Fahrenheit 9/11 Boils Box Office and Conservatives

man, things are certainly looking bad for bush. even if 99% of the people that see the movie are decided kerry supporters, 1% of the movie audience in swing states could seriously impact an election.

SD: I know what you mean about the scene in the Senate -- I actually remembered watching that, back in 2001 (I still had hopes that Gore might get the presidency, deus ex machina style), and it was so disheartening to watch Congressperson after Congressperson futilely protest.

Yeah, why didn't he mention Britain? C'mon Mike, don't be so sloppy! But the scenes in Iraq, the mother who lost her son--I was bawling. It was so moving to sit in a packed theater with so many excited and involved people...the crowds were crazy waiting to see it. Everyone cheered a lot and there were some amazingly funny bits in there. I will have to see it again.

As far as Republican criticism; they can pick it apart all they want, there's no denying the way our soldiers have been mistreated and casually put in harm's way. If there were no other reason to depose this President, that would be enough. Those poor kids, and their families.

No standing O or visiting auteurs at my screening. But it was incredibly affecting, and made me feel generally betrayed and helpless. I blogged about it, of course, just like everyone else did...

Of all the lame arguments in favor of this movie, Jen's "it will get people thinking..." is just about the lamest. First of all, anyone who cares about these issues has been thinking about them for a long time. Second, the use of hyperbole and lies (which Moore does in all of his movies, like him or not) do not promote serious thought or discussion. Finally, has this site ever promoted Rush Limbaugh because he will get you thinking? I doubt it. Defend this movie on its merits, if you can, but don't try and pass off shallow propaganda as some kind of educational experience.

It seems to me that much of Moore's credibility was lost with his shameless "creative" editing for "Bowling for Columbine", in which he used composite footage of Heston from several speaches and presented them all as words spoken in Denver at the NRA convention. There were several more questionable editing/storytelling devices used. The real shame here is that there is a story to tell, and it's possible to tell it without going as over the top as Moore seems to go.

IMO, Moore is the left's answer to Rush, much as the Village Voice or Air America is the answer to Fox News.

Not sure what personal responsibility has to do with the administration's response to September 11 and the invasion of Iraq.

michael moore is a crappy filmmaker, biased, and a schmuck, but you can't argue with the dialogue he creates. I cringe to watch him, but he does return the volley that conservatives throw out with fox news, rush & the rest. Someone has to fight back - they are already pushing the country back to the right...

"making an effort to learn what's going on over there and exercising your right to vote to show your support or disapproval."

Did we watch the same movie? While the motive of the movie is to get people to vote and show disapproval. The essence of the movie itself is that Rich White Guys use fear to dupe Americans into having them support their money related interests. Didn't it cross your mind that the title of the movie might be significant?

By personal responsibility, I mean that more blame should have been put on the American public for being duped (not me, of course) about Iraq. But of course, that's not popular, so let's just show Bush on a gold course (don't get me wrong, that was funny too).

Err, that should say golf course.

Well, Moore's next film project is to take a look at PM Blair's role in this Mess-O-Potamia. I'm now down in Illadelphia and went to see the 11.15 show at the Ritz East and it was packed. It started off as being a little rowdy with so many active Liberals out en masse, but quickly calmed down with the blacking out of the screen and the overpowering audio from the 9/11 attacks.

If Michael Moore wasn't in the movie, I'd see it. He's so f-ing nasty!

"It's our fault Bush mislead us?"

It IS our fault we LET him misled us. Again, I don't mean all of 'us' as in people on Gothamist (or most in NYC for that matter), I am sure there were plenty here who were against the war, against the Administration from day one, like I was.

But...

It is our fault we elected him.

It is our fault the polls his approval rating was so high and that most Americans supported action in Iraq.

It is our fault we go to Iraq. It's our fault we told our brothers, sisters, friends that it's okay to go to Iraq. I'm sick of this be against the war, but support the troops bullshit. If you are against the war, guess what, you're against the troops, as they are implementing what you oppose.

Don't get me wrong, I blame Bush for misleading us, etc. But it requires support and troops to go to Iraq. The American public didn't have to give it to him. That's what I mean about personal responsibility.

and Doshin, I agree with you except for this: we DID NOT elect him, the Supreme Court put him into office, a move unprecedented in our history, and one that can be compared to how Mussolini and Hilter were put in power.

Bush "won" thanks to election fraud prepetrated by his brother Jeb and his secretary of state Katherine Harris. Here is a list of the crimes committed, for which neither of them or officials at the Florida GOP have faced charges, as well as others who collaborated :

Bush-Cheney Campaign and the Florida GOP

Absentee ballot law (FL GOP)

The Florida Republican Party sent a letter with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots. But Florida law (which was made even stricter in 1998) is not a "vote-by-mail" system - voters must have a valid reason for voting by mail. The Republican Party was thus encouraging Republican voters to break the law.

Florida's absentee ballot laws were tightened because of the 1997 Miami absentee ballot scandal that resulted in the voiding of ALL absentees and the overturn of the election. The man who engineered that massive fraud - Mayoral candidate Xavier Suarez - played a key role in the GOP absentee effort in 2000.

