[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 48 (Wednesday, April 4, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1458-H1460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         NEWSPAPERS' RECOUNT SHOWS GEORGE W. BUSH WON ELECTION

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous 
material.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, there has been much said about the Florida 
election returns, and we hear over and

[[Page H1459]]

 over again from people that, well, Bush really did not win the 
election; that he stole it.
  I would invite Members of the House to pick up a copy of the USA 
Today newspaper. It says, ``Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed in 
Florida Vote.''
  I am going to read the first paragraph, and keep in mind newspapers 
are not exactly known for being conservative instruments.
  The first paragraph says, ``George W. Bush would have won a hand 
count of Florida's disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al 
Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballot reveals.''
  My, my, my. Where are all the accusers, where are all the finger-
pointers to say, well, gee whiz, I was wrong, it looks like Mr. Bush is 
the legitimate President of the United States?
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to submit this full article for the Record 
because I am sure Members in their hurry to get out of town will not 
have time to read this paper; but out of my concern for these Members, 
I want this to be in the Congressional Record and maybe they could 
share it with some of their friends in academia and the unions and the 
other great liberal institutions throughout the land.

                     [From USA Today, Apr. 4, 2001]

        Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed in Florida Vote

                          (By Dennis Cauchon)

       George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's 
     disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had 
     been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals.
       Bush would have won by 1,665 votes--more than triple his 
     official 537-vote margin--if every dimple, hanging chad and 
     mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/
     Maimi Herald/Knight Ridder study shows.
       The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 
     ``undervote'' ballots that were at the center of Florida's 
     disputed presidential election. The Florida Supreme Court 
     ordered Dec. 8 that each of these ballots, which registered 
     no presidential vote when run through counting machines, be 
     examined by hand to determine whether a voter's intent could 
     be discerned. On Dec. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the 
     hand count before it was completed. That gave Bush Florida's 
     25 electoral votes, one more than he needed to win the 
     presidency.
       USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers 
     hired the national accounting firm BDO Seidman to examine 
     undervote ballots in Florida's 67 counties. The accountants 
     provided a report on what they found on each of the ballots.
       The newspapers then applied the accounting firm's findings 
     to four standards used in Florida and elsewhere to determine 
     when an undervote ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of 
     the standards, Bush holds the lead. The fourth standard gives 
     Gore a razor-thin win.
       The results reveal a stunning irony. The way Gore wanted 
     the ballots recounted helped Bush, and the standard that Gore 
     felt offered him the least hope may have given him an 
     extremely narrow victory. The vote totals vary depending on 
     the standard used:
       Lenient standard. This standard, which was advocated by 
     Gore, would count any alteration in a chad--the small 
     perforated box that is punched to cast a vote--as evidence of 
     a voter's intent. The alteration can range from a mere 
     dimple, or indentation, in a chad to its removal. Contrary to 
     Gore's hopes, the USA TODAY study reveals that this standard 
     favors Bush and gives the Republican his biggest margin: 
     1,665 votes.
       Palm Beach standard. Palm Beach County election officials 
     considered dimples as votes only if dimples were found in 
     other races on the same ballot. They reasoned that a voter 
     would demonstrate similar voting patterns on the ballot. This 
     standard--attacked by Republicans as arbitrary--also gives 
     Bush a win, by 884 votes, according to the USA TODAY review.
       Two-corner standard. Most states with well-defined rules 
     say that a chad with two or more corners removed is a legal 
     vote. Under this standard, Bush wins by 363.
       Strict standard. This ``clean punch'' standard would only 
     count fully removed chads as legal votes. The USA TODAY study 
     shows that Gore would have won Florida by 3 votes if this 
     standard were applied to undervotes.
       Because of the possibility of mistakes in the study, a 
     three-vote margin is too small to conclude that Gore might 
     have prevailed in an official count using this standard. But 
     the overall results show that both campaigns had a 
     misperception of what the ballots would show. The prevailing 
     view of both was that minority or less-educated Democratic 
     voters were more likely to undervote because of confusion.
       Gore's main strategy throughout the post-election dispute 
     was to secure a recount of any kind in the hope of reversing 
     the certified result. Bush's strategy was to stop the recount 
     while he was ahead. But his views on how recounts should be 
     done, in the counties where they were underway, would have 
