Voters stupidity!!

The Great American Debacle!!

United States is not a true democracy and never was intended to be. George Washington could have been, King George The 1^ST, if he would of wanted to be, but he refused. Even there were political people who tried to declare a king for sometime after the Revolutionary War ended. Early in the 1800 hundreds there was a lot of trouble with the political system in that there were tons of different political parties and each one of these were so small as to be of no value to the political process. So the politicians in the congress implemented the Electoral Collage System. This system worked not so bad when the Presidential race was not close, but as can be seen in two different times in the 19th century and the year 2000, the system does not work well at all in a close race. But, the United States is stuck with this system now. To get the Congress and the individual States to vote out this system now, would take a miracle. Two thirds of Congress and three quarters of the states would have too agree, and I don’t think there is any chance in hell, that this could happen in the political climate that we have now. Do you??

The election was a real mess, from the beginning. The main candidates started their bid for the Presidency right after the election of 1996!!!! Just it was not the official start of the election!!! The political process has gotten well out of hand. This election has cost well over one billion dollars. Just take the expense of Gore rehearsing for the first debate in October of 2000. Gore went to Florida and they had a stage built, that would reflect the stage, he would be on at the first debate. This cost well over $400,000 dollars. This does not include the cost of flying all those advisers of his, on Air Force Two. This cost, over $10,000 an hour. If you think that the Gore Election Committee reimburses, the United States in full, I still have that bridge that I could sell to you!! The Vice President can always find some reason that they can use the plane on official business and go to the political events in the same trip. It’s done all the time, regardless, the fact that the Republicans or Democrats are in power.

I don’t want you to think that only the Democrats are the ones who are at fault, after all if you put a Republican and a Democrat into the same bag and shake them up and dumped them out, You could not tell who is who. I am sometimes ashamed to have to admit that I am an American, while the election and recount and recount and recount are going on. Europeans do not understand how America can be so rich and powerful and yet be so backwards in their election laws. The answer is this is politics, pure and not so simple. In politics anything goes, the bigger the lie, the more chance, it will be accepted by the voters, just ask Clinton. This is from both sides!!

It is so, so easy to see why Gore chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate in this election. Lieberman is in no way his own man, and was chosen entirely because he is Jewish and because he never said anything that was from his own mind. He sounded just like a talking head, with a tape-recorder in his mouth. It looked just like he was in love with Al Gore and if Al said to jump, Joe would say, how high, Mr. Al and how often Mr. Al!!

Bush was no better. George Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate and the reason was this would give Bush a big leg up, on the foreign policy issues. Bush was not yet ready to be President. But it is my thinking that Bush has grown up a lot in the last year, in regards to knowing the world. We will see!! Both Bush and Gore chose good men, just that nether one of these men are, the best that could have been found.

The Media!! We get all of our info from the national media. In the main they are so, so biased toward the Democrats that it is hard to believe anything that they say on the subject of politics.

Florida!! In regards to election laws, Florida has no unified standards across the state. Each county sets up its own standard. How this can be fair to the voters, I don’t have any idea???? Do you??

Democrats!!! They say that they want each and every vote counted!!! What a lie!!! They only want the votes counted if it favors them. This is why they don’t want the absentee votes from the military counted and go way, way out of the way to try to not let these votes be counted!!!

Republicans!!! The Republicans are no better. They are using every dirty political trick in the book, to not let the votes to be counted at all. I use to be a Republican and now I don’t want to vote at all, but if I do vote, it will be as an Independent voter.

Independent!! I believe that the Independent Party has the high ground, even though the Democrats don’t like the fact that the Independent vote took many, many votes away from Gore!!!!

Getting back to the Election!!!! I don’t believe that there can be any clear victory for the American voters, now that the Democrats and Republicans are spending all this time and money in the courts. The Office of the Presidency has been diminished and will never recover and is not repairable, sense President Clinton did what he did in the Oval Office. Regardless the fact that Clinton was a very good President. The public has no faith in the process anymore. Only the fanatical Republicans and Democrats will continue to fight over the spoils of the political system.

In the main, there are five different way of casting ones vote, on election day. Lever machines, paper ballots, optical scanning, electronic and the very, very, controversial punch card way of voting.

No.1- Lever machines. You go into the voting booth and pull a big lever to close the curtains and pick your different choices and when you are done with that, you pull the lever again to open the curtain and at the same time, your vote is counted on the machine. It works not so bad, but people need to know how to read and not every one can.

No. 2- Paper ballots. You get the paper ballot from the people who run the voting place. Then you go into the voting booth and mark your ballot and take it back to where they have the locked box and put it into this box. Works well, but is very slow when the counting starts and again many people can’t read.

