Who knows how many determined voters opted to stay home after hearing the authoritative voice of Peter Jennings divine the will of the Florida electorate? However, the greater tragedy lies in the fact that two decades ago this type of debacle would have been unthinkable. In the halcyon days of yesteryear, chain-smoking political reporters fought tooth and nail over which outlet would provide the first (and most accurate) voting results.

Unfortunately, the consolidation of media into fewer and fewer entities has allowed efficiency-minded corporate managers to abdicate this crucial responsibility to Voter News Service (VNS); an organization funded by the major networks to provide early election results to television, cable, and radio. Although cutting costs was their initial goal, this disconcerting uniformity of coverage among allegedly competing news sources resulted in the mass coercion of Florida voters.

Cletus Nelson
cletus@disinfo.net
www.disinfo.com

Obviously, it's very suspicious, particularly the weird ballots with the Gore/Buchanan mix-up. This situation could be used to make an argument both pro and con regarding Votescam. It seems an incredibly complex scheme to be Votescam - would Al Gore really erroneously make a concession call and then retract it? That's quite a script. But the Jeb Bush factor, of course, makes one suspect a scam. (Does not the Bush family own stock in sugar companies, which are destroying the Florida Everglades?)

I also thought of the Florida Keys, notorious for being a brotherhood (Masonic, etc.) stronghold and purported site of mind-control implementation. Are not the keys even named thus because of esoteric "Keys" in Masonry? I don't know what all this means, except that the brotherhood certainly has a heavy presence in Florida. And then, of course, there's the other Mob(s).

In weaving all these threads together, I defer to my bud Kenn Thomas, researcher extraordinaire and deft expert at six degrees of separation.

Acharya S
acharya_s@yahoo.com
www.truthbeknown.com

Votegate 2000

Recently in the Ivory Coast and Peru, when there were dubious returns in elections, the American press covered the stories with a smug detachment. After all, what could you expect from ignorant Third Worlders in Africa and Latin America? Maybe it's time we looked in the mirror.

Al Gore is not a person I have much sympathy for, and his cronies seem clueless when they whine unconvincingly that Ralph Nader may have cost him the election. That Gore alienated so many voters says everything about Gore and what the Democratic Party stands for, and their attempt to scapegoat Nader and his supporters is a charge that won't stick.

Still, what is happening now in Florida appears as crooked as a swamp-land real estate deal in the Sunshine State. To begin with, the neo-fascist anti-Semite Pat Buchanan won 3,407 votes in Palm Beach, a liberal, Jewish county: he won only 786 in Broward County and 561 in Miami-Dade, two nearby counties that were much larger. 19,000 other votes were also disqualified due to double-punching, a mistake only made by 3,783 voters in the U.S. Senate race. With less than 1,800 votes separating Bush and Gore in the state, these are major voting issues.

The cause of these two suspicious facts was the design for the Palm Beach County ballot, a design ironically approved by a Democrat, County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore. GOP hacks have tried to use her approval as proof that this is a non-issue, but their denial is bogus: confusion in voting isn't a political issue, it's a violation of the basic right to have a say in the government which represents you. The facts clearly show thousands of people who were trying to vote for Gore were confused and may have voted for Buchanan (or both) instead. Though it likely was not intentional subterfuge, a fuck-up is a fuck-up, and this is a mistake that has national effects.

And I don't even have the space to discuss missing ballot boxes, voters turned away from polls due to lack of ballots, and the harassment of African-American voters by Florida Highway Patrol pigs.

I'm sure that James Shelby Downard is chuckling in his grave, knowing that a central figure in the Votegate 2000 scandal, Clay Roberts (director of the Florida Department of Elections), has a name which echoes both Clay Shaw (the only man ever formally charged with involvement in the JFK conspiracy) and Bruce Roberts (the writer of the Gemstone Files, an underground conspiracy classic which alleges a Mafia combine secretly runs our country).

Despite all this, I don't believe this is an example of the Collier description in Votescam. Votescam is too much of a bunch of powerful guys in a smoke-filled room deciding what the agenda of a country will be. This appears more like a crooked fiefdom trying to control its piece of the pie, only in this case, this is the slice that matters.

Which is why I don't think it's going to stand. Jeb Bush knows that what passes for democracy in Florida is now becoming a national issue, and he also knows it's neither helping his brother or his state avoid a black eye. Further, while Florida is a GOP state under Bush, the Federal courts (where presidential election lawsuits will be filed) are pure Klinton Kounty, as the Elian affair showed. Clay Roberts may claim that Everything is under control, but nobody's going to buy that. Keep in mind one thing: anything that makes people stop drinking beer and watching television and start asking questions freaks THE MAN out.

Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has provided a Solomon-like solution to the dilemma: have a run-off between Gore and Bush in Florida to decide all the suspicions around the voting. You don't need to build a temple in Jerusalem to know that's the least objectionable solution to the problem. Of course, this is not what the Republican Party wants done, as a run-off would eliminate the Nader factor and would likely have huge voter turnout, which works against them. Stay tuned.