Absentee Ballot Law, Voting Rights Act (FL GOP, Seminole County, Martin County)

With the active assistance of GOP Election Supervisors, FL GOP officials sent GOP operatives to illegally alter over 2,500 defective Republican absentee ballot applications, while at least 550 Democratic applications were ignored.

Conspiracy to Interfere with the Lawful Count of the Votes (Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris)

When the TV networks called Florida for Gore, Bush campaign spokespeople (Rove, Matalin, etc.) went on TV to declare the results were wrong and would soon be changed. Was there already a plan to use state and local government powers to interfere with the lawful counting of votes?

FL Absentee Ballot Law

Pressured canvassing boards in Republican counties to violate Florida's election laws and count clearly illegal overseas Republican absentee ballots, while fighting to prevent Democratic counties from counting similar absentee ballots

14th Amendment, Voting Rights Act

Forced hand counting of heavily Republican absentee ballots that the machines couldn't read - while delaying and blocking hand counting of poll-cast ballots in heavily Democratic counties that the machines couldn't read, thus treating ballots differently and discriminating against black voters
GOP Stalling Tactics in Palm Beach

Legal ethics

Urged courts to block hand counts in Democratic counties in FL while urging courts to conduct hand counts in NM

Interference with Administration of Elections; Assault (Rep. John Sweeney, Congressional staff, etc)

On 11/21, organized a riot in Miami/Dade County that intimidated the canvassing board into stopping its hand count, and then assaulted Joe Geller, chair of the Dade County Democratic executive committee. This riot was paid for by the Bush recount committee.

Abuse of Congressional office for partisan politics; politicization of active-duty military (Rep. Steve Buyer, Rep. Tillie Fowler, Michael Higgins, Rob Carter)

On 11/22, Rep. Buyer gave the Pentagon a list of active duty sailors whose ballots had been rejected as invalid, which was provided by Florida Republican operative Rob Carter. Buyer demanded their e-mail addresses immediately. Buyer's aide Michael Higgins then contacted the sailors and put them in touch with Carter, who enlisted these sailors in a propaganda campaign to attack Vice President Al Gore as anti-military, and to pressure county officials to count invalid ballots. Carter also supplied Rep. Tillie Fowler with stories from service members, which she used to denounce Gore at a rally.

FEC Disclosure

Failure to disclose how the $8 million the Bush campaign raised for its Florida recount effort

IRS Disclosure

Failure to disclose the occupation and employer of thousands of recount donors

Governor Jeb Bush

Absentee Ballot Law

Letter sent by Florida Republican Party with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urged Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballot, regardless of whether they had a valid legal reason for doing so.

Abuse of State Seal

Letter sent by Florida Republican party with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots

Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes; Interference with Administration of Elections

Jeb and his staff made 95 phone calls made to Bush/Cheney Presidential campaign after Jeb said he'd recused himself; he visited the Bush/GOP headquarters in Tallahassee; he participated in at least 1 Bush strategy conference call; 6 of the 95 calls were on the day GOP thugs stopped the Miami-Dade recount

Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes

Called special session of legislature to intimidate county officials and judges

14th Amendment (Florida Legislature)

2001 Election Reform law perpetuates the election problems that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to be in violation of the 14th Amendment.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris

Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Bucky Mitchell, Michael Cochran, Elaine Baxter)

Misrepresentation of the felons list statute, failure to provide available documents directly relevant to the pre-clearance review 

Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Clay Roberts, Bucky Mitchell)

Knowing failure to obtain pre-clearance for significant changes in policies and procedures pursuant to the implementation of the felons list law which resulted in the removal of legal voters from the registration rolls in at least one of 5 pre-clearance counties in Florida

Disenfranchisement of Legal Voters

Knowingly purged felons from states where voting rights were automatically restored upon release, contrary to clear court rulings. Knowingly included non-felons in its purge through its "wide net" policy (accepting a 90% name-match in 1999, and an 80% match in 2000).

Ballot Design Law

Sent out a sample ballot design to county elections supervisors that split the 10 Presidential candidates on the ballots onto 2 pages

Uniform Administration of Election Law: Assistance to Voters

Failure to oversee training of poll workers to ensure proper assistance to voters

Americans with Disabilities Act (Jeb Bush, Counties)

Failure to make voting machines fully accessible to the handicapped

Mandatory Machine Recount Law

20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.

Overseas Absentee Ballot Law

Allowed illegal overseas absentee ballots to be counted and included in the certified total

Uniform Administration of Election Law

Coordination (conspiracy) between Harris lawyers and Bush/GOP lawyers; Deliberate misinterpretation of the law for partisan purposes

Uniform Administration of Elections: Hand Recount Law

Inconsistent application of hand count law: accepted manual recounts from some counties, but denied Palm Beach permission to conduct hand count

Use of Government Office for Politics

Allowed Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M. Stipanovich to use her state computers and offices during the recount; Communications Director Donald Tighe admitted writing partisan speeches during the campaign.

These political activities were found on Harris' computer. 1) On 1/29/00, a speech written for a Republican meeting that declared: "We are READY TO LEAD!" 2) On 3/14/00, a set of campaign talking points for George W. Bush. 3) On 11/14/00, an examination of the campaign finances of FL Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente - who was reviewing important election cases. 4) A list of contributors to Harris' 1998 Democratic opponent, Karen Gievers (undated).

