There was a reporter in Arizona, I think, and I can't remember the reporter's name, and I am reporting this to y'all from memory almost 20 years later, but during the post-election media recount of the Florida ballots, the reporter noted a really suspicious anomaly reported by the media officials who participated in the recount. There were different kinds of over-vote ballots in Florida. There were ballots that contained a vote for Gore and somebody else, and ballots that contained a vote for Bush and somebody else, and there were ballots that contained votes for both Gore and Bush. The really weird thing about the Bush-Gore over-vote ballots, the reporter noted, was that they were ALL in punch-card counties. None of them were in those counties where you filled in an oval with a felt pen, they were only in the counties were you punched through a card. Think about that. Most of those punch-card counties were in heavily Democratic areas, and a lot of them were in south Florida counties like Broward and Dade.
Now, think about this for a moment. If you were a Republican-leaning vote counter who wanted Bush to win the election and you were determined to rig the election to make sure Bush won, how would you accomplish that on election night? You could alter the ballots in those counties where a felt tip pen filled in an oval, but you would have to alter those ballots one at a time. The time it would take would be prohibitive. But in the punch card counties, you could just stack up the ballots a few dozen thick and punch them through the Bush hole and thus alter a lot of ballots in a short time. That would not affect the Bush votes, they would still be Bush votes, but it would turn the Gore votes into ... Gore-Bush over-vote ballots! Thus ruining only Gore ballots in the heavily Democratic counties. And probably a lot of them.
I have believed ever since reading that Arizona reporter's article that this is exactly what happened. There were some Republican-leaning elections officials in those south Florida counties who were waiting until late on election night to see just how many Gore ballots needed to be ruined to ensure that Bush would win Florida, and then they counted up that many ballots, calculating the percentages to figure out how many of them would be Gore votes, and then mass-punched through the Bush punch to ruin just enough Gore ballots to make sure Bush won. That would explain why those south Florida counties' results were reported so late on election night. I sat up into the wee hours on that night watching election returns, and I remember being aware at the time that those results were being reported really late. This would also explain why the final official tally in Florida was so close. It was 537 votes out of six million cast, as I recall. They were able to fix only barely enough of the ballots to fix the election. And the reporter whose name I can't remember said that at the Bush family Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks later, they were angry at those Republican vote-fixers for letting it get so razor-thin.
That is, as best I can recall almost 20 years later, what happened in Florida on election night in November 2000. I really do believe this is what happened, and I keep hoping, probably unrealistically and foolishly, that some day, there will be a conscience-ridden south Florida elections official who will make a deathbed confession revealing this publicly.
-- Ron
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