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There were a few systems in use in Florida.

One was the punchcard system. That's the source of the "hanging chads" stories. (Actually, the source of these stories was that poll workers did not empty the chad collection boxes frequently enough and the punches worked inefficiently with jammed little bits of card). See this FAQ

Another was optical-scan ballots, on paper. According to at least one reporter, the optical scan systems were programmed to kick-out undervote/overvote ballots in some prectincts but not others (leaving "incorrect" ballots in the system to remain un-recountable, instead of corrected at the time the votes were cast). I believe this may have been reported by Greg Palast.

The question of paper vs. electronic voting is fairly simple: Which system is more likely to be hacked "invisibly"? I am old enough to be cynical. Developers know damn well that nontrivial software is essentially never perfect, even when everyone involved wants it to be perfect. Voting systems are nontrivial software systems where someone does *not* want it to be perfect. As far as I am concerned, the most perfect definition of "conflict of interest" is when county or state boards of elections are members of political parties and entrusted with choosing electronic voting systems.

Voter intimidation, how about Voter disenfranchisement ...

Minorities who are ex-felons have to jump through hoops to get their right to vote back. Florida doesn't even automatically re-authorize an ex-felons right to vote. And since minorities make up a large amount of disenfranchised, it really affects the minority vote.

See Democracynow and Voter Disenfranchisement to read about it.

Why is something as simple as voting in 2004 still a problem? Makes me sick that people are excluding votes to win, and getting away with it. The flyer is rather tame compared to the issue.

Books about those who designed
the Bush administration's deliberate dishonesty

There are many excellent people in the Republican political party in the United States. But there is are people who say they are Republicans who might be called "Re-money-cans". (There is no "public" in Remoneycan.) They are only interested in money and power and they achieve them by using dishonesty as a tool. For example, the Remoneycans have been running advertisements on U.S. television claiming that George W. Bush is a more experienced military leader than John Kerry, who opposes him for the 2004 presidential election. During times when people in the U.S. feel threatened, a large percentage of them feel that violence is the only answer, and the ads manipulate that feeling. The ads may be very convincing if the viewer does not know the truth, that John Kerry is much more experienced, as the Military Service Records for Bush and Kerry show. Also see the essay Bush's Military Records Show He Shirked.

1. Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The brains behind the remarkable political triumph of George W. Bush by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon, 2003, PublicAffairs. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon

   The secret of Karl Rove's success is that U.S. voters don't want to believe there is widespread corruption in their government. Therefore, if lies are extreme enough, they will be accepted.

   President George W. Bush has a habit of giving disrespectful nicknames to those with whom he works. "Boy Genius" is one of President Bush's nicknames for Karl Rove. President Bush also calls Karl Rove, "Turd Blossom". The term refers to a flower that grows in the feces of a cow.

2. Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush presidential by James Moore and Wayne Slater, 2003, John Wiley & Sons, New York, New York, USA. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon

   An Amazon review about the present U.S. president, George W. Bush, quotes the book: "Karl Rove matters to all Americans, many who have never even heard his name. While the president chafes at the description of Rove as 'Bush's Brain,' he can hardly deny that every policy and political decision either goes through, or comes from, the consultant," write the authors, leading them to pose the question, "Who really runs this country?"

3. Bad Boy: The life and politics of Lee Atwater by John Brady, 1997, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts. Reviews: Barnes & Noble Amazon

   Lee Atwater and Karl Rove worked together, but Lee died of a brain tumor when he was 40. Mr. Atwater also had no interest in government policy, but only in how to get someone elected. For example, see the top of page 103 of the hardcover edition: "Indeed, Lee had no interest in the policy loop." Another quote, about his sexual involvement with women other than his wife, from page 151: "He [Lee Atw

Democrats made a number of mistakes in 2000; the first was running Al Gore as their candidate, but the second was in how they pursued the Florida issue. They should have demanded a recount of the entire state; it would have reeked less of Gerrymandering, and it would have resulted in a win. The NYT was right in saying that the mistakes were more wide-spread than just the counties that the Democrats picked out.

However, if you poke around even a little bit, you find numerous articles talking about this issue. Sure, it is always "BUSH WOULD HAVE WON IF GORE'S RECOUNT HAD BET ALLOWED!!!! (but he might have lost if they'd have recounted the entire state)", but the studies are still there saying that he probably (which is the same as "maybe" if you don't like the results) would have lost.

I have a little more faith that people will read the content, not just the headlines.

By the way, you didn't "dig" at all, much less "any further". Four links down from the headline you chose to focus on was a link to the consortium study that showed that Gore won. Just so you don't miss it again here are some more links to various sources. Much of that is raw data of the research, but some of the links I originally provided reported the results of the research. At least one of the links provide a number of different interpretations of the data, all of which show that Al Gore would have won.

Aw, what the heck... since some people are incapable of following links more than one deep:

• Slate
• Washington Post
• Common Dreams

Just for good measure, I'd rather have a flip-flopper in office than a proven promise breaker.

I await the day when the independant exit polls that the media conducts deviate by a statistically noteable amount from some non-verifiable voting machine. What will happen? The media's polls, while "unscientific" tend to be decent approximations, and the sampling error should be calculable. How much would the "real" results have to be off to raise eyebrows or, worse, to raise fists?

This isn't too far from what happened during the 2000 American Presidential elections, where news services flip-flopped between calling the election for Gore and Bush and then finally recognized that their polls results and eventually the actual results placed each side well within the margin of error. This link has bit of information, although it was apparently posted before the final resolution.

I remember tracking the results on the web while watching it on TV and CNN's online coverage made it perfectly clear that the results were well within the margin of error at all times. So I think they were well aware of that a margin of error existed, but I guess the pressure to call it first was just too high on TV.

It still boggles my mind that the new election machine companies are against paper trails -- why is printing out a receipt and putting it in a box _just in case_ such a big deal?

Exactly because it isn't a big deal, and in fact it seems to be the best way to do it -- but without the computer. For this to work, they apparently need to get rid of the paper -- without the redundancy of computer + paper, it's harder for people to argue that the computer is actually the redundant part. I love new technology, but only when it's useful (well, usually). Throw out the computers and punch card machines, spend more on voter education, and go back to a technology that works better, faster, and for less -- paper and pencil.

I didn't bring criminal convictions up but since you asked, Bush's DUI conviction in 1976 courtesy of the Smoking Gun. I don't personally think it is that big a deal but you seem sensitive on the subject.

It's ceratinly true that all major political candidates favor corporate welfare of one kind or another. (Though I do want to point out that the Clinton administration's stance on trade was far more market oriented than the pandering of the Bush administration. Look at steel tariffs.) Bush was unusual in that he personally profited from corporate welfare.

"Self-righteous" is definitely an eye-of-the-beholder thing.

The Clinton recession? That's good. Clinton certainly benefitted from a strong economy while he was at the helm. And a downturn of some sort was inevitable. But he did the most important thing: he didn't derail the economy. The Bush tax cuts, which Bush claims is a "jobs stimulus", have created nothing but defecits as far as the eye can see while the economy sheds tens of thousands of jobs each month.

There was fraud in the election. The Bush team pressured Florida election boards to count invalid absentee ballots. But even with it, under every plausible recount scenario (with the hugely ironic exception of the one favored by the Gore team), Gore received more votes in Florida than Bush.

If you spot the "demonstrating genuine leadership" letter, send it to these folks who've listed 74 and climbing.