Bush (Hypocrisy, Election 2000) 

FACT: The White House rejected a request from the Federal Election Commission for $5.5 million over two years to beef up its Office of Administration. The money would have been used to develop standards that ensure elections are run properly. 

Katherine Harris (Election 2000, Hypocrisy) 

FACT: Harris was shocked that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission released a report which accused her and Jeb Bush of "presiding over an election in which blacks were systematically disenfranchised." She claimed that the report was bogus because the chair, Mary Frances Barry, "was rooting for Al Gore." Harris blamed the commission's "partisanship" on the fact that Barry supported Gore in last year's election.

Katherine Harris (Lies, Election 2000) 

FACT: A report was released regarding the deleted files recovered from computers which Harris's staff had used prior to Election Day. Harris maintained that at no time were any partisan activities conducted in the Secretary of State's office - a claim which has now been proven to be a complete lie. The recovered files showed that political work on behalf of George W. Bush was indeed conducted in Harris's office throughout the year 2000. Even more damning, investigators found a statement that called recounted Palm Beach County votes "unlawful" - BEFORE SHE EVEN RECEIVED THEM. Harris released a statement saying that the investigations "prove that despite the innuendo and misinformation reported in the media, no partisan political activity transpired in my office during the recount period." Then, according to the St. Petersburg Times a spokesman for Harris said, "Her policy is no apologies, no excuses, no regrets." Thanks for summing that up for us Katherine.

Katherine Harris (Lies, Criminal, Election 2000)

FACT: According to the New York Times Harris set up a GOP "war room" in her office during the recount process, and didn't appear at a single press conference without being thoroughly briefed by GOP strategists. She pronounced throughout the recount that Al Gore was never once in the lead, despite her very own website telling a slightly different story. Currently, she withheld from reporters public information held on publicly owned computers despite the fact that she has absolutely nothing to hide. 

Katherine Harris (Lies, Election 2000) 

FACT: The Palm Beach Post revealed that Ms. Harris attempted to have the state of Florida pay $12,000 to Adam Goodman, a Republican operative who was working out of her office during the recount. Obviously it was highly inappropriate for Katherine Harris to have been seeking advice from a partisan political consultant in the first place (considering she was supposed to be representing all of Florida's voters, not just the Republicans) but in defending herself Harris made it clear that Goodman was an unpaid volunteer. Not through want of trying though. In an April 9th letter to Goodman, Harris wrote, "As we discussed in DC - You said $12,000. I am not trying to be weird about this because I want to pay you what you deserve, but they have been working on this since I returned. Now you say $20,000. I am confused - they will be, too. This is a delicate matter." So who are "they" exactly? 

Republicans (States Rights, Hypocrisy, Election 2000) 

FACT: During the 2000 election, Republicans were all to happy to crush the Florida State Supreme Court's decision to go ahead with the legal manual recount. Certainly, they would like everyone to forget that the "Conservative Principals" by which they live prefer states make their own decisions and remain largely independent from the cold clutches of big federal government. But have no fear, The "Felonious Five" Supreme Court justices that penned this usurpation of democracy (which they wisely declined to sign) included within their ramblings the clause that Gore v. Bush should not be used as precedent in future cases. But why not, you ask. A: Because it's bullshit. So you see, there has been no infraction of states rights because this case isn't a precedent setter. Whew!

Republicans (Election 2000, Undermining Democracy) 

FACT: All nine Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee boycotted the committee meeting where they considered a bill to upgrade our nation's election system. Apparently, the major sticking point was a  provision requiring that states meet minimum standards to ensure that voters would have their ballots counted. Never mind that committee rules allowed the Republicans to offer their own version of the bill to, change the offending provision.

COMMENT: Silly Dems, don't you realize that the election system is the way that it is only after years of careful "upgrading" by the GOP.

Republicans (Election 2000, Hypocrisy) 

FACT: During the Florida Recount last year, the Bush camp built their entire case around one simple argument: If a machine can't read a ballot, then it must not be counted. The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that on Election Day, county officials "made new copies" of at least ten thousand incorrectly marked or torn absentee ballots that optical scanning machines "initially couldn't read" - saving the ballots "from being thrown out." Since absentee ballots went more for Bush than Gore, this "divining of voter intent" by election officials likely handed the election to Bush. We are still waiting for James Baker to take a stand on principle and admit that by his sacrosanct machine-readable-votes-only standard, Bush should have lost. 

Al Cárdenas (Election 2000, Bigotry)

FACT: Florida Republican Party chairman Al Cárdenas appeared in the Weekly Standard to denounce the credibility of the African-American leadership. "We need to call into question the African-American leaders and what they're saying,'' Cárdenas announced. "If we don't do that, [voters are] going to take the Democrats' and the African-American leadership's word for it. The only way we break that cycle is to call into question the credibility of those who are parlaying that message." Black leaders were understandably furious about the remarks. Frederica Wilson, chairwoman of the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators, said, "During the struggle for civil rights, it was common for those who wanted to protect segregation and deny minorities equal rights to attack black leaders physically and through more personal attacks on their credibility." 

Chris Carman (Election 2000, Criminal, Honor and Integrity) 

FACT: Carman, who resigned as a member of Manatee County's Republican Executive Committee in January, faces felony charges for voter fraud after casting two votes for George W. Bush in last year's election. After intercepting an absentee ballot mailed to his roommate Blair Hanner, Carman cast a vote for Bush, forged Hanner's signature, and mailed it in. When Hanner showed up to vote at the polls, Carman was exposed. In his defense he said, "I made a boo-boo." 

