"A newspaper review of Florida's ''undervote'' ballots concludes that President Bush would almost certainly have still won the state had the United States Supreme Court allowed a hand recount to be completed."
In April of 2001 Florida election officials gave actual ballots to: The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, The Wall Street Journals The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun-Sentinel for analysis.
In 2021 Democrats are fighting tooth and nail against every effort to audit any part of the 2020 election. It has gotten to the point an Arizona judge had to explain to the Democrat's lawyers the reason for ballots not being destroyed for 24 months was to allow audits.
So in 2001 it's ballots for the media but in 2021 giving them to to the State Senate of Arizona is a bridge too far?
Here is what was reported twenty years ago:
The Miami Herald and USA Today reported in Wednesday's papers that Mr. Bush would have expanded his 537-vote margin of victory to 1,665 votes if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead under the most inclusive standards, where even partial punches and dimples were counted as votes.
The results bucked the expectations of both the Democratic and Republican teams during the Florida recount contest, finding that the more inclusive standards sought by Mr. Gore would have helped Mr. Bush. And the strictest standard sought by Republicans -- that only clean ballot punches be counted -- would have given Mr. Gore victory by three votes. Both newspapers said that was too close to withstand the possibility of errors.
"Many Americans were asking the question, What would the result be if the Florida Supreme Court's order to conduct hand recounts in all 67 counties were carried out?'' Martin Baron, the Herald's executive editor, said today. ''We felt it was our responsibility to answer questions that so many people had.''
The review of 61,195 undervotes did not examine the approximately 110,000 overvotes in the election. Both papers are planning a separate analysis of the overvote next month.
Gore supporters were quick to interpret the newspaper findings today as evidence that the vice president should have won Florida's 25 electoral votes and thus the presidency.
Doug Hattaway, Mr. Gore's national campaign spokesman and now a Democratic consultant in Boston, said: ''What this shows is that if you count the voter's intent, Gore wins. If you look for excuses not to count votes, Bush does better.''
A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, countered that the 537-vote victory was the correct tally.
''The law of the land are those rules that were in place on Election Day,'' Mr. Lisaius said. ''Using that standard, President Bush won on Election Day''
In 2001 newspapers were given ballots to physically review but audits in 2021 are only being allowed after long drawn-out legal battles should blow your mind. It blows mine!
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| Judge Robert Rosenberg looking at Chads |
Note: The audit in Georgia... County officials will NOT let auditors touch the actual ballots. The solution was a 200 DPI scan of the audits. A judge ruled that was not good enough and ordered the ballots rescanned at 600 DPI. My question... Isn't it obvious the actual ballots should be turned over for review. I seriously doubt the laws, rules, guidance, etc... on audits was written so recently to incorporate the possibility of scanning millions of ballots. Why isn't this itself not a story?
