On Tuesday, Nov. 28th, Bush campaign spokesperson, James Baker, addressed a national audience and demanded that Al Gore end his contest of Florida's election results. Baker also demanded all lawyers to leave Florida. Later in the day, CNN interviewed B. Irvin Terrell (at right). Terrell just arrived in Florida -- summoned by the Bush team. Terrell is considered by many to be a "Bois Killer" -- in reference to the highly skilled attorney assisting Al Gore's effort.

The subcommittee from the Florida state legislature held an emergency meeting also on Tuesday (Illustration B). They are considering constitutional remedies for the current dispute. Republicans maintain a 2-1 majority in the legislative body. It is clear they intend to certify the Florida election in favor of Republican candidate George W. Bush.

Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke to the nation as well on Tuesday (Illustration C). Jackson leads the Rainbow/Push Coalition. Jackson claims the Florida election disenfranchised thousands of minority and underpriviledged citizens. Jackson believes Al Gore won the popular vote in Florida. He contends the Republican machine in Florida, under the direction of Governor Jeb Bush (George's brother) and Secretary of State Katherine Harris (see Secretary of State on a Hotseat), manipulated the election process and the reporting of results.

A Zimbabwe politician is quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a phenomenon of the developing world.

Here's why....
1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).

2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's victory turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5. Imagine that that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre-or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

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Actual Palm Beach Florida Ballot

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