November 24, 2000

Florida Lawmakers Anger At Court May Not Vanish
By John Kennedy and Gwyneth K. Shaw The Orlando Sentinel
TALLAHASSEE -- Angry Republican lawmakers in Florida worked feverishly Wednesday to sidestep or block the state Supreme Court`s presidential ballot ruling, claiming justices crossed a constitutional line and jumped into legal turf reserved for legislators. Led by House Speaker Tom Feeney of Oviedo and Sen. Daniel Webster of Ocoee, lawmakers began floating several ideas that would give the Republican-dominated Legislature a key role in deciding the presidential election in Florida. A final strategy likely will emerge by Sunday -- the deadline justices set for hand recounts to be completed in key South Florida counties.

Court Won't Order Dade Recount
By Linda Deutsch / The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday refused to order Miami-Dade County officials to resume a handcount of presidential election ballots, dealing a blow to Al Gore's efforts to cut into George W. Bush's lead in the state. Gore had asked the court in an emergency Thanksgiving Day appeal to restart ballot counting in the county, which they said was "being frustrated by a deliberate campaign of delay and intimidation of local officials." "The writ is denied without prejudice. No motion for rehearing is allowed," the court said in a statement read by spokesman Craig Waters.

Recount Heads to Supreme Court
By John Heilprin / The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- With Election 2000 stretching past Thanksgiving, Al Gore was dealt a setback from the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday even as the ballot showdown with George W. Bush moved to the U.S. Supreme Court. The contest stretched from Tallahassee to Washington. Bush won a significant round when the Florida Supreme Court refused to order Miami-Dade County officials to resume a handcount of presidential election ballots, as Gore had requested.

Gore's Scorched Earth Policy: Won't Concede
United Press International
TALLAHASSEE, (UPI) - There was no let up, despite the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday, in the seemingly endless legal and political warfare over the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The campaign of Democrat candidate Vice President Al Gore said Thursday it would contest the vote totals from Miami-Dade county in Florida after they are certified at the weekend, whoever is leading in the statewide tally.

Gore Gains 88 Votes In Broward
By Steve Miller / The Washington Times
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Election canvassing board members in Broward County started their review yesterday of up to 2,000 contested ballots, and by the end of the day, Vice President Al Gore had picked up a net 88 votes.

Tossed Absentee Ballots Have Panhandle Area Up in Arms
By Dana Milbank / The Washington Post
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- The Democrat Party, found what some consider a strange way to commemorate Military Appreciation Month. Last Friday night, its lawyers spent a contentious six hours trying to disqualify as many as possible of the absentee ballots sent in by overseas military personnel. That effort was repeated throughout the state, resulting in disqualifying nearly 40 percent of 3,733 overseas absentee ballots counted last Friday. But the challenges also created an uproar that still resonates here in this heavily Republican corner of the Florida Panhandle, home to the sprawling Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola Naval Air Station and other installations.

Cheney Doing Well, May Be Released
By John Heilprin / The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, said by his doctor to be recovering well from a mild heart attack, could be released from the hospital Friday.

Bush Team Reviews Oregon Voting Records
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.

Petition Drives Attempt To Influence
Electoral College Into Changing Vote
By Julie Foster / WorldNetDaily.com
With Florida's choice for president still unknown, and unprecedented legal battles raging in the courts, several groups have shifted their focus from the Sunshine State and adopted a new tactic to get their man into the Oval Office: Lobby members of the Electoral College. Established by America's founding fathers in Article 2 of the Constitution, the Electoral College meets on Dec. 18 this year to cast the determining votes for president of the United States. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.

Gore's Final Assault
By George Will / New York Post
"The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." - James Madison, Federalist 47. Al Gore's assault on the rule of law, crowned with success by Florida's lawless Supreme Court, has now become a crisis of the American regime. See above. In asking that court on Monday to do what Gore wanted, attorney David Boies uttered a notable understatement: "I believe that there is going to have to be a lot of judgment applied by the court." Consider the radicalism - it far exceeds routine judicial activism - of what the court did with its "judgment."

'The People Who Count The Votes'
The Washington Times
"It's not the people who vote that count," Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once observed. "It's the people who count the votes." Stalin obviously did not have in mind the Democrat-dominated election canvassing boards in several Florida counties. But he might as well have. Let there be no mistake. In the immediate aftermath of the razor-thin presidential vote in the decisive state of Florida, those Democrat-controlled canvassing boards, exercising substantial vote-tabulating powers in overwhelmingly Democrat counties (Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade), were strategically pinpointed by the campaign of Vice President Al Gore to play the pivotal, indispensable role in stealing the presidency from George W. Bush.

Florida's Overweening Court
By Thomas L. Jipping / WorldNetDaily
The presidential election saga is not about the fine points of election law. It is about whether "we, the people" or "they, the judges" run the country. Tuesday night, the Florida Supreme Court took control of democracy.

Supreme Court Trumps Freedom
By Ron Strom / WorldNetDaily
In its ruling, the court decided to set an arbitrary deadline, Nov. 26, for Florida counties performing hand recounts to submit their results to the secretary of state. The ruling directly contradicts clear Florida statute that sets the deadline at seven days after the election or, in this election year, Nov. 14.

'Dimpled, Pimpled, Pregnant;' Is This A Teenage Novel?
By Bruce Ramsey/ The Seattle Times
Florida may grant Al Gore the presidency by a handful of dimpled and pregnant chads. But Washingtons' secretary of state, Ralph Munro, sniffs at these exotic names from down South. "Dimpled, pimpled and pregnant," he says. "Sounds like a teen-age novel."

Chads Show Election Pregnant With New Possibilities To Cheat
By Audrey Hudson / The Washington Times
Stuffing the ballot box on Election Day is "as American as apple pie," but charges of voiding absentee military votes, trading smokes for votes and cheating by chad in the presidential campaign are new to American elections.

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