We exchanged several comments regarding whether overseas absentee ballots require postmarks. You quoted Kudlow’s hash of the facts.

I reminded you that even Katherine Harris had decreed that postmarks were required.

You responded by taunting:

“The Federal Courts found that ballots were valid, and yet another leftitst, Democratic attempt at disenfranchising out military members, while shrieking about how they  support the troops! , failed.”

What the federal courts ruled was that legal ballots received between November 8 and 17 could be counted. (Lucky thing for Bush. Without those ballots, Gore would have won by 202 votes.)

Several Florida voters had brought suit, challenging the validity of counting late-arriving votes. Why? Because Florida law says they don’t count! A state regulation (in the form of a consent decree that came out of an earlier federal case) contradicted the law and said that late votes could be counted.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a postmark is required. And none of it has anything to do with…how did you put it?…“another leftitst, Democratic attempt at disenfranchising out military members”

The suit sought to throw out all ballots that arrived after November 7, not just the ones from members of the military.

You might like to know that there was another aspect of Florida law that the Gore campaign chose not to use:

Even before Harris announced the final results, the Gore campaign had decided to formally contest Bush’s victory in a lawsuit. One important question, though, was whether to challenge the overseas ballots. Campaign strategists tried to persuade Gore to do just that, saying it would allow Democratic lawyers to argue that the Republicans had benefited from the unequal treatment of absentee ballots.

There was another potential benefit. Under Florida law, if the number of improper absentee ballots exceeds the margin of victory, a judge can, under some circumstances, disqualify all absentee ballots arriving after the election and base the results on only those ballots cast by Election Day. On the basis of the final official tally, that would have had Gore winning by 202 votes.

Gore rejected his aides’ advice.

Joe Sandler, who was the Democratic National Committee’s general counsel, recalled how Gore explained his decision. “I can give you his exact words: “If I won this thing by a handful of military ballots, I would be hounded by Republicans and the press every day of my presidency and it wouldn’t be worth having.’ ”

Ironic, ain’t it?

I am tired of doing your homework for you.

Says the man who complained about “unreferenced” cites.

You funny, peedro.

You finally changed the subject enough times to befuddle even me. I thought we were still talking about the “no-postmarks” issue, but looking back, I can see you were right about this one.

Keep up the good work. Getting things right could become a habit.

“ATLANTA (AP) — An appeals court on Monday agreed with a federal judge who refused to throw out 2,400 of Florida’s overseas ballots, mostly from military personnel, because they arrived after Election Day.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the ruling by U.S. District Judge Maurice Paul in Gainesville, Florida, was consistent with recent comments by Florida’s highest court about the workings of the absentee ballot law.

The lawsuit brought by Democratic voters sought to eliminate enough ballots to change the election results in Vice President Al Gore’s favor. Republican George W. Bush led by less than 200 votes as election challenges continued in the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere Monday.

“While Florida law seems to favor counting ballots, this change would take away the votes of thousands of Florida citizens — including members of America’s armed forces on duty outside of the country pursuant to the nation’s orders — who, to cast their ballots, just did what they were told by Florida’s election officials,” the appeals court said.

The appeals court rejected the claims of lawyers representing 13 individual Democratic voters whose lawsuits were combined before Paul.

The lawsuits claimed that state and federal laws, along with the U.S. Constitution, require all ballots to be received by the close of the polls on Election Day.”

The Federal Courts found that ballots were valid,

Really? Which federal court? When?

You’re MSU now, peedro.

You are pulling your facts out of your nether regions again, but to simplify the whole argument.

The Federal Courts found that ballots were valid, and yet another leftitst, Democratic attempt at disenfranchising out military members, while shrieking about how they “support the troops!”, failed.

Next time your boys won’t be so stupid as to put out a memo explaining how to screw the servicemember…well, at least you can HOPE they won’t.

And note Mark Herron sent the memo to democratic poll workers.

That’s correct. Poll workers are not canvassing boards. Your earlier cite from WND claimed the memo went to canvassig boards. Shall I expound on the difference, or is that clear to you now?

Further, it is unikely that the republicans  prepared the very same memo for its poll workers, at least I have not seen any evidence of that.

You mean I’ve been posting all this stuff and you’ve been ignoring it all?