Harris claims Stipanovich and Goodman were "volunteers," but Goodman billed Harris $12,000 for his work, and Harris initially approved the bill (Palm Beach Post, 8/23/01)

Abuse of Discretion in Violation of Florida Supreme Court Order

The Florida Supreme Court ordered Harris to accept the Palm Beach recount until 9 a.m. on 11/27; she refused to accept them after 5 p.m. on 11/26

Conflict of Interest; Use of Office for Political Gain

While overseeing the recount, Harris expressed interest in appointment as Ambassador under Bush

Public Records

Reinstalled Windows and erased files on state computers used by Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M Stipanovich

County Election Officials

Voter Registration Law and Voting Rights Act

Failure to process thousands of voter registration forms before the election, including many from historically black colleges

Absentee Ballot Law (Okaloosa)

Sent hundreds or thousands of absentee ballots to voters who did NOT request one

Absentee Ballot Law (Bay)

Republicans turned in "handfuls" and in one case a suitcase-full of absentee ballots in defiance of a law that provides people may submit no more than two absentee ballots other than their own or that of a family member

Ballot design law (Palm Beach)

Butterfly ballot

Sample ballot law (Duval)

Sample ballot differed significantly from actual ballot - sample ballot listed 10 candidates on 1 page, while actual ballot spread candidates over 2 pages

Voting Rights Act

Substandard voting machinery in predominantly minority precincts that produced ballot spoilage up to 40%; Failure to provide voter assistance in Spanish (Osceola County) and Creole (Miami-Dade); reports of intimidation of minority voters

Voting machine law (Punch Card)

Failure to properly maintain machines, including misalignment and accumulation of chads

Election Day law

Closed polling places without notice; Turned away voters who were on line at 7 pm when polls closed

Voting machine law (Miami-Dade)

Use of malfunctioning voting machines

Voting Machine Law (Optiscan)

Failure to provide machine-readable pens

Voting Machine Law (Palm Beach)

Misaligned ballots, as described by Rabbi Yellin; Use of malfunctioning voting machines in county elections office
Miami Herald 8/28/01: Democratic State Representative Calls for Criminal Investigation of Teresa Lepore

Negligence (Palm Beach)

Failure to respond to complaints about confusing ballot and voting mistakes

Intent of the voter

Nearly all counties failed to count machine-unreadable votes where the intent of the voter was clear. This includes "write-in overvotes" that must specifically be counted by law.
Palm Beach Canvassing Board rejects dimpled ballots

Mandatory machine recount law

20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.

Racial Discrimination (Escambia)

Disabled optiscan technology that prevents errors on poll-cast votes, but "duplicated" (fixed) absentee votes with errors.

Different Treatment of Machine-Unreadable Ballots

Various Republican counties hand-counted absentee ballots that could not be machine-read (thus favoring Republicans), but refused to hand-count poll-cast ballots that could not be machine-read (thus harming Democrats)

Ballot tampering fraud (Escambia and other Northern counties)

Estimated 7,100 ballots were destroyed in 11 counties

Ballot tampering; Open meetings law (Optiscan)

Secret duplication of 10,000 optiscan-unreadable absentee ballots in 26 heavily Republican counties in central and north Florida. These ballots favored George W. Bush by more than 2 to 1.

Fraud (Duval)

Republican elections supervisor John Stafford lied about the number of under and overvotes to the Gore campaign during the 72-hour window for requesting a recount, telling the Gore campaign there were only 2-300 votes disqualified, when there were actually 27,000.

Recount law (Miami-Dade)

Refusal to conduct hand count

Absentee Ballot Law (Orange)

Refused to count stateside absentees postmarked before Election Day, while counting overseas absentees with no postmark or date

Public Records Law (Palm Beach)

Destruction of computer records of 2000 Presidential vote

U.S. Supreme Court

Conflict of Interest

Four members of the Supreme Court majority in Bush v. Gore had conflicts and should have recused themselves: O'Connor, Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist. In August 2001, three Justices recused themselves from the case of Napoleon Beazley, who was sentenced to death for the murder of the father of J. Michael Luttig, a well-connected federal appeals court judge.

US Law on Emergency Injunctive Relief

Granted emergency relief to George W. Bush to stop the manual 4. Count of 60,000 uncounted votes as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, on the theory that counting all of the votes would cause "irreparable harm" to Bush.

14th Amendment

In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court declared the the 14th Amendment prohibited variations in vote counting by county officials, contrary to all precedents - and explicitly refused to set a precedent for future cases. In the same ruling, the Court accepted 2,490 overseas absentee ballots that were counted without any consistent standard and produced a net gain of 630 votes for Bush - greater than his 537-vote margin of victory.

Presidential Elections; Appointment of Electors (3 USC Chapter 1 Section 5)

On December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court intentionally misrepresented the law as saying that Electors had to be chosen by December 12, when the true deadline was December 18.

