Found a link:
It is on NewsMax.com, which is rather Right-Wing, but I don’t doubt the basics of the story. I did see her interviewed on TV, saying the same thing that this story says. And I was wrong - the difference was 14 votes. Granted, it was a small election, not many votes cast (a few thousand) but still - fourteen votes does not seem like a lot at all.
Another thread (that isn’t getting much of a response) provided this article from the Washington Times telling more about Carol Roberts’ shenanigans. Apparently she is (to put it mildly) very partisan (if the allegations are true.) Perhaps she should recuse herself as well.
That looks pretty egregious. The statement about single digits, though, is not quoted from Roberts. some of teh other articles on the site give me qualms about accepting this report without more substantiation, but the article they reference from the Ft Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel has already cycled back to their pay archives, and I don’t feel like paying for it. I see no mention of the story on CNN or MSNBC.
Maybe there will be some more information tomorrow.
As to your second link, I have seen that article before. If the accusations are substantiated, she should definitely recuse herself. Actually, if teh actions are substantiated she should be removed from her position permanently. Happily, these procedings took place before many witnesses and television cameras, so if the accusations are true it should not be too difficult for her accusers to find supporting evidence.
Some further comment about the motivation of Ms. Harris:
It occurred to me that she may have been hoping to forstall a finding that she acted to save Bush, by acting before the votes came in giving Gore a definite lead. Not much to go by, but you never know.
Further endgame speculation:
I’ve heard that the Florida state legislature (Republican) can legally set aside the vote and select it’s own electors. Also supposedly the House of Representatives can disregard the results and certifiy their own winner. I’m not clear on either of these scenarios, but I’ve heard them floating around, and perhaps someone else can clarify the exact technicalities.
Also, a front page WSJ article yesterday claims that a Democratic operative by the name of Bob Beckel has begun checking the backgrounds of Republican electors. Sounds sinister.
From the Orlando Sentinal, by way of the National Review
I am not of the opinion that the opinions of the drafters of a law should be binding, or even that that of the legislators who voted, if the language used for the law includes some unindended consequences. Nonetheless, it does seem to suggest that the opinion of Ms. Harris is not unreasonable.
No, seriously. If Bush somehow winds up being our next President, my partisan liberal soul wants to see Ms. Harris in as high-visibility a post as Bush can appoint her to. Forget an ambassadorship, there’s a limit to how deeply she can embarrass her own party from overseas. I want her in Bush’s Cabinet, should there be one, and the more visible and prestigious a position, the better! 
Those of you who believe Ms. Harris is acting independently are fooling yourselves. Her actions are fully coordinated with those of the Bush campaign team.
How do I know? Well, in this thread, I predicted what the Republican strategy would be.
I predicted that when Ms. Harris got the written justoifications for the recounts in hand, she would issue a proclamation announcing that the reasons weren’t good enough. Which is exactly what she did.
I further predicted that the Republicans would then file suit, through individuals in the affected counties, trying to stop the recounts by arguing that since Harris wouldn’t accept them, the recounts would be moot, and a waste of taxpayer money. I predicted that the suit would be filed on behalf of named citizens of those counties who would be acting as straw men for the Republican Party.
Sure enough just such a suit was filed yesterday in Broward County.
These steps were not difficult to predict, because I was assuming that Ms. Harris’s efforts were coordinated with the Bush campaign. Her reason for demanding the early explanations was to reject them in advance, and thus give the Bush folks grounds to stop the recount before it happened.
At first, I too tried to give Ms. Harris the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that she was acting impartially. But now I see that every step Ms. Harris takes is fully scripted.
According to judge Terry Lewis, Katherine Harris used her discretion and acted appropriately.
For better or worse, that’s the tolling of the bell. Gore’s odds just dropped dramatically IMO.
Gore will appeal, I’m sure, but I would be surprised if the judge were reversed by the Florida Supreme Court.
The other point to make is that this ruling may allow the Republicans to stop the recounts in their tracks via citizen lawsuits in the affected counties, thus preventing the public from learning what the results of the recount would have been. We’ll see if that works.
Anybody have an official link to the full list of tax-payer paid get out the vote celebrities? Since about 90% of Hollywood is liberal, I’m betting that the list is nowhere near 50-50.
