Write To Your Media and Legislators And Complain About How Democrats Tamper With Handcounts
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20001113_xex_how_democrat.sht
ml
By Jon Dougherty and David Kupelian
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
The manual vote recounts being insisted on by Democratic operatives in
Palm
Beach County, Fla., have been used for over 20 years to steal elections
from
Republicans, claim several GOP veterans of hand-recount
election-upsets.
According to Bob Haueter, chief of staff to the California Assembly
Republican Caucus, and an expert on manual recounts, a Democrat lawyer
intimately involved in "stealing" elections from Republicans through
hand
recounts admitted to the process and even shared the techniques
involved.
After Tuesday's vote and an automatic recount still left GOP nominee
George
W. Bush ahead by a slim 288-vote margin, Palm Beach elections officials
decided that a manual recount of all 425,000 votes should be
undertaken.
"What's happening in Florida is exactly the game plan laid out to me by
an
attorney who represented the Democrats in a recount in California where
they
stole a seat from us," former California Assemblyman Pat Nolan told
WorldNetDaily.
A staunch conservative legislator, Nolan served in the California
Assembly
from 1978 until 1994, when he was convicted, along with several other
lawmakers, in a federal corruption probe. After spending a little over
two
years in federal prison, he emerged to become president of Justice
Fellowship, the public policy arm of Watergate figure Chuck Colson's
Prison
Fellowship Ministries. For the past four years, Nolan has worked with
Colson -- another fallen-but-reformed public figure -- to reform the
criminal justice system.
Regarding the 1980 California Assembly race between Republican Adrian
Fondse
and Democrat Pat Johnston, Nolan recalled that the Republican won "by
about
54 votes or so."
But after the election, Democrats "brought in their junkyard dog
lawyers
from around the country," said Nolan, "and basically harassed the local
registrar -- got in their faces and demanded to handle ballots" --
which
were of the same type now in dispute in Palm Beach.
The same issue of "hanging chads -- the little squares in the punch
cards
--
was also an issue in Stockton," says Nolan. The Democrats' strategy, he
says, was to handle them as often as possible -- perhaps bending,
crinkling
or otherwise altering them -- so that additional chads become
displaced,
thereby disqualifying the ballot.
The result? In the Stockton election, Nolan said Democrats were
successful
in getting the vote count reversed from a plus-54 win by Republicans to
a
minus-17 loss.
"I vowed that I'd never let that happen again," Nolan said. "So I asked
my
staff to track down the lawyer that headed up the team for the
Democrats."
Haueter was, at that time, chief of staff for Nolan, and it was he who
first
contacted attorney Tim Downs, who readily admitted the Democratic
strategy
and even described the tactics to Nolan.
"When I first called him and explained to him who I was and why I was
calling, he chuckled and said, 'I wondered when you guys would get
around
to
calling me,'" Haueter said, adding that Downs told him -- "'I've taken
several seats from you across the United States.'"
"Downs told me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, 'You get me within 100 votes
and I
can steal any election,'" Haueter told WorldNetDaily.
Nolan subsequently hired Downs and "brought him out to train my staff
in
the
techniques they [Democrats] were using" so they could protect
themselves
against future election-fraud victimization, Nolan said.
Nolan and Haueter said Downs described three basic tactics:
"The first rule is, you keep counting until you're ahead. And if that
doesn't put you ahead, you recount, re-recount -- you keep counting
until
you're ahead. If you're behind, then you've got nothing to lose."
Second, Nolan said, "the more times those ballots are handled, the more
chance there is that chads will break loose" and hence disqualify the
ballot.
Third, he said, "the minute you're ahead, you stop and declare yourself
the
victor."
"After that, you don't want the ballots handled any more," Nolan said,
"because some of the chads for your candidate might break loose. While
you're behind it doesn't matter, but if you're ahead and more break off
or
become disqualified for your candidate, that's a bad thing."
A favorite tactic, said Nolan, is to ask election officials for
ballots,
"allegedly so they can look at it more closely." When operatives do,
often
they will bend or crinkle ballots covertly in an effort to break
another
chad loose and thus have the ballot thrown out.
"This whole process sounds like exactly what is going on in Florida,"
Nolan
said. "And the more times those ballots are handled, the more chances
are
you'll break some of them [chads] loose."
