Originally Posted by aceventura3

When Bush "stole" the election from Gore the tone was already set in Washington before Bush was sworn in. Democrats were not happy at all, and they let everyone know it. To blame the division entirely on Bush is wrong in my opinion.

Perhaps some of our elected officials in Washington should sit down and form a consensus on a unified message regarding Iraq that is an alternative to Bush's plan. People want to be for something, taking pot-shots at Bush's plan is no longer enough. We need to know what is meant by a military withdrawal. We need to know what kind of support will we give Iraq after withdrawal, if any? Where will we maintain our military presence in the ME given the conditions in the ME after withdrawal? Etc? Etc?

Florida is one of six states that permanently strip voting rights to felons for life unless they petition to have them restored. One election-law expert who usually represents Democrats said the release of the list will rekindle the debate over disenfranchising voters. <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml">http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml</a>

..More than 50,000 felons were released from Florida prisons last year. About 85 percent must apply to get clemency. A year ago, the court found that about 125,000 inmates who completed their terms between 1992 and 2001 -- out of as many as 700,000 -- had not been properly notified of their right to clemency. Gov. Bush can't call the appellate court's ruling judicial activism. The court didn't make the law; the state did. Here is the wording: "The authorized agent (of the state) shall assist the offender in completing these forms... before the offender is discharged from supervision." The court "interpreted" that to mean the state must "assist the offender." <a href="http://www.freelists.org/archives/lit-ideas/07-2004/msg00472.html">http://www.freelists.org/archives/lit-ideas/07-2004/msg00472.html</a>

http://www.wired.com/politics/securi.../2004/07/64071 Florida Told to Open Voter List Jacob Ogles Email 07.01.04 | 3:23 PM ORLANDO -- A Florida Circuit Court judge said Thursday that a list of felons to be purged from Florida's voter rolls must be made available to anybody that wants a copy, handing a victory to media organizations that had sought copies from the state but were refused. The ruling by Judge Nikki Clark came in a lawsuit filed by CNN in May. The news network said it wanted the list in order to verify its accuracy and to prevent the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. Critics suspect many legitimate voters were not allowed to vote in the 2000 presidential election because of inaccuracies in these lists. "The Division of Elections is hereby ordered to immediately open the suspected felons list for public inspection and permit the plaintiff and interveners to copy and photograph the list," Clark wrote in a summary judgment. State officials said they would not appeal the ruling. Department of State officials previously said anybody in the public could look at the list, but only political entities such as candidates or political parties could obtain a copy, and those who had the list could only use it for campaign purposes. After being denied a list, CNN filed suit and was joined by the First Amendment Foundation, ACLU and numerous Florida media outlets. The list contains the names of 47,000 felons who are registered to vote, but may not be eligible to have that right. Florida is among seven states where felons released from prison don't automatically have voting rights restored upon completion of sentence. They still must re-register to vote, according to state law. In the lawsuit, the state cited a 2001 law that protects the state's Central Voter Database from being copied. State lawmakers said the list should not be public because it would violate the state constitution's privacy clause. But Clark said that law was unconstitutional, and the Florida Legislature illegally passed the 2001 statute without showing any public benefit. "The court cannot and will not speculate what the public necessity might be, nor can the court construe or imply the public necessity from the language of the statute itself," Clark wrote. CNN attorney Gregg Thomas said the ruling would make the felon list available to anybody, but was unsure if the rest of the database would be public as well. Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the entire statute, which also protects voter registration information and other election-related materials, may be void because of the ruling. "We caution all those who view this information that this is a list of potential matches, not a final list," Hood said. "The Department of State has worked closely with the NAACP to develop a redundant and rigorous process to protect the rights of all eligible voters." Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said it was important the list be made available for verification, especially considering Florida's election history. "There's a primary election coming up in just two months in Florida, and of course, the general election in November," Neas said. "We want to help every voter in Florida cast a vote that counts this election year." George Bush won Florida's 25 electoral votes in 2000 by just 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore. That year, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private firm to purge felons from voting. Hundreds of voters claimed to have been wrongfully removed from the rolls, possibly altering the outcome of the election.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/12/felons/ Florida scraps list of suspected felons barred from voting Monday, July 12, 2004 Posted: 3:59 PM EDT (1959 GMT) (CNN) -- Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has decided to scrap a list that was intended to keep more than 47,000 suspected felons from voting in November. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed with the decision, his spokesman said Monday. "The list will not be used," said Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Bush, whose state proved key to his brother's victory four years ago. Hood decided over the weekend to dump the list, which was created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, after <h3>news stories pointed out that the list included only 61 Hispanic names, DiPietre said. The state's large Cuban population tends to vote Republican....</h3>

