LA Times mangles the 2000 election

From Patterico's blog:

The L.A. Times reports:

Obama dispatched Al Gore to Florida — a merging of man and state that served as painful symbolism to Democrats of the need to cast every ballot.

"Vote early. Take people with you to the polls," the former vice president said at a rally in Coconut Creek. Gore's 2000 campaign foundered in Florida after ballot problems led to a long legal standoff. The Supreme Court ultimately determined that Bush had won the presidency with a 537-vote margin in Florida.

No, it didn't.

....

But the statement is false. It apparently comes from some reporter who heard too many people say at the water cooler that the Supreme Court awarded the Presidency to George W. Bush.

But that's not what happened. Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, is the person who certified George W. Bush as the winner, and the margin of victory at 537 votes.

The Supreme Court did no such thing. In its per curiam opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an order of the Florida Supreme Court ordering a recount to proceed. The Court held that the standardless manual recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause.

It is true that the Court's actions in halting the recount were a critical factor in the process. But the Supreme Court made no determination as to who had won the presidency. That was Katherine Harris.

You can read the opinion as many times as you like, but you'll see no statement to the effect: "The Court hereby determines that George W. Bush has won the presidency of the United States by a margin of 537 votes." Instead, the Court simply stated: "The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion."

Voter Fraud at the Spectator

The American Spectator has a piece on voter fraud.

Florida
The problem of voter fraud today is thoroughly revealed in a recent book by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books). One of the best features of that book is that it reveals what really happened in Florida in 2000: The Democrats tried to steal the election for Gore, but failed.
....
After all the shouting was over, a consortium of major news organizations conducted their own thorough Florida recount. Despite well-developed Democrat mythology, supported by an idiotically irresponsible HBO movie on the controversy, the New York Times reported the results as follows: "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward."

But Fund shows that only widespread Democrat vote fraud made the election as close as it was. The highly liberal Palm Beach Post conducted an investigation concluding that the county had illegally allowed 5,600 convicted felons to vote. Felons, of course, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, apparently seeing them as soul mates. By contrast, Democrat lawyers won a motion to disqualify 1,420 military ballots because they didn't have a foreign postmark (which most likely resulted because the ballots were sent back through the U.S. military rather than foreign post offices). Those serving in the U.S. armed forces overwhelmingly vote Republican.  

....

Today, these same vote fraud schemes are being conducted nationwide under the auspices of the far left extremist group ACORN, the Left's equivalent of the John Birch Society. ACORN is a rogue organization growing out of the 1960s that openly flouts the law as a matter of strategic policy, engaging in physical intimidation, trespass, threatening behavior, even outright violence. It has taken over meetings, throwing out speakers, invaded and occupied businesses, demanding payoffs, and seized unoccupied homes and apartments, forcibly claiming the right to stay.

These same attitudes have been carried over to its so-called voter projects, where ACORN has been caught breaking the law all over the country for years now. ACORN has hired more than 13,000 workers this year to register new voters in 21 states, producing 1.3 million new registrations nationwide. ACORN workers have registered voters in the name of Fruto Boy Crispa, Stormi Bays, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys, in Nevada. In Ohio, where ACORN has conducted a massive voter registration drive this year, 200,000 new registrations have been found with mismatches with state records. Batches of ACORN registration applications are often submitted in the same handwriting, including the supposed voter signatures. A voter registration form ACORN submitted in Connecticut was in the name of a 7-year-old girl. In other places, ACORN has submitted illegal registrations for felons, or even prison inmates, and in the names of pets.

Kling on George Bush

Arnold Kling writes about the George Bush presidency. He's not a fan of Bush.

I have never felt comfortable with George Bush. I voted for Al Gore--although I never felt comfortable with him, either. I felt even less comfortable with John Kerry, so that I voted for Bush in 2004.

Neoconservatism is not my ideology. As I pointed out four years ago, the economic ideology of neoconservatism is willing to accept a large and ever-growing government, whereas I am not. Neoconservatives are comfortable turning religious values into hot-button political causes, while I prefer to keep my conservative moral values in the background. Finally, neoconservatives are somewhat more grandiose and moralistic than I am on foreign policy.

Nevertheless, Bush has one point in his favor.

I think that President Bush has got one thing very much right, which is that Arab-Islamic terrorism is a symptom that something is rotten in the Middle East. If anything, his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot. For all the allegations of his lack of intellect, George Bush is a brainiac compared to people who want to see terrorism as a symptom of something rotten in the United States or Israel.