No. 3- Optical scanning. You get a voting card from the people who run the voting place and mark your choices with a #2 pencil. Then this card is read with a optical scanning machine. This system works very well.

No. 4- Electronic. A person votes on a voting machine that looks like a computer, or ATM machine that people use to do their banking. Works very good, and is fast.

No. 5- Punch card system. A person takes a special card from the people who run the voting place and put this card into the machine. Below is a detailed description, which was to cause a lot of the trouble, that happened in the year 2000 election.

Voting process. For punch card machines. No. 1 - The voter walks into the booth and puts his card into the voting machine. The voter then pushes a punching tool through a hole near the candidate he or she wants to vote for. The tool passes first through a template guide and then the ballot. No. 2 - A perforated piece of paper, called a Chad, is punched out. No. 3 - A rubber strip containing slits should trap the shad, as it detaches from the ballot.

This way of voting has got to be the most stupid thing in politics, since sliced bread. As can be seen from the above info, the little Chad’s may or may not fall off the voting card. Because sometimes the voter puts the card on top of the voting machine and not into the machine as they were told to do Also, it is people who do their voting in a very unpredictable way. Like not pushing hard enough, or not pushing at all. So they may or may not lose their vote to a very inaccurate machine. The whole idea was to speed up the counting of the votes, so that the winner of the election would be known in a very short time. But as can be seen, in a very close election, these types of machine only add to the confusion and leads to court challenges.

So this is how we come to have the dimpled, pimpled, pregnant, open door, swinging door, light at the end of the tunnel Chad.

A better system, it seems to me, would be voting by computer, but have a proven way of eliminating fraud, would have to be found, to make sure that people don’t vote twice or even more. Everyone does not have a computer, but everyone could go to a polling place and use ATM type machines, at the voting center. People who have computers at home, could vote through the internet, and eliminate, to a large extent, the long lines at polling places.

As of right now, the way we vote around the country is different from state to state and even county to county and also precinct to precinct with-in a county..

No. 1 - Paper ballot 6%
No. 2 - Electronic 11%
No. 3 - Lever 19%
No. 4 - Optical scan 29%
No. 5 - Punch card 35%

The Great American Debacle!!!
The court cases!!!

Katherine Harris, The Secretary of State for the state of Florida, tried to certify the vote count on November 14, 2000 as Bush was ahead at that time and the hand recounts were not completed. That she was a big time Bush supporter, was not in the mix of her decision. How can anyone believe that!!!

The Republicans and the Democrats, have tried to out guess each other as to which court to file a law suit and when. Now we have more lawyers in Florida then we had voters, or so it seems.

November 13^th.
Bush, on November 13, was rejected by Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Federal Circuit Court, when the Republicans tried to have the hand recounts stopped.

November 14^th.
Bush, was told on November 14, by State Judge Terry Lewis of Leon County that it was O.K. for Katherine Harris to certify the election, as long as she considers the different counties requests for amended results after the deadline and can’t reject hand counts arbitrarily.
Gore, Bush, both sides now have a super lawyer, David Boise for Gore, and Ted Olson for Bush. The fun begins!!!
Katherine Harris, on November 14, says that Bush has a 300 vote advantage, but the overseas absentee ballots must still be counted.

November 15^th.
Bush, On November 15^th the Federal 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals agrees to hear Bush’s request for an injunction to stop hand recounts.
Gore, On T.V., Gore proposes to Bush that the hand counts continue all over the state, and each candidate except the results.
Katherine Harris, denies written requests from Palm Beach and Broward Counties to count the hand counts after the 14th.
Bush, shocked by Gore’s T.V. ploy, goes on television and rejects Gore’s bid, calling manual recounts arbitrary and chaotic.

November 16^th.
Bush, Gore, Running mates of both parties, weigh in on T.V. about how bad the other side is in running to the courts.
Bush, tries to focus in on Florida, by not asking for recounts in Iowa, Oregon and New Mexico.
Bush, Florida State Supreme Court says that hand recounts can go on, as litigation continues. Bush to challenge hand counts.
Gore, Palm Beach starts hand recount and complains about butterfly ballots. Miami-Dade reconsiders starting again.

November 17^th.
Bush, State Judge Lewis says that Harris followed state law. But Gore quickly appeals.
Katherine Harris, Has her plan to certify Bush blocked by the Florida State Supreme Court, until Monday-afternoon hearing.
Gore, Scores victory in Federal Appeals Court, when it turns down Bush’s request to halt hand recount.

