Key Facts Challenged in the Documentary 'Unprecedented'

By Nancy Kuhn

I've been most anxious to view the DVD "Unprecedented-the 2000 Presidential election", because I spent 15 years volunteering on numerous election campaigns when I lived in Florida. Because of my own personal experience I know the disputed territory and the election laws that were deliberately broken by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris in 2000 extremely well. I've finally seen "Unprecedented" and I've found 2 claims made in this documentary that are totally false.

The first false claim is that Al Gore should've requested a statewide count of the uncounted votes from the beginning. What "Unprecedented" fails to point out is the fact that Florida election law didn't provide for a statewide count of the uncounted votes. All statewide candidates had the right to request hand counts in the counties where they disputed the vote counts. The Gore campaign followed Florida election law to the letter. In addition, the Gore campaign requested the hand counts in the counties where there were the most uncounted votes. It turned out that these were the most heavily democratic counties in Florida whose voters used what we now know was the most flawed voting system in Florida, the punch card system. It turns out that the voters who used the punch card voting system were the voters least likely to have their votes counted.

In addition, "Unprecedented" makes no mention of the serious software problem that had taken place in the democratic county of Volusia -- that at one point showed Al Gore with a negative vote total. Under Florida election law in 2000 -- for Al Gore to have requested a statewide count of the uncounted votes from the beginning -- his campaign would've had to have filed hand count requests in all 67 of Florida's counties within 72 hours of election day -- because it's the counties who actually count the votes. This was impossible. The Bush campaign deliberately chose not to request any hand counts in any of the counties, because it knew that that would eventually result in all of the uncounted votes being counted. And they knew that this meant victory for Al Gore. The Bush campaign was determined to prevent the counting of the uncounted votes at all costs. In addition, I have a tape of the nationally televised November 15, 2000 speech that Al Gore gave offering to drop all legal proceedings, if Bush would agree to a statewide count of all of the uncounted votes. Bush flatly refused to do so.

The hand counts that Al Gore had correctly requested under Florida election law in 2000 should've been carried out, as hand counts were a routine and an accepted part of the election process in Florida. I certainly remember them taking place in the 15 years I was in Florida volunteering on election campaigns. The hand counts that Al Gore requested were illegally blocked by the actions of both Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush who were determined to trample the will of the people of Florida and install Jeb's brother. And that's exactly what they did. In fact, I've since acquired a transcript of a meeting of the Pinellas county canvassing board, that voted to conduct a hand count in that county in a local fire department advisory board race, which changed the outcome of that race. This was at the very same time that Katherine Harris was on national TV illegally blocking the very same type of request made by the Gore campaign.

I can further document with copies of the county ballot duplication logs that 10,000 absentee ballots that the counting machines couldn't read were in fact hand duplicated and counted as Florida election law in 2000 allowed. These ballots favored Bush by more than 2 to 1 and the Bush campaign made no effort to block the counting of these votes. The Gore campaign's request asked for the same treatment for the ballots cast on election day that the counting machines couldn't read. None of these critical facts are included in "Unprecedented".

The 2nd totally false claim made in "Unprecedented" is that Bush would've won if only the undervotes had been counted. This is completely false and a creation of the pro-Bush media. I have the Miami Herald's own count of the uncounted votes and when all of the uncounted undervotes are counted Al Gore wins. In order to invent this so-called "win" for Bush, the pro Bush media distorted the Florida Supreme courts ruling and didn't count the many thousands of uncounted votes in Broward and Palm Beach counties that the Bush campaign had successfully and illegally blocked from being counted. In the first couple of sentences of it's decision, the Florida Supreme Court clearly called for the counting of all uncounted votes, where the intent of the voter is clear. This is what the law was in Florida in 2000.

Furthermore, in early 2001, the Orlando Sentinel interviewed Judge Terry Lewis, who was the judge assigned to oversee the count of the uncounted votes. He clearly said that he was going to count the overvotes where the intent of the voter was clear. The truth is, there are no vote count scenarios that Bush wins -- when all of the uncounted votes are counted. Not if just the undervotes are counted. Not if both undervotes and overvotes combined are counted. None of these facts were included in "Unprecedented' either.