November 14, 2000

Bush Camp to Appeal Florida Hand Count Ruling
Reuters
ATLANTA (Reuters) - The campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush filed notice Tuesday that it will ask an appeals court in Atlanta to act to stop hand counting of presidential election votes in Florida, a court official said. In a five-page notice, the Bush camp said it would ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a decision rendered by a federal court in Miami Monday, according to court clerk Thomas Kahn.

Dems Drive to Keep Counting Votes
By Anne Gearan / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Confusion reigned in Florida courthouses Tuesday, as Democrats pushed legal challenges and imported a top litigator in an 11th-hour drive to keep recounting the state's crucial presidential ballots. The first showdown came with a Solomonic decision from a state judge in Tallahassee. Circuit Judge Terry Lewis upheld the deadline but held out the possibility that the state would accept late returns from recounts in four heavily Democrat portions of the state. A spokeswoman for Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris said she would consider late filings, but it was unclear what criteria she might use.

Slow-Motion Larceny In Florida May Succeed If It Can Proceed
By George Will / Access Atlanta
WASHINGTON -- In his campaign to follow in the presidency a man defined by moral turpitude, Al Gore promised, ''You ain't seen nothing yet.'' Now we know what he meant. Credit him with a promise kept. Credit also his farsightedness in entrusting his campaign to the late Mayor Richard Daley's son, for whom the manufacturing (literally the making by hand) of votes is a family tradition.

Florida Counties Report Votes
By Ron Fournier / The Associated Press
One week into America's election limbo, Florida counties officially reported their presidential votes after a Tuesday deadline was upheld by a state judge, even as thousands of disputed ballots were counted by hand into the night. Democrats rejected George W. Bush's potential compromise to cease the ballot-by-ballot fight for the White House. "When is it going to end?" asked Bush aide James A. Baker III. There was no answer in sight.

Voting Deadline Has Conditions
By David Espo / The Associated Press
In a ruling issued Tuesday in Tallahassee, Fla., Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said Secretary of State Katherine Harris had the authority to enforce the late afternoon deadline for certifying vote totals in the state's 67 counties. But he also said the counties could continue hand-counting – as some are at the behest of the Gore campaign – and that Harris had the discretion to accept or reject any revised totals submitted after her deadline.

P.O. Delivers Military Ballots
By Terry Spencer / The Associated Press
MIAMI -- Step to the front of the line. The U.S. Postal Service is hurrying military overseas ballots arriving in Florida through the delivery process, getting them to the 67 county election departments the same day they arrive in the country. The ballots are being separated by workers at the Air Mail Center near Miami International Airport, where – coincidentally – all overseas military mail sent to the United States arrives.

Court Upholds Fla. Vote Deadline
By Jackie Hallifax / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida judge ruled on Tuesday that officials may cut off the vote recount in the state's fiercely contested presidential election at 5 p.m. EST, handing a victory to George W. Bush and a setback to Al Gore. Judge Terry Lewis ruled that counties may file supplemental or corrected totals after the deadline, and Secretary of State Katherine Harris may consider them if she employs "proper exercise of discretion." Democrat officials, who have initiated attempts to conduct manual recounts in a few counties, said they would appeal the ruling, as did local officials in Volusia County, where a recount was under way. No details were immediately available on the details of the appeals.

Tempers Flare Amid Recount
By Marcy Gordon / The Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A shouting and shoving match breaks out in Palm Beach County. A Democrat congressman needs a sheriff's escort after protesters interrupt a TV interview. Dozens of people march in front of an elections office in Jacksonville over uncounted votes. Tensions are running high and nerves are beginning to fray across Florida as the vote-counting ordeal that will decide the nation's presidency grinds into its second week.

D.A. Probes Multiple Voter Reports
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE -- The district attorney is investigating a report that scores of college students may have cast more than one presidential ballot. The Marquette Tribune, Marquette University's student newspaper, surveyed 1,000 students and said it found that 174 admitted voting more than once.

Gore Trying to Steal Election, Bush Campaign Says
NewsMax.com
Al Gore is trying the steal the election, the Bush campaign charged Monday evening after Gore insisted he would continue to contest – not so much because he wanted to win, but because he cared about "democracy." Texas Gov. George W. Bush's communications director, Karen Hughes, lashed out at Gore for trying to "overturn" the results in Florida, where 25 electoral votes will determine who is the next president. "Today, the vice president essentially said we should ignore the law so that he can overturn the results of this election," she said.

