Florida 2000 and Washington 2004

"The Commission completely ignored the bigger story: Approximately 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida on November 7, approximately 68 percent of whom were registered Democrats. The Miami Herald discovered that, 'among the felons who cast presidential ballots, there were "62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists, and 7 kidnappers. At least two who voted were pictured on the state's on-line registry of sexual offenders.'"   (My emphasis)

(Kerry, 2004)

Notice that he carefully avoids any discussion of the fact that those felon voters made it through the polls because county supervisors were unwilling to use a felon list which was widely known to have been riddled with false-positives. That list was Katherine Harris’ responsibility. Even if Kerry’s statement were correct the relevance of the political affiliations of these "felons" was never clarified. Nowhere is there any discussion of what the figures even represent, much less how they were derived or how they relate to the larger population of Democrat voters. The whole argument appears to have no other point than to somehow link registered Democrats with criminals and place as much blame as possible on them.

In this respect Kerry's comments are typical of the Far-Right's treatment of this issue. Having reviewed literally thousands of articles and commentaries representing numerous conservative media outlets and online forums nationwide, I found many that did acknowledge some citizens were wrongfully denied their votes (particularly by the felon list). However…

I have yet to find even one statement anywhere in this body of literature that expressed any regret about the election’s problems, showed any empathy toward those who were impacted by it, or offered any suggestions whatsoever as to how problems like these might be prevented in future elections.

Without exception everyone concerned themselves solely with passing all responsibility away from themselves and onto Democrats and disenfranchised voters.

Successful leaders have long known that no problem is ever solved merely by assigning blame. Those who are truly committed to the Constitution and the well-being of all voting American citizens will spend as little time as possible doing so and commit themselves to solving the problems. In the aftermath of November 2000 Governor Jeb Bush appointed a bipartisan committee to investigate how Florida's electoral system could be reformed. This led to the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 (GSTF/CCPP, 2001). Most of the real work done by this committee happened after the election, when the problems gained national attention and the USCCR investigation and NAACP lawsuits were under way. Many of the resulting reforms had been proposed in the USCCR report or were part of the various settlements in the NAACP lawsuit (NAACP, 2001; NAACP vs. Harris, 2001; LCCRUL, 2002). The contributions of these organizations and their supporters to the process played a significant role in bringing this about. Most if not all of the issues these reforms corrected were known well in advance of Election Day 2000. If these efforts had been initiated then tens, even hundreds of thousands of Florida voters would not have been denied their constitutional right to a vote.

And the American people would have the president they truly chose.

Conclusion

Figure 1 shows a side by side comparison of the Gregoire/Rossi and Bush/Gore races summarizing the results of this study. It’s clear that neither election gave a statistically significant margin to the victor. In fact, they were almost identical in their final margins. Beyond that, the differences between the two are striking. In almost every respect where comparisons can be made Florida 2000 shows far more ballot spoilage and voter disenfranchisement, and systemic abuses. Furthermore, unlike Washington 2004 there is clear and well documented evidence of negligence highly partisan oversight of the election by Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and even mob violence instigated by the Bush Campaign. Nothing even remotely similar happened in Washington 2004, and in over 5 months neither the WSRP or Rossi supporters were able to produce any evidence to the contrary.

To get a clearer picture, consider what Washington 2004 would have looked like if Florida 2000 had happened there normalized to total ballot count.