Ok, here is my confusion. It is my understanding that the Palm Beach Election Board sought a legal opinion from the state board of election about whether or not they had the authority to do a recount in the absence of a mechanical breakdown. The state board of elections is under the state Attoney General, Bob Butterworth (Gore’s Florida Campaign manager). (this is not under Sec. of State Harris)
The judge who has jurisdiction ruled that they had no authority to recount in the absence of a mechanical breakdown and told them to stop. Big ol Butterworth (I’m sorry:)) decided to break his own policy and offer a non-binding opinion that they COULD manualy recount.
At the PBEB meeting Tuesday morning, the issue was whether or not the judge’s, not Butterworth’s, ruling was binding. There was some lawyer lady there who who read off a law that stated if the board sought an opinion from the judge, then it was binding.
At this point Roberts almost choked and complained that she never would have sought the opinion if she had known it was binding. At that point the board voted to wait until the FSC made a decision.
So…Yes Harris filed suit in FSC, but not until well after the board had not counted on Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sunday and Monday.
They only counted on Saturday. So you can’t blame Harris for the delay before Tuesday. In addition, All the other counties finished their handcounts and certified them by Tuesday at 5pm.
Yes I think Harris is partisan, but, she IS following the letter of the law as far as I can tell.
Yeah well, if the democrats had been using the required double sided tape on the bottom of their shoes, we wouldn’t have this problem now would we?
If the recounts get stopped, do the ballots get destroyed?
I’m wondering if a news organization could get access to them to do a tally, even if no official recount ever gets completed.
No way can a news organization get to them.
Think about it…Do you really want the media crawling all over ballots? What safegaurds are there to make sure THEY count and report fairly. They could also concievably figure out who voted for who if they had access to the ballots.
As a rule I think it is good that ballots get destroyed without the media seeing them.
That seems to be a more valid measure than the actual number of votes between the two candidates. I would also like to see numbers on how many ballots were invalidated by the two machine counts, since these are the ones most likely to be affected by any hand recount.
I also find it interesting that it was a republican Party primary that was affected. The “local GOP leaders” apparently considered Green their best chance to win the house race in that district. One might wonder, then, why the local GOP voters did not concur.
Freedom2,
Maybe, but many of these celebrities are non percieved as being as ideological as Shwatzkopf - a potential Republican candidate for office, and their appeal is not primarily in the political shpere. I would be inclined to agree with you if well known Hollywood activists, i.e. Alec Baldwin, were broadcasting get-out-the-vote messages.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi *
**
This is actually quite common. (The voters in primaries are typically more ideological than are the voters in general elections.) Green is a black women. This (and possible similar facts - she may have been more “centrist” than her primary opponent) might have more significance to the potential crossover voters in the general election than it did to the Republican primary voters.
Izzy:
I was not clear. My question, rhetorical though it may have been, was intended to question the relationship between GOP leaders in PBC and the GOP “faithful” in teh contested district. If the “leaders” cannot get the “faithful” to vote for a candidate that the leadership feels has a clearly superior chance of winning, one wonders who they are leading?
I was not intending to dispute the idea that closed primaries encourage extremism in candidates. That is, in fact, one of the reasons I object to closed primaries.
Oh come on now, Freedom2. If the situation were reversed, you would be the first one demanding that the ballots be available for review, and you would be the first one yelling “Coverup!” if they were destroyed. In fact, you would probably be calling for a Congressional investigation of the whole election.
And that suit demands that all three members of the canvassing board be present, which stops the count since one has to be at the count at all times.
Isn’t that conveeeeenient?
(I liked the Slate article which compared her moves to those of the person who murders his parents then asks for mercy because he’s an orphan. She tries to stop the recount before she’s ruled on it, then rules it is late. I don’t think it is any mystery where her heart is on this one. And her self-interest.)
And I haven’t heard many people trying to claim she’s independent, because that is just becoming too laughable. What I have heard is that what she’s doing is legal and the right thing to do.
Sez them.
I’m just getting a little nauseated.
Why do you say? Especially since the FSC gave the go-ahead to keep counting?
I disagree. Under no circumstances do I want secret ballots to be available to the general public.
Ever.
As long as the count is transparent, and both parties are represented at the time of the election, I am comfortable with that. If you have enough time with the ballots you can determine who cast each vote. We have a secret ballot in this country, and that can not be violated.
We have also seen the controversey over the ballots when they get handled to much. Can you imagine if the the media came out with a different count? This country is divided enough. Let the process work itself out, and then burn the ballots.
I am not taking a stand at this point for you to agree with. I merely pointed out that there were a bunch of questions that needed to be answered before you could nail Harris to the wall for the Schwatzkopf thing.