The Damage Al Gore Has Wrought: The Washington Election Nightmare
At the end of the year 2000 we were screaming mad. At that time we remember watching the revolting events in Florida after the Presidential election with a growing sense of dread and wonder. Dread, because we detected in the events a barely-perceptible, yet significant, tear in the Constitutional order. Wonder, because no one in the press or in the Democratic Party seemed the least bit concerned about this. What was important, as soon became clear, was that Albert Gore, Jr. became President of the United States. All else, including such niceties as voting rights, equal protection of the laws and the role of stare decisis in appellate court proceedings, were tossed aside in pursuit of that goal.
We entered a new political age then, born of the horribly selfish acts of a sitting Vice President who would not and could not accept defeat. Count after count after count since those horrible days, even by liberal mouth-pieces like the New York Times, have verified that President Bush won Florida. Let us concede: the vote was close, Bush did not win the popular vote, Gore was favored by a majority of voters. However, in the end, under our precious Constitutional system, Bush won the 2000 election.
The Florida disaster inaugurated a new world where the Democratic challenger never really loses an election, even if he or she has. Since Florida, the Democratic Party has been completely unable to accept that it is losing in the battleground of ideas and has retreated to ever-more improbable conspiracy theories. And since they never lose, challenging any and all results is, of course, morally justified and right, since the whole world knows that Republicans never really "win" anything. Should "all the votes be counted," the Party of the People would, naturally, prevail.
And so we have had to witness the much-commented-about public deterioration of what once was a reasonably intelligent Senator from Tennessee, as he turned into the Man Who Had the Presidency Stolen From Him. To Democratic Blacks, the Republicans "suppressed" the black vote through public intimidation. To Democratic academics, the Supreme Court "stole" the election. To Democratic "anti-globalization activists," Republicans' victories are invalid since they are the fruit of corporate contributions. Nowhere and at no time since Florida have the Democrats lost. Either they were robbed, or the people are stupid and didn't understand them correctly, or they were the victims of a racist conspiracy.
Thus, we find the recent silliness in Ohio. (Note that should the Kerry campaign have succeeded in overturning the Ohio results that Kerry would have become President by winning the Electoral College and losing the popular vote, but, somehow, the furious outrage over the popular vote/Electoral College issue from the Democrats in 2000 and trumpeted in the MSM was nowhere mentioned in connection with Ohio.) Thus, we find the recent silliness in the U.S. Senate, where long-time loser Sen. Barbara Boxer led a small movement to protest the certification of the election results.
One is tempted to simply mock the Democrats for this hopelessly out-of-touch mindset, the kind of mindset that seriously thought for a number of months that an obvious buffoon like Howard Dean could be President of the United States. Republicans can do nothing but gain so long as the Democratic Party sounds like that guy in the corner mumbling to himself under the tin-foil hat.
Problem is, their obsession is starting to do real damage to our country. The latest battleground where this phenomena has arisen hasn't been much noticed in the national or the world press, but it is by far the most significant news story of 2004: the governor's race for the State of Washington.
Bush v. Gore
We have no wish to re-visit the Florida controversy in detail, but in order to understand what is now happening in the Democratic Party in 2005, and in Washington, one must understand the ruling that ended the Florida mess. We know what the Left, including law professors like Lawrence Tribe, think of the opinion: that the 5-justice Republican-appointed slim majority stopped the re-counting of valid votes, thereby selecting Geo. Bush as the next President of the United States.
This is nothing but a lie and a myth. The most cursory reading of Bush v. Gore lays to waste the entire Democratic mythology that has arisen about Florida. A quick look at the lies and the reality set forth in the opinion makes this plain.
First Lie: The Democrats only wanted to count all the votes! The Republicans don't want to count the votes, they're disenfranchising people!!!
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"The proceedings leading to the present controversy are discussed in some detail in our opinion in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante, p. ____ (per curiam) (Bush I). On November 8, 2000, the day following the Presidential election, the Florida Division of Elections reported that petitioner, Governor Bush, had received 2,909,135 votes, and respondent, Vice President Gore, had received 2,907,351 votes, a margin of 1,784 for Governor Bush. Because Governor Bush's margin of victory was less than "one-half of a percent . . . of the votes cast," an automatic machine recount was conducted under §102.141(4) of the election code, the results of which showed Governor Bush still winning the race but by a diminished margin. Vice President Gore then sought manual recounts in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties, pursuant to Florida's election protest provisions. Fla. Stat. §102.166 (2000)." (Emphasis added).
