A Very American Coup

excerpted from the book

Stupid White Men

and other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation

by Michael Moore

ReganBooks, 2001

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The coup began long before the shenanigans on Election Day 2000. In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris, an honorary Stupid White Man who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign cochairwoman and the Florida secretary of state in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did so with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W.'s brother Jeb Bush-whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it . . . a felony in its own right. But hey, this is America. We don't prosecute felons if they're rich or married to a governing Bush.

The law states that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida. And sadly (though I'm confident that Florida's justice system was always unimpeachably fair), that means 31 percent of all black men in Florida are prohibited from voting because they have a felony on their record. Harris and Bush knew that removing the names of ex-felons from the voter rolls would keep thousands of black citizens out of the voting booth.

Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats-and sure enough, A1 Gore received the votes of more than 90 percent of them on November 7, 2000.

That is, 90 percent of those who were allowed to vote.

In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the state of Florida, Bush, Harris, and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, they also removed thousands of black citizens who had never committed a crime in their lives-along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misdemeanors.

How did this happen? Harris's office told Database-a firm with strong Republican ties-to cast as wide a net as possible to get rid of these voters. Her minions instructed the company to include even people with "similar" names to those of the actual felons. They insisted Database check people with the same birth dates as known felons, or similar Social Security numbers; an 80 percent match of relevant information, the election office instructed, was sufficient for Database to add a voter to the ineligible list.

These orders were shocking, even to Bush-friendly Database. They would mean that thousands of legitimate voters might be barred from voting on Election Day just because they had a name that sounded like someone else's, or shared a birthday with some unknown bank robber. Marlene Thorogood, the Database project manager, sent an E-mail to Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, a lawyer for Katherine Harris's election division, warning him that "Unfortunately, programming in this fashion may supply you with false positives," or misidentifications.

Never mind that, said ol' Bucky. His response: "Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let [county election] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether."

Database did as they were told. And before long 173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. In Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, 66 percent of the voters who were removed were black. In Tampa's county, 54 percent of those who would be denied the right to vote on November 7, 2000, were black.

But culling names from Florida's records alone was not enough for Harris and her department. Eight thousand additional Floridians were thrown off the voting rolls because Database used a false list supplied by another state, a state which claimed that all the names on the list were former convicted felons who had since moved to Florida.

It turns out that the felons on the list had served their time and had all their voting privileges reinstated. And there were others on the list who had committed only misdemeanors-such as parking violations or littering. What state was it that offered Jeb and George a helping hand by sending this bogus list to Florida?

Texas.

This entire incident stunk to the high heavens, but the American media ignored it. It took the British Broadcasting Corporation to dig deep into this story, running fifteen-minute segments on its prime-time news program revealing all the sordid details and laying responsibility for the scam right at the doorstep of Governor Jeb Bush. It's a sad day when we have to look to a country 5,000 miles away to find out the truth about our own elections. (Eventually the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post picked up the story, but it received little attention.)

This assault on the voting rights of minorities was so widespread in Florida that it even affected people like Linda Howell. Linda received a letter informing her that she was a felon-and therefore advising her not to bother showing up on Election Day, because she would be barred from voting. The only problem was, Linda Howell wasn't a felon-in fact, she was the elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida! She and other local election officials tried to get the state to rectify the problem, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. They were told that everyone who complained about being prevented from voting should submit themselves for fingerprinting-and then let the state determine whether or not they were felons.

On November 7, 2000, as black Floridians flocked to the polls in record numbers, many were met at the ballot boxes with a blunt rebuke: "You cannot vote." In a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police to block anyone on Katherine and Jeb's "felons list" from voting. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens looking to exercise their constitutional right to vote, mostly in black and Hispanic communities, were sent away-and threatened with arrest if they protested.

George W. Bush would officially be credited with receiving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. Is it safe to assume that the thousands of registered black and Hispanic voters barred from the polls might have made the difference if they had been allowed to vote-and cost Bush the election? Without a doubt.

On election night, after the polls closed, there was much confusion over what was happening with the counting of the votes in Florida. Finally a decision was made by the man in charge of the election night desk for the Fox News Channel. He decided that Fox should go on the air and declare that Bush had won Florida and thus the election. And that's what happened. Fox formally declared Bush the winner.

But down in Tallahassee, the counting of the votes had not yet been completed; in fact, the Associated Press insisted it was still too close to call, and refused to follow Fox's lead.

