Truth about the 2000 Election

The Truth About the 2000 Election

Let anyone who tells you "George Bush won the 2000 election" chew on this: Al Gore was ahead in the popular vote, then came the standoff in Florida for the needed Electoral College vote. We pick it up on pages 769-770 in Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars":

“On June 8, 2001, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, after extensive hearings, approved a report on ‘Election Practices in Florida During the 200 Campaign.’ (Two Republican members of the eight member commission dissented.) The report stated:

"The Commission’s findings make one thing clear: widespread voter disenfranchisement - not the dead-heat contest – was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election. . . The disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters. The magnitude of the impact can be seen from any of several perspectives:

Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, black voters were nearly 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected.
Estimates indicate that approximately 14.4 percent of Florida's black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of non-black Florida voters who id not have tier presidential votes counted.
Statistical analysis shows that the disparity in ballot spoilage rates - i.e., ballots cast but not counted - between black and non-black voters is not the result of education or literacy differences.

...After carefully and fully examining all the evidence, the Commission found a strong basis for concluding that violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) occurred in Florida. . . The state’s highest officials responsible for ensuring efficiency, uniformity, and fairness in the election failed to fulfill their responsibilities and were subsequently unwilling to take responsibility."

"After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the NAACP and other civil rights groups sued the state of Florida and seven counties in it for violating voting rights. On September 3, 2002, a settlement was negotiated in which the state acknowledged the grievances and agreed to far-reaching reform of election practices. No one knows how many black voters were improperly scrubbed from the rolls or how many ballots marked with clear intent were not counted. But certainly there were more than enough of those ballots to have elected Gore if they had been.”

There is only one word that explains what happened to all those people whose rights as citizens of this country were stripped from them by the Republicans, the Florida Governor's office, the Supervisor of Elections, and the Supreme Court of the United States: But so far, I have avoided using the "F" word on this site. Besides, I may need it when I get into discussing the finer points of Karl Rove.