Election 2004: Vote Early and OftenNovember 24, 2000
Sunday, October 31, 2004, 03:23 PM
NYT Headline: "Florida's High Court Deals Gore a Setback, Denying Bid to Force a Miami-Dade Recount".
The lead paragraph:
"A unanimous Florida Supreme Court refused today to compel Miami-Dade County to resume its manual recount of nearly 700,000 paper ballots. The ruling was a serious setback to Vice President Al Gore, whose aides promptly announced that on Monday he would formally contest the certified results of the FLorida election."
In Broward County, folks kept counting, and "...the atmosphere at times turned ugly. The members of the canvassing board, made up of two Democrats and one Republican, had to try to gauge -- sometimes from unclear marks on the ballot -- each voter's intent, as observers from the two campaigns looked on inside a wood-paneled courtroom in the Broward County Courthouse.
The candidates' lawyers were under orders from the board not to challenge its decisions ballot by ballot. But William Scherer, a lawyer for Mr. Bush's campaign, became so agitated by the board's decisions on dimpled ballots that he ignored the directive and was almost removed from the counting room."
And, in the Gore camp, "people were assessing whether or not there is the political will" to continue the fight.
A story about absentee ballots opens with the story of one person who decided to follow Republican Party advice and vote absentee.
"But his vote for George W. Bush ended up in a reject pile when election officials decided his scrawled signature did not match the more precise autograph on file, Dade County election officials indicated.
'What?' Mr. Bergrab sais Wednesday when told the news. 'That's just wrong not to count my vote."
In fact, absentee ballots cast by thousands of Floridians were tossed out because election officials rejected the signatures or found other flaws in their submissions..."
The article talking about the Gore camp's internal divisions described the Bush camp as being "encouraged by a remarkable unity on the Republican side. Many Republicans have encouraged Mr. Bush to take the fight to the Florida Legislature or the United States Congress, if need be. Even many Republicans who opposed President Clinton's impeachment, like Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, have been steadfast in defending Mr. Bush, and have begun to speak out passionately about their concern that Mr. Gore was trying to steal the election."
We also learned that one of the reasons that Miami-Dade County decided top stop their recount the day after getting the go-ahead form the Florida Supreme Court was due to a well-organized public pressure campaign on the part of the Republicans, using phone banks to mobilize Republican voters in Miami to protest downton.
"The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public. Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order.
When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting."
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