     been potentially disastrous for him if used statewide.
       Bush and Gore were informed Tuesday of the new study's 
     results. Both declined comment. But White House spokesman Ari 
     Fleischer said, ``The President believes, just as the 
     American people do, that this election was settled months 
     ago. The voters spoke, and George W. Bush won.''
       The newspapers' study took three months to complete and 
     cost more than $500,000. It involved 27 accountants who 
     examined and categorized ballots as they were held up by 
     county election officials.
       The study has limitations. There is variability in what 
     different observers see on ballots. Election officials, who 
     sorted the undervotes for examination and then handled them 
     for the accountants' inspection, often did not provide 
     exactly the same number of undervotes recorded on election 
     night.
       Even so, the outcome shows a consistent and decisive 
     pattern: the more lenient the standard, the better Bush does. 
     Because Gore fought for the lenient standard, it may be more 
     difficult now for Democrats to argue that the election was 
     lost in the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court rather than 
     the voting booths of Florida.
       The study helps answer the question: What would have 
     happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the hand 
     count of undervotes?
       However, it does not answer all the questions surrounding 
     another set of Florida ballots: the 110,000 ``overvotes,'' 
     which machines recorded as having more than one presidential 
     vote. These ballots were rejected by the machines and were 
     considered invalid. Some Democrats say if all of Florida's 
     overvote ballots were examined by hand to learn voters' 
     intent, Gore would have prevailed.
       USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Gannett and Knight Ridder 
     newspapers also are examining Florida's overvotes for a study 
     to be published later this spring. Overvotes contain some 
     valid votes, mostly instances when a voter marked the oval 
     next to a candidate's name and then wrote in the name of the 
     same candidate.
       No candidate requested a hand count of overvotes and no 
     court--federal or state--ordered one. The U.S. Supreme Court 
     cited the state court's failure to include the overvotes in 
     its recount order as an example of arbitrariness.
       Immediately after Gore, conceded the election to Bush, The 
     Miami Herald began to evaluate what might have happened if 
     the U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the recount of 
     undervotes.
       Florida is one of the few states that permit members of the 
     public to examine ballots after they've been cast. The Miami 
     Herald and the BDO Seidman accounting firm began examining 
     ballots on Dec. 18. USA TODAY joined the project in January. 
     The last undervote ballot was examined March 13.
       Florida law requires that political parties be notified of 
     ballot inspections. The Republican and Democratic parties 
     took different approaches to the three months of ballot 
     inspections.
       The Democrats took a hands-off approach. They rarely showed 
     up at election offices during the evaluation. ``We want to 
     see what you find. It's not our role to be at the table with 
     you,'' Tony Welch spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, 
     said during the newspapers' study. ``If we're spinning and 
     the Republicans are spinning, people won't believe the 
     result.''
       He said at the time that the party expected the outcome 
     would show that Gore receive more votes than Bush.
       By contrast, the Republicans attended every ballot 
     inspection. They devoted hundreds of days of staff and 
     volunteer time. The party delayed cutting its post-election 
     staff of field directors from 12 to 6 so it could staff the 
     ballot inspections. Some Republicans took meticulous notes on 
     the contents of the ballots. Others just watched. The 
     Republican Party of Florida published a daily internal memo 
     called ``Reality Check,'' which critiqued the media efforts 
     to examine ballots.
       In an interview before the results were released, Mark 
     Wallace, a Republican lawyer assigned to critique the media 
     inspections, said, ``The media appear ready to offer 
     unprecedented liberal standards for judging what is a vote. 
     The appropriate legal standard is what was in place on 
     Election Day: cleanly punched cards only.''
       Before this election, almost nothing was known by the 
     public and by political parties about what types of marks 
     appear on undervotes and overvotes, which make up about 2% of 
     ballots cast nationally. The newspapers' study shows both 
     parties predicted incorrectly which of these ballots would 
     help them.
       Democrats and Republicans noted that voter errors on punch-
     card voting machines were most frequent in low-income and 
     predominantly minority precincts. Because these voters tend 
     to vote Democratic, the disputed votes were assumed to be a 
     rich trove of support for Gore.
       Likewise, both parties noted that the 41 Florida counties 
     that used optical-scan ballots, a system similar to 
     standardized school tests, tended to vote Republican.
       Bush supporters attacked Gore for asking for hand counts in 
     three Democratic-leaning counties. If any hand count 
     occurred, it should include the Republican-leaning optical-
     scan counties, too, the Bush supporters said.
       The USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows that 
     the Democratic and

