Election 2004: Vote Early and OftenNovember 14, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 02:06 PM
NYT headline: "A Vote Deadline in Florida is Set for Today".
What happened? Florida's Sec. of State said she would enforce a legal Tuesday evening deadline for certifying the statewide vote. In the meantime, a federal judge in Miami refused to block the hand recounts.
In state court, the Gore campaign and two counties fought to get the Tuesday deadline extended but the judge did not immediately rule on the matter.
As we all recall, Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State in question, was also co-chair of Bush's presidential campaign in Florida. She was also a delegate at the Republican National Convention in 2000.
Unfortunately, most secretaries of state are partisans, and most play roles during election years that are as crucial as hers was.
Fox News got some spotlight shone on it as well:
"Senior executives for the Fox News Channel acknowledged last night that John Ellis, an executive who played a central role in the first decision on election night to project that George W. Bush had won the presidency, and who is a first cousin of Mr. Bush, spent much of the night in communication with the candidate.
The Fox executives said they had been unaware of the contact and said Mr. Ellis had misused his role with the network, perhaps damaging its reputation."
Here's the popular vote as it looked that day: Al Gore, 49,260,111, and George W. Bush, 49,043,820. Gore lead by 216,291 votes. The elctoral vote count was: Al Gore, 255, George W. Bush, 246, and undecided, 37 (Florida, New Mexico, Oregon).
Here's a quote from Ms. Harris on the recounts:
"Because there are no uniform standards governing this manual recount in four heavily Democratic areas, the votes in these four selective counties are not being counted accurately or fairly. They are being counted subjectively and selectively."
How close are we to uniform standards today? Get real!
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