No Replacement For Displacement

Second Letter from John to the Idiotarians

"George Bush stole the election"

This is one of the strangest assertions I have heard, because it works on the assumption that Al Gore was leading at some point in the 2000 vote count in Florida. The only reason I can think that people make this assertion is that Al Gore won the popular vote, but not the electoral vote. While this might be cause to claim a moral victory(alongside the Boston Red Sox and the French), it does not mean that Al Gore is anyway entitled to win the office of the president.

In fact, not only did George Bush not steal the election, but there is copious evidence that it was Al Gore that attempted to steal the election. Think about the following:

1. The Gore campaign only asked for recounts in heavily Democratic precincts.
   
2. The Gore campaign filed lawsuits to disallow military ballots and absentee ballots
   
3. The Gore campaign tried twice to change the election laws of Florida after the election, and were overruled both times by the US Supreme Court.
   
4. The Democratic party attempted to keep the polls in predominantly Democratic St. Louis open late, which was against state law, and was overturned that night on appeal, but not before keeping the polling place open an extra hour or two.
   
5. The Democratic party has had a history of vote fraud, including recent incidents in South Dakota and Arkansas and a Democratic operative who was filmed buying votes in Wisconsin.
   

But even if we forget those facts, there is still no proof that Gore would have won the election. At no time during the recounts did Gore get more votes than Bush. Every count done of the votes, both the official tally and unofficially by news organizations has borne this out. There has been no tally of the votes where Bush did not receive the most votes in Florida. Not one. Yet for all ballot analysis done by all the news organizations(including by such conservative rags as the New York Times[just this once I'm not calling it the Howell Raines Gazette]), none have been able to show a scenario in which Al Gore had more votes cast in Florida than George W. Bush.

So the answer is no, George W. Bush did not steal the election. In fact, it could be said that George W. Bush actually was able to win in spite of vote fraud on the part of the Democratic Party.

Update: Oops. The update that I put here was in the wrong place. My bad.