Once again, Vice President Al Gore lied to America on Monday night on several counts. The first complete lie was that 10,000 votes were not counted in Miami. These ballots were undercounts, not marked for any candidate or not marked correctly. The Constitution ensures equal opportunity, not outcome. That all ballots were run through machines to be counted is an affirmation of the constitutional process. No one must vote. If these are counted by hand to define an intent, they are essentially being treated differently than every other vote in the country, against the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
These 10,000 undervotes in Miami-Dade County are not special. They join 14,000 in Tulsa, Okla., 17,100 in Indianapolis, 37,000 in New York, 18,000 in Santa Barbara, Calif. and more than 1 million absentee ballots nationwide that will not be counted because they will not change the outcome. Undervotes are a fact of life in elections. You must take responsibility to make sure your vote is actually going to be valid. I did, because my vote was valuable to me. Gore lied about wanting to count every vote. He doesn’t care about the tens of thousands of undervotes anywhere else than in Miami because he thinks those are the votes to get him power. What about the military vote, Gore?
Gore’s lawyers tried their best to disenfranchise the military, and succeeded in many cases. The military is 100 percent volunteer. Men and women put their lives on the line for our country and the man who would be the U.S. commander in chief doesn’t even want to count them. That’s despicable.
Another lie is that there was a violent rent-a-mob intimidating the Miami-Dade canvassing board. What happened was that a hand count of the “Anglo” precincts occurred and Gore got about 150 more votes. Then it was realized that the next precincts up were the Cuban immigrant precincts. The Cuban immigrants voted 85 percent for Bush. When they heard they would be disenfranchised by the Democratic machine behind closed doors, the Cuban immigrants were angry and demanded to have the vote counting done in public. They did not look like a mob. They looked like they came from their jobs at the offices down the street, dressed in their ties and dresses. I’d bet that if anyone was violent, he or she was part of the media. It is a lie that Gore would pick up votes in Miami-Dade County. Votes had been counted in all of the precincts that went for Gore - only about 10 percent of the total. Most estimates have Texas Gov. George W. Bush picking up about 300 votes from a total, objective, hand count of the county.
Most senior citizens even voted for Bush, according to new polls. Now Gore, who wants “every vote counted,” is trying to get 15,000 absentee ballots in Seminole County thrown out, simply because a Republican filled in voter numbers on ballot request forms. Wouldn’t filling in the numbers for absentee voters allow more “voices of the people” to be heard? The ballots weren’t touched, just paperwork. You need to watch what comes out of both of Gore’s faces.
Gore apparently wants the voices of convicted murderers and rapists to be heard. I haven’t heard him say anything about the 2,000 potentially illegal votes he got in Florida from convicted criminals. If Seminole County has to throw out 15,000 absentee ballots, the entire Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counts should be thrown out to get rid of the illegal criminal votes. Basically, Gore is a hypocritical, power-hungry liar. Many now doubt his mental health. He needs to stop spending so much on lawyers and get himself professional help for his megalomania. He also needs to stop ruining my country and go back to the tobacco farm.
Gregory Brown
chemistry and
computer science senior