Here it is. Again:

In Broward and in other Gore strongholds, Bush lawyers questioned scores of ballots, almost always from civilian Democrats but occasionally from members of the military. They objected to the slightest of flaws, including partial addresses of witnesses, illegible witness signatures and slight variations in voter signatures. In at least six cases, the Bush lawyers relied on the Republican protest form that was barely distinguishable from the infamous protest form designed by Mr. Herron, the Gore election law specialist.

And still, after all this time, no comment from you about Jim Smith’s press conference in which he outlined exactly the same information that was contained in Mr. Herron’s memo.

Now peedro, a couple of posts back upthread, you started whining that my posts were “unreferenced.” Do you mean you’re unhappy that I’m not showing you the source of my cites? Just following your lead, sparky. You’ve not provided a link to anything you’ve quoted.

But since you asked so nicely, the cite in this comment comes from “How Bush Took Florida : Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote” by DAVID BARSTOW and DON VAN NATTA Jr. in the The New York Times on July 15, 2001.

It doesn’t support your assertion that Democrats selectively disqualified military votes.

It doesn’t counter the evidence I have provided that Republicans found some military votes more valuable than others as they filed suit for lenient standards in a select few counties.

It doesn’t show that Mr. Herron’s memo was anything other than what you can see with your own eyes: a summary of Florida election law. (How dare those dirty Democrats ask to know the rules?)

I’m not sure whether to accuse you of building with straw or grasping at straws.

Ms. Harris’ guidance–the bulletin Kudlow says Herron must have “surely” known about–said the latter, but not the former. Her guidance as of November 13 still required a postmark.

On the day after the election, Division of Elections staff members drafted a press release titled “Secretary Explains Overseas Ballot Procedures.” It was meant to be a simple reminder from Ms. Harris, similar to those her predecessors had routinely sent out, that state election rules required overseas ballots to have been “postmarked or signed and dated” by Election Day.

By early that evening, the draft statement had been sent to Ms. Harris’s e-mail basket for approval. It was never released.

Instead, Ms. Harris said nothing about the absentee ballots until Nov. 13, when she touched on them at the end of a televised statement that focused mainly on trying to bring an end to the South Florida recounts. In her statement, she said that the overseas ballots had to be “executed” – a vague word that could have meant either signed or both signed and dated – by Election Day and that they had to bear a foreign postmark. Then she added, “They are not required, however, to be postmarked on or prior to” Election Day.

“What’s more, the notion that ballot mistakes in West Palm Beach are equivalent to ballot denials from the armed services, as put forth last night by California Gov. Gray Davis on one of the cable talk shows, is an outrage.

There is no equivalence here.

When troops are serving on the front line, anywhere around the world, the mail goes when it goes. When it is strategically and tactically appropriate, military mail is put on the next transport plane. To clarify this point, I spoke to my father-in-law, Col. Burritt Hollister Pond, USAF (retired), who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and completed his career tour on the senior staff of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs. Holly Pond, who knows a thing or two about military procedures, tells me that when servicemen and women are in conflict zones, for example such as Bosnia, they are actually given franking privileges for mail  the same franking granted members of the U.S. Congress. So there are no ordinary postage stamps or postmarks. Instead, they merely put their name, rank, and serial number on the envelope. At that point, the squadron clerk, or whoever is in charge of various administrative duties, becomes the post office. And the mail goes when it goes.

In similar fashion, people serving on submarine duty, where ships can be submerged for 30 to 60 days at a time, have no recourse to normal postal services or timetables. Literally, the mail is posted and sent when they come up for air.

So, it’s for these reasons that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was exactly right when she generated an election bulletin that absentee ballots from the military need not be postmarked as of Election Day. It would be sufficient to merely have a dated signature in order to qualify. Surely, the Tallahassee Democratic attorney, Mark Herron, was aware of all this when he sent his now-infamous memo to thousands of Democratic poll workers advising them how to disqualify absentee ballots. This action led to roughly 40% of the military absentee ballots being thrown out. Efforts by Democratic spokesmen high and low to deny the memo itself, and the intent of the memo, and the results of the memo, smacks of dishonesty and unpatriotism. That’s the long and short of it”

Since few of the leftist poster’s here ever served in the armed forces (with apologies to qukslver who is currently serving in the paramilitary branch of the service, the air force), they would not understand the vicissitudes of military mail.

And note Mark Herron sent the memo to democratic poll workers. Further, it is unikely that the republicans “prepared the very same memo” for its poll workers, at least I have not seen any evidence of that.

Dr Pedro, The happy, election winning clown….

