A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation...

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by CheekyBird

My understanding of what occurred is that Gore/Lieberman were not attempting to block legitimate votes from overseas military troops (over 1,400 absentee ballots from overseas were chucked without opening the envelopes), but requesting that the Florida Secretary of State comply with the previously accepted legal standard of rejecting ballots that did not include a postmark. (To assert that Gore/Lieberman attempted to disenfranchise military personnel stationed abroad is to presume that all the UNOPENED ballots were for Bush).

Gore/Lieberman were well within their right to demand that the FL Secretary of State enforce a voting LAW. Alas, it was a public relations bungle.

Yes, you are correct. In terms of the letter of the law they were entitled to ask for those ballots to be disqualified. But considering all that our military troops do for the country, to try to disqualify their votes on a technicality is pretty low, especially when Gore and Lieberman kept on saying that they simply wanted all the ballots counted. That was their talking point. They kept saying that all they wanted was for everyone's votes to be counted. In reality, they only wanted more ballots to be counted if those ballots were ballots that were likely to help them. They only wanted recounts in precincts that tend to vote democrat. Since military troops lean republican, they didn't want those votes counted if there was any legal way to keep those votes from being counted.