[[Page H1460]]

     Republican assumptions were largely wrong. The under-vote 
     ballots actually break down into two distinct categories:
       Undervotes in punch-card counties. In the 22 punch-card 
     counties in which BDO Seidman examined undervotes, 56% of the 
     35,761 ballots had some kind of mark on them.
       The study found that punch-card undervotes correlated less 
     to race of party affiliation than to machine maintenance and 
     election management. Counties that maintain machines poorly--
     not cleaning out chads frequently, for example--have 
     plentiful undervotes. The study shows that when undervotes 
     are had counted, they produce new votes for the candidates in 
     proportions similar to the county's official vote.
       For example, in Duval County, where Jacksonville is the 
     county seat, Bush defeated Gore 58%-41%. Among the 
     undervotes, Bush defeated Gore 60%-32% under the lenient 
     standard and by similarly comfortable numbers under all 
     standards. Bush picked up a net of 930 votes, including 602 
     dimples.
       Likewise, in Miami-Dade, where Gore hoped to score big 
     gains, he received 51% of the marked undervotes, about the 
     same as the 52% that he got in the official count.
       Undervotes in optical-scan counties. In the 37 optical-scan 
     counties in which BDO Seidman examined undervotes, one third 
     of 5,623 ballots had discernible votes.
       The most common was when a voter made an X or check mark, 
     rather than filling in the oval properly. Other common errors 
     included circling the candidate's name or using a personal 
     pencil or pen that couldn't be read by the machine. Black ink 
     that contains even a trace of red will not register on many 
     vote-counting machines, even when the mark appears pure black 
     to the human eye.
       The study shows that these errors were disproportionately 
     common among Democratic voters. For example, in Orange 
     County, home of Orlando, Gore edged Bush 50%-48% in the 
     election. But Gore won the undervotes by 64%-33%, giving him 
     a net gain of 137 votes. That accounted for half of the 261 
     votes Gore gained in optical-scan counties, which Bush won 
     overall by 53%-44%.
       The study found that optical-scan counties are the only 
     places where Gore actually picked up more votes than Bush: 
     1,036 to 775 for Bush.
       In the punch-card counties, where Gore had placed his 
     hopes, his chances of winning a hand count were washed away. 
     On dimples alone, Bush gained 1,188 votes. When all the 
     possibilities are combined--dimples, hanging chads, clean 
     punches--Bush outdid Gore by 8,302 to 6,559.
       USA TODAY's analysis is based on accepting Bush's official 
     537-vote margin. This figure includes hand counts completed 
     in Broward and Volusia counties before the U.S. Supreme Court 
     intervened.
       The newspaper also accepted hand counts completed in Palm 
     Beach, Manatee, Escambia, Hamilton and Madison counties, plus 
     139 precincts in Miami-Dade.
       These hand counts, which were never certified, reduced 
     Bush's lead to 188--the starting point for USA TODAY's 
     analysis.
       The newspaper excluded these counties from its analysis. 
     However, BDO Seidman collected data in these counties, and 
     they are available on USATODAY.com.
       In the end, Florida's presidential election remains 
     remarkably close by any standard: 2,912,790 to 2,912,253 in 
     the official count.
       In an election this close, the winner often depends on the 
     rules and how they are enforced.

                          ____________________