Nolan referred to Fox News' Tony Snow's weekend interview with Bush
campaign
representative and former Secretary of State James Baker, in which he
asked
Baker why -- after each time election officials run ballots through
mechanical vote-tally machines -- there have been more votes counted or
taken away from both candidates.
"Baker didn't have an answer to that," Nolan said. "But the answer is,
because they've handled those ballots more times, breaking loose more
of
those chads" -- those that perhaps weren't completely punched through.
"The tactics fit what [Downs] told me back in 1982 and 1983," Nolan
said,
who added that he didn't know who Downs may have worked with using
these
tactics recently.
WorldNetDaily attempted to reach Downs by phone on Sunday, but was
unsuccessful.
Following a mechanical recount over the weekend, Palm Beach election
officials awarded an additional 36 votes to Gore, while Bush lost
three.
"A hand count of four selected precincts turned up enough additional
votes
for Gore to prompt the Democratic majority on the county election
commission
to order the hand recount in all 531 precincts," the Associated Press
reported.
Republicans, news accounts said, lodged "strenuous protests" and
pledged
to
file a lawsuit halting yet another recount of Palm Beach votes. That
hearing
is scheduled for today.
Reports said nearly 30,000 ballots have already been rejected in Palm
Beach
County because they had two or more holes punched for president, or
because
computers could not detect any holes at all. Ballots with two votes
also
are
rejected in hand counts.
Corroborating Haueter's and Nolan's account is a parallel story by Los
Angeles-area political strategist Arnold Steinberg. In a National
Review.com
piece titled "Beware of Hanging Chads," Steinberg asks, "Do you know
what
two words will determine the Presidential election?" The chilling
answer,
he
said: "Hanging chads."
Steinberg, describing a 1980 congressional race between long-time
incumbent,
Democrat James C. Corman, and Steinberg's client, Republican challenger
Bobbi Fiedler, recalls how after Fiedler's upset victory -- by a slim
margin -- over the heavily favored Corman, the Democrats called for a
hand
recount.
"Democratic Party lawyers and recount specialists descended on the
county
registrar's office," says Steinberg. "Each recount station had a
government
employee to do the counting, flanked by one Democratic and one
Republican
observer.
"The Democrats' agenda was, of course, to change the election result,
and
they went about it systematically. At their urging, the recounting
began
with Corman's strongest precincts, Fiedler's weakest. Their intention
was
to
recount ballots in those areas until the election outcome was reversed,
and
then stop the recount. Similarly, today in Florida, the Gore people are
demanding hand recounts in their favored counties, where they would be
most
likely to gain."
Just as important as the order in which the precincts are recounted,
however, is outright ballot tampering, says Steinberg.
"Their hired guns tried lots of tricks on Corman's behalf, but what I
remember most was the hanging chads. A chad is the perforated square
(or
circle) on the ballot that a voter depresses with a pin to indicate his
preferred candidate. The chad hangs from the ballot if the voter didn't
fully depress it -- for instance, if an older person did not press
firmly
enough. This matters because voter machines usually are not able to
tabulate
cards with hanging chads.
"It often comes down to interpreting the voter's intention. Does the
chad
hang 'strongly' -- i.e, detached only a little -- meaning that it is a
mistake that should not be counted? Or does it hang loosely -- i.e.,
mostly
detached -- as an intended vote would be?
"What my lawyers soon discovered was that the opposition would eyeball
a
disputed ballot before picking it up to officially inspect it. If the
hanging chad indicated a vote for Fiedler, the lawyer for the other
side
picked up the ballot ever so carefully, so he could argue that the
voter
really never intended to vote for Fiedler. If the hanging chad was a
Corman
vote, the lawyer picked up the ballot quite vigorously, so that the
chad
soon was no longer hanging.
"'You see,' their guy would declare, 'that voter obviously intended to
vote
for Corman.'"
Luckily, says Steinberg, "it didn't take long to figure out all the
opposition's tricks. I added more lawyers, more observers, and the bad
guys
eventually caved. Bobbi Fiedler's victory was preserved. But it was a
nasty
business."