Secretary of State's Decision May Ignite Storm
By Jack Thompson / NewsMax.com
As clever as the announcement of the Republican Secretary of State is that she is going to certify the vote in Florida at 5 p.m. Tuesday, thereby preventing a hand count of any more votes, this is the type of "abuse of discretion" that courts abhor. A United States Supreme Court Justice, when pushed to define what is "a denial of due process", said: "You can't really define it, except that when you see it it makes you want to throw up." Some judge somewhere, probably ultimately the Florida Supreme Court, is going to get to review this move by the Secretary of State, and they will likely throw up. The Florida Supreme Court is liberal, and their gag threshhold is notoriously low.

One-Two Punch Knocked Out Conservatives' Ballots, Too
By Bill Sammon / The Washington Times
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- More votes were disqualified in conservative Duval County than in the liberal Palm Beach County, leading Republicans to believe that double-punched ballots in Florida hurt George W. Bush almost as much as Al Gore. But Republicans opted against requesting a hand recount of Duval and other conservative counties because they were already denouncing such tallies as unconstitutional in Democrat counties where hand recounts were under way.

Florida Officials Use Telepathy In Prez Ballot Hand Count
By Deroy Murdock / NewsMax.com
NEW YORK -- Just days after Missouri voters elected a dead man to the Senate, the American presidency is being decided on the basis of telepathy. No word better describes the way some Florida officials are hand counting ballots in the Sunshine State's deadlocked presidential tally.

Four Florida Democrats Could Pick Next President
NewsMax.com
Four people control the process that will determine who will win the White House – and they are all partisan Democrats. In the hotly contested Palm Beach County recount of the presidential ballots, a Palm Beach County commissioner, the county elections supervisor, and two judges could have the power to pick the next president.

Legal Battle Could Put Speaker In Oval Office
By Curt Anderson / The Times Of India
WASHINGTON -- Should a legal battle drag on for weeks between Al Gore and George W Bush over the presidential election results, Americans could wake up in late January with a man named J Dennis Hastert in the Oval Office. Hastert, a 14-year member of Congress from Illinois, is the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. Under the Constitution, in certain circumstances when the president and vice president cannot take office by the January 20 inauguration date, the House speaker takes the reins of power for the time being.

Stocks Fall on H-P Woes, Bonds Up
Reuters Online News
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended weaker on Monday, after fighting back from a tumble sparked by poor earnings from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP.N), while bonds rose as investors fled to safe havens amid the disputed U.S. presidential election. The euro fell in the absence of central bank intervention, while oil prices rose amid worries about short supplies of crude and heating oil heading into winter in the United States.

Tempers Flare At Jackson Rally
The Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Tempers flared between supporters of Al Gore and George W. Bush on Monday when The Rev. Jesse Jackson tried to address a rally backing the recount of ballots in Palm Beach County.

Bush Wants Hill Leaders to Turn up the Heat on Gore
By John Bresnahan / Roll Call
With the rhetoric heating up on both sides, senior officials from the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R)are urging GOP Congressional leaders and Republican governors to step up the public pressure on Vice President Al Gore to end his challenge to the Florida recount.

Doña Ana Finds 500-Vote Error
By Chaka Ferguson / The Associated Press
George W. Bush took a tentative 126-vote lead in New Mexico's presidential race Monday as a county clerk discovered a 500-vote oversight that could swing the state back in favor of Vice President Al Gore. Doña Ana County Clerk Rita Torres said election workers misread a 600-vote absentee total for a precinct, mistaking the figure as 100.

N.H. Presidential Race Tightens
By David Tirrell-Wysocki / The Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. -- Proofreading and computer errors have tightened the presidential race in New Hampshire and may affect some local races, the secretary of state's office said Monday. The official margin of victory for Bush now is 7,068 as election officials check for other possible errors.

A Glance At Florida Vote Recounts
Capitol Hill Blue
Nov 13, 2000 8:07 PM, developments in the presidential election recount Monday.

County By County
The Sierra News
Bush Won 2,427,000 Square Miles Of America; Gore 580,000.

