Kathie's Tweezers
Post-Postscript

Sharmanbraff@yahoo.com

Some more observations. My thanks to the readers who responded with comments, information and the title for this Post-Postscript, special thanks to the Webmaster@Bushboyzstolethevote.com.


1)Duval refuses to cooperate with the media hand count, and Jeb is trying to get the ballots sealed

The Miami-Herald has had to bring suit to get access to Duval County's ballots. Recall, this is not the first time Duval has gone out of its way to keep its ballots under wraps. Duval's Republican elections supervisor allegedly lied about the rejected ballot totals, costing Democrats the opportunity to request a hand count.

But really creepy, a few readers report (no definitive source yet) that Jeb is trying to sneak a bill through the Legislature to seal the ballots.

This is a huge red flag. Why would Jeb care at all about the media hand count? The counting is virtually completed now, all done but some small counties and Duval. The papers already reported tallies that put Gore over the top, and it was a big yawn. To attempt such a blatantly fascist act as sealing the ballots, there is something more than chad dimples Jeb doesn't want us to see.

Physical evidence, maybe?


2)One out of every 13 voters in the Jewish seniors precincts of Palm Beach had a double-punched ballot.

I have already made the point that the "uneducated, first time voter" alibi is disproven by the overvote from the Jewish seniors precincts of Palm Beach. This is a population that has both education and voting experience. Also, it is a group that came under intense media scrutiny immediately after the election, because of the 3,400 who voted for Buchanan by mistake. [1] If thousands of these voters had double-punched their ballots by mistake, we would have heard about it.

When I wrote "Katharine Harris with Tweezers," I was under the impression that most of Palm Beach's overvote came from black neighborhoods. I now realize that a huge part of Palm Beach's 19,000 overvotes, maybe most of it, comes from the Jewish seniors population.

According to the Palm Beach Post, there are 120 precincts where the elderly make up the majority of the population, accounting for 98,000 of Palm Beach's 460,000 votes. (By comparison, there are only 38 majority black precincts, accounting for 18,000 votes.) These precincts saw 9.3% of their ballots rejected. Subtracting a reasonable guestimate for undervotes, that's maybe 7,500 overvotes, or one in every thirteen ballots. For one example, in the Lakes of Delray precinct (85% elderly), 1500 votes went to Gore, about 50 to Bush, 47 to Buchanan, and 253 were thrown out. [2]


3)How did they do it?

The most common theme in the reader feedback was, how did they do it? In fact, the author of the Washington Post's article on the overvote study, Dan Keating, was kind enough to email his comments, the major thrust of which was, it couldn't be fraud because it would be too difficult to pull off.

This point is certainly well taken. There were hundreds of precincts affected by the overvote, and 79,000 ballots is a huge task to accomplish in a very short time. Plus, these were Democratic-voting counties, presumably under the control of Democratic officials.

So how did they do it? The answer is,

HELL, I DON'T KNOW. I'm not a detective. But me not knowing how to tamper with ballots is not proof that it is impossible. I do not know how to burgle houses or rob banks either. Professional investigators are needed. My fantasy is a lawsuit against Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Butterworth, to compel them do their jobs.

I can offer a few thoughts on the possible ways and means, again, with thanks to the readers who have contributed their ideas.

1) When your daddy is the former head of the CIA and your brother is cozy with South American criminal elements, there is good criminal talent on the family rolodex. [3]

2) Democratic counties controlled by Democrats: Look again. The three biggest blocks of overvote came from Duval (22,000), Palm Beach (19,000) and Miami-Dade (18,000). Duval is a Republican county, whose elections officials have thus far successfully blocked all access to the ballots. Nor would anyone seriously regard Miami-Dade as controlled by the Democratic Party, after the shenanigans observed during the election contest. That leaves Palm Beach. Just recently, I have seen reports questioning the loyalty of Theresa LaPore, Palm Beach's Elections Supervisor. See the article in Footnote [4] for her role in obstructing the Palm Beach hand count.

