"More than 180,000 Americans -- 180,111 to be exact -- cast ballots in Florida on Nov. 7 only to have them discarded, never counted. That was about 335 times the number of votes (537) by which George W. Bush led Al Gore in Florida at the time the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the state's court-ordered recount, thus allotting Florida's electoral votes to Bush and making him president." [Chicago Tribune]
"The unspoken truth of the 2000 election dispute in Florida is always ignored by the left: Gore never led; not on election night, not after any statewide recount, not after adding the votes from county hand recounts, and not even in the exhaustive statewide post—election recounts conducted by the major state and national newspapers (in almost all of which Bush wound up ahead when any consistent method of counting was used.) Pick your method of counting chads, and it doesn't matter. Bush won.
Another myth is that Gore simply wanted all the votes counted. This is absolutely false. Gore lawyers and their supporters attempted to disqualify votes of some military voters overseas, and of absentee voters in several Florida counties. Both groups, not surprisingly, strongly supported Bush.
On the other hand, they tried to create votes that the machines had determined contained no vote for President (the 'undervote'), but only in four heavily Democratic counties: Broward, Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia. In each of these counties, Democratic Party officials would control the hand count of the 'undervote.' So this was no exercise in civic minded duty — the logic was to find votes for Gore, and cancel votes for Bush. " [American Thinker]
The issue of "spoiled ballots" – ballots that do not obey the rules of the election system and which hence cannot be used – depends on a lot of factors – not just the election system's mathematical definition, but also how the election officials behave, what kind of voting machines they employ, and what settings they set their machines to.
For example in the critical Bush-versus-Gore presidential contest in Florida 2000, it was known that Blacks were much more pro-Gore than Whites. The Florida state governor was Bush's brother Jeb. The Florida state elections commissioner Katherine Harris was simultaneously Bush's Florida campaign co-chair. Sample voting machines of the types used in each Florida county were on display outside governor Bush's office before the election so the higher-ups could be sure that had been adjusted right. In heavily black counties and districts throughout Florida the machines were intentionally adjusted to silently reject invalid ballots. In contrast, in White counties, and districts expected to be pro-Bush, the machines were adjusted to complain to the voter about invalid ballots, and offer the voter the chance to try again.
Result: Sure enough, the rates of non-counting were considerably higher in the 4 blackest Florida counties than in the 4 whitest (and the electronic voting machines in Gadsden were known to have been adjusted to silently reject invalid ballots without any indication to the voter that it was happening):
Comparison of uncounted "spoiled" ballot rates in the 4 blackest and 4 whitest Florida counties (from Greg Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"):
County..............Black..........Uncounted
..........................popul.........votes
Gadsden................52%................12%
Madison................42%.................7%
Hamilton...............39%.................9%
Jackson.................26%.................7%
Citrus......................2%.............1/2%
Pasco.......................2%.................3%
Santa Rasa.............4%.................1%
Sarasota..................4%................2%
What do you think? Just a coincidence?
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