Dallas County Democrats
Gore Update

This site is an ARCHIVE of the website used for the Dallas County Democratic Party from 2000 to May of 2002, and which was built by the then Chair Bill Howell. Though some information here will be relevant through the 2002 elections, other pages here are of interest for history or research. For the latest updated news about the Dallas County Democratic Party, see their own website at www.dallasdemocrats.org.

NOTE: If you wish to contribute to the Gore/Lieberman campaign's legal effort to ensure a complete and accurate count of the votes in Florida, you can do so on-line at the campaign website at www.algore.com

December 8, 2000:

Dear Gore-Lieberman Supporters:

On this feast day of the Immaculate Conception, the Florida Supreme Court, on a 4-3 vote, has ordered the addition of 383 votes to the Gore-Lieberman total and has, among other things, ordered the recount of some 9,000 ballots from Miami-Dade, as well as "undercounts" from other counties. You may find the opinions of the court at www.flcourts.org if you can get through.

As it stands now, we lie 155 votes from victory. There's a long way to go, and the Republicans will stop at nothing to disenfranchise minority voters, but we just took a positive step for the preservation of democracy. Keep a wary eye on the Tallahassee Taliban (i.e., the Florida House and Senate), the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (a highly partisan court), and the U.S. Supreme Court.

No doubt, the Dallas Morning News will go nuts. For you letter writers, let them know your views. Their e-mail address is [email protected] For those of you in other areas, please write your local papers. The three rulings of today (the Gore appeal, the Martin County case and the Seminole County case) all stand for the proposition that the sanctity of the right to vote is paramount.

Cross your fingers, hold your breath and pray.

Ken Molberg, Co-Chair

Texans for Gore-Lieberman

Dallas County

Tuesday, December 5, 2000:

Dear Gore-Lieberman Supporters:

Yesterday, in what must soon be known as the Monday Massacre, Judge Sanders Sauls of Tallahassee clubbed his way through annoying legal precepts and fundamental principles of democracy to deliver a victory, damn the cost, to the Cheney-Baker forces. I'll spare you the legal analysis, but you should remember that this may be the first judge in history to categorically refuse to look at evidence (several thousands of unread ballots) properly admitted during the course of a trial. And with this perverted brand of blind justice came the disenfranchisement of up to 13,000 voters. In Alice in Wonderland fashion, it was verdict first, trial second.

That small matter aside, I would like to make this observation that you should consider and about which there is no debate: During the course of the proceedings, the judge accorded high praise to Palm Beach County officials for the way in which they had conducted their recount. Yet, at the urgings of the Republicans, he discarded what were admittedly an additional 200 valid votes for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman that resulted from the recount. These are votes about which there is no question.

The Republicans now argue in cases that will be tried tomorrow that 14,000 ballots in Seminole County, and a lesser number in Martin County, should not be thrown out, even though they were procured by fraud--fraud that may result in a criminal conviction under Florida law. If the rule is now that thousands of ballots in Palm Beach and Dade counties must be rejected because of some fabricated legal principles, it is more correctly the case that the Seminole and Martin votes must be rejected based on long standing Florida law. Indeed, discarding these ballots is precisely what the law of Florida calls for and what has happened as recently as two years ago in that state.

In the course of his ramblings, Judge Sauls chastised voting officials in Democratic counties using punch card systems. They knew some years ago that such systems were deficient, he said, essentially holding that the misdeeds of election officials justify rejecting the right of the voters to have their votes counted for their candidates. Taking from this "logic," which the Republicans praise, is it now not also appropriate that the admitted misconduct of election administrators in Seminole and Martin counties must end with the same result? Put another way, shouldn't these rules of law apply to Republicans, too? Or do the "rules" apply only to Democrats?

Why is there likely to be no consistency? You can answer that as well as I can. The votes that have been rejected by Judge Sauls and the Republicans are mostly those of low-income and minority individuals. Those votes in issue in Martin and Seminole counties are not.