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/prisons3.html 8.27.04 Society and Community: Prisons in America Stats and Facts Some startling new statistics may bring the issue of America's prison population into the 2004 campaign. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has projected that if current trends continue, one out of every three African American men born in 2001 will go to prison at some point during their lifetime. In addition the Justice Policy Institute has just released a study which shows that prison spending has increased five times as fast as education spending in some battleground states. And, according to the study: <b>"Outside the swing states, states leaning Republican saw their incarceration rates increase at nearly twice the rate of Democrat-leaning states." In addition the Institute estimates, nearly 2 million voters are disenfranchised in swing states because they have felony records.</b> Find out more about Life After Prison on NOW. Prisons are big in the United States. There are more people behind bars literally, and proportionally, than any time in our history. We have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation. And, we keep building more prisons, in fact many locales lobby for new prisons as a tool of economic recovery. What are the actual numbers that put American prison populations in historical and international perspective? In 2001, nearly 6.6 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year end. That number represents 3.1% of all U.S. adult residents or one in every 32 adults. American Prisons: The Debate Between 1973 and 2000 the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled. The International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College, London now calculates the U.S. rate at 700 people per 100,000. (That number encompasses the most recently available federal, state and local prison population statistics.) There are now more than two million Americans behind bars. Add to that another four and a half million on probation or parole and three million ex-convicts...

Originally Posted by Ustwo My reply is telling in that I have no idea what hosts original point was, but I think it had something to do with the 2000 election. I fail to see a problem here, an issue here, or where he is going. Perhaps he is mad that Bush wanted to work with people who supported him rather than against him. He is also wrong because Bush did try to 'reach out' to the democrats after 2000, even letting Teddy write the Education bill, and he saw how far THAT got him, but thats all old news.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ions/kamen.htm Al Kamen is a reporter on the national news staff of The Washington Post. <b>He writes the "In the Loop" column four times a week.</b> He joined The Post in 1980 and has covered local and federal courts, the Supreme Court and the state department. Kamen assisted Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein in writing "The Final Days," and Robert Woodward and Scott Armstrong in writing "The Brethren."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...1074-2005Jan23 <b>In The Loop Miami 'Riot' Squad: Where Are They Now?</b> By Al Kamen Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A13 As we begin the second Bush administration, let's take a moment to reflect upon one of the most historic episodes of the 2000 battle for the White House -- the now-legendary "Brooks Brothers Riot" at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters. <b>This was when dozens of "local protesters," actually mostly Republican House aides from Washington</b>, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and "Let us in!" when the local election board tried to move the re-counting from an open conference room to a smaller space With help from their GOP colleagues and others, we identified some of these Republican heroes of yore in a photo of the event. Some of those pictured have gone on to other things, including stints at the White House. For example, <b>Matt Schlapp, No. 6</b>, a former House aide and then a Bush campaign aide, has risen to be White House political director. <b>Garry Malphrus, No. 2 in the photo</b>, a former staff director of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, is now deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. And <b>Rory Cooper, No. 3</b>, who was at the National Republican Congressional Committee, later worked at the White House Homeland Security Council and was seen last week working for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. <CENTER><CENTER><img src="http://www.washintonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/intheloop_012405.jpg"> Here's what some of the others went on to do: <b>No. 1. Tom Pyle</b>, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries. <b>No. 7. Roger Morse</b>, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. "I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight," he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview. <b>No. 8. Duane Gibson</b>, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant. <b>No. 9. Chuck Royal</b> was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member. <b>No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier</b>, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group. (<b>We couldn't find No. 4, Kevin Smith</b>, a former GOP House aide who later worked with Voter.com, or No. 5, Steven Brophy, a former GOP Senate aide and then at consulting firm KPMG. If you know what they are doing these days, please e-mail shackelford@washpost.comso we can update our records.) <b>Sources say the "rioters" proudly note their participation on résumés and in interviews.</b> But while the original hardy band of demonstrators numbered barely a couple of dozen, the numbers apparently have grown with the legend.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:...s&ct=clnk&cd=3Posted Posted on Sat, Jul. 13, 2002 Bush gave plum jobs to supporters who worked recount, paper reports By CAROL ROSENBERG Knight Ridder Newspapers ......Bolton, the U.S. diplomat now responsible for arms control issues, said no payoff was promised for his decision to join the post-election fray. He had worked for the first Bush administration and, <h3>finding himself in South Korea on election night, contacted former Secretary of State James Baker in Texas to see how he might lend a hand. The reply: Go to Florida.</h3> ``I think, frankly, most of the people who did it just went down there by instinct,'' Bolton said. He said he received no legal fees, although the campaign paid his hotel bills and other expenses. Bolton was part of the legal team and a ballot observer in Palm Beach County. Then he rushed to Tallahassee as the recount battle reached higher courts. It was his role, on a Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, to <b>burst into a library where workers were recounting Miami-Dade ballots to relay news of the U.S. Supreme Court's stay in the on-again, off-again presidential recount. ``I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count,'' he was quoted as saying in news reports at the time....</b>

