This is my first post here, hoping to stir up some conversation.
And please dont let my username fool you, I am not a blind conservative, Bush follower, etc etc.
I repeatedly see opinions about how Bush stole the election and blah blah blah, but there is never a mention of Gore. Is it because most people are ignorant to what actually went on during that month or so? (If this is the case, dont feel bad, it is the media’s fault).
Anyway, lets go ahead and start at the night the poles closed. 7:49pm EST, obviously WAY before the voting polls in Florida closed, both CBS and CNN began to announce that Gore had already wont the state of Florida. NBC followed a few minutes after. Out of the major networks, FOX was the only one that did not blindly follow the leader, and although projected that Gore would perhaps win the state of Florida, they were smart enough to know that the polls were not closed as of yet.
I dont know if any of you have heard of John Lott, but he is a very well-respected economist. Anyway, after studying voting trends on every presidential election since 1976, he and his crack team took this info and from it estimated that, in a nutshell, this completely false announcement cost Bush between 10,000 and 37,000 votes in the areas where polls were still open.
If John Lott and his team are not convincing enough, John McLaughlin & Associates also estimated that this pre-emptive call cost Bush somewhere in the area of 10,000 to 15,000 votes. Democrat strategist Bob Beckel also concedes that Bush lost between 8,000 and 10,000 votes that night. Of course, during this time Dan Rather said on live tv: “If we say somebody has won Florida state, you can take that to the bank.” Obviously not.
As I said earlier, I wouldnt be surprised if many of you dont know about this. It is probably because that, during the time when the major networks should be apologizing for their mistakes that prompted tens of thousands of voters to stay home instead of going to vote, they began making a big deal about John Ellis, and anchor on Fox News. Ellis is a relative of Bush, which only fueled the liberal media’s fire. Im sure if you use Lexis Nexis to search around, you will see countless reports and articles on how NBC, CNN, CBS, etc think that Ellis calling the state of Florida for Bush at 2:17am EST the next morning is what really caused the chaos in Florida. This is odd considering that, by that time, Bush had already won the state of Florida, although the liberals did not want to admit it.
Their postponing of announcing that Bush had won was not limited to Florida. This actually happened with numrous states all throughout the evening. It took CNN, CBS, and NBC less than one hour to report that Gore had won the state of Michigan by 3 points, yet it took them over three hours to report that Bush had won Arkansas by 7 points. The same goes with Pennsylvania (Gore: 3 points) and Arizona (Bush: 6 points). Dont forget Washington and West Virginia. Ditto Minnesota and Tennessee.
This all pales in comparison to what happened in the days and weeks following the election. Katherine Harris, who was the Secretary of the State of Florida at the time, was required to certify the vote by November 14th, seven days after the election. Just so that nobody is confused, the law for this count states:
If the county returns are not recieved by the Department of State by 5p.m. of the seventh dau following an election, all missing counties shall be ignored and the results shown by the returns shall be certified.
As you can guess, seven days after the election the results were confirmed. Bush had definately won the state of Florida. However, seven days was unacceptable to Gore. He obviously did not believe that law was set in stone, and thought it was more of a guideline.
Gore had lost the election, the 7 day recount, and a third manual recount to the point permitted by the law. 2 weeks later, however, Gore demanded that the Florida Supreme Court give him yet another recount. Needless to say, this was entirely unlawful. But, with the majority of the media behind him, the Florida Supreme Court went ahead with the 4th recount. Katherine Harris was appalled at this illegal action brought on by Gore and his cronies. She still believed that her original certification made seven days after the election in accordance with the written law was the legally binding one. Anyone with half a brain could see where she was coming from.
Believe it or not, Gore lost the fourth and final recount. An illegal recount at that.
If anyone is interested in citations let me know and Ill let you have em.