POAC XVII: Who stopped the recount?

Seventeenth in a continuing series, peeling away the spin of the "Counterspin" page at the Project for the Old American Century.

The supposed talking point:

It was the Democrats who stopped the vote count in 2000

Really? Which vote count?
T. J. Templeton, who has admitted being the author of POAC's Counterspin entries, has this habit of using unattributed "talking points," so it is often hard to tell what the original claim is supposed to have meant.

Just from memory, I recall a number of separate vote counts in Florida in the wake of the 2000 election. I seem to recall that the Broward County vote count was stopped temporarily because of uncertainty about the legalities, and some of that probably stemmed from Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris' determination that certain counties were proceeding with inappropriate vote counts.

Harris made that determination on the advice of a law group dominated by Democrats, I will add.

How pervasive was this talking point? I searched for the exact phrase with Google and got one hit. That hit was--you guessed it!--POAC Counterspin.

So how does Templeton debunk this mysterious talking point? Perhaps we may obtain a clue as to what the talking point is simply by considering the response.

The man Bush tapped to fill Karl Rove’s spot as his policy advisor is none other than Joel Kaplan, who took part in the infamous “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000. That’s when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted “Stop the fraud!” and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.

John Bolton: "Im with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Bush gave plum jobs to supporters who worked recount

Three URLs this time. As usual, I'll treat the URLs in order of occurrence.

The new White House policy chief, who is filling Karl Rove’s shoes in that post, took part in the infamous “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000, in which GOP operatives, dressed as protesters, tried to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount. (Via Truthout.)
(Truthdig)

If you're wondering how Joe Kaplan taking part in the "infamous 'Brooks Brothers Riot'" amounts to a falsification of a claim that the Democrats stopped the vote count in Florida, then I'm with you.

Well, let's follow the links and see if we accomplish anything other than chasing a wild goose.

What about that "infamous" riot, anyway?

That's when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.
(TPMMuckraker)

So far nothing about who stopped a vote count, though perhaps the intent is to show that Republicans were responsible for intimidating the people (Democrats?) who stopped the vote count temporarily.

How did they pose as outraged Floridians, I wonder? Was the chant more involved than Muckraker presented it, something more like "We're outraged Floridians and we want you to stop the fraud!"? Or did they just rent cars with Florida license plates (oh, the deviousness of that!)?

Well, maybe it was the pounding on the windows that stopped the vote count.

article.php is deprecated
(smirkingchimp.com)

That trail ends with a broken link.

I suppose I'm left to my own devices.

Aired November 22, 2000 - 1:27 p.m. ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Miami-Dade County's canvassing board has just voted 3-0 to stop all recounts after a contentious morning there. And we'll continue to talk with our correspondent about those developments. But that perhaps puts all the focus on Palm Beach County and Broward County and the question surrounding those absentee ballots.
(CNN)

And from a little later in the same transcript:

CHRIS BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Frank, the Gore campaign officials that I've been able to reach are just stunned by this setback, the decision from the Miami-Dade officials. They say they believe that the Miami-Dade County officials have been intimidated by the Republicans, that there was a near-riot this morning at the courthouse where they were trying to count those ballots. And they believe that there's no question there's a relationship between that near-riot this morning and this decision. They say this is part of a pattern of Republican obstructionist tactics, and this is one of their greatest concerns the Republicans will try to slow down if not stop this count before the deadline on Sunday -- Frank.
(ibid)

OK, so Gore team officials thought that the riot definitely influenced the Miami-Dade decision. What did the county canvassing board say?

JIM LEHRER: There were several major developments today in the Presidential recount in Florida. In Miami-Dade County, election officials halted their hand counting. They said they could not finish by Sunday. Vice President Gore's campaign appealed that decision. Last night, the Florida Supreme Court ruled hand counts must be included in the state's final tally, if completed by Sunday.
(PBS)

The Miami-Dade canvassing board halted its manual recount because it looked like it would be a waste of money, in other words. Was the GOP riot team just concerned about the manual recount?

This section of the same PBS transcript encapsulates that aspect of the story:

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But today in south Florida, partisan fighting escalated after the Miami-Dade canvassing board said it didn't have time to recount of all its 650,000 ballots. Instead, the Democratically controlled board decided to hand count just those ballots not counted by the machines, a move denounced by Republican leaders.