Originally Posted by Ustwo All I seem to recall are the Union members the democrats bussed in to 'protest' the inital vote. I fail to see a point other than you didn't like the outcome of the 2000 election. Next time perhaps the democrats won't try SELECTIVE recounts in democrat controlled areas and instead push for the statewide one.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...,89419,00.html .........<b>It looks like Gore is the one doing the disputing and Bush is doing the Gary Cooper thing of being strong and silent. In fact, of course, it was Bush who first went to the federal courts and first to the U.S. Supreme Court.</b> For Bush, who has made a mantra of local control, this is like trashing the big bully behind his back and then enlisting his services when you get in a brawl. You'll notice that the Bush campaign called the Florida Supreme Court an "instrument of the Democratic party" when it agreed to let the manual count continue, but were silent about the court's bias when it rejected Gore's emergency appeal to force Miami-Dade to resume its recount. ..... ......Right now, there is a vague presumption among Americans that Gore is the down-and-dirty cheater and Bush is the honest cheater. <h3>Bush is using tactics we all are used to, sabre-rattling press conferences and thuggish spokespeople and vague threats to do something really nasty.......</h3>

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/po...5ab0cd&ei=5070 November 27, 2000 The Demonstrators: Labor Unions Take to Florida Streets, Rallying for Gore By SOMINI SENGUPTA TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Nov. 26 � Finally, Al Gore's friends showed up. <b>After ceding the rallying and protesting to the Republicans for more than two weeks, the vice president's organized labor base gathered its troops today</b>, filling the State Capitol plaza here with more than 200 cheering, chanting demonstrators, signaling a shift in the public relations battle over the presidential race. <h3>Since the recounting began, Republicans have dominated the rallies on the streets, with their placards and slogans. And their protests, occasionally unruly, as in Miami last week, have been important to the Republican strategy of portraying the manual recounts as scenes of confusion and chaos.</h3> The Democrats had chosen to portray the Florida recounts as calm, methodical civic rituals. That changed today, as the recounts wound down for the 5 p.m. deadline. Organized labor turned out its street soldiers for simultaneous protests this afternoon in Miami, West Palm Beach and here, in the Capitol plaza. Marilyn P. Lenard, Florida's A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, who called the protests, said she had grown weary of turning on the television and seeing only all those "Sore-Loserman" placards. Sure, she said, she had considered something dignified and quiet, like the silent vigil her group had organized on the night of the Florida Supreme Court's decision last week. But that just got drowned out by the noisemakers from the other side.....

http://www.geocities.com/floridavotecount/rallies.html SPONTANEOUS RALLIES ARE CAREFULLY STAGED FROM UNIONS TO PARTIES TO JESSE JACKSON, PROTESTS ON CAMERA GOT LOTS OF BACKSTAGE POLISH. THE ORLANDO SENTINEL December 6, 2000 Author: Doris Bloodsworth of The Sentinel Staff....

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=44 it was discovered by the the Sarasota Herald Tribune that the 2004 purge list HAD ALMOST NO HISPANIC NAMES ON IT, due to a "database error"), and the way the 2000 Florida 65,000 names voter purge list smelled....since only seven states do not automatically restore voting rights to felons who complete their sentences, and the accuracy of that list was called into question, and now because Florida recently was found to have neglected to give a notice, required by law, to 125,000 inmates, since at least 1993, informing them at the time of their release, how to apply to the governor for clemency in order to restore their right to vote. <b>Bush "won Florida" by 537 votes...</b> http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/11/St...s_felon_.shtml http://www.whoseflorida.com/misc_pag...ht_to_vote.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/wa...9c7d0&ei=5088& By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA Published: April 12, 2007 Correction Appended WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews. Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year. Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show. In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.....