Media

Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign (FOX)

George W. Bush spoke by phone with his cousin John Ellis at FOX News shortly before FOX incorrectly projected Bush as the winner at 2 a.m. on Election Night, which prompted Al Gore to temporarily concede and defined him as the presumptive loser.

Corporate Contributions to Federal Campaign; Broadcast License Requirement to Serve the Public Interest (FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS)

The broadcast networks consistenly ignored Bush's flaws and inconsistencies, while scrutinizing Gore's flaws and inconsistencies

Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign; Violation of Broadcast License (NBC/Jack Welch)

On Election Night, GE CEO Jack Welch reportedly ordered the network to call Florida for Bush, even though the results were too close to call.
Rep. Henry Waxman's Repeated Requests for Videotapes Promised by NBC News President Andrew Lack

Attorney General John Ashcroft

Failure to Investigate

DoJ has received THOUSANDS of complaints, but is investigating only 12. Complaints include serious allegations of fraud, such as pre-punched ballots in heavily African American and Democratic precincts in Miami/Dade and Broward Counties

We agree on the fundamental principle here, doshin... Bush lied to us. He shouldn't have started a war in Iraq. He shouldn't be our president anymore. I just think nothing is to be gained by blaming the general public for thinking their leader was genuinely looking out for their best interests.

Of course skepticism is good for America. I wish there was more of it. But the way to promote that is by educating the American public, not by pointing your finger at them and blaming them for not being inquisitive enough in the first place. We went through a terrible time as a country and the people in power took advantage of that situation by pushing their agenda onto a crowd that was looking for leadership. You may think the general public is more to blame for letting that happen, but I reserve more of the blame for the elected officials. They abused their power and started a war under false pretenses. And short of hopping in a time machine, there's nothing we can do about it except vote the bastards out in November.

And now that SP has spammed this thread with a 2,000 word essay, I guess this discussion is dead. (Seriously dude, people are trying to talk here. I'm glad you're doing your part, but there's a time and place.)

SP - you're attributing actions of Democrat-controlled elections boards as evidence of how Bush "stole" the 2000 election? Haha. Please.

Bush won Florida. It was incredibly close, but the legislatively-defined counting procedures were all followed, and Bush won. The Florida Supreme Court - comprised entirely of Democrat appointees - attempted to rig the election for Gore, by keeping Florida mired in turmoil so that it could send no delegates to the Electoral College. The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Florida court's action were unconstitutional, and by 5-4 held that the legislatively required midnight deadline was in force, ending the election.

Subsequent recounts by independent entities - press and otherwise - have all concluded that Bush won. Get over it, and get ready to chew your lip for another four years when he wins again in November.

doshin:
please stop with the lie that one cannot support the troops unless you support the war on Iraq. Um, my brother is an active duty marine. his unit was just told they will be going to Iraq in a few weeks. i love him, i care about him. i don't want him to kill anyone and i do not want him to be killed. I don't know how I will sleep at night if he goes there.

I want the us out of iraq. My mother, sister, most of our extended family and in-laws feel the same way. We are smart, thinking, working-class chicanos and whites with a LONG history of family service in the military in war zones-WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm.

My coworker's 19 year-old son just got back from serving in Iraq. She loves and cares for her son. She has marched against the war on iraq and continues to be active in events calling for the US to get out of Iraq.

We support the troops we do not support Bush's war on Iraq. Our loved ones, who ARE the troops can understand that, even if people like you cannot get it.

Sterling, thats just the same old party propaganda youre spewing, and thats all you can do, because the facts are the facts. They stole it, with a little help from all their friends.

The thing that moved me the most in the movie was the mother reading her son's last letter and the way he castigated Bush. That was heartbreaking.

What infuriated me the most was when the mother's loss of her son was trivialized by that cunt when she went to Washington D.C. If I could find who that cunt was....

"Sterling"...Sorry to tell you, but your Dear Leader is going down in November. Straight back to Crawford..the brush is a calling...

We actually ended Saddam's war against a majority of his and not-so-his people. Tyrants don't stay in power by being nice. Before our latest bout of liberation, I carefully read the accounts of exiled Iraqis. I vividly remember an interview the German Public Radio (DLF) broadcast. The tales, again and again, are terrible. Dictatorship usually is a horror without end.

Likewise, I took a weekend's time to burrow into the UN's documents on Saddam's protracted, well devised and utterly deceitful programs to acquire decidedly nasty weapons. Intent and criminal energy were there. Why trust imperfect oversight?

The question is why we didn't do the job right ten years ago. Many people were sacrificed to Saddam for this error. And yet, but for the current administration, that man would still wield absolute power over the lives of millions in the heart of the not quite enlightened Arab world.

Many commentaries I have read here impart a strong urge to vote Not-Kerry. I'll have to withstand that impulse.

He has, actually, scroll up...

Actually, John, the Washington Post front page story on its recount findings (November 12, 2001) had the headline: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush" although the subhead was "But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots". Now, the "uncounted" ballots in this story were the "undervotes" - i.e. ballots on which counting machines detected no vote, but on which human beings might be able to discern one. Obviously the idea of the "undervotes" was highly controversial because the counties in which "undervoting" was claimed were all - SURPRISE! - Democrat controlled with Democrat election boards. Those democrats would have performed an "interpretation" of these ballots that were never intended to be counted by people, and in a way not specified by the Florida legislature.

