December 15, 2001—In its ongoing effort to aid and abet George W. Bush's illegal occupation of the White House, the corporate-owned, pro-Bush media sunk to a new low in their desperation to hide the truth that Al Gore got the most votes in Florida and clearly won the 2000 presidential election.
In its much ballyhooed count of the undervoted Florida ballots, the media consortium that hired the respected National Opinion Research Council (NORC) to inspect some 170,000 ballots promised to prove once and for all who won Florida and thereby the 2000 presidential election. The problem was that the media consortium didn't like the results of what NORC found. And even when the consortium applied the rules each of the 67 counties said they would have used in determining the intent of the voters, the result was inescapable: Al Gore won.
The way the media consortium hid this truth was to distort the Florida Supreme Court's ruling. The media consortium didn't include in its recount a several thousand legal undervotes for Al Gore in Broward and Palm Beach counties that the Bush campaign had illegally blocked the canvassing boards in these counties from tallying. When these legal Gore votes are added to the vote totals, Gore wins under all scenarios, including in the counties where Gore had requested manual recounts.
What the media consortium failed to report was what the Florida Supreme Court's ruling actually said. The Florida high court's ruling clearly called for "the counting of all uncounted votes where the intent of the voter is clear."
With the revelation by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff of the existence of emails sent by Terry Lewis, the judge assigned to oversee the counting of the uncounted ballots, instructing the counties to also count the overvotes where the intent of the voters was clear, it's inescapable that Judge Lewis knew that the Florida Supreme Court wanted all uncounted votes where the intent of the voters was clear to be counted.
The truth is, there are no scenarios that George W. Bush would have won under had the U.S. Supreme Court not stopped the counting of legal votes in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court's ruling is what the law was in Florida in 2000 and the Florida Supreme Court was exercising its authority to settle a disputed election—authority that it had clearly been given by the Florida legislature. Despite this evidence, the media consortium clearly lied in order to invent a Bush victory and hide the truth that Al Gore won the election.
By stopping the manual recount, the U.S. Supreme clearly trampled Florida election law. In addition, five of the justices in fact set aside the votes of every American who cast ballots for president and substituted their own, thereby inventing an authority for themselves that the Constitution does not give them. Contrary to the media consortium's clearly false headlines, there's no question that the actions of these felonious five U.S. Supreme Court judges inescapably changed the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, not only in Florida but nationwide, and clearly trampled the will of the people who chose Al Gore to be their president.
The reason I was able to uncover this media lie is the fact that I lived in Florida for 16 years and I volunteered on numerous election campaigns when I lived there. Because of my experience, I know the disputed territory and Florida election law extremely well. It's absolutely crucial that we expose the lies of the media consortium and get the truth out to everyone that Al Gore won the 2000 election and that there's an illegal occupant in the White House.