Having spent 15 years working on dem election campaigns when I lived in Florida I can say that the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot violated Florida ballot design laws at every turn. In addition, Florida had a remedy for counting ballots that the counting machines couldn't read. Florida election law in 2000 allowed for the hand duplication and counting of ballots that the counting machines couldn't read. The county election supervisors were required to keep detailed logs of ballots counted in this manner. It turns out that there were 10,000 absentee ballots mostly located in heavily repug voting Florida counties that were counted in this manner as documented by the logs of the county election supervisors. These ballots favored bushthief by more than 2 to 1 and are in the Jeb/Harris "vote" total despite bushthief claiming publicly to oppose the hand counting of ballots. The only media outlet to ever report this was the Orland Sentinel on 5/7/01 in their article, "Mangled ballots resurrected". In addition, in it's post 2000 election book, "Democracy held hostage", the Miami Herald showed a picture of a dimpled chad and admitted that the intent of the voter was clear. Florida election law in 2000 required that all ballots where the intent of the voter is clear be counted. During the legal proceedings, the Gore legal team opened a punch card ballot machine from Palm Beach county and showed that the machine was plugged up with chad which made it impossible for voters to fully punch through their ballots. The Florida election law that allowed for the hand duplication and counting of ballots that the counting machines couldn't read applied to all ballots and not just absentee ballots in heavily repug voting counties. The Bush brothers, their Florida campaign co-chair and the GOP controlled SCOTUS blatantly violated Florida election law to steal the election
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