• The presidential race would have had nearly 85,000 rejected ballots, not 21,000. The large majority would have been Republican votes.
• Over 31,000 of these would have been verified as unintentionally spoiled and showing clear indications of voter intent—more than the population of Wenatchee, WA. At least two thirds of these ballots would have been Rossi votes.
• Over 5,800 voters would have been wrongly listed as felons in Washington voter records. Over two thirds of these would be Rossi supporters.
• Washington’s Secretary of State (John Doe, let’s say) would have been a Democrat and a co-chair of Gregoire’s campaign right up to Election Day. In the weeks following the election he would have been actively involved in blocking any and all effort by the Rossi Campaign to pursue legal challenges to the election and any investigation of its many reported irregularities. Following Election Day the State Supreme Court would have intervened twice to force him to allow manual recounts of ballots in pro-Rossi counties that had unusual ballot spoilage rates. Throughout the gubernatorial campaign he would have collaborated extensively with Gregoire Campaign officials on many election related tasks and housed them at least once.
• Post election investigations would have revealed that John Doe’s office had been informed months in advance that his guidelines for preparation of the state felon list would significantly drive up false positives, but that he’d ordered the list to be prepared with those guidelines anyway. The resulting fallout would have fallen disproportionately on Rossi voters.
• Roughly 2,700 to 3,000 rightful voters would have been denied their vote due to wrongful felon listings. At least two thirds of those would have been Rossi voters.
• Another 2,700 actual felons would have voted in the election, largely because Republican county supervisors knew the state felon list was badly flawed and didn’t use it for fear of disenfranchising rightful voters. Despite the evidence as to how John Doe’s office had handled the list’s preparation, Democrats across the nation would blame them for these felon votes.
• Hundreds and perhaps thousands of ballots would have been deliberately altered by Democrat county supervisors. Though at least some of these would have been legitimate damaged ballot recoveries, they would have refused to do the same for Republican ballots when requested to. Thousands more ballots would have been submitted in ways contrary to clear Washington State law.
• There would have been widespread evidence of racial biases, particularly in the state felon list and ballot spoilage rates. Numerous independent statistical analyses would have demonstrated this, and that the impact fell disproportionately on Rossi. The one sole exception would have been an analysis by a Far-Left economist with a history of professional and ethical lapses that had been commissioned by the Democrat party. The study would have numerous math errors.
• One of the state’s larger pro-Rossi counties (Spokane County let’s say) would have suffered unusually high levels of ballot spoilage. Numerous independent statistical analyses would have shown that this was highly unlikely to have been intentional and that once again the impact fell disproportionally on Rossi. While a State Supreme Court approved recount was under way to recover as many of those votes as possible, a mob of Democrat protesters would have descended on the county election headquarters trapping elections workers behind closed doors. At least one Republican elections worker trying to escape would have been assaulted and beaten. Later, it would have been discovered that the Gregoire Campaign had organized and financed the mob, sent hundreds of staff workers all expenses paid to help organize it, and thrown a thank-you party for the participants afterwards.
• To this day numerous Far-Left forums nationwide would be dismissing all of the above as sour grapes. Republican voters who spoiled their ballots were simply “stupid”, we would be told, and it was self-centered of the Rossi Campaign to call for manual recounts of those spoiled ballots and an investigation of the election instead of allowing “the will of the people” to be accepted.

To be sure, there were irregularities in the Washington 2004 election and Rossi supporters were right to insist that they be investigated and rectified. But nothing even remotely comparable to the above happened in that race. Even so, while there is no evidence of any intentional fraud in either election, in Florida 2000 we have clear evidence of Katherine Harris’ conflict of interest in the election’s oversight and repeated attempts on her part to actively block any and all access to lawful election challenges by the Gore Campaign. Her office was shown evidence of the flaws in the state felon list months in advance of the election, yet still she ordered the list to be prepared with those flaws anyway. In the end, it was the success of her efforts and those of the Bush Campaign to block all attempts at recovering unintentionally spoiled votes that gave Bush the presidency of the United States. If either election could in any sense be considered “stolen” it’s this one.

Speaking for myself, I appreciate the conservative concerns regarding Gregoire’s governorship. I believe they had every right to challenge her victory in court, and given that her victory was no more statistically significant than Rossi’s machine counted victories they also have a right to dispute the legitimacy of her office. But the double standard they’ve shown in this matter is almost beyond belief. Had the scenario above actually happened in the Gregoire/Rossi race they wouldn’t be merely angry—they would be positively livid. Airwaves across the nation would be filled with angry denunciations of a “stolen” election and demands that everyone involved be sent to prison.

This did in fact happen to Democrats in 2000, and ever since those who dared to raise their voice in protest have been dismissed as self-centered spoil-sports or worse. During last fall's election I recall many friends and family members waxing eloquent at social gatherings about how they hoped the Gregoire/Rossi race wouldn't end too close… because they “just couldn't bear to see a repeat of what the Democrats did to the nation in 2000". The outcome of that race decided far more than a governor's seat—it gave the presidency of the United States to a man who had nowhere near a majority of the popular vote.

Now after more than four years of callous dismissals, accusations of "stupidity" on the part of Florida's year 2000 disenfranchised voters, and "moral" indignation about "what the Democrats did"…