GOP in 2000: 'I cannot believe our service boys would have their ballots disqualified.'

In the aftermath of the 2000 GOP coup d'etat, remember when the Reichwing was yelping that the Democrats were discarding votes of "our service boys?" Joe LieberBush made sure he helped the GOP in the aftermath of the 'election.'

In July 2001, with the election safely stolen for the Bush regime, the NYT published an article called 'How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote' The cover illustration showed that military overseas ballots postmarked AFTER November 7 were accepted in the 'counting.'

(New York Times, Via 'TimesSelect')

July 15, 2001
EXAMINING THE VOTE; How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote
By DAVID BARSTOW AND DON VAN NATTA JR.
On the morning after Election Day, George W. Bush held an unofficial lead of 1,784 votes in Florida, but to his campaign strategists the margin felt perilously slim. They were right to worry. Within a week, recounts would erode Mr. Bush's unofficial lead to just 300 votes.

With the presidency hanging on the outcome in Florida, the Bush team quickly grasped that the best hope of ensuring victory was the trove of ballots still arriving in the mail from Florida residents living abroad. Over the next 18 days, the Republicans mounted a legal and public relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws when counting overseas absentee ballots.

Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.

A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this chapter in the closest presidential election in modern American history shows that the Republican effort had a decided impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state laws.

<snip>

The flawed votes included ballots without postmarks, ballots postmarked after the election, ballots without witness signatures, ballots mailed from towns and cities within the United States and even ballots from voters who voted twice. All would have been disqualified had the state's election laws been strictly enforced.

The Republican push on absentee ballots became an effective counterweight to the Gore campaign's push for manual recounts in mainly Democratic counties in southern Florida.

In its investigation, The Times found that these overseas ballots -- the only votes that could legally be received and counted after Election Day -- were judged by markedly different standards, depending on where they were counted.

The unequal treatment of these ballots is at odds with statements by Bush campaign leaders and by the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, that rules should be applied uniformly and certainly not changed in the middle of a contested election. It also conflicts with the equal protection guarantee that the United States Supreme Court invoked in December when it halted a statewide manual recount and effectively handed Florida to Mr. Bush.

After being told of The Times's findings, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said: ''This election was decided by the voters of Florida a long time ago. And the nation, the president and all but the most partisan Americans have moved on.''

<snip>

Many of the 680 flawed ballots in the analysis of the overseas envelopes had multiple defects, so the total number of flaws exceeds the number of defective ballots. The following questionable ballots were found:

*344 ballots with no evidence they were cast on or before Election Day. They had late, illegible or missing postmarks.

*183 ballots with United States postmarks.

*96 ballots lacking the required signature or address of a witness.

*169 ballots from voters who were not registered, who failed to sign the envelope or who had not requested a ballot. A request is required by federal law.

*5 ballots received after the Nov. 17 deadline.

*19 voters cast two ballots, both of which counted.

Still, this benefit of the doubt was given to such ballots more than three times as often in counties carried by Mr. Bush, according to the Times database.

<snip>

Far more troubling were reports about military ballots. In county after county, Bush observers noticed that military ballots were arriving without postmarks.


This seemingly obscure postmark standard was suddenly of crucial importance to the Bush strategists. Hundreds of overseas ballots that they wanted counted met neither requirement -- the envelopes had no postmarks, and the signatures had no dates.

It was an ambitious goal. In 1996, Bob Dole beat Bill Clinton by just 208 votes among Florida's overseas voters. The Republicans decided they had to make sure as many military ballots as possible arrived in Florida in time to be counted on Nov. 17.

A Rush to Retrieve Military Ballots

<snip>

Aboard the George Washington, an aircraft carrier then in the Adriatic Sea, Michael J. Kohrt recalled fellow crew members gathering around television sets on the morning of Nov. 8. ''We saw Florida was deadlocked, and everyone on the ship said, 'Whoa, I have got to get my ballot in,' '' he said. ''A lot of guys voted late.''

The Times investigation found a substantial number of people who, like Mr. Kohrt, knowingly cast their ballots after Election Day. Of the 91 voters interviewed whose ballots had either missing or late postmarks, 30 acknowledged marking ballots late. Only four were counted. Mr. Kohrt's vote, which he said was for Mr. Gore, was among those rejected.

The Pentagon soon faced pressure from the Bush campaign.


Clouding the Matter Of the Postmark

Questioning Civilian Ballots, Defending Military Ballots

But a review of the transcripts, minutes and recordings of canvassing board meetings shows otherwise. The records reveal example after example of Bush lawyers' employing one set of arguments in counties where Mr. Gore was strong and another in counties carried by Mr. Bush.

County by county, and sometimes ballot by ballot, they tailored their arguments in ways that maximized Mr. Bush's support among overseas voters. They frequently questioned civilian ballots, for example, while defending military ballots with the same legal defects.

In Bush strongholds they pleaded with election officials to ignore Florida's election rules. They ridiculed Gore lawyers for raising concerns about fraud, while making eloquent speeches about the voting rights of men and women defending the nation's interests in remote and dangerous locations.

''If they catch a bullet, or fragment from a terrorist bomb, that fragment does not have any postmark or registration of any kind,'' Fred Tarrant, a Republican City Council member from Naples, Fla., told the board in Collier County, a conservative outpost in southwest Florida.

Making frequent and effective use of the protest form they had developed to defend military ballots without postmarks, the Bush lawyers succeeded in persuading three counties in the western tip of the Panhandle, all of them Bush strongholds, to disregard Florida's postmark rules.

By contrast, in Democratic strongholds, Bush lawyers simultaneously worked to exclude as many likely Gore votes as possible.

When ballots were defended, they were from military voters. ''I cannot believe that our service boys, fighting hard overseas, that their ballots would be disqualified,'' Mr. McCown, the Bush lawyer, told the Palm Beach County canvassing board. The public relations campaign began when Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana, a Bush supporter, said that Democratic lawyers had ''gone to war'' against military voters. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf called it ''a very sad day in our country.'' Robert Novak, the conservative newspaper columnist, called the Herron memorandum a ''quickie guide for tossing out the serviceman's vote.''

The candidate himself took up the theme, calling on election officials to count more military ballots.

Almost immediately (*of course*), the Democrats were in full retreat.

On Sunday, Nov. 19, Mr. Gore's running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, appeared on the NBC program ''Meet the Press.'' Faced with a barrage of aggressive questions, he called on Florida's canvassing boards to reconsider their rejection of military ballots. The next day, the attorney general of Florida, a Democrat, said that local officials should ''immediately revisit this issue.''

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Oh don't remind me that I once voted for a ticket with Joely Ho on it.

And welcome to DU, BTW!

I live in CT!
Recall that LieberBush ran for US senator and also VP in 2000. Dems in CT typically voted for LieberBush twice on that ballot, once for each position. The 'Alarm bells' should have gone off for me (and all of us), but unfortunately, they didn't. :)
Polar Bear