Election 2004: Vote Early and OftenNovember 16, 2000
Friday, October 22, 2004, 11:49 AM
NYT Headline: "Florida Says No to Further Recounts as Bush Dismisses Overture From Gore".
Here's an excerpt from Katherine Harris's statement given the night before:
"After Judge Lewis's decision yesterday morning, my staff and I, along with counsel, developed criteria appropriate to the exercise of my discretion under Florida law. This criteria is clearly set forth in Florida case law.
For the past six hours, I have applied these criteria in deliberating upon the specific requests of the counties contemplating manual vote recounts. As a result of these deliberations, I've decided it is my duty under Florida law to exercise my discretion in denying these requested amendments. The reasons given in their requests are insufficient to warrant waiver of the unambiguous filing deadline imposd by the Florida Legislature."
In Palm Beach County, the recount was halted for the fourth day in a row while the board members waited for a ruling from the state Supreme Court on whether or not the manual recount was legally authorized.
In the courts, we had the following:
"In a unanimous one-page ruling late today, the Florida Supreme Court denied a request from the state's secretary of state, Katherine Harris, to block [the hand recounts]."
Also, "a federal appeals court in Atlanta agreed to hear Mr. Bush's request for an injunction to block any further recounts as unconstitutional, paving the way for possible review by the United States Supreme Court."
Gore proposed that the two campaigns accept either the results of the two manual recounts in progress, plus the overseas ballots yet to be counted, or to have a full recount of all 67 counties in Florida and abide by that. The Bush camp swiftly rejected the proposal.
Statisticians predicted that the overseas ballots would favor Bush by about 55% to Gore's 43%.
And meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill...
"Representative Tom DeLay, the Republican leader who drove the House forward to impeachment, has sent a staff memorandum to Congressional Republicans pointing out that the House and Senate can reject a state's electoral votes if they decide that the votes are tainted."
Bush and Gore both gave televised statements, a quote from each on the front page below a corresponding mug shot. Bush's quote:
"Manual counting, with individuals making subjective decisions about voter intent, introduces human error and politics into the vote-counting process."
Yeah, but as any computer tech person knows, leaving it to the computers is a guaranteed recipe for error. I *still* can't believe that some of these e-voting systems run on .... Windoze. Come on, I mean, throw me a friggin' bone here!
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