So, counting properly marked ballots, the Washington Post agreed that Bush won Florida.

You also err in describing the Washington Post and Tribune Company recounts as being separate, when in fact they were both part of a single consortium (along with six other news organizations) that recounted ballots, and in its report declared that Bush won. You may be thinking of the Miami Herald's separate recount effort, which also found, heh, that Bush won. Here's a report from that famous right-wing organ, the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1190222.stm

Let's be philosophical about this for a moment, shall we? The state of Florida cast about six million votes for president in 2000. The difference in the number of votes for Bush and Gore was less than the statistical margin of error for tallying such a large quantity. So the truth is that it is impossible to know which candidate received the greater number of votes. It is not knowable. But Florida has a system that requires a winner. So what we are left with, then, are the rules - the laws that govern elections. These are drafted ahead of time, and are crafted to deal with problems such as the one that befell us in Florida in 2000. We follow these rules because the alternative is bedlam and corruption.

The Florida election laws allowed one week for counties to recount their tallies and report the revised results. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for those laws. Under those rules, Bush would clearly be declared the winner - that was apparent within a day or two of election day. The Gore campaign - which understood the mathematical unknowability of the results - to its shame made a decision at some point that it would work to subvert those laws in the courts. The goal was probably not to win Florida so much as to prevent it from participating in the Electoral College, or causing it to send multiple slates of electors to the Electoral College, and cause a Constitutional crisis. And what happens during a Constitutional crisis is anybody's guess - the last one resulted in 600,000 dead Americans and four years of civil war.

Under the rules, Bush won. And that's what both the Washington Post and the Tribune Company found.

On a personal note, John - I do my best to provide a counterpoint to a vastly larger number of lefties here, and if you're going to challenge me on facts you ought to at least spend five minutes on Google making certain that you're correct. Otherwise don't waste my time, you fucking idiot.

Aren't I, though? And yet I do the best I can to share my wisdom with you poor benighted lefties.

If you want the details of the Bush-Saudi quid-pro-quo relationship, please read Craig Unger's "House of Bush, House of Saud" (he's featured in F9/11). The book has all the footnotes that the film is lacking.

Its not just about the votes that were (and werent) counted. There is plenty of evidence that Sterling has chosen to ignore or dismiss with a broad stroke as "lies" that point to tampering with the ballot counting process. The point is, stealing florida was PREMEDITATED. It about the FACT that Katherine Harris with the complicity of Jeb Bush and at the request of the Bush Cheny campaign TAMPERED with voter rolls ILLEGALLY. If you have the attention span to read after "a simple google search" you will find it all, the RACISM and the CORRUPTION that led to the THEFT of the election.

Five months BEFORE the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 names from Florida’s voter rolls on grounds that they were felons. Voter rolls contain the names of all eligible, registered voters. If you’re not on the list, you don’t get to vote.

If you commit a felony in Florida, you lose your right to vote there, and you‘re “scrubbed” from the rolls. You become a non-citizen, like in the old Soviet Union. This is not the case in most other states; it’s an uncivilized vestige of the Deep South.

At minimum, 90 percent of the people were completely innocent of any crime – except for being African American. We didn’t have to guess about that, because next to each voter’s name was their race.

When questioned about the high percentage of African Americans on the scrub list, they responded, “Well, you know how many black people commit crimes.”

The Florida Republicans wanted to block African Americans, who largely vote as Democrats, from voting. In 1999 they fired the company they were paying $5,700 to compile their felony “scrub” lists and replaced them with Database Technologies [DBT], who they paid $2.3 million to do the same job. [DBT is the Florida division of Choicepoint, a massive database company that does extensive work for the FBI.]

There are a lot of "Joe Smiths" in the Florida phonebook. DBT was hired to verify which "Joe Smith" was a felon and which was not. They were supposed to use their extensive databases to check credit cards, bank information, addresses and phone numbers, in addition to names, ages, and social security numbers. But they didn’t. They didn’t use one of their 1,200 databases to verify personal information, nor did they make a single phone call to verify the identity of scrubbed names.

So where did DBT get their data?

From the Internet. They went to 11 other states’ Internet sites and took names off dirt-cheap. They scrubbed Florida voters whose names were similar to out-of-state felons. An Illinois felon named John Michaels could knock off Florida voter John, Johnny, Jonathan or Jon R. Michaels, or even J.R. Michaelson. DBT matched for race and gender, but names only had to be similar to a certain degree. Names could be reversed, and suffixes (Jr., Sr.) were ignored, but aliases were included. So the felon John “Buddy” Michaels could knock non-felon Michael Johns or Bud Johnson Jr. off the voter rolls.

Although DBT didn’t get names, birthdays or social security numbers right, they were very careful to match for race. A black felon named Mr. Green would only knock off a black Mr. Green, but not a single white Mr. Green. That’s how DBT earned its $2.3 million.

Why didn’t DBT use their own databases?

They didn’t, because the state told them not to. Choicepoint vice-president James Lee was grilled by a Congressional committee, headed by Cynthia McKinney, and he admitted everything, but said DBT was following state directives. Florida state officials told DBT to knock off voters by incorrectly matching them with felons.