Read that again folks: the first move to the courts to protest the election result was Vice President Gore's, and in his petition Gore asked only for recounts in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. (Facts hurt, don't they?)
Second Lie: The Republican cronies in the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop the recount! How obvious can you get?!?
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"Per Curium.
* * *
Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy. See post, at 6 (Souter, J., dissenting); post, at 2, 15 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The only disagreement is as to the remedy." (Emphasis added).
To translate this arcane legalease for all you journalists out there, this passage means that 7 out of the 9 justices (and not, say 5 out of 9) found the Gore-sought, Florida Supreme Court-approved "a few counties only" recount plan in violation of the Constitution of the United States. In fact, the main body of the opinion where the main question presented was decided was labeled by the court as a "per curium" opinion. Go ahead and click on the link above on that word and find out what it means in case you don't know. Then, tell all your liberal friends about it.
Third Lie: The U.S. Supreme Court anointed Bush President. He was selected, not elected!!!
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"The Supreme Court of Florida has said that the legislature intended the State's electors to "participate[e] fully in the federal electoral process," as provided in 3 U. S. C. §5. ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op. at 27); see also Palm Beach Canvassing Bd. v. Harris, 2000 WL 1725434, *13 (Fla. 2000). That statute, in turn, requires that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12. That date is upon us, and there is no recount procedure in place under the State Supreme Court's order that comports with minimal constitutional standards. Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the December 12 date will be unconstitutional for the reasons we have discussed, we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering a recount to proceed." (Emphasis added).
In other words, the Constitutionally sound election had taken place. In that election, people registered to vote in Florida voted, not the 9 justices of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court stopped the Florida Supreme Court's mandated "recount" because the recount was illegal and in violation of basic protections afforded by the Constitution. Thus, rather than "selecting" Bush, the Supreme Court stopped an illegal sham vote from proceeding in favor of the real vote, in which Bush won the plurality of votes.
In short, almost every cherished myth espoused by the Democratic Party about the Florida election and its aftermath is either a lie or a distortion. But it is a deeply held belief by the faithful in their millions.
Washington State, November 2004
Which brings us to the present-day. In the Summer and Fall of 2004, the campaigns of the three main challengers for the governorship of the (wonderfully beautiful) State of Washington were in full swing. Republican Dino Rossi, Democrat Christine Gregoire and Libertarian Ruth Bennett all sought to replace departing Governor Gary Locke (D). On election day, it became apparent that an extraordinarily close race was taking place. It took the Secretary of State, a moderate Republican named Sam Reed, until November 30, 2004, to certify the results: Republican Rossi had won the governorship by a remarkably slim margin of 261 votes out of around 2.9 million votes cast.
Pursuant to state law, due to the low margin of victory, any candidate could ask for a recount, at a cost of 25 cents per ballot for a hand recount or 15 cents per ballot for a machine recount. The Democrats (thrifty beasts they) opted for a machine recount. At the close of the machine recount, Rossi's lead was whittled to a mere 42 votes.
As in Florida, the Democrats headed to the courts as a matter of course. There was no objective reason to believe that anything untoward had occurred; it was just assumed by the Democrats that if they had lost, not every ballot had been counted. Since the Democrat still hadn't won, it was time for a 2nd recount! A state-wide hand recount ensued, the Democrats having learned at least something from Bush v. Gore.
In their first petition to the (heavily-Democratic) Washington Supreme Court, the Democratic Party asked that all ballots cast be reconsidered and recounted, including those that had been rejected (for various reasons) by the counties' canvassing boards. To its everlasting credit, the Washington Supreme Court rejected the Democratic Party's wish to re-visit non-valid ballots in David T. McDonald, et al v. Secretary of State. The court held that:
"Nonetheless, we must reject petitioners' arguments. In this context, a "ballot" is a physical or electronic record of the choices of an individual voter, or the physical document on which the voter's choices are to be recorded. RCW 29A.04.008(1)(c),(d). "`Recount'means the process of retabulating ballots and producing amended election returns.." RCW 29A.04.139 (emphasis added). The procedure for recounts isset forth in RCW 29A.64.041, and starts with the county canvassing board opening "the sealed containers containing the ballots to be recounted." SeeRCW 29A.60.110. Thus, under Washington's statutory scheme, ballots are to be "retabulated" only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210." (Emphasis added).
Again, translating for our liberal friends, a "recount" means that only the votes counted as votes on election day are counted, thus the prefix "re" in front of the word "count." As the normal manual recount proceeded, early reports showed Rossi's (miniscule) lead widening.
