Door Daan de Wit
Wat pijnlijk was, wordt pijnlijker. Steeds groter wordt het getal dat aangeeft
hoeveel méér stemmen Gore heeft behaald dan Bush. Het gaat
voor de goede orde om stemmen van Het Volk. 'Gore's Lead in the Popular
Vote Now Exceeds 500,000' kopt de New York Times vandaag. 'Vice President
Al Gore's nationwide lead in the popular vote has grown by about 200,000,
to more than half a million, since Dec. 18, when the Electoral College sealed
his fate and made Gov. George W. Bush the 43rd president of the United States.'
Lees het hele verhaal
van de NY Times. Login en password: daanspeak
Waarom won Bush en niet Gore? De NY Times heeft het antwoord in een lang
artikel, 'Resisting the Recount'. Enkele citaten.
'The Democrats also mobilized intensively and relentlessly, but they had
fewer levers of power. At every street corner demonstration and counting
hall, it seemed that they were outnumbered, outshouted and outorganized by
Republicans.'
Local and state officials described in interviews a web of activity — from
seminars on ballot challenges and election law to the distribution of cheap
cameras to collect evidence — as new indicators of how sophisticated their
efforts were.'
Lees het hele artikel
op. Login en password: daanspeak
'Now it's unofficial: Gore did win Florida' meldde The Guardian
zondag.
'As George W. Bush handed further key government posts to hardline Republican
right-wingers, an unofficial recount of votes in Florida appeared to confirm
that Bush lost the US presidential election.
Despite the decision by the US Supreme Court to halt the Florida recount
in the contested counties, American media organisations, includ ing Knight
Ridder - owner of the Miami Herald - have commissioned their own counts,
gaining access to the ballots under Freedom of Information legislation. The
result so far, with the recounting of so-called 'undervotes' in only
one county completed by Friday night, indicates that Al Gore
is ahead by 140 votes.
[...]
Gore's lead is expected to soar [sterk stijgen] when counting resumes in
the New Year and Miami votes are counted. In a separate exercise, the Miami
Herald commissioned a team of political analysts and pollsters to make a
statistical calculation based on projections
of votes by county, concluding that Gore won the state
by 23,000.
The media initiative is likely to bedevil Bush in the weeks to come, thickening
the pall of illegitimacy that will hang over his inauguration on 20 January.
It has already led to a face-off between almost all the news media organisations
in the state and Bush's presidential team. In the most extreme example of
the Bush camp's desperation to avoid a recount, the new director of the Environment
Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, has proposed that the Florida
ballots be sealed for 10 years.
Bush's spokesman Tucker Eskew dismissed the recount as 'mischief-making'
and 'inflaming public passions' while his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush,
accused the papers of 'trying to rewrite history'. Het hele artikel.
'How would a Bush presidency affect the region of Central and Eastern
Europe (CEE)?', vroeg Central
Europe Review zich af op 13 november. 'For many analysts, his election
would certainly be seen as a negative sign. Looking at his father's presidency
and at his set of advisors, many close to ex-President George Herbert Walker
Bush, this view is surely justified. Bush's rhetoric during the campaign
only enhanced that negative sense.'
Neer'lands meest vermaarde journalist, Henk Hofland, schreef woensdag
over de verkiezingen en kwam in zijn column
nog op een inmiddels bekend, maar toch niet onbelangrijk feit: '"Het microscopisch
onderzoek heeft misstanden aan het licht gebracht die anders niet ontdekt
zouden zijn. Een hoger percentage zwarte kiezers was verplicht, ouderwetse,
gebrekkige stemmachines met perforatiesysteem te gebruiken, terwijl in de
welvarende districten overwegend blanke kiezers hun stem uitbrachten via
de optisch scanning machines," stelt de New York Times vast. De NAACP, National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, heeft rechtszaken aangespannen
- nu, na de beslissing over het presidentschap. Het gaat niet tegen Bush,
maar om de verwezenlijking van de gelijke rechten, zegt de NAACP.'
Verder wijst hij terecht op de gevolgen va de wisseling van de wacht: Star
Wars, (het gebrek aan) buitenlands beleid, (ons) drugsbeleid, om maar wat
te noemen.