But these werent the only votes that were stolen: 8,000 Floridians who had committed misdemeanors, but were counted as felons. Their votes were scrubbed. Katherine Harris’ office illegally scrubbed people who’d served time in other states, then moved to Florida, and Jeb Bush’s office illegally barred these people from registering to vote at all.

The biggest wholesale theft occurred inside the voting booths in black rural counties. In Gadsden County, one of the blackest in the state, thousands of votes were simply thrown away. Gadsden used paper ballots which are read by an optical reader. Ballots with a single extra mark were considered “spoiled“ and not counted. The buttons used to fill out the ballots were set up – with approval from Bush and Harris – to make votes appear unclear to the machine. One in eight ballots in Gadsden was voided by the state.

The same ballots were used in Tallahassee County, which is mostly white. There only one in 100 votes was “spoiled.” What made the difference? In Tallahassee, ballots were read on the premises, and if they were marked incorrectly, voters were sent to revote until they got it right. In the black counties, the votes were trucked off immediately. There were no machines on site. Voters weren’t told that their votes were spoiled, and they certainly weren’t permitted to re-vote.

When Ted Koppel investigated voter theft in Florida, he concluded that blacks lost votes because they weren’t well educated, and made mistakes that whites hadn‘t. He didn’t even bother to ask how the machines were set up. This is the kind of reporting we get in America. In Britain, this story ran 3 weeks after the election, when Gore was still in race. It was in the papers and on TV. In the US, it was seven months before the Washington Post ran it, and then it was only a partial version. After the election, Gadsden County replaced its voting commissioner. In 2002 they only lost one in 500 votes. So you can say blacks in Gadsden got smarter – they elected a black elections chief.

I thought Ashcroft's performance of his original song, "Let the Eagle Soar" was truly one of the film's highlights.

Sterling, I didn't write what you said I did. It came from one of the links I'd cited above, as I noted. Anyways, I'm not "making shit up". If you want to read about the equal protection argument, here you go:
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122240/

Some more minutiae in there for you, the voting histories of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas when it comes to equal protection. There's a funny disparity you might notice...

Sterling, as I just said, it was a quoted assertion, from here (not an assertion of mine):
http://www.chicagomediawatch.org/01_4_gore.shtml

The argument is that the equal protection guaranteed under the 14th Amendment was violated when the recount was only partially completed, that some votes were counted and others were discounted. Both sides were arguing equal protection from different directions. Once triggered, the recount had to be completed or else it violated the equal protection clause in the amendment, as discussed here:
http://slate.msn.com/id/95203/

SP - I'm sorry but I think you're a loony conspiracy theorist. I mean, you cite this conspiracy against blacks as being particularly sinister in Gadsden County. You say that 1 in 8 ballots in the county was voided by the state. THAT IS A LIE, isn't it, SP? They were voided by the Gadsden County Board of Elections. Gadsden County, according to the US Census, is 57% black, and I would expect the local elected officials and board of elections to reflect that racial preponderance.

What really happened is that to save money, Gadsden County decided to use central counting, which means that all the ballots are tabulated at one location after the polls have closed. In other counties in Florida, for instance Leon County, tabulating machines were installed at most precincts, and voters were able to insert the ballot themselves. If the machine could not read the ballot, the voter was given a clean ballot to try again. That's not possible when, as in Gadsden County, the tabulating is done afterwards. So there's no conspiracy here, SP, there's just a county government that decided to save money by skimping on voting equipment. Isn't that right? Come on, admit it: you lied.

John - Just because you are paraphrasing from another source does not mean you are immune from responsibility for error. There was no constitutionally required recount. NONE. You made it up. Further, any argument that a recount must be "complete" or violates the equal protection clause is absurd, as elections are managed on a local basis (see above). Further still, my recollection is that Florida law did not provide for the recounting of ballots, but rather the retallying of precinct results. The various Democrat-controlled elections boards took it upon themselves, extra-legally, to start manually recounting ballots. So to find that a county board acting without legal authority creates a constitutional obligation for every other board (statewide? nationally?) to do the same thing is absurd.

I also note with some dismay that neither of you seem particularly concerned with vote fraud in Wisconsin, committed by your fellow New York Democrats.

Well, SP, you're contradicting yourself. It seems as if 60,000 people were removed because the State of Florida thought they were felons, not for "no reason". I've only ever been a registered voter in Virginia and New Jersey, but I know that in both of those states, if you show up to vote but are not on the rolls, you're given a slip of paper to vote on, and are able to appeal your ineligibility. Your vote and appeal are then sealed until after the results are tallied. If the number of people voting in such a fashion is more than the margin of victory in the election, then the appeals and votes are unsealed and each is considered on the merits.

By the way, what percentage of those 60,000 were not actually convicted felons? 60,000 represents about 0.6% of the total number of registered voters in Florida, and seems like a reasonable amount to clear in an election year. Obviously there are going to be errors in a process like this, but that doesn't necessarily indicate malice. Further, since Jeb Bush probably didn't do the data entry himself, the process of flushing out the felons from the list would have been watched over by career civil servants, not political appointees.

