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                                                                        The Florida Recount

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    To my surprise, the movie began with a dramatic rehash of the 2000 elections concluding, "If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario Gore won the election." Having read extensively on this issue I could not believe what Moore was insinuating. The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post and the LA Times all did extensive journalistic investigations of this issue and all found that even if Gore had won the Supreme Court Case and a recount was undertaken in the specific Democratic voting counties (which is what Gore was asking for), Bush still would have won (34) (83). CNN has on it's "In-depth Special":

      A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president. (121)

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide. (121)

     Now, these papers certainly lean to the left in their reporting, as seen by their endorsements of Gore in that election (118), and you can bet your bottom dollar that the journalists investigating this were hoping to cash in on what would have been the biggest journalistic scoop of the century. In my research I did find that there were studies done where Gore would have won under certain extenuating circumstances, hence the infamous indented or hanging chad scenario etc... (34) 

    In fact, the argument can legitimately be made that more people in Florida went to the ballot box intending to vote for Gore. However, short of reading voters minds, an election has to have parameters around which it can be conducted. Bush clearly won the election. The film shows tearful, almost all black, members of the house of Representatives on the floor of the house chamber railing against the 'disenfranchisement' of minority voters, denouncing the election as illegitimate and berating the Senate for not backing them (apparently, in a procedural flux, a single Senator had to co-sign to allow these representatives to proceed in taking further action)... The fact that the entire Senate and almost the entire house of Representatives recognized the legitimacy of the election is apparently lost on Moore, who resorts to race baiting in his desperate attempt to make his point. I wonder what all these Democratic Senators present for this 'gala' film opening thought of this. Will any reporters ever ask them?

    Where does Moore get this stuff from? The myth was built up and continues to be propagated by the nations prominent Democrats. At the Democratic National convention more than nine in 10 delegates say George W. Bush did not win the 2000 election legitimately. (140)

       Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry had this to say in a speech before the AME:

Don’t tell us disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes is the best we can do.  This time, in 2004, not only will every vote count – we’re going to make sure that every vote is counted. (141),

        And he made similar remarks to the Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition:

Peter Kirsanow, an African American member (Bush appointee) on the U.S Commission on Civil Rights writes in the National Review:

The six-month investigation of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. The investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice also found no credible evidence that any Floridians were intentionally denied the right to vote in the 2000 election. (142)

In fact, Florida 2000 was not a startling anomaly. Ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2-3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent. (142)

The next time Senator Kerry tells a black audience about massive disenfranchisement, he might also inform them that in none of the offending counties was the county supervisor a Republican — and in 24 of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage — er, disenfranchisement — rates, the county supervisor was a Democrat. (In the remaining county, the supervisor was an independent.) (142)

Glitches occur in every election. Some glitches are massive, others not. This is not to downplay the problem, but to put it into perspective. For example, the number of ruined ballots in Chicago alone was 125,000, compared to 174,000 for the entire state of Florida. Several states experienced voting problems remarkably similar to those in Florida. But the closeness of the 2000 election in Florida, and the attendant electoral implications, placed the state at the fulcrum of a remarkable opportunity for racial demagoguery. (142)

        Kirsanow's statement that the commission found no intentional disenfranchisement is correct. His assertion that the commission found absolutely no evidence of systematic black disenfranchisement is misleading, because the commission split into two partisan camps. The sole Republican and an Independent on the commission wrote a minority dissenting opinion agreeing with Kirsanow and slamming the majority report:

 By basing its conclusion on allegations that seem driven by partisan interests and that lack factual basis, the majority on the Commission has needlessly fostered public distrust, alienation and manifest cynicism. The report implicitly labels the outcome of the 2000 election as illegitimate, thereby calling into question the most fundamental basis of American democracy. What appears to be partisan passions not only destroyed the credibility of the report itself, but informed the entire process that led up to the final draft. (144)

       But the 5 democrats and one independent detailed in their majority report the chaos of the election process and numerous inconsistencies and problems:

During Florida’s 2000 presidential election, restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors, and inadequate resources in the Florida election process denied countless Floridians of their right to vote. This disenfranchisement of Florida voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based on county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly 10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in the November 2000 election. (145)

      The minority report responded that this statistic "....is nothing more than a wild guesstimate."