He then addresses five points he considers "myths" about the Bush presidency:

• Myth 1: Bush lost in 2000
• Myth 2: Bush economic policies were disastrous
• Myth 3: Bush was too right-wing
• Myth 4: Bush was too partisan
• Myth 5: Iraq reflects Bush's personality

Read the whole thing.

Myths about Bush

The Anchoress looks at a list of "reasons to impeach Bush".

I’ve seen similar lists throughout the web - the collective is circulating it in order to really drill home to everyone who may not yet be fully convinced that George W. Bush is the worst, most evil man ever born from woman (if that is what Barbara Bush may be called) and also the stupidest evil super genius imaginable.

I read a transcript of the execrable morning program The View in which Joy Behar, a Gore-adoree of the first water, reads from one of these lists:

...Let me get through the list. He withdrew us from the Kyoto Treaty, John Ashcroft. Sat in the classroom after learning about 9/11…He lied to us to get us into the war. He awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton, Abu Ghraib. He promoted his friend Michael Brown to take care of Katrina. Heck of a job, Brownie. Remember that? He doesn’t listen to the Iraq Study Group. He choked on a pretzel…He waited a week to visit New Orleans and then only to watch some jazz. He stood by Alberto Gonzales…and he stood by Rumsfeld, who some people think is a war criminal. He can’t pronounce the word “nuclear.” These are just some of the reasons…this guy needs to be thrown out of office.

The list she looks at includes:

1) Bush Stole the Election!

2) Bush Lied Us Into War!

3) Bush Wanted to Privatize Social Security!

4) Bush Killed the Surplus with Tax Cuts!

5) Bush Killed the Kyoto Treaty!

6) Bush sat in the classroom after learning about 9/11!

7) Bush awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton!

8) Bush promoted his friend Michael Brown to take care of Katrina! Heck of a job, Brownie. Remember that?

9) Bush ignored the Iraq Study Group!

10) Bush choked on a pretzel! He can’t say nuclear the way we want him to! He talks like a Texan! We hate him!

Follow the link to see what she does with them.

The Florida saga continues

Jonah Goldberg on the great urban legend of the Florida 2000 votes.

Interestingly enough, he quotes Eric Holder, a member of the Democrats' Election Task Force, as saying,

If every vote is allowed to be cast, and every vote is counted, John Kerry will be president within a day of that election.

Well, actually, he'll be president elect. He won't be president until Inauguration Day, in January.

I know what he meant, though. So do you, so did he, and so did Chris Wallace, who was interviewing him. But if a Bush aide, or a Bush supporter, or Bush himself had made that gaffe, would the press have been willing to do the work of translating it for him?

Katherine Harris' take on Florida

The Democrats are still whining about Florida.

Katherine Harris offers her perspective.

Seven states experienced worse rates of "undervotes" and "overvotes" than Florida (the rate for his home state of Georgia was 3.5 percent, as compared to Florida's 2.9 percent. The rate for Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, was 6 percent).

and...

...Mr. Carter repeats discredited myths about the 2000 presidential election in Florida without providing evidence to support his claims. He alleges that "several thousand ballots of African Americans were thrown out on technicalities," when 1) the American tradition of ballot secrecy prevents us from knowing the race of a voter who cast a spoiled ballot, and 2)no shred of evidence exists to support the far-left accusation that "thousands of African Americans" were prevented from voting because of Florida's effort to remove felons and other ineligible voters from the registration rolls, which was required by 1998 legislation sponsored by two Democratic legislators and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles. In fact, during the 18 months of litigation that followed Election 2000, only two persons testified that they were unable to vote in that election because their names erroneously appeared on the mandated list of potentially ineligible voters. Nevertheless, because one qualified voter's loss of this sacred right constitutes an anathema to me,I made certain that the groundbreaking election reforms that Florida enacted in 2001 included "provisional ballots" (enabling individuals whose registration status is challenged at the polls to vote and have that vote counted upon later verification of their eligibility).

Orson Scott Card on Kerry

Mr. Card doesn't have nearly as many good things to say about J.F.Kerry.

Florida on my mind

Florida's on my mind, mainly because it's very much on the mind of people who are still sore over losing the state in 2000.

This article addresses myths about what happened in Florida. The final report of the USCCR states there was no conspiracy on the part of Florida officials to disenfranchise voters. Even if there were actions taken which had the effect of disenfranchising some eligible voters, that's not enough to count as intentional disenfranchisement.