The Democrats were forced, again, to play by the rules by a Supreme Court, and they were, again, losing. But they were not finished.
Having lost every conceivable round, they retreated back to the type of place Gore sought safe haven in in 2000: the heavily-Democratic urban counties. This time around King County (i.e. Seattle) would stand in for Miami-Dade. Because of unfortunate legal rulings, the Democrats couldn't just force a recount in an area rich with Democratic voters and in canvassing boards dominated by Democrats. There had to be another way.
Democrats soon focused their attention and their hopes on some 573 ballots that had been determined not to be legal votes because the signature did not match any on file. Despite a clear legal ruling that void votes not be "recounted" because they were never "counted" in the first place, the county's canvassing board included those 573 non-valid ballots, and then found a further 159 similar ballots, for a total of 732. The canvassing board argued that just because the signatures weren't on file on election night wasn't reason not to re-count them; the problem had been a technological glitch and by resorting to the physical registration cards, the signatures could be matched, and, so, they were legal votes. And, wouldn't you know it, when you added those new ballots into the total, Democrat Gregoire pulled into the lead.
Feeling scammed, the Republican Party filed suit. To its everlasting shame, the Washington Supreme Court reversed itself (and an gob-smocked lower court that thought it was following clear precedent) in Washington State Republican Party v. King County Division of Records, where the court lamely explained:
"Our prior opinion did not hold that the recanvassing statute may not be employed by canvassing boards during a recount."
This is wholly true and completely beside the point. This new ruling effectively allowed King County to re-visit ballots that were rejected on election night, in clear violation of the earlier ruling.
And here is the really sweet part: since King County took so long to manually recount all their ballots, all the other counties had already certified their results under what they thought was direct guidance from the Washington Supreme Court only to recount votes counted on election night when the new ruling was handed down. Thus, only the most heavily-Democratic county in Washington had an opportunity to re-visit spoiled ballots. In the end, Gregoire won with a lead of 129 votes. No further recount was necessary, of course, because finally the right person had come out on top.
What Florida made possible, Washington has now made routine. From here on out in every close election the Democrats will use litigation as a tool to win elections, and no Republican will ever take office again unless they win not just by a recount-proof margin, but by a lawyer-proof margin. As a result, the Democratic Party, starting with Al Gore, have called into question the very legitimacy of elections. They have done lasting, long-term damage, in nothing less than a cold pursuit of power and the "disenfranchisement" of Republican voters.
On January 12, 2005, Christine Gregoire was sworn in as Governor of Washington.
She called for reconciliation and unity, now that the election is behind us.
We entered a new political age then, born of the horribly selfish acts of a sitting Vice President who would not and could not accept defeat. Count after count after count since those horrible days, even by liberal mouth-pieces like the New York Times, have verified that President Bush won Florida. Let us concede: the vote was close, Bush did not win the popular vote, Gore was favored by a majority of voters. However, in the end, under our precious Constitutional system, Bush won the 2000 election.
The Florida disaster inaugurated a new world where the Democratic challenger never really loses an election, even if he or she has. Since Florida, the Democratic Party has been completely unable to accept that it is losing in the battleground of ideas and has retreated to ever-more improbable conspiracy theories. And since they never lose, challenging any and all results is, of course, morally justified and right, since the whole world knows that Republicans never really "win" anything. Should "all the votes be counted," the Party of the People would, naturally, prevail.
And so we have had to witness the much-commented-about public deterioration of what once was a reasonably intelligent Senator from Tennessee, as he turned into the Man Who Had the Presidency Stolen From Him. To Democratic Blacks, the Republicans "suppressed" the black vote through public intimidation. To Democratic academics, the Supreme Court "stole" the election. To Democratic "anti-globalization activists," Republicans' victories are invalid since they are the fruit of corporate contributions. Nowhere and at no time since Florida have the Democrats lost. Either they were robbed, or the people are stupid and didn't understand them correctly, or they were the victims of a racist conspiracy.
Thus, we find the recent silliness in Ohio. (Note that should the Kerry campaign have succeeded in overturning the Ohio results that Kerry would have become President by winning the Electoral College and losing the popular vote, but, somehow, the furious outrage over the popular vote/Electoral College issue from the Democrats in 2000 and trumpeted in the MSM was nowhere mentioned in connection with Ohio.) Thus, we find the recent silliness in the U.S. Senate, where long-time loser Sen. Barbara Boxer led a small movement to protest the certification of the election results.
