The Florida Debacle
An explanation of the discrepancy for Nassau County is as follows:
In Nassau County, the board was accused of violating Florida law by adding votes from earlier tabulations that had been rejected by the board as illegal.
However, the facts as reported are as follows:
On election night, all the votes were counted, but during the machine recount, 218 ballots were accidentally separated from the rest, and not counted. As a result, Bush received 124 fewer votes and Gore received 73 fewer votes than on election night.
After the recount, the Nassau County Board supervisor discovered her mistake, and tried to correct it. Because the Supreme Court of Florida had held the date open for final certification until Sunday at 5:00 p.m., the Division of Elections informed the supervisor that she could revise the count to make it accurate.
The Board (2 Democrats and 1 Republican) voted unanimously to certify the original election night count - which included the 218 ballots - rather than the machine recount total (which mistakenly omitted those ballots).
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The following is the actual raw data from the Sun-Sentinel newspaper web site:
http://sun-sentinel.com/news/badvotes.htm
Presidential votes disqualified
in Florida
Updated at noon Wednesday, Nov. 15. --2.93-- percent of the ballots in Florida were disqualified from the presidential category. These ballots had one of two problems: no note for president or more than one vote for president. This is an increase from the 1996 presidential election, when --2.52-- percent were disqualified.
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The percentage shift was tiny, and understandable since so many first time voters had been thrown in to the mix. The Dems have a history of vote fraud. They called a bunch of people on Dem voter registration rolls in Palm Beach County, and told them people were being duped by butterfly ballots, and to complain that they hadn't understood the ballot--to get a revote.
These things were reported.
(Goes to make some popcorn)