Tom Feeney - (Election 2000, Hypocrisy)

FACT: You may recall Mr. Feeney as the man who led the fight to have the Florida legislature appoint its own set of electors for GW Bush just in case the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Al Gore. Hey, remember when Al got blasted for wanting to win by any means necessary? Anyway, after last week balking at the Sunshine State election reform task-force's recommendation that $40 million should be spent on fixing Florida's election system, Feeney said, "I don't fix something that's not broken." 

Rush Limbaugh and Bill Schneider (Bigotry, Stupidity, Election 2000) 04/2002

FACT: Rush Limbaugh made the tubby-moron hall of fame with such insightful comments as the one about the  2000 election results, "If you take away the black vote, Bush won by a landslide." Not to be outdone, CNN's Bill Schneider explained that, if you don't count black people's votes, Bush would have won by 187 electoral college votes and, if you take away the black vote in the 2000 Senate races, Democrats win only 37 seats instead of 50.

COMMENT: Luckily, we don't live in the "White's only" world of Limbaugh and Schneider. One point that they did leave out however was that Gore won in a shut-out if all racists misogynists and war-mongering windbags are deleted from the voting equations

Media (Election 2000, Lies) 11/2001

FACT: After a year of vote counting, the results are finally in. Last night the official results of the Florida recount by the media consortium were released, and like the winner is Al Gore! It doesn't matter whether you count dimpled chads, hanging chads, or cleanly punched chads - if you count every legally-cast vote in the state, Gore is the winner. Period. But if you read any of the coverage of the story in the media, you'd have to look pretty closely to get the facts. The headline on the Washington Post's website was: "Study Shows Recounts Would Have Elected Bush." The New York Times: "George W. Bush would have won even if the Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount that the Florida court had ordered to go forward." And CNN: "Florida recount study: Bush still wins." Surprisingly, only Drudge got the story right: "Big Media Florida Database: Gore Topped Bush if all Under/Over Votes Counted; Legal Strategy Destroyed Chances."

The Pentagon (Election 2000) 

FACT: The same New York Times article which accused Katherine Harris of being a partisan hag also pointed out that during the recount process, the GOP requested that the Pentagon provide them with the private e-mail addresses of military personnel. And wouldn't you know it, the Pentagon was more than happy to just hand 'em right over. Many of these email addresses belong to people who had post marks after election day. 

Lisa Riddle and Brigham McCown (Hypocrisy, Lies, Election 2000) 

FACT: The last time they showed up at the Palm Beach County Election Office, political consultant Riddle and attorney McCown were furiously arguing that dimpled chads would not, could not, and should not ever count as votes. That was, of course, when it looked like their man Bush might fail in his bid to cheat his way into the White House. Luckily, these two little GOP Nazi's heeded the decree by the felonious five not to use "Bush v. Gore" as any sort of precedent. Indeed, their U-turn prowess went unmatched as they appeared at the Election Office again last week to argue on behalf of Boca Raton council candidate Susan Saxton, who finished two votes behind incumbent Dave Freudenberg after Tuesday's election and Wednesday's machine recount. Of course dimpled ballots should count as votes, they argued, it's clear evidence of a voter's intent! When asked about this blatant inconsistency, McClown said, "there's no inconsistency". 

Judge N. Sanders Sauls (Election 2000, Despicable Behavior, Lies)

FACT: Judge N. Sanders Sauls was the judge who dismissed Al Gore's case for recounting the ballots in Miami-Dade, forcing him to go to the State Supreme Court. It turns out that Judge Sauls was going to be a guest speaker at a rally organized by FreeRepublic.com along with the another guest speaker  Katherine Harris. Ironically, the rally is titled "Celebrating America, Our Constitution and the Rule of Law." 

Eugene Scalia (Nepotism, Taxpayers Expense, Payback, Election 2000, Labor)

FACT: The New York Post reported last week that Eugene, the nominee for Labor Department attorney, will be up before the Health, Education and Labor Committee in September. However, Eugene didn’t quite get the free ride that Strom Jr. received. You see, Eugene face a tough time over some comments he made, "Ergonomics is quackery" - it's not like he’s ever had to actually do any hard work in his life before, so how would he know? Although it's lucky for him that his daddy was in charge of deciding who won last year's election, otherwise he probably wouldn't have been nominated at all.

COMMENT: It seems that affirmative action is a-okay with the GOP when you're talking about rich white men.

Voter News Service (Election 2000) 

FACT: At a pollsters meeting in Montreal, the editorial director of Voter News Service (VNS) indicated that VNS is undertaking a massive review of its practices after what they now call "faulty exit projections" in Florida last year. Based on its exit polling, VNS had projected that Gore would win the state. Among their explanations: they didn't anticipate the Bush margin among absentee voters; they need a better model for dealing with votes outstanding; and they did not provide analysts with the "history of what's been going on through the night in close states and counties" (whatever that means). Unfortunately, they missed the one thing that would correctly explain their findings…the exit polls were right. It is widely agreed among independent sources that if all voters’ intents were recorded correctly and counted (as an exit poll would have done), Gore WON the state by between 15,000 and 30,000 votes had it not been for the butterfly ballot and other voting debacles.