Florida election law in 2000 allowed no provision in the protest of election return procedure for a county canvassing board to only canvass undervotes.

(5) If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of the election, the county canvassing board shall:

(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining precincts with the vote tabulation system;

(b) Request the Department of State to verify the tabulation software; or

(c) Manually recount all ballots.

(6) Any manual recount shall be open to the public.

(7) Procedures for a manual recount are as follows:

(a) The county canvassing board shall appoint as many counting teams of at least two electors as is necessary to manually recount the ballots. A counting team must have, when possible, members of at least two political parties. A candidate involved in the race shall not be a member of the counting team.

(b) If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent.

(Florida Statutes for year 2000, Title IX, 102.166)

The PBS reporting also provides a hint or two that the Miami-Dade recount was not open to the public (note the clamoring by the protesters that they be permitted to witness the recount).

***

We move to the second URL.

"Im with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."
Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

(The Nation, via Common Dreams)

We appear to have left Miami-Dade County without ever establishing that the three Democrats who made up the canvassing board were not the ones who decided not to proceed with the manual recount. We're now in Leon County, dealing with a recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.Well, then again, there's this:

It was there that he personally shut down the review of ballots from Miami-Dade County, a populous and particularly contested county where independent reviews would later reveal that hundreds of ballots that could reasonably have been counted for Gore were instead discarded.
(ibid)

The writer appears to have lost his hold on objectivity, if not reality. It's absurd to suggest that Bolton "personally" shut down that count because the canvassing board appears primarily responsible, and even if the protest is blamed (a protest which appeared to have legitimate grounds--see above) for influencing the board's decision it's hard to see how it could in turn be associated directly with Bolton.

[Note: Contrary to my initial impression, the passage above still refers to the count of Miami-Dade ballots in Leon County. Thus, the writer is suggesting that Bolton was "personally responsible" for causing the vote count to stop even though it was ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States--a position no less absurd than the other]

Again, there's nothing here that appears to contradict the claim that the Miami-Dade canvassing board ended its own manual recount.


***

We move to the third URL.

article.php is deprecated
(smirkingchimp.com)

Oops.

Don't panic. I'll see what I can do.

It was [Bolton's] role, on a Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, to burst into a library where workers were recounting Miami-Dade ballots to relay news of the U.S. Supreme Court's stay in the on-again, off-again presidential recount. ``I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count,'' he was quoted as saying in news reports at the time.
(Knight-Ridder Newspapers, via extralove.com)

The lead of the story makes it look like Bolton's just trying to intimidate the poor innocent poll workers. Seems like bringing news of a U.S. Supreme Court stay would give some legitimacy to his intent to stop the recount.

The Knight-Ridder story had a fascinating amount of spin to it. The writer repeatedly sheds the practices of objective writing: ("bursting into"--no attribution, "supposedly spontaneous"--no attribution, "helped persuade"--no attribution) in favor of editorializing.

Summary: Another POAC flop. Miami-Dade Democrats decided to halt their manual recount because they could not complete it by the deadline, and probably because they were embarrassed about trying to conduct an improper recount limited to undervotes while barring the count from public observation.

To help underscore that last point, here's a Youtube video of the protest.

The video is a piece of liberal propaganda, to be sure, but it's valuable because it has audio of the protest: "Let us in." Listen for it, starting around the 2:00 mark (it was counting down when I previewed it).



One might wonder why the news reports have the protesters chanting "Stop the fraud!" while the audio has them chanting "Let us in!"
I guess the reporter chooses which chant is most relevant to his version of the story.

The "I can't believe I missed this the first time" file (Sept. 15, 2010 Update)

The Truthout/Truthdig account of the Brooks Brothers riot says that the group was "dressed as protesters."

Like there's some required uniform or appearance code for protesting?

The name "Brooks Brothers riot" came from the description of one of the GOP participants in defense of the group's actions.  The media portrayed them as a mob.  The "Brooks Brothers" comment emphasized that it was a nicely dressed group (formal attire expected of all protesters!)--not the sort of attire one would ordinarily expect of a mob unless it was during Prohibition and they carried submachine guns.

"(D)ressed as protesters."  I'm still laughing.