Let us be clear: According to Dr. Lichtman’s data, some 180,000 Florida voters in the 2000 election, 2.9 percent of the total, turned in ballots that did not indicate a valid choice for a presidential candidate and thus could not be counted in that race. Six out of ten of these rejected ballots (59 percent) were “overvotes”—ballots that were disqualified because they indicated more than one choice for president. Another 35 percent were “undervotes,” ballots lacking any clear indication of which presidential candidate the voter preferred. (The other 6 percent were invalid for some other unspecified reason. Since they are ignored in the majority report, they will be here as well.) (144)

The problem is voter error, a term that astonishingly appears nowhere in the majority report. This is the central fact the majority report attempts to obscure. Some voters simply did not fill out their ballots according to the instructions. They failed to abide by the very elementary rule that you must vote for one and only one candidate for the office of president of the United States, and therefore their attempt to register their choice failed. Their ballots were rejected, and their votes did not count. (144)

     However, the term 'voter error' does appear in the majority report and it is 'astonishing' that the minority report would claim this. Their basic point that the majority report tends to minimize voter error is probably true. The minority report offers more facts not contained in the majority report:

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state’s only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate. (144)

Republican-appointed commissioners were never asked for any input in the composition of the witness list or in the drafting of the report itself. (144)

An outside expert with strong partisan affiliations was hired to do a statistical analysis without consultation with commissioners. (144)

We asked for a copy of the machine-readable data that Professor Lichtman used to run his correlations and regressions. That is, we wanted his computer runs, the data that went into them, and the regression output that was produced. The Commission told us that it did not exist—that the data as he organized it for purposes of analysis was literally unavailable. Professor Lichtman, who knows that as a matter of scholarly convention such data should be shared, also declined to provide it. (144)

     Who is Professor Lichtman? Brief searches yielded some interesting results. He wrote an endorsement on the back of Bill Clinton's recent book, "My Life" (147). During a later redistricting dispute in Florida he was called as the main Democratic witness:

The Legislature called two political scientists who challenged the logic and conclusions of the Democrats' top expert witness, Allan Lichtman, the history department chairman at American University. (146)

He was also called as a Democratic witness in Arizona:

But the Democrats had a statistics expert of their own. Professor Allan Lichtman, chair of the American University history department, cited studies that show the gap closing and called the year-old Commerce study obsolete. (149)

On January 14th 2004 he gave an interview with CNN:

"Now you have George Bush coming along. His dad tried to get into space and failed. His dad didn't have the vision thing. So here is George Bush. He's not going -- he's now going to prove he has the vision thing that his dad didn't have." (148)

"He he's even going to top Kennedy. He's not just going to the moon, he's going to Mars. The problem is he doesn't want to make it hard. Where is he going to pay for it? Is he going to ask his rich buddies out there in corporate America to pony up and pay what could be a multibillion dollar price tag?" (148)

"What's on the table now won't do it. We needed that $5 trillion surplus that's has gone a glimmering and suddenly become a $500 million deficit." (148)

The other thing is there are lots of other goals that might be more relevant to life here. What about cutting fossil fuels by 50 percent? Or doing something about global warming or fixing up the electric grid? All those questions are going to be asked by George's Bush's critics.  (148)

      Professor Lichtman has a blog on the History News Network, which is filled with Bush bashing. A recent entry states:

Today, a charge by John Kerry that the Bush administration was the most corrupt in American history would also engender widespread skepticism. Yet there is good reason to believe that such a charge is once again correct. (149)

       Besides his partisanship, Lichtman also has a personal conflict of interest - his academic reputation. On CNN:

WOODRUFF: Well, whatever the poll numbers are showing these days, history may be on Al Gore's side in his bid for the presidency. Allan Lichtman, dean of history at American University, some years ago, created a system for predicting the outcome of presidential elections. I asked Lichtman to explain the 13 keys to the presidency and what they bode for this year's presidential hopefuls. (150)

WOODRUFF: Now, and you're saying it's been accurate every time you've applied these keys since 1984? (150)

LICHTMAN: That's correct. Well ahead of time, it has predicted the outcome of every election from 1984 to 1996. (150)

WOODRUFF: But having said that, the pluses for Al Gore, you're saying, far out -- or outweigh the negatives? (150)