Echoing Nolan's and Haueter's experience with manual-vote recounts,
Steinberg says, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
# # #
Jon Dougherty is a staff reporter and David Kupelian is managing editor
of
WorldNetDaily.com.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20001113_xex_how_democrat.sht
ml
By Jon Dougherty and David Kupelian
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
The manual vote recounts being insisted on by Democratic operatives in
Palm
Beach County, Fla., have been used for over 20 years to steal elections
from
Republicans, claim several GOP veterans of hand-recount
election-upsets.
According to Bob Haueter, chief of staff to the California Assembly
Republican Caucus, and an expert on manual recounts, a Democrat lawyer
intimately involved in "stealing" elections from Republicans through
hand
recounts admitted to the process and even shared the techniques
involved.
After Tuesday's vote and an automatic recount still left GOP nominee
George
W. Bush ahead by a slim 288-vote margin, Palm Beach elections officials
decided that a manual recount of all 425,000 votes should be
undertaken.
"What's happening in Florida is exactly the game plan laid out to me by
an
attorney who represented the Democrats in a recount in California where
they
stole a seat from us," former California Assemblyman Pat Nolan told
WorldNetDaily.
A staunch conservative legislator, Nolan served in the California
Assembly
from 1978 until 1994, when he was convicted, along with several other
lawmakers, in a federal corruption probe. After spending a little over
two
years in federal prison, he emerged to become president of Justice
Fellowship, the public policy arm of Watergate figure Chuck Colson's
Prison
Fellowship Ministries. For the past four years, Nolan has worked with
Colson -- another fallen-but-reformed public figure -- to reform the
criminal justice system.
Regarding the 1980 California Assembly race between Republican Adrian
Fondse
and Democrat Pat Johnston, Nolan recalled that the Republican won "by
about
54 votes or so."
But after the election, Democrats "brought in their junkyard dog
lawyers
from around the country," said Nolan, "and basically harassed the local
registrar -- got in their faces and demanded to handle ballots" --
which
were of the same type now in dispute in Palm Beach.
The same issue of "hanging chads -- the little squares in the punch
cards
--
was also an issue in Stockton," says Nolan. The Democrats' strategy, he
says, was to handle them as often as possible -- perhaps bending,
crinkling
or otherwise altering them -- so that additional chads become
displaced,
thereby disqualifying the ballot.
The result? In the Stockton election, Nolan said Democrats were
successful
in getting the vote count reversed from a plus-54 win by Republicans to
a
minus-17 loss.
"I vowed that I'd never let that happen again," Nolan said. "So I asked
my
staff to track down the lawyer that headed up the team for the
Democrats."
Haueter was, at that time, chief of staff for Nolan, and it was he who
first
contacted attorney Tim Downs, who readily admitted the Democratic
strategy
and even described the tactics to Nolan.
"When I first called him and explained to him who I was and why I was
calling, he chuckled and said, 'I wondered when you guys would get
around
to
calling me,'" Haueter said, adding that Downs told him -- "'I've taken
several seats from you across the United States.'"
"Downs told me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, 'You get me within 100 votes
and I
can steal any election,'" Haueter told WorldNetDaily.
Nolan subsequently hired Downs and "brought him out to train my staff
in
the
techniques they [Democrats] were using" so they could protect
themselves
against future election-fraud victimization, Nolan said.
Nolan and Haueter said Downs described three basic tactics:
"The first rule is, you keep counting until you're ahead. And if that
doesn't put you ahead, you recount, re-recount -- you keep counting
until
you're ahead. If you're behind, then you've got nothing to lose."
Second, Nolan said, "the more times those ballots are handled, the more
chance there is that chads will break loose" and hence disqualify the
ballot.
Third, he said, "the minute you're ahead, you stop and declare yourself
the
victor."
"After that, you don't want the ballots handled any more," Nolan said,
"because some of the chads for your candidate might break loose. While
you're behind it doesn't matter, but if you're ahead and more break off
or
become disqualified for your candidate, that's a bad thing."
A favorite tactic, said Nolan, is to ask election officials for
ballots,
"allegedly so they can look at it more closely." When operatives do,
often
they will bend or crinkle ballots covertly in an effort to break
another
chad loose and thus have the ballot thrown out.
"This whole process sounds like exactly what is going on in Florida,"
Nolan
said. "And the more times those ballots are handled, the more chances
are
you'll break some of them [chads] loose."
