DAVID PODVIN
October 2, 2001
Now, if the prison guards will just allow my fans to have access to a computer, then we're all set.
Archives : David Podvin 5/01 - 8/01
According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore’s victory from the American people.
The source is a former media executive who previously revealed information that the Bush administration was lying about Clinton staffers having vandalized the White House. That information led me to accuse Karl Rove of manufacturing the “crime”. My accusation appeared in an article that was posted by Buzzflash.com on January 28, 2001, and it was confirmed by a General Accounting Office investigative report several months later.
Having previously established credibility as a well-informed and accurate conduit of information, the executive now claims the Consortium is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because Gore was the indisputable winner.
Originally, the Consortium believed that there were three potential outcomes of the recount, any of which would have been acceptable to the participating news conglomerates. The first was a Bush win, which would have resolved the issue. The second was a dead heat/inconclusive result, which would have maintained the status quo. The third was a narrow Gore victory, which would have given die hard Democrats a debate point, but would have simply been another photo finish recount that most Americans would have disregarded as being currently irrelevant.
The Consortium was stunned to discover that the recount revealed Gore won a clear victory. Even after casting aside the controversial butterfly ballots and discarding ballots that were “iffy”, Gore decisively won the recount. While the precise numbers are still unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was involved in the project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to create “major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out”.
Gore’s victory was large enough that it became apparent he would win prior to the Consortium recount being fully completed. And contrary to a recent claim by the New York Times, the terrorism of September 11 was not the crucial factor that determined whether to release the results to the American people. Prior to that time, the de facto majority shareholders in the publicly traded New York Times Company reportedly intervened on the side of quashing the recount results and convinced the other participants to shelve the story. The executive claims that the most important decisions at the Times are made by the influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of a majority of stock. These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on a majority of the Consortium.
The story of Gore’s victory has been spiked at the highest levels of the media conglomerates that are involved, rather than at the cosmetic steering committee level of the recount project. The Consortium reportedly has received intense pressure from members of the Bush inner circle both in and out of government, but has not been lobbied by representatives of Gore.
The huge disparity between the original recount and the Consortium recount stems from the G.O.P. tactics in Florida. Their strategy was to aggressively contest every pro-Gore ballot, even the obviously valid ones. The Republicans then accused the vote counters of being biased because most of the challenges were resolved in favor of Gore. By using this approach, the Bush partisans successfully intimidated the counters into bending over backwards to show “fairness”, resulting in thousands of legitimate Gore votes being disqualified or relegated to a pile of disputed ballots.
“It was the old baseball manager’s trick of crying about every call in order to pressure the umpire to give you more than your fair share,” said the executive. “And it worked in Florida. However, in the relative calm of the Consortium recount - absent the pressure tactics - the Bush total remained basically consistent with the original count, while the Gore total shot way up.”
As for what will happen next, the executive said, “Once the dominant pro-Gore trend became apparent, the Consortium was never going to release the results; the pressure from the big money boys was too great. Terrorism just provided a better excuse for withholding the information than the ‘technical difficulties’ stalling tactic that was otherwise going to be used. The Consortium is determined to make sure that the original results of their recount will never see the light of day.”
I urge you to pass this article on to EVERYONE YOU KNOW! Send me a message if you don’t know how to do that, and I’ll send you a message you can forward. — Caro
CHARLES LAURENCE
October 22, 2001
THE most detailed analysis yet of the contested Florida votes from last year's presidential election - with the potential to question President Bush's legitimacy - is being withheld by the news organisations that commissioned it.
Results of the inspection of more than 170,000 votes rejected as unreadable in the "hanging chad" chaos of last November's vote count were ready at the end of August.
The study was commissioned early this year by a consortium including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times, the nation's most powerful newspapers, and the broadcaster CNN.
It was regarded as a means of supplying final answers to the nagging questions over President Bush's razor-thin victory margin. The cost was more than £700,000.
Now, however, spokesmen for the consortium say that they decided to "postpone" the story of the analysis by the National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) at the University of Chicago for lack of resources and lack of interest in the face of the enormous story of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent "war on terrorism".
Newspapers were saying last week that the final phase of the analysis, the actual counting of the 170,000 votes, had been "postponed" but would become known at an appropriate time.
America's liberal newspaper establishment originally set up the commission in the belief that it would discover that Al Gore was the winner of the Florida count.
Their hope for a Gore victory appears to have been sacrificed on the altar of patriotism and a perception that America needs to be led into war by a strong president.
"Our belief is that the priorities of the country have changed, and our priorities have changed," said Steven Goldstein, the vice-president of corporate communications at Dow Jones and Co, the owners of the Wall Street Journal.
Catherine Mathis, a spokesman for the New York Times, said : "The consortium agreed that because of the war, because of our lack of resources, we were postponing the vote-count investigation. But this is not final. The intention is to go forward."
However David Podvin, an investigative journalist who runs an independent web page, Make Them Accountable, said he had been tipped off that the consortium was covering up the results.
He refused to disclose his source other than to describe him as a former media executive whom he knew "as an accurate conduit of information" and who claimed that the consortium "is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because Gore was the indisputable winner".
He also claims that a New York Times journalist who was involved in the recount project had told "a former companion" that the Gore victory margin was big enough to create "major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out".
He believes that the inspection, carried out over months by a team from NORC, proves that Mr Gore won Florida and, therefore, the election.
That theory, however, is countered by the NORC staff who say that they designed the inspection programme so that no one has yet counted the votes and no outcome could be known.
Dr.John Mason, a professor of political science at William Paterson University, in New Jersey said : "The goosiness, the sensitivity, that the press which organised this analysis is showing to publishing the results and the persistence of questions about the Florida ballots raise questions. There is a sensitivity over the legitimacy of this president."
Staff at NORC have been puzzled by the idea that the media would lack the resources because, according to them, they have computer programs already designed and fitted for the final count.
Julie Antelman of NORC said : "They are all ready to go, and could have the count and the result within a working week."
She added : "We very carefully kept our distance from the political implications of whatever the result may be. We do not know the outcome, and do not want to.
"Our job was to prepare the raw data which goes into the counting programs: we are simply waiting for the order to deliver this data to the consortium, which we expected within the first two weeks of September."
NORC analysts studied each of the 170,000 votes which were discarded because they were considered spoiled or simply unreadable. Each ballot paper has now been analysed and recorded to the ballot box and constituency where it was cast.
French and Canadian newspapers suggest that the black-out can only raise suspicions, and the issue is being increasingly aired on the internet.
Dr.Mason said : "It would be responsible to complete this study and produce the result, whatever it may be."
