Illinois case offers shaky precedent

By Jan Crawford Greenburg
and Dan Mihalopoulos
Tribune Staff Writers
November 23, 2000

But that Illinois case should not give Democrats any confidence that dented ballots will be counted in Gore's favor. That's because the Illinois court actually affirmed a trial judge's order to exclude dented ballots, since he had decided he could not reasonably determine the voters' will by examining the ballots.

In fact, in the Illinois case, the dented ballots were not counted at all.

"The judge did not count ballots that were indented because he could not determine the voters' intent," said attorney Burton Odelson, who represented challenger Rosemary Mulligan in the 1990 case. "From the beginning, I knew everybody [in Florida] was interpreting this case wrong and reading into it what they wanted to read into it."

GORE'S FINAL ASSAULT
Thursday,November 23,2000

"The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Gore's point man argued against dimples in 1996

By Joel Engelhardt, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 22, 2000

Wednesday, November 22, 2000

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A 10-person team that Republican George W. Bush sent to Oregon to review election and voter records says it has found some voters registered in more than one county in Oregon's Nov. 7 presidential election.

With nearly all ballots counted, Democrat Al Gore led Bush by 6,595 votes -- well above the legal threshold of roughly 2,800 votes that would trigger an automatic recount.

Leslie Goodman, a Bush spokeswoman, said a GOP search of voter rolls in 17 of Oregon's 36 counties found 4,000 people registered in more than one county. "It means that there is a systemic problem," she said.

Federal law

18 USC 4 states: "Whoever, having knowledge of the actual

commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United

States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make

known the same to some judge or other person in civil or

military authority under the United States, shall be fined

under this title or imprisoned not more than three years,

or both."

Now we learn that Gore is covertly hiring

attorneys and private investigators in every state won by

Bush to make up "profiles" on those picked to represent

their State in the Electoral College. Gore's intent is to

threaten and intimidate as many Electors as possible into

changing their vote. As long as Gore has the full power of

the federal government behind him, this may not be very

difficult.

Truly, the Gore campaign is a criminal conspiracy

in progress.

12/11/2000
Oregonians Post Their Ballots

In this presidential election, Oregon replaced the traditional ballot box with a new system of mail-in voting. There was a high vote turnout, but problems were encountered.

GOP official accuses Theresa LePore of covering up significant errors!!

11/18/00 - West Palm Beach --

Tucker Eskew, the Bush campaign spokesman in West Palm Beach, Fla., has accused a local elections official of covering up knowledge of misplaced ballots for George Bush that were stacked with votes for Al Gore.

Florida Speaker Feeney: Support Building for Legislative Intervention

Less than a day after the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Secretary of State Katherine Harris must extend the deadline for hand recounts before certifying the state's presidential election winner, Florida's Speaker of the House Tom Feeney announced that he was considering intervening in the election crisis.

"There is increasingly compelling evidence of widespread mischief, human error, vote and ballot manipulation in the manual recount process," Feeney told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

"One of the reasons the Florida legislature was so clear in having a very definite deadline set out in statute, which the court has decided to ignore, is to make certain we never had to be in a position where you had the charade that is going on now."

"I'm told by our information technology department," Feeney said, "that the Florida Web site has had over 1 million hits today. Our offices have had over 200,000 e-mails. The large majority - we haven't done the tabulation, but the large majority - are asking us to do our constitutional duty to help resolve the crisis that the court, in my view, has created."

The Florida legislature could decide to appoint the state's electors based on the results of voting machine recounts that Harris was set to certify last Saturday. Those results had George Bush leading Al Gore by 930 votes.

On Tuesday, Speaker Feeney, a Republican, took office with the largest Republican legislative majority in a century.

NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 23, 2000

The Chicago Tribune reports in today's Thanksgiving edition that a critical Illinois court ruling cited by the Fla. Supreme Court may not have set the precedent Al Gore's lawyers claimed.

"I got 30 calls just today from people who got the letters," Ritchie said Friday.

Gene Moore of Galveston was among those angered by the news. Moore said the letter stated his ballot had been rejected because signatures did not match.

To vote by mail, residents must sign an application for a ballot and then sign the envelope when they mail the ballot. The letter Moore received stated those two signatures did not match, he said.

"To add insult to injury, they not only tell me my vote didn't count, but accuse me of fraud," Moore said. "That is outrageous."

Jack Strange, 81, of Texas City said his ballot was rejected for the same reason. "I can guarantee I signed both," Strange said.

The county clerk's office runs the election, but a pair of committees appointed by the commissioners court from people nominated by the chairs of county Republican and Democratic parties decides the fate of mailed ballots, Ritchie said.

One committee first determines whether signatures on ballot applications match those on ballot envelopes, Ritchie said.

If the verification committee decides the signatures are the same, the ballots are counted. If the committee decides they don't match, the ballots are sent to a second committee, which can uphold or overturn the first judgment.

Democrats and Republicans serve on both committees and rulings are made by majority vote, Ritchie said. Ritchie said she didn't know whether the law allowed voters to appeal the committees' decisions.

Mary Ellen Brennan, chairwoman of the Galveston County Democratic Party, said she had called the secretary of state's office about the issue, but hadn't received an answer by Friday.

"I have not found anything in the election code that allows a voter to appeal," Brennan said.

The 425 rejected ballots were not enough to change of the outcome of any races, Ritchie said.

Ritchie said the signature verification issue was tricky because senior citizens are most likely to use mail-in ballots and sometimes have inconsistent handwriting.

At the same time, she said, the mail-in ballots are the most easily abused, so they have to be scrutinized.

Whether to count a pregnant chad depends on the circumstances of the vote, says Deborah Phillips, president of the nonpartisan Voter Integrity Project.

If a punch-ballot machine in an overloaded precinct isn’t maintained properly, the chad could pile up and prevent voters from punching their choice cleanly, she says.

"You have to be a bit of a detective and not use a patented rule of thumb," she stresses.

Chad are the small pieces of paper that are supposed to be removed when a voter punches a vote card with a stylus or other implement.
Saying "the will of the people is the paramount consideration," Labarga ordered the board to try and determine the intent of the voters who cast each questionable ballot.

The ruling is a crucial legal victory for Gore — if all of the "dimpled" ballots are counted as votes, the vice president stands to pick up a net gain of 300 votes.

But Judge Charles Burton, head of the county’s canvassing board, said it remained unclear just how to count the dimpled ballots.

"That’s kinda been the problem all along and we’ve been hoping for a little more guidance from the courts," he said on Nightline.

"We’ve got to look at each ballot and we’ve got to try to determine the voter’s intent," he said. "Admittedly, that’s difficult."

He said when looking at the ballots with the now-famous "dimpled" chad, they will look at other marks on the ballot to see if there are any indications of the voter’s intent.

Burton said several thousand questionable ballots — perhaps as many as 7,000 — remain for the board’s consideration. He said the discussions on each ballot can be as short as five seconds, if there are no objections. Others could take several minutes.

"Sometimes, they go very quickly," he said. "Sometimes, they involve a little more discussion."

But he said he fully expects to complete the recount by the Sunday deadline.
In Broward County — where Gore hopes to register an additional 300-400 votes — officials were back at work today. They are giving up their holiday to continue counting ballots before the Sunday deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court.

Chads show election pregnant with new possibilities to cheat
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 24, 2000

November 24, 2000

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

By Melissa Seckora, NR editorial associate

The Wall Street Journal
March 2, 1998 Review & Outlook