LICHTMAN: The pluses narrowly outweigh the negatives. That's why Gore is going to win. (150)

      In sum, from the brief research I have done it is certainly suspicious that: 1. The commission based it's majority report on hidden research which cannot be replicated (as the work has not been shared). 2. The 'expert witness' who did this research seems to be a partisan Democrat. If the majority commission was truly looking to come clean in their investigations, their actions make little sense. 3. The minority report neglects to mention that Dr. John Lott, their statistician, is clearly a staunch Republican as seen by his website and has been accused of biases in his studies of gun control. (151)

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Articles

Still Seeking a Fair Florida Vote Jimmy Carter weights in.

Florida Govenor Jeb Bush counters:

"There's this constant haranguing of nonsense, including by President Carter, which is a huge surprise to me because I have admired his compassionate actions in his post-presidency," Bush said.

"Without talking to a single person, without getting any information, he joins up with the MoveOn.org crowd and I cannot tell you how disappointed I am," Bush said.

The Florida Myth / spinning tales about 2000 to boost black turnout - A Wall Street Journal Editorial rebutal.

Let Jackson take Lesson from King - Enquirer columnist offers his opinion on Jesse Jackson trying to play Ohio in 2008 like the Democrats played Florida in 2004. President Bush won Ohio by around 140,000 votes. Like he did in Florida, Jesse is again charging disenfranchisement, fraud, conspiracy, and, of course, racism.

Update 10/29/04

    In a further effort to investigate the disparities between the Minority and Majority report statisticians I attempted to contact them. I was successful in both cases and appreciate their willingness to respond and discuss these issues. First, I emailed Dr. Lott:

hey Dr. Lott, I have been doing some research on the Moore movie and from there ended up doing some research on the Fl election. I was wondering if you could help shed some light on some things. well, instead of explaining it I can just give you the link to what i have written:
 
http://www.neoperspectives.com/farenheight_911.htm
 
skip the first few paragraphs till it gets to the election stuff. Specifically I was curious about who you did you research with, if you shared your results and your experience with Dr. Lichtman? Thanks, Travis Snyder

Dr. Lott responded:

Since 1993, I have indeed been registered as a Republican.  Prior to that I was a registered Democrat.  Lichtman worked with the Gore campaign during the 2000 election.  I have been, for the last 11 years, a registered Republican, but I have not worked as a paid person for any campaign.

I am not sure that I understand the question about who I did my research with.  I worked with the US Commission on Civil Rights and I was a statistics expert for USA Today in their recount of the Florida 2000 election.

I have shared my results with Dr. Lichtman.  I was never able to get any data from him when we did the research for the US Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Lichtman frequently writes articles at the History News Network. There is opportunities to comment on the articles (http://hnn.us/blogs/20.html)and I wrote him:

hello Dr. Lichtman,

I was doing a bit of research on the Florida election and I noticed that the dissenting commission report claimed:

"We asked for a copy of the machine-readable data that Professor Lichtman used to run his correlations and regressions. That is, we wanted his computer runs, the data that went into them, and the regression output that was produced. The Commission told us that it did not exist—that the data as he organized it for purposes of analysis was literally unavailable. Professor Lichtman, who knows that as a matter of scholarly convention such data should be shared, also declined to provide it."

I was wondering if you could clarify if this is correct, and if it is correct what the normal procedures for this are? Thanks! Travis

Professor Lichtman responded:

This is, of course, entirely untrue. If you looked carefully at the dissenting report you will find a statistical analysis they sponsored by John Lott (a.k.a. Mary Rosh) which used far more data than I had available at the time. All data I used was from published sources listed in the report the great bulk of my data was actually published with the report and accessible to everyone. This matter is a smokescreen created by the dissenters to disguise the fact that they cannot refute my finding that African-Americans in Florida had their ballots rejected as invalid at vastly higher rates than whites. If the rejection rate had been equal more than 50,000 additional African-Americans would have voted in the election. For additional documentation you can consult my article in the Jan. 2003 Journal of Legal Studies. These findings are now the overwhelming consensus among scholars and journalists who have examined the issue.