As for the voting machines themselves being in on the conspiracy, that's absurd. There are so many reasons for this being absurd that I am emotionally overwhelmed at the prospect of listing them. None of the links you provide suggest any kind of non-wacky rationale for how the machines might have been able to steal Gore votes - they are ALL loony left sites.

I don't link to loony right sites, you shouldn't link to loony left sites. I'm sorry, SP, but you are definitely crazy. You should seek professional help and medication - I mean that, it's not just a rhetorical device. Sorry.

OK, I will go into just a few reasons why the CEO of Diebold, for instance, would not and could not arrange for voting machines to be manufactured that could be easily manipulated.

Right off the bat, do any of you remember an accounting firm called Arthur Anderson? Do you remember what happened to it? It was involved - in just a few cases - of abetting corporate fraud in reporting results to the SEC and shareholders. Within the course of a few weeks, Arthur Anderson, a multi-billion dollar company, effectively ceased to exist. It's owners/partners were left severely in the lurch. That is the penalty for the sort of thing you are suggesting. And let it be noted that Arthur Anderson accountants committed these crimes for MONEY.

OK, that's just to put things in context. Now, one of the errors people on both the left and the right make is to project their own motivations on the other side. In the case of the left, this means that it often ascribes activist motives to Republicans. In this case, the idea that the CEO of a major corporation would risk everything to see his political agenda enacted. According to the FEC, Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, has contributed about $10,000 to political campaigns over the last seven years. $6000 to the RNC, and $4500 to Senator Voinovichs' campaign (R-OH). His salary according to SEC filings, just last year, was $3 million dollars. So this diabolical manipulator of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has spent an amount equal to 1/300th of last year's salary over the last seven years to support the Republican cause. Oh yeah, he's a sinister fucker.

Now let's go into some technical reasons why this is impossible. First off - these are standalone terminals. No one can access them over a network. Secondly - they are audited periodically and tested - if secret communications gear was hidden in their innards, it would be found. Thirdly, HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ARE INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF THESE MACHINES. The conspiracy could not be kept secret. I could go deeper, but this seems like enough. They are simple tallying machines, SP, which have safeguards in place to allow candidates to be added, and to deliver results when the polls close. Yes, they can malfunction - just like every other vote-collecting technology.

Sterling, you really don't get it, do you? I quoted (didn't paraphrase, have a look:http://www.chicagomediawatch.org/01_4_gore.shtml)
something you disagree with--*I* didn't make it up. Maybe someone else "made it up", but that really depends on how you interpret the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

And Sterling, if gross irregularities in the ballots and tallying shouldn't provoke a statewide, if not nationwide, recount, then what should? I mean, your guy got the most votes, right? What's the harm in recounting them, then, especially if there are concerns in more than one state (Wisconsin, right?). The fact that the Supreme Court stopped the recount under the auspices of equal protection based on votes from Supreme Court Justices whose records for equal protection voting showed they were skeptical of it, AT BEST, should've been enough to set off even your creatively-tuned bullshit detector. I'm QUOTING below:

The majority's decision in Bush v. Gore that the recount process ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated the Equal Protection Clause was a highly activist, but plausible interpretation of the Constitution. What was disheartening to me was not the constitutional principle embraced by the majority, but the votes cast by Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in support of that decision, votes that were dispositive of the case, and of the presidency of the United States.

No one familiar with the jurisprudence of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas could possibly have imagined that they would vote to invalidate the Florida recount process on the basis of their own well-developed and oft-invoked approach to the Equal Protection Clause.

In the decade leading up to Bush v. Gore, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas cast approximately 65 votes in non-unanimous Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause. Nineteen of those votes were cast in cases involving affirmative action, and I will return to them in a moment. Of the 46 votes that these Justices cast in cases that did not involve affirmative action, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas collectively cast only two votes to uphold a claimed violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Thus, these three Justices found a violation of Equal Protection in only 4 percent of these cases.

For the sake of comparison, over this same period, and in these very same cases, the colleagues of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas collectively voted 74 percent of the time to uphold the Equal Protection Clause claim. 74 percent versus 4 percent.

Against this background, one must wonder why Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas suddenly discovered power and beauty in the Equal Protection Clause in Bush v. Gore. Indeed, as a group they cast more votes (three, to be exact) to uphold the Equal Protection Clause claim in Bush v. Gore than they had previously cast in all of the non-affirmative action Equal Protection Clause cases that they had considered in the previous decade.

Of course, those other cases were different, for they involved laws that disadvantaged blacks, women, gays, the disabled and the poor--groups that are surely less deserving of concern under the Equal Protection Clause than the beneficiary of the Court's decision in Bush.

But this is not a fair characterization. After all, I have excluded from the above analysis the votes of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in affirmative action cases. In those cases, these three Justices have consistently demonstrated the same spirit of bold and innovative interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause that they manifested in Bush v. Gore. Indeed, over the past decade, these three Justices have collectively cast 19 votes to hold unconstitutional various forms of affirmative action. This represents 100 percent of their votes in these cases--a perfect record. (Their colleagues, by contrast, have voted only 33 percent of the time to invalidate such programs.)