Nolan referred to Fox News' Tony Snow's weekend interview with Bush
campaign
representative and former Secretary of State James Baker, in which he
asked
Baker why -- after each time election officials run ballots through
mechanical vote-tally machines -- there have been more votes counted or
taken away from both candidates.
"Baker didn't have an answer to that," Nolan said. "But the answer is,
because they've handled those ballots more times, breaking loose more
of
those chads" -- those that perhaps weren't completely punched through.
"The tactics fit what [Downs] told me back in 1982 and 1983," Nolan
said,
who added that he didn't know who Downs may have worked with using
these
tactics recently.
WorldNetDaily attempted to reach Downs by phone on Sunday, but was
unsuccessful.
Following a mechanical recount over the weekend, Palm Beach election
officials awarded an additional 36 votes to Gore, while Bush lost
three.
"A hand count of four selected precincts turned up enough additional
votes
for Gore to prompt the Democratic majority on the county election
commission
to order the hand recount in all 531 precincts," the Associated Press
reported.
Republicans, news accounts said, lodged "strenuous protests" and
pledged
to
file a lawsuit halting yet another recount of Palm Beach votes. That
hearing
is scheduled for today.
Reports said nearly 30,000 ballots have already been rejected in Palm
Beach
County because they had two or more holes punched for president, or
because
computers could not detect any holes at all. Ballots with two votes
also
are
rejected in hand counts.
Corroborating Haueter's and Nolan's account is a parallel story by Los
Angeles-area political strategist Arnold Steinberg. In a National
Review.com
piece titled "Beware of Hanging Chads," Steinberg asks, "Do you know
what
two words will determine the Presidential election?" The chilling
answer,
he
said: "Hanging chads."
Steinberg, describing a 1980 congressional race between long-time
incumbent,
Democrat James C. Corman, and Steinberg's client, Republican challenger
Bobbi Fiedler, recalls how after Fiedler's upset victory -- by a slim
margin -- over the heavily favored Corman, the Democrats called for a
hand
recount.
"Democratic Party lawyers and recount specialists descended on the
county
registrar's office," says Steinberg. "Each recount station had a
government
employee to do the counting, flanked by one Democratic and one
Republican
observer.
"The Democrats' agenda was, of course, to change the election result,
and
they went about it systematically. At their urging, the recounting
began
with Corman's strongest precincts, Fiedler's weakest. Their intention
was
to
recount ballots in those areas until the election outcome was reversed,
and
then stop the recount. Similarly, today in Florida, the Gore people are
demanding hand recounts in their favored counties, where they would be
most
likely to gain."
Just as important as the order in which the precincts are recounted,
however, is outright ballot tampering, says Steinberg.
"Their hired guns tried lots of tricks on Corman's behalf, but what I
remember most was the hanging chads. A chad is the perforated square
(or
circle) on the ballot that a voter depresses with a pin to indicate his
preferred candidate. The chad hangs from the ballot if the voter didn't
fully depress it -- for instance, if an older person did not press
firmly
enough. This matters because voter machines usually are not able to
tabulate
cards with hanging chads.
"It often comes down to interpreting the voter's intention. Does the
chad
hang 'strongly' -- i.e, detached only a little -- meaning that it is a
mistake that should not be counted? Or does it hang loosely -- i.e.,
mostly
detached -- as an intended vote would be?
"What my lawyers soon discovered was that the opposition would eyeball
a
disputed ballot before picking it up to officially inspect it. If the
hanging chad indicated a vote for Fiedler, the lawyer for the other
side
picked up the ballot ever so carefully, so he could argue that the
voter
really never intended to vote for Fiedler. If the hanging chad was a
Corman
vote, the lawyer picked up the ballot quite vigorously, so that the
chad
soon was no longer hanging.
"'You see,' their guy would declare, 'that voter obviously intended to
vote
for Corman.'"
Luckily, says Steinberg, "it didn't take long to figure out all the
opposition's tricks. I added more lawyers, more observers, and the bad
guys
eventually caved. Bobbi Fiedler's victory was preserved. But it was a
nasty
business."
Echoing Nolan's and Haueter's experience with manual-vote recounts,
Steinberg says, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
# # #
Jon Dougherty is a staff reporter and David Kupelian is managing editor
of
WorldNetDaily.com.