Help! Need info to use against Freeper.

[TEXASYANKEE]

Did Al Gore not want to count absentee military votes in Florida? I need facts and links, please.

Also, my memory is bad, but I thought that Bush went to court to stop the counting of military ballots.

HELP!!

[radwriter0555]

1. Former Vice President Al Gore only asked that the military ballots

cast AFTER the legal date be not counted. Bush inc was pressing for counting military ballots cast AFTER the deadline, which is of course illegal.

The MORE important matter is that bush sued to stop THE recount. And there was only ONE attempt at a recount.

All you have to do is stand by that fact, that bush in fact, sued to stop the recount.

The ONE recount was based on a legally defined sampling of margins of error amoung FL counties. It wasn't specific counties per se, but random counties polled that failed the error margin, not, as freeper rhetoric spews, "only of democratic counties." The attempt at a recount was well within Florida State Election laws.

[gratuitous]

2. Florida's military ballots

Copied from my response in the locked thread in the Lounge:

Al Gore stated repeatedly over and over that he wanted all legally cast ballots to be counted in accordance with Florida state law. The Florida Supreme Court agreed with him time and again, and the Bushistas went to their puppets on the federal bench and the Supreme Court to overrule the Florida court on a matter of Florida law. The majority in Bush v. Gore came up with the ludicrous assertion that the Florida ballots had a Fourteenth Amendment right to uniform treatment under the law which trumped the right of the voters of Florida to have their ballots counted. Don't believe me? Read the opinion.

At any rate, the counting of the military ballots briefly became a big cause as the Republican Wurlitzer alleged without proof that the Gore campaign was trying to disenfranchise our brave Amurikind fightin' men and women. Joe Lieberman, without consulting anyone in the campaign, cravenly made a public statement that certainly all military ballots should be counted, and the Republicans used this stupid comment to force the counting of all military ballots, legal and illegal, with or without postmarks or signatures, and further delay the examination and counting of the legally cast ballots.

The military ballot controversy was concocted as a sideshow, pandering to people's prejudices about the perception of Republicans as friends of the military and Democrats as its foes. The delay, compounded by Lieberman's ill-advised statement, kept the issue alive until the Supreme Court could put together its ridiculous ruling and award Florida's electoral votes to George W. Bush by judicial fiat.

Books to read on the subject: None Dare Call It Treason by Vincent Bugliosi (the DA who prosecuted the Manson Family murders) and Too Close to Call by Jeffrey Toobin.

[nannygoat]

4. More good resources

Stolen Election 2000
http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=248

I know what you did last election
http://www.iknowwhatyoudidlastelection.com/bush-supreme-court.htm

[hang a left]

3. The other real story is the absent votes

from democrats that were purged from voter roles.

[Don_G]

5. You Forgot

Florida Dems were purged from the count using flawed lists from Georgia.

:nuke:

[TEXASYANKEE]

6. Yes, but ...

I don't want to shift focus from his position that Gore tried to not count military ballots. (But you have a very valid point ... what do a few hundred military ballots matter when the Dems are faced with 50,000+ purged voters.)

[CBHagman]

7. Grab a copy of "The Press Effect" by...

...Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman. They cover the whole business of how the OVERSEAS ballots were termed "military ballots" by the GOP and how the recount was depicted as Gore attempting to steal the election. :mad:

The book is worth checking out for its coverage of the whole election 2000 situation, both before and after ballots were cast. They particularly debunk the goofball "Bush would have won the recount anyway" headlines we were treated to in fall of 2001.

The book was still in hardback, by the way, the last time I looked, so maybe you can find it at your library.

By the way, it's time that the Democrats took back veterans issues and stopped letting the chickenhawk members of the GOP claim that they are the party of defense and the advocates of veterans. Al Gore is a Vietnam veteran, as are Bob Kerrey and John Kerry. Bush is not, and neither is Cheney.

Tom DeLay, a non-veteran, bashes Wesley Clark, whose extensive military career I can't summarize here. Then DeLay sneers that he doesn't want to see Ted Kennedy in a flight suit. But Kennedy is a veteran of the Army, and virtually all of his brothers served. One died in action. Yet I didn't hear screams that the odious DeLay was urinating on veterans and on the graves of fallen heroes. Well, he is, and the little dirtbag should be called on the carpet.

[kayleybeth]

8. My understanding

is that Gore was just following the rules... Absentee ballots had to be postmarked by the deadline, according to Florida state law. Gore was not trying to single out the military absentee ballots to be excluded. He was just following the rules by throwing out ANY ballots that were not postmarked by the established deadline, military or civilian. Apparently some of the military ballots sent from overseas were not postmarked at all, which would have disqualified them under state law. Gore was following the rules, the repubs decided they wanted to change the rules in the middle of the game.