One is tempted to simply mock the Democrats for this hopelessly out-of-touch mindset, the kind of mindset that seriously thought for a number of months that an obvious buffoon like Howard Dean could be President of the United States. Republicans can do nothing but gain so long as the Democratic Party sounds like that guy in the corner mumbling to himself under the tin-foil hat.
Problem is, their obsession is starting to do real damage to our country. The latest battleground where this phenomena has arisen hasn't been much noticed in the national or the world press, but it is by far the most significant news story of 2004: the governor's race for the State of Washington.
Bush v. Gore
We have no wish to re-visit the Florida controversy in detail, but in order to understand what is now happening in the Democratic Party in 2005, and in Washington, one must understand the ruling that ended the Florida mess. We know what the Left, including law professors like Lawrence Tribe, think of the opinion: that the 5-justice Republican-appointed slim majority stopped the re-counting of valid votes, thereby selecting Geo. Bush as the next President of the United States.
This is nothing but a lie and a myth. The most cursory reading of Bush v. Gore lays to waste the entire Democratic mythology that has arisen about Florida. A quick look at the lies and the reality set forth in the opinion makes this plain.
First Lie: The Democrats only wanted to count all the votes! The Republicans don't want to count the votes, they're disenfranchising people!!!
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"The proceedings leading to the present controversy are discussed in some detail in our opinion in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante, p. ____ (per curiam) (Bush I). On November 8, 2000, the day following the Presidential election, the Florida Division of Elections reported that petitioner, Governor Bush, had received 2,909,135 votes, and respondent, Vice President Gore, had received 2,907,351 votes, a margin of 1,784 for Governor Bush. Because Governor Bush's margin of victory was less than "one-half of a percent . . . of the votes cast," an automatic machine recount was conducted under §102.141(4) of the election code, the results of which showed Governor Bush still winning the race but by a diminished margin. Vice President Gore then sought manual recounts in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties, pursuant to Florida's election protest provisions. Fla. Stat. §102.166 (2000)." (Emphasis added).
Read that again folks: the first move to the courts to protest the election result was Vice President Gore's, and in his petition Gore asked only for recounts in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. (Facts hurt, don't they?)
Second Lie: The Republican cronies in the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop the recount! How obvious can you get?!?
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"Per Curium.
* * *
Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy. See post, at 6 (Souter, J., dissenting); post, at 2, 15 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The only disagreement is as to the remedy." (Emphasis added).
To translate this arcane legalease for all you journalists out there, this passage means that 7 out of the 9 justices (and not, say 5 out of 9) found the Gore-sought, Florida Supreme Court-approved "a few counties only" recount plan in violation of the Constitution of the United States. In fact, the main body of the opinion where the main question presented was decided was labeled by the court as a "per curium" opinion. Go ahead and click on the link above on that word and find out what it means in case you don't know. Then, tell all your liberal friends about it.
Third Lie: The U.S. Supreme Court anointed Bush President. He was selected, not elected!!!
The Reality, from Bush v. Gore:
"The Supreme Court of Florida has said that the legislature intended the State's electors to "participate[e] fully in the federal electoral process," as provided in 3 U. S. C. §5. ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op. at 27); see also Palm Beach Canvassing Bd. v. Harris, 2000 WL 1725434, *13 (Fla. 2000). That statute, in turn, requires that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12. That date is upon us, and there is no recount procedure in place under the State Supreme Court's order that comports with minimal constitutional standards. Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the December 12 date will be unconstitutional for the reasons we have discussed, we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering a recount to proceed." (Emphasis added).
In other words, the Constitutionally sound election had taken place. In that election, people registered to vote in Florida voted, not the 9 justices of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court stopped the Florida Supreme Court's mandated "recount" because the recount was illegal and in violation of basic protections afforded by the Constitution. Thus, rather than "selecting" Bush, the Supreme Court stopped an illegal sham vote from proceeding in favor of the real vote, in which Bush won the plurality of votes.
In short, almost every cherished myth espoused by the Democratic Party about the Florida election and its aftermath is either a lie or a distortion. But it is a deeply held belief by the faithful in their millions.
Washington State, November 2004
Which brings us to the present-day. In the Summer and Fall of 2004, the campaigns of the three main challengers for the governorship of the (wonderfully beautiful) State of Washington were in full swing. Republican Dino Rossi, Democrat Christine Gregoire and Libertarian Ruth Bennett all sought to replace departing Governor Gary Locke (D). On election day, it became apparent that an extraordinarily close race was taking place. It took the Secretary of State, a moderate Republican named Sam Reed, until November 30, 2004, to certify the results: Republican Rossi had won the governorship by a remarkably slim margin of 261 votes out of around 2.9 million votes cast.