2) As of 2:00 am election eve, there still remained 280,000 ballots uncounted. That's a lot of time between the polls closing at 7:00 and the final tally at 4:00 am (when "a rush of Democratic votes from Palm Beach brought the race to a virtual tie." (See the Postscript))

3) It is apparently common knowledge that the preferred device for ballot tampering is not tweezers, hat pin or other crude device. Rather, the necessary efficiency is achieved by a machine that stacks and punches 30 or so ballots at once. Washington Post reporter Keating is one of the sources for this information. I have come to think of these tampering machines as "Kathie's Tweezers."

Remember the possibility of physical evidence? Maybe someone got clumsy with the Kathie's Tweezers.

In the classic ploy, the tamperer punches his candidate's chad through the stack of ballots, so as not to spoil any of his own guy's votes. Reporter Keating cites this as proof that Florida's overvotes were innocent, meaning, if there had been tampering, we would see a pattern of Gore/Bush overvotes. This argument is amazing to me. There were Gore/Bush votes, 5,800 of them in the Post study, maybe more in Duval and other punchcard counties. That there were any such ballots, let alone a significant number of them, is to me proof positive of foul play.

That the rest of the 57,000 overvotes (57,000 in the Post study, 79,000 including Duval's uncounted 22,000) showed other combinations of overvote (Gore and someone else), and included several Bush ballots (Bush and someone else), is not at all inconsistent: First, in heavily Democratic precincts that voted 80 or 90% for Gore, you can risk losing a few Bush votes to Kathie's tweezers. You're not going to hit many. Second, having some spoiled Bush ballots keeps the overvote from looking too suspicious. Bush ballots might have been deliberately spoiled. Third, apparently even the Republican Party is not so brazen as to try to get away with 50,000 Bush/Gore overvotes. Even the Washington Post would be on to them then.


4)Even paranoids have cause to suspect the media bias

I don't mean to pick on Dan Keating or the Washington Post. I am truly grateful to the Post for publishing some important information. But the reporting of it left a lot to be desired.

In the best traditions of fuzzy math, the article reports 45,600 Gore overvotes, 17,000 Bush overvotes, and 5,800 Gore/Bush. The reader is not told that the 5,800 Gore/Bush ballots are included in the 45,600 and 17,000 totals,

The 5,800 are almost certainly all spoiled Gore votes. (They are either all Gore's or all Bush''s. There is no way to explain them but tampering.) So the real numbers are 45,600 Gore to 11,000 Bush. That's 35,600 net, not 28,600, as Keating allows the reader to infer. And the ratio of spoiled ballots is more than 4:1 to Gore's detriment (45,600/11,000), not 3:1 (presumably 45,600/17,000) as Keating calculates it.

The most appalling omission of the article is its failure to mention the 22,000 overvotes yet uncounted in Duval. (Which then leads to the conclusion that Gore's margin of victory is somewhere around 50,000, since we know Duval's overvote came disproportionately from its black precincts.)

And it worked! Two liberal publications, Democrats.com and the Guardian, have reported the Post study as giving Gore only 28,000 net votes, and likewise failed to add in Duval's 22,000. [5]

Woodstein, where are you when we need you?

Endnotes

1. See "How Gore lost the presidency," Parts 3 and 4, Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post for an excellent account of the tempest as it unfolded in Palm Beach on election day.

2. "Nearly half of the tossed ballots came from black, elderly precincts." Stephen Kiehl and Elliot Jaspin, The Palm Beach Post, Nov. 18, 2000.

3. "Coup 2K," John Dee, Jan. 15, 2001 nettime-archive@nettime.khm.de

4. "President Jackass: Stupid George loses more votes," John Seeley, LAWeekly Feb 2-8, 2001

5. "Bush pushes his luck",: Guardian Unltd., Jan. 30, 2001.
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