Reply #2: EVERY DU'ER READ THIS AND PAY ATTENTION [View All]

[AnIndependentTexan]

Volusia County, Florida:
John Ellis, hired as an analyst for Fox TV News, knew exactly
the margin needed to call the 2000 presidential race for George W.
Bush. He was privy to the Voter News Service data, and he spoke
several times during the evening to his two cousins: Jeb and George
W. Bush.
At 2:09 a.m., the required vote margin appeared from Volusia
County, Florida. At 2:10 a.m., this margin was enhanced by a 4,000-
vote bump in Brevard County, and at 2:16 a.m., Ellis called the race
for George W. Bush. Within four minutes, NBC, CBS and ABC
followed suit. 5
Precisely the right margin appeared on a Volusia County machine
(Global Election Systems, now Diebold), amplified by a Diebold/
Global Election Systems machine in Brevard County. Unfortunately,
these vote totals were incorrect and soon disappeared, along with a
“card no. 3” which helped to create them.
If Al Gore had publicly conceded on election night, would we ever
have learned that these votes were bogus? Would there have been a
recount, and could the “Help America Vote Act” have passed, triggering
the rush to touch-screen machines?
We’ll never know, but thanks to an internal CBS report and a memo
written by Talbot Iredale, vice president of research and development
at Diebold Election Systems, we now know that the unexplained
replacement of a set of votes on a Diebold optical-scan machine in Volusia
County triggered a premature private concession from Al Gore to George
W. Bush and resulted in TV networks’ erroneously calling the election
for Bush instead of deeming it too close to call. The final “offical”
tally showed Gore losing by 527 votes, though the hand recount stopped
by the Supreme Court later gave the election to Gore.
Fox News Network, 29 November 2000: Brit Hume, host: “ ... It seems a
broken computer modem and a faulty memory card were culprits in the
erroneous election-night call of George W. Bush as the Florida winner ...
computers with a bad memory card caused it to appear for a time that Al
Gore had lost more than 16,000 votes, which seemed to put George W.
Bush up by 50,000 — at that stage in the night, an insurmountable margin.
Every network saw that as a basis for calling the state for Mr. Bush. ... ”