There is nothing at all comical about ballot tampering and stealing of an election

Dear Editor:

There is nothing comical about the stealing of an election through fraud, no matter who makes the attempt, no matter what means the thief uses to obtain stolen goods in the form of an American Election. The potential thievery of our presidential election is bad enough, but snickering of television reporters and media pundits is absolutely sickening. Shown detached bits of paper, chad, wholly removed from perforations of punchout ballots of punch cards allegedly rejected by a machine, being hand recounted in buildings which were not polling places, these news gatherers laugh.

In Broward County, Florida, an Associated Press report:"sheriff’s deputies took custody of 78 tiny bits of paper after Republicans demanded that the scraps be held as evidence of potential ballot tampering. The paper, from the holes in punchout ballots, was placed by police in an envelope marked, Crime. Found Property."

On Saturday, Bush supporter Montana Governor Marc Racicot

recited new charges by Republican observers on the site that there have been additional chads found on the floor. Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC posed: We should be seeing videotapes of these allegations, the news media has been all over the place. The same skepticism is absent concerning the reasoning given for the hand-counts to be initiated in the first place, after automatic machine counts have shown no malfunctioning of machines.

We’ve heard the justification for full hand recount: "thousands of Broward voters, mostly senior citizens, didn't apply sufficient pressure on punch cards to record their vote." Robert Novak’s "Counting Gore In," describes: "heavily Democratic Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) last week soon became the focus for turning apparent defeat into glorious victory. Thousands of Broward voters, presumably Democratic senior citizens, did not apply enough pressure on the punch card to record the vote."

Yet, now, in the hands of hand-recount judges chads never before loosened from a ballot card by the sharp stylus on a punch-hole machine, just happenstance fall to the floor. 78 of them.

You’ve seen the video replayed every few minutes on all major TV networks and you’ve seen at least one camera shot of handlers hand counting. One, then another hold up a ballot that somehow contains other holes all over the card ballot, enough holes to look like a police-academy gun-training or a hunting club practice target. We are led to believe weak-handed voters pressed hard enough to completely detach chads for United States senators and representatives while only the hole for Gore in the slot for president remained "undervoted."

We are to led believe that even though Ralph Nader garnered 3% of the vote nationwide, not a single loyal Nader Raider attempted to vote for Ralph Nader, pressed the hole punch machine with the sharp stylus ever so lightly, and failed to have a recorded vote.

Simply not in the Florida sunshine for Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Harry Browne, or Howard Phillips is a single uncounted-by-machine vote later determined to be intended to be cast for these third-party candidates.

We are led to believe that even though an allegedly 3000 Palm Beach County voters believe they mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan at the poll on election day and didn’t realize their mistake until hours later, not one of those voters inattentively pressed too lightly. These 3000 who really wanted to vote for Al Gore, were strong-handed enough to make their vote count for Pat Buchanan.

We are led to believe that 19,000 overvotes were cast, with the stylus punching out holes for two candidates. In these cases the stylus worked to perfection and voter maintained a strong and steady-hand powerful enough to enable the hole punch machine to do double duty, and invalidate that vote in a machine recount.

Are we, the people of the rest of the U.S. really so gullible?

For Broward County alone, the numbers of cast ballots to be fully recounted has been reported as five different totals with the latest of 573,000. (CNN 9:15 AM ET November, 18, 2000) A dramatic increase from the 560,000 reported by FOX NEWS just two days earlier.

Are we, the people of the rest of the U.S. really so stupid?

No. We’re counting on voter fraud investigation teams to come to the rescue. Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, long ago exposing voter fraud around the country, worldnetdaily.com, and Newsmax.com are doggedly tracking new information.

We’re counting on fired-up Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan who writes: "Columnists are writing about it… You can hear vote fraud discussed on the all-argument political shows on TV and radio."

We’re counting on C-Span guest on Saturday morning November 18, 2000, Carolyn Lockhead after a Florida caller posed: Do you know about the Snowbirds, we call them, Northerners who come down here to live part of the year, and how many vote absentee and then come here to vote?

Lockhead: absentee ballots are an underreported problem.

And, we’re counting on you to see fraud when you see it, and expose fraud as readily to the sunlight as a Florida punch out ballot which hasn’t produced a single newly found vote for Nader, Buchanan, or Browne.