Here is what Professor Philip A. Klinker of Hamilton College concluded after studying all the evidence:

"The facts of what happened regarding racial disparities in spoiled ballots in the Florida 2002 presidential election were first established by Allan Lichtman for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in the spring of 2001. Since then, additional analyses, including that done by myself, including those with more detailed, precinct-level data have only reinforced Lichtman's earlier findings. The only exception to these results are the analyses conducted by John Lott, first for the dissenting commissioners for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and then in the Journal of Legal Studies. Nonetheless, Lott's findings beggar belief and have been thoroughly refuted by Lichtman in his accompanying Journal of Legal Studies article. Thus, on the matter of rejected ballots in Florida in 200, the case is closed and no amount of statistical legerdemain can reopen it."

    Professor Lichtman referred to 'Mary Rosh' because Dr. Lott used this pseudo name to praise his own work on the internet. Dr. Lott's work is published on the internet, but Professor Lichtman's publication in the Journal of Legal studies cannot be accessed without purchasing the journal. I skimmed the work of Dr. Lott, but since I didn't purchase the Legal Journal I have not been able to do any real comparative analysis. This doesn't seem like it should be a complicated process, with the relevant data these questions could easily be settled... I don't even know why one would need a statistician to do the work. It is hard to understand why a serious reporter could not go through this stuff and come to firm conclusions and set the record strait on this...

    Because we know someone is lying/spinning:

Dr. Lott: I have shared my results with Dr. Lichtman.  I was never able to get any data from him when we did the research for the US Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Lichtman: All data I used was from published sources listed in the report the great bulk of my data was actually published with the report and accessible to everyone.

Update 11/21/04

I have recently read some news stories that stated that voters have to travel farther in minority counties. Whether this is true or not, I think the fact that counties organize their own elections is a good thing. Centralized control increases the chance of fraud. Also, many of these problems that the minority commission found may correlated more highly with poverty then with race. I don't believe that this has been looked into.

Update 11/28/04 

I was unable to establish a secondary source backing up Dr. Lott's claim that Dr. Lichtman worked for the Gore campaign in 2000. 

Also, an alert reader has offered two articles critical of Dr. Lott that are worth posting.  1and 2

Update 11/29/04

Let Jackson take Lesson from King - Enquirer columnist offers his opinion on Jesse Jackson trying to play Ohio in 2008 like the Democrats played Florida in 2004. President Bush won Ohio by around 140,000 votes. Like he did in Florida, Jesse is again charging disenfranchisement, fraud, conspiracy, and, of course, racism.

Senators should object to Ohio vote - Jesse Jackson writes an editorial on Ohio...

Update 11/30/04

    The Civil Rights Commission continues it's partisanship. The Washington Post reports:

"In a 4 to 4 split, the commission was one vote shy of the support needed to adopt the 181-page report, which contends that 'President Bush has not defined a clear agenda nor made civil rights a priority.'"

    Also, Mary Frances Berry, the current Democratic chairwoman, has said that she will not step down when her term expires. This is not the first time the Commission has had term squabbles. Here is a brief report from (Conservative) Human Events.

Posted 12/8/05

80% of Military voted or Tried to

12/7/05 Washington Post For example, while 79 percent of those in the uniformed services participated in some way, 73 percent voted successfully. lol, pretty interesting story in the Washington Post. Not because of this news or the angle of this story, it's pretty fair, but the angle or the news of this story compared to past stories. What about that 6%? 

    Could you imagine a headline titled '80% of blacks voted or tried to'? Of course, this would not be the headline. The headline would scream 'Disenfranchisement' and 'Racism' and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the democratic party, and the mainstream press would go into conniptions over all the African Americans that tried to vote, but were unable to. This is the double standard of the media. Voter error cannot be 100% prevented!

    On a separate, but related note, this story from the Baltimore Sun, states:

    Alvicar said the Democratic candidates for Senate - which also include former congressman Kweisi Mfume, American University professor Allan Lichtman and Lise Van Susteren, a forensic psychologist - are bound to accept help from their party leaders.

    Attentive readers will remember that in my review of Fahrenheit 9/11, I explored in detail  The Florida Recount (corresponding with both the Democratic and Republican statisticians) and investigated the background of Dr. Lichtman, the official Democratic statistician who alleged that widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans occurred in the 2000 Florida Presidential Election. Now he may be running for the US Senate, as a Democrat. (Added to 'The Florida Recount').

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