No, cherry picking is going to specific counties that are predominately republican and then going through ballots with a fine tooth comb to throw out as many as possible.

Still no proof?

Here are seven counties& & cherry picked by the democrats

Actually, cherry-picked by Republicans!

a Democratic lawyer sent all 67 Florida county canvassing boards a memo

Clearly wrong if you bother to look at the memo, which is addressed to FDP (Florida Democratic Party) Lawyers.

a memo outlining ways to disqualify military absentee ballots.

No, a memo outlining the law! (Follow the link. You can read it for yourself.) The GOP prepared the very same memo for its canvassing board observers.

Clown.

Republican Service Records

Or theres this comparison

Put up or shut up.

By the way, I’m currently in the USAF.

I never suggested that there were not ballots that deserved to be thrown out. Of course my republican collegues would not protest clearly ineligible ballots. Ergo, your slanted and half-told story above….Sorry, and unreferenced….

The duality of the Bush strategy was demonstrated in another way. In three South Florida counties, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, boards rejected as illegal 362 of 572 overseas ballots that Friday. Most – including many military ballots – were thrown out without a word of protest from Mr. Bush’s lawyers.

Some of their work was done by the Gore lawyers, who, true to their strategy, challenged hundreds of overseas ballots with little discrimination. They objected to ballots from Democrats, Republicans, civilians, military personnel – even in counties where Mr. Gore actually beat Mr. Bush among overseas voters.

Your cite is from the NY Times& .I will just have to go with my understanding of the facts&

A link to the original memo is provided above. You may see for yourself that your source was wrong.

Want more?

In Broward and in other Gore strongholds, Bush lawyers questioned scores of ballots, almost always from civilian Democrats but occasionally from members of the military. They objected to the slightest of flaws, including partial addresses of witnesses, illegible witness signatures and slight variations in voter signatures. In at least six cases, the Bush lawyers relied on the Republican protest form that was barely distinguishable from the infamous protest form designed by Mr. Herron, the Gore election law specialist.

Ballots coming from military members known to be stationed on a ship at sea, and known to not put postmarks on envelopes is somewhat different that ones coming from a foreign country…would you agree? Would you also agree that a ballot coming from an APO or FPO has more legitimacy on it’s face than one from a foreign country?

So, an “irregularity” on a ballot from the USS Kitty Hawk, might reasonable be treated differently than one from say, the middle east?

Hmm….seems reasonable.

However all these points are moot, as you will simply look at any document that I produce and then rewrite it as you see fit.

Whatever….

Worried about talk of absentee ballots for Gore coming from Florida voters in Israel, as well as losing any military ballots considered likely Bush votes, a Bush overseas-voter team was headed by Warren Tompkins, the consultant who had overseen Bush’s South Carolina primary win over then-insurgent candidate John McCain.

A Bush campaign memo laid out a two-pronged strategy  telling Bush lawyers how to challenge “illegal” civilian votes that they assumed would be for Gore and also how to defend equally defective military ballots, the Times said.

Ginsberg acknowledged that they had fought for military ballots while opposing ballots from civilians. Others involved in the campaign denied it.

For Pat Hollarn, the elections supervisor of Okaloosa County, the next days brought a kind of bedlam she couldn’t believe. A deep-green Panhandle county, Okaloosa has no fewer than six military bases, including Eglin and Hurlburt Air Force bases and an Army Ranger camp. And so the county’s four-story government building, nestled within a highway strip of stores such as Mr. Cheap Butts, became ground zero for the lawyers on both sides assigned to the fight over absentee ballots.

Both parties were pushy, obnoxious, and sometimes almost hysterical. The Bush lawyers argued passionately that the rules should be eased and all absentee ballots included. “I told them not only no but hell no,” says Hollarn, a centrist Republican, who prides herself on being a nonpartisan supervisor. (At the same time, in the more Democratic counties, Bush lawyers were arguing just as passionately that rules should be strictly adhered to and any questionable ballots put aside.)

Good night, peedro.

Why? Your answer seems to be “it must have had something to do with Al Gore.”

You still haven’t shown us even one example of “cherry-picking.” You haven’t addressed the fact that the Bush campaign, in the person of Jim Smith, was persuing precisely the same strategy. You haven’t even suggested a reason why the Bush campaign cared so much for the rights of soldiers from Okaloosa county but so little for those from Dade.

You’re down to a blue-faced, frothing rant peedro. You got nothin’.