What does this tell us? It tells us that Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas have a rather distinctive view of the United States Constitution. Apparently the Equal Protection Clause, which was enacted after the Civil War primarily to protect the rights of newlyfreed slaves, is to be used for two and only two purposes--to invalidate affirmative action and to invalidate the recount process in the 2000 presidential election.

As Professor Robert Post of the Berkeley Law School has observed, "I do not know a single person who believes that if the parties were reversed, if Gore were challenging a recount ordered by a Republican Florida Supreme Court," that Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas "would have reached for a startling and innovative principle of constitutional law to hand Gore the victory."
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122240/

Wait, let me guess: that's left-wing loonyism?

Yes, SP, I don't doubt that in the initial draft of 60,000 people, there were numerous errors. However, sometime between that draft and the actual removal, the number of people to be removed was cut dramatically - to the point where about 1000 were improperly removed. Not the 54,000 you claimed. But even those 1000 were not barred from voting, they just had an extra hurdle thrown up in that they had to write out an appeal slip indicating that they had the right to vote. Look, SP, when you get caught repeatedly fabricating or misrepresenting information in an argument, do you know what that means? It means you lose. It means that the other party to the argument no longer takes you seriously as a good-faith opponent. You have an idea in your head - that Bush stole the election - and you cling to any piece of information that supports that, regardless of whether it's true or not. Which would be fine, if you didn't fancy yourself an evangelist for your message. As an evangelist you are a profound flop, because you cannot make an argument without relying on fictions.

John - Recounts are conducted when necessary, not every time the loser wants to hold on to some shred of hope for victory. In addition to being expensive to conduct, they are rife with the opportunity for mischief and must be closely watched. And incidentally, it was a 7-2 vote in the US Supreme Court declaring the Florida SC's actions unconstitutional, not 5-4. The 5-4 vote was to uphold the midnight deadline (and which effectively ended the recount). Everyone focuses on the 5-4 vote because it makes it look as if the conservative justices fixed the election for Bush, but it was the 7-2 vote that ended the Florida Supreme Court's attempt to re-write the election rules in Gore's favor, and thus torpedoed Gore's strategy.

And by the way - the situation could not be "reversed". The reason Bush's supporters stuck with him in Florida is because he won. If he had lost the initial count and the Florida-law mandated recount (as Gore did - both), we would have expected him to concede. (The fact that Gore did concede and then retracted it struck us as amazing.) As should be evident to anyone who watched the fall of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, John Rowland or even Trent Lott, conservatives tend not to support their politicians when they are in the wrong. This is because we see our "cause" as subordinate to our character. The Left, on the other hand, sees its cause as a great struggle and subordinates everything (including truth, as SP has demonstrated) to that struggle. There is no conservative equivalent to Saul Alinsky. Few leftists understand this - but it's the reason why there are hundreds of times as many leftist "activists" in this country as conservative ones.

Sterling, you don't mention that 4 of the justices wrote dissenting opinions as to how the unconstitutional nature of the recount could be remedied. Had Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas voted in a way consistent with their views on equal protection, they would've voted to keep the government's hands off. QUOTING AGAIN:

In a late-night decision, a divided US Supreme Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision that had ordered recounts of undervote ballots in all Florida counties.

The courts unsigned "per curiam" decision carried the opinion of seven justices that the recounts as ordered by the Florida court suffered from constitutional problems. However, four Justices wrote dissenting opinions regarding possible remedies in the case.

"Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional ... we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering the recount to proceed,'' the court said in the 7-2 per curium section of its decision.

The court continues, "It is obvious that the recount cannot be conducted in compliance with the requirements of equal protection and due process without substantial additional work.''

A majority of the Justices also suggested that in moving to select its own slate of electors, the Florida Legislature made an order requiring new recounts something that, "could not be part of an appropriate remedy."

According to Gore campaign legal advisor Laurence Tribe, the Supreme Court had created "a hurdle too high," in requiring the Florida Supreme Court to address the constitutional issues in an impossibly short period of time.

In a blistering dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. I respectfully dissent."

Stevens was joined in dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter.

Justice Souter expressed the opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court was not even justified in considering the case.

"The Court should not have reviewed either Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante, p. ___ (per curiam), or this case, and should not have stopped Florida’ s attempt to recount all undervote ballots," wrote Souter, who continued, "If this Court had allowed the State to follow the course indicated by the opinions of its own Supreme Court, it is entirely possible that there would ultimately have been no issue requiring our review, and political tension could have worked itself out in the Congress following the procedure provided in 3 U. S. C. §15. The case being before us, however, its resolution by the majority is another erroneous decision."

Justice Breyer agreed, writing, "The Court was wrong to take this case. It was wrong to grant a stay. It should now vacate that stay and permit the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether the recount should resume."

Stressing constitutional separation of powers between state and federal government as a basis for her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote, "The extraordinary setting of this case has obscured the ordinary principle that dictates its proper resolution: Federal courts defer to state high courts’ interpretations of their state’ s own law. This principle reflects the core of federalism, on which all agree."

Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy did not write separate opinions, but were counted in the unsigned 7-2 per curium opinion.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa121000d.htm