[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.
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