Al Gore is right to fight.

For a good article on the legal proceedings of yesterday, see this.

To see the best study to date that shows how Al Gore and Joe Lieberman actually won Florida, see this.

For the true picture of whose votes have been thrown out, see this and this.

About the Katherine Harris complicity in denying the right to vote, see this.

On who is really running the show, see this.

On the Miami Melee, see this and this.

And this interesting piece.

Democratically,

Ken Molberg

Tuesday, November 28, 2000:

Dear Gore-Lieberman Supporters:

Today we enter the third week of the national election. Reckless Republican rancor and rhetoric have become commonplace. We have now learned that Tom DeLay funded some 700 Republican staffers and other partisan operatives to descend upon Dade County in an effort to physically stop the manual recount that would have resulted in a Gore-Lieberman victory. Currently, the situation has degenerated to the point that numerous officials in Florida, including a U.S. Congressman, are receiving death threats. In the meantime, Bush and his allies continue to do everything in their power--including their action in the U.S. Supreme Court--to thwart an accurate count of Florida's votes. Ask yourselves this: Why are the Republicans pulling out the stops to prevent a count of more than 10,000 votes that have never once been counted? The reason is simple, and it is based upon an assumption agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans alike: If those votes are counted, Gore wins. In contrast to the illegitimate conduct of the opposition, our candidates said last night and this morning:

''This is America. When votes are cast, we count them. We don't arbitrarily set them aside because it's too difficult to count them.''

-- Al Gore in prime-time televised speech Monday night.

''This is a matter of doing what we think is right, not just for us and the 50 million Americans who voted for us, but for our system, for history, to set a precedent.''

-- Joseph Lieberman, Tuesday, on CBS's ''The Early Show.''

I believe history will punish the Republican conduct. What follows is an excerpt from a disturbing report that I have just received from one of our Texas attorneys who has now returned from Florida:

"My wife and I were at ground zero at the Palm Beach counting center most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, including at the deadline hour Sunday evening. One thing I want to take some pains to report is the Republican demonstrator crowds. There is a whiff of fascism in the air. These crowds are very ugly. They are shock troops of the far right. They are not just politically demonstrating for Bush and Cheney. With their signs, their chants, and their ferocity they are calling Democrats "baby-killers", "communists," "fags", etc. They are not orderly in the slightest. I almost came to blows with one man who insisted on screaming one inch from my face that my wife and I were baby-killers and that he would like nothing better than to beat the shit out of me and that we better leave "their" sidewalk. Unquestionably Bush's big lie propaganda campaign has unleashed something from the far right. Clearly the far right forces have adopted Bush as their man and expect a lot from him.

"What a campaign of lies. . . . They have got people believing that Gore is trying to recount ballots that have already been counted multiple times. What a lie. The ballots in question are ballots that were rejected as no-votes by the machine and have never been counted. That is what a manual recount is for. They have got people believing that the manual recount process is corrupt and unreliable. Another big lie. . . . The real lie is George W. Bush, period. He is a walking liar, a fraud masquerading as a person. He knows that if all the votes are counted Gore won Florida. That is why he is working so hard with his propaganda campaign to stop the votes from being counted. Clearly, Bush has no respect for constitutional government. If he did, he would have agreed three weeks ago to step back and let the votes be counted. Now, I shudder even more for what we are facing as a country if this shameless demagogue actually becomes president."

We must fight for a complete and accurate vote count. For those of you of a like mind, I urge you to e-mail the vice president and ask him to keep up the fight--not only for himself, but for the sake of democracy. Al Gore's e-mail address is [email protected]

I also ask you to read this article about the conduct of the Republicans.

And I would urge you to sign the petition to count all votes, found at www.PetitionOnline.com/CountAll/petition.html

Ken Molberg, Co-Chair

Texans for Gore-Lieberman

Dallas County

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