November 18^th.
Bush, Gets a strong showing from the Military absentee vote, but even though Bush now has a vote lead of 930, lots of the votes were disqualified by Democratic party leaders who are in charge of elections at the county level.
Gore, Palm Beach and Broward Counties continue hand count through the weekend, Miami-Dade will not be done counting for several weeks. And stops again.
Bush, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes, accuses Democratic counties in Florida of distorting, reinventing and miscounting the ballots. Democrats say the Republicans are preventing a fair count of the votes in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

November 20^th.
Gore, Filled in Florida State Supreme Court, to start up the recounts again and on the 21st, the court said that Gore’s people had till the 26th of November to complete the recount. Broward County finished their recount, but Miami-Dade decided to not recount and this made the Gore people very upset. Also Palm Beach was not able to finish and asked Katherine Harris for a extension for a few hours. Harris said a flat no!!! Harris then certified Bush as the winner of the Florida contest.

November 27^th.
Gore, Filled in the State Court on November 27th to have another recount and they said yes!! Bush filled in the Federal Supreme Court to have it stopped.
Gore, people had a hearing in Leon County before a local state judge and after a trail, the judge said no to the recount!!! Gore then appealed to the State Supreme Court and they said they could have this recount.

December 6^th.
Bush. Won a victory in the Federal Court on December 6th in that they said that the state court must make the state way of counting, to comply with federal law. And to not write new laws at the same time.
Florida State Supreme Court, didn’t pay any attention and even made things worst as far as the law goes. Now the Gore recount started again.

December 8^th.
Bush, Filled with the Federal Supreme Court to have the recount stopped under the Federal equal opportunity law. The Supremes said that the recounts must stop, until they had their hearing on the 11th of December and then made their finding on December the 12th. What the Federal Court then said was, that the State of Florida could continue with their recount. This was not possible and so that was the Ball Game. Bush won, and Gore lost the whole ball of wax.

Now for a little humor, as we sure could use it at this stage of the game!!!
No. 1 Partisan Republicans and Democrats should not be allowed on T.V., as they carpet bomb the whole of America with their party political talk, which amounts to nothing!!! But a lot of people believe this stupid talk! Sometimes I think people should have to take an intelligence test, in order to be able to vote or talk on T.V.!!
No. 2 Bush got 100% of the African-American vote on the Federal Supreme Court!!!! There is only one on the Supreme Court.
No. 3 Democrats can’t follow the arrows on butterfly ballots and that is why they lost the election!!! And then cry about it!!!
No. 4 The Democrats are all virgins and need closure, as they can only dimple the Chad!!!
No. 5 Democrats can’t see very far into the political future, as they want to count every vote whether it is a legal vote of not, as in - Count every vote and every vote counts!!!! How stupid?? They (Al Gore) want to win, no matter what!!!
No. 6 The Federal Supreme Court was very funny in that they gave Florida two whole hours it complete the recount. And this was under Federal law and the judges didn’t even smile.
No. 7 Gore says he strongly disagrees with the Federal Supreme Courts finding, but he will accept it!! Who is Al Gore??? He has no choice but to accept the courts decision!!
No. 8 Again, with the count every vote and every vote counts thing. If this is true then why not count all the absentee military votes. Al would not even speak up about this issue. Talk about being disingenuous!!!!!
No. 9 The Republicans in Martin and Seminole Counties helped the Republican absentee voters fill out their ballot request forms and then said that they were only trying to help the voters, Why would anyone ever believe that??? Democrats filled suit and tried to have all 25,000 votes thrown out. The trail judge in state court said, that the remedy didn’t fit the crime. And so nothing was done. Again the Democrats didn’t follow their own rule of, count every vote and every vote counts. Talking out of both sides of their mouth.

On November the 13^th it was reported in the New York Times that after another recount in Florida, it is sure that Bush would of won the vote in that state, and so the Year 2000 Election. So it didn’t matter what the Supreme Court did in December. 2000.

Then on November the 14^th, the newspaper Sentinel says that the New York Times is all wet and don’t know what they are talking about!!!

Who is right and who is wrong at this point does not matter, as it will not change anything. A person might as well argue with the wall, as it also will not change anything. Politics is a dirty business and there is no way to get around this fact!!!

For what it matters, it is my opinion that either Bush or Gore would of done about the same as far as job approval goes and this also would not of changed anything!! Just different approaches, to the same job. The old adages about the, "More things change, the more they stay the same", applies.

Who are the losers in all this mess?? The voters, but in the main, they have no one to blame but themselves!! As they don’t demand election law reform.

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