Chairmanship Shuffle Beginning in the House
By Ben Pershing / Roll Call
With House Republicans kicking off their organizational activities for the 107th Congress this week, aspiring committee chairmen have begun their gavel campaigns in earnest.

Endgame Still Up in the Air
By John Bresnahan / Roll Call
Despite a request from GOP leaders for more time, President Clinton and senior Democrats have rejected an offer to postpone the final budget battle until December, meaning Congress is likely to be in a lame-duck session during the week of Thanksgiving.

Aides to Ousted Members Dealing With Sudden Defeat
By Lauren W. Whittington / Roll Call
With almost all of the winners and losers of this year's Congressional elections determined, another race has already begun on the Hill - the scramble for new jobs.

Blood in the Streets?
By Hal Turner / Sierratimes.com
While Gore supporters are holding protests in the streets, Bush supporters are buying bullets at gun shops. In the three days since the U.S. General Election, ammunition sales throughout the United States have jumped an astonishing nine-hundred percent (900%). Americans are furious over massive, blatant and widespread vote fraud by supporters of Al Gore and many are openly talking about "blood in the streets." Voter fraud in Tuesdays general election has Radio Talk Shows throughout the United States burning up with callers who are openly speaking about civil insurrection, blood in he streets, state secession from the Union and wondering aloud whether President Bill Clinton will use this election debacle as an excuse to remain in power after his term expires on January 20, 2001.

'How Democrats Steal Elections'
By Jon Dougherty and David Kupelian / WorldNetDaily.com
The manual vote recounts being insisted on by Democrat operatives in Palm Beach County, Fla., have been used for over 20 years to steal elections from Republicans, claim several GOP veterans of hand-recount election-upsets. According to Bob Haueter, chief of staff to the California Assembly Republican Caucus, and an expert on manual recounts, a Democrat lawyer intimately involved in "stealing" elections from Republicans through hand recounts admitted to the process and even shared the techniques involved.

In The Daley Tradition
The Washington Times
One of the more Dada-esque elements of this post-election limbo is the spectacle of Gore campaign chairman William Daley delivering lectures to the nation on election ethics. Mr. Daley, of course, is the youngest son of Chicago's former Mayor Richard J. Daley, the infamous political boss of the Cook County Democrat machine, who is best remembered for the political crime of the century — stealing Illinois for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election against Richard M. Nixon.

This Just In Rides Again!
By Norman Liebmann / NewsMax.com
Democracy will remain theoretical until we can wake up the day after an election and find the American people have voted Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings out of their cushy sinecures and replaced them with honorable men. After decades of aggravated disservice to the nation, they have touched bottom by contaminating a national election with a premature, inaccurate and biased announcement of the results.

Bush, Gore Begin Race For 'Moral' Win
By Sean Scully / The Washington Times
AUSTIN, Texas -- The campaign of Republican George W. Bush says it holds the "moral high ground" over Democrat Al Gore and tried to paint him as desperate and willing to flout the law to win. "It's becoming increasingly clear that Vice President Gore's campaign simply wants to keep counting votes until they like the result," Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told reporters yesterday.

Networks Stole Bush's Popular Vote
By Barry Farber / NewsMax.com
This was a venal, vicious attempt to cut the heart out of the Bush campaign – and it was bitterly successful. For weeks the networks had been setting the public up by hammering home the message that "Florida is crucial to Bush's hopes." "Without Florida it would be almost impossible for Bush to win." Over and over and over.

Nothing Fuzzy About This Math
The Washington Times
With all the charges and countercharges, state court cases and federal court cases, court-ordered injunctions issued and court-requested injunctions denied, vote counts and vote recounts, mechanical recounts and manual recounts, all of which have proliferated in Florida in the aftermath of the presidential election just concluded, perhaps it is time to consider some math that isn't the least bit fuzzy.

The Electoral College: Even More Important Now, Not Less
By Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. / NewsMax.com
Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton is quite wrong when she states the premise that "we are a very different country than we were 200 years ago," and therefore she believes "strongly that in a democracy we should respect the will of the people and to me that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president."

Election Being Discussed at Churches
By Ted Anthony / The Associated Press
In his sermon a week ago, the Rev. Ron Crawford said a few words about the upcoming election then tossed in this line: "Thank goodness," he told his congregants, "it'll all be over Tuesday night."

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