-Caveat Lector- Sunday March 11 11:41 AM ET Palm Beach Butterfly Ballot Reportedly Cost Gore WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Palm Beach County's controversial butterfly ballot cost Al Gore (news - web sites) about 6,600 votes in Florida's Palm Beach County, more than enough to have given him the presidential election, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The butterfly ballot, which has candidates' names on opposing pages with a row of punch holes in the middle, confused thousands of voters in Palm Beach County, a Democratic stronghold and Florida's third most populous county. The Palm Beach ballot contributed to a chaotic aftermath to the Nov. 7 general election, one of the closest in U.S. history. Legal challenges left the presidency up in the air for 37 days before the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ended the controversy by giving Bush Florida's critical 25 electoral college votes and the White House. A ballot-by-ballot review of 19,125 discarded ``overvotes'' -- ballots on which a voter punched holes for more than one candidate -- found that 5,330 Palm Beach voters invalidated their ballots by punching holes for Gore and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan (news - web sites), the Palm Beach Post reported. The review also found that 2,908 voters punched Gore's name and that of Socialist David McReynolds (news - web sites). The names of Buchanan and McReynolds appeared on the right page of the ballot while Gore's was on the left. The hole for Buchanan was just above Gore's and the one for McReynolds was just below Gore's. The newspaper said the ballot confusion also hurt President George W. Bush (news - web sites); 1,631 people voted for both Bush and Buchanan, whose hole was directly under that of Bush. Adding the two Gore totals and subtracting the Bush total would have given Gore 6,607 extra votes, plenty to overcome Bush's winning statewide margin of 537 votes, the newspaper reported. About 6 million votes were cast in the state. Even allowing that 1 percent of the 6,607 votes were intended for Buchanan or McReynolds -- more than their portion of the county's total vote -- Gore still would have had more than enough votes to beat Bush, the paper said. ``What it shows is what we've been saying all along -- there is no question that the majority of people on Election Day believed they left the booth voting for Al Gore,'' Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff, told the Post. Speaking for the Republicans, former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot told the paper that the analysis amounted to ''speculation.'' ``You're trying too hard to find a correlation here. You don't know these people, you don't know what they intended,'' he said. Thousands of Palm Beach voters complained bitterly about the confusing ballot on and after Election Day. Many were elderly Jews anxious for the chance to cast a ballot for a Jewish vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites). Instead they voted for Buchanan, who some Jewish voters consider anti-Semitic. In a story published on Saturday, the Post said Gore might also have won the election if Palm Beach County officials had counted every dimpled punchcard ballot. The newspaper said Gore would have had a net gain of 784 votes over Bush if the county's three-member canvassing board had counted every ballot with a hanging chad, pinhole or dimple -- enough to erase Bush's 537-vote margin. ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
