, and the mistake happening on several occasions. And it's not as if I'm the only person pointing out the mistake - when the Democrat observer is pointing this out and is concerned about accuracy of the count, I would say that that is not just a chance. And human error happens. However, when it's five or six occasions within 45 minutes of counting ballots, I'd say it's a huge problem.

SAWYER: Have you filled out an affidavit to this effect?

GARCIA: I have spoken to the Bush team. I have not signed the affidavit as of yet but I do plan on doing so.

SAWYER: Jennifer Garcia. Thank you for talking to us, Jennifer. I should mention that we intended to have a Democrat observer or counter as well, but because of technical problems we were not able to.


=============================================================

And almost unnoticed in all the furor over the Democrat attempts to steal the election, Bill Clinton finally made it to Vietnam -- following stop-overs in London,
Moscow, Yale, Little Rock, and Washington.

=============================================================

Return to beginning of ejps
Return to beginning of this issue