Pursuant to state law, due to the low margin of victory, any candidate could ask for a recount, at a cost of 25 cents per ballot for a hand recount or 15 cents per ballot for a machine recount. The Democrats (thrifty beasts they) opted for a machine recount. At the close of the machine recount, Rossi's lead was whittled to a mere 42 votes.
As in Florida, the Democrats headed to the courts as a matter of course. There was no objective reason to believe that anything untoward had occurred; it was just assumed by the Democrats that if they had lost, not every ballot had been counted. Since the Democrat still hadn't won, it was time for a 2nd recount! A state-wide hand recount ensued, the Democrats having learned at least something from Bush v. Gore.
In their first petition to the (heavily-Democratic) Washington Supreme Court, the Democratic Party asked that all ballots cast be reconsidered and recounted, including those that had been rejected (for various reasons) by the counties' canvassing boards. To its everlasting credit, the Washington Supreme Court rejected the Democratic Party's wish to re-visit non-valid ballots in David T. McDonald, et al v. Secretary of State. The court held that:
"Nonetheless, we must reject petitioners' arguments. In this context, a "ballot" is a physical or electronic record of the choices of an individual voter, or the physical document on which the voter's choices are to be recorded. RCW 29A.04.008(1)(c),(d). "`Recount'means the process of retabulating ballots and producing amended election returns.." RCW 29A.04.139 (emphasis added). The procedure for recounts isset forth in RCW 29A.64.041, and starts with the county canvassing board opening "the sealed containers containing the ballots to be recounted." SeeRCW 29A.60.110. Thus, under Washington's statutory scheme, ballots are to be "retabulated" only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210." (Emphasis added).
Again, translating for our liberal friends, a "recount" means that only the votes counted as votes on election day are counted, thus the prefix "re" in front of the word "count." As the normal manual recount proceeded, early reports showed Rossi's (miniscule) lead widening.
The Democrats were forced, again, to play by the rules by a Supreme Court, and they were, again, losing. But they were not finished.
Having lost every conceivable round, they retreated back to the type of place Gore sought safe haven in in 2000: the heavily-Democratic urban counties. This time around King County (i.e. Seattle) would stand in for Miami-Dade. Because of unfortunate legal rulings, the Democrats couldn't just force a recount in an area rich with Democratic voters and in canvassing boards dominated by Democrats. There had to be another way.
Democrats soon focused their attention and their hopes on some 573 ballots that had been determined not to be legal votes because the signature did not match any on file. Despite a clear legal ruling that void votes not be "recounted" because they were never "counted" in the first place, the county's canvassing board included those 573 non-valid ballots, and then found a further 159 similar ballots, for a total of 732. The canvassing board argued that just because the signatures weren't on file on election night wasn't reason not to re-count them; the problem had been a technological glitch and by resorting to the physical registration cards, the signatures could be matched, and, so, they were legal votes. And, wouldn't you know it, when you added those new ballots into the total, Democrat Gregoire pulled into the lead.
Feeling scammed, the Republican Party filed suit. To its everlasting shame, the Washington Supreme Court reversed itself (and an gob-smocked lower court that thought it was following clear precedent) in Washington State Republican Party v. King County Division of Records, where the court lamely explained:
"Our prior opinion did not hold that the recanvassing statute may not be employed by canvassing boards during a recount."
This is wholly true and completely beside the point. This new ruling effectively allowed King County to re-visit ballots that were rejected on election night, in clear violation of the earlier ruling.
And here is the really sweet part: since King County took so long to manually recount all their ballots, all the other counties had already certified their results under what they thought was direct guidance from the Washington Supreme Court only to recount votes counted on election night when the new ruling was handed down. Thus, only the most heavily-Democratic county in Washington had an opportunity to re-visit spoiled ballots. In the end, Gregoire won with a lead of 129 votes. No further recount was necessary, of course, because finally the right person had come out on top.
What Florida made possible, Washington has now made routine. From here on out in every close election the Democrats will use litigation as a tool to win elections, and no Republican will ever take office again unless they win not just by a recount-proof margin, but by a lawyer-proof margin. As a result, the Democratic Party, starting with Al Gore, have called into question the very legitimacy of elections. They have done lasting, long-term damage, in nothing less than a cold pursuit of power and the "disenfranchisement" of Republican voters.
On January 12, 2005, Christine Gregoire was sworn in as Governor of Washington.
She called for reconciliation and unity, now that the election is behind us.