Not so the other networks. They ran like lemmings after Fox made the call, afraid that they would be seen as slow or out of the loop-even though their own news reporters on the ground were insisting that it was too early to call the election. But who needs reporters when you're playing follow the leader-the leader, in this case, being John Ellis, the man in charge of Fox's election coverage. Who is John Ellis?

He's a first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush.

Once Ellis made the call and everyone followed suit, there was no going back-and nothing was more psychologically devastating for Gore's chances of winning than the sudden perception that HE was being the spoiler by asking for recounts, withdrawing his concession of defeat, tying up the courts with lawyers and lawsuits. The truth is that during all of this, Gore actually was ahead-he had the most votes-but that was never how the news media played it.

The one moment from that election night I will never forget came earlier in the evening, after the networks had first- correctly-projected the state of Florida for Gore. The cameras cut to a hotel room in Texas. There sat George W. with his father, the former President, and his mother, Barbara. The old man appeared cool as a cucumber, even though it looked like curtains for Sonny. A reporter asked young Bush what he thought about the outcome.

"I'm not . . . conceding anything in Florida," Junior piped up, semicoherently. "I know you've all the projections, but people are actually counting the votes.... The networks called this thing awfully earlier and people are actually counting the votes have different perspective so . . ." It was an odd moment in that crazy night of election result coverage. The Bushes, with their relaxed smiles, looked like a family of cats that had just wolfed down a bunch of canaries-as if they knew something we didn't.

They did. They knew Jeb and Katherine had done their job months earlier. They knew cousin John was holding down the fort at Fox election central. And if all else failed, there was always that team Poppy could count on: the United States Supreme Court.

As we all know, that's exactly what happened for the next thirty-six days. The forces of the Empire struck back, and they did so without mercy. While Gore was stupidly concentrating on getting recounts in a few counties, the Bush team was going after the holy grail-the overseas absentee ballots. Many of these ballots would come from the military, which typically votes Republican, and would finally give Bush the lead that denying the vote to thousands of blacks and Jewish grandmothers hadn't.

Gore knew this, and tried to make sure the ballots underwent maximum scrutiny before they could be counted. Sure, this ran contrary to the "let every vote be counted" plea he'd made when calling for recounts. But he also had Florida law, which is pretty clear about this, on his side. It states that overseas absentee ballots can only be counted if they were cast and signed on or before election day, and mailed and postmarked from another country by election day.

But while Jim Baker was chanting his mantra-"It is not fair to change the rules and standards governing the counting or recounting of votes after it appears that one side has concluded that is the only way to get the votes it needs"-he and his operatives were doing just that.

A July 2001 investigation by the New York Times showed that of the 2 ,490 overseas ballots that ended up being included in the certified election results, 680 were considered flawed and questionable. Bush got the overseas vote by a ratio of 4 to 5. By that percentage, 544 of the votes that went to Bush should have been thrown out. Got the math? Suddenly Bush's "winning margin" of 537 votes is down to a chilly negative 7.

So how did all these votes end up being counted for Bush? Within hours of the election, the Bush campaign had launched their attack. The first step was to make sure that as many ballots got in as possible. Republican operatives sent out frantic E-mails to navy ships asking them to dig up any ballots that might be hanging around. They even put in a call to Clinton Defense Secretary William S. Cohen (a Republican) to ask him to put pressure on the military outposts. He declined, but it didn't matter: thousands of votes poured in-even some that were signed after election day.

Now all they had to do was make sure that as many of these votes as possible went to W. And so the real thievery began.

According to the Times, Katherine Harris had planned to send out a memo to her canvassing boards clarifying the procedure for counting overseas ballots. Included in this memo was a reminder that state law required all ballots to have been "postmarked or signed and dated" by election day. When it was clear that George's lead was rapidly shrinking, she decided not to send the memo. Instead she sent out a note that said ballots "are not required to be postmarked on or prior to" election day. Hmmm.

What caused her to change her mind-and the law? We may never know, since the computer records that showed what happened have been mysteriously erased-a possible violation of Florida's Sunshine Laws. Now, long after the horse has left the barn, Harris has turned over her hard drives to the media for inspection-but only after her own computer consultant "looked them over." This is a woman who is now planning to run for Congress. Can these people get any more shameless?

Armed with the blessing of the secretary of state, the Republicans launched an all-out campaign to make sure as broad a standard as possible was used in counting these absentee ballots. "Equal representation," Florida style, meant that the rules governing acceptance or denial of your absentee ballot depended on what county you were from. Perhaps that would explain why in counties where Gore won, only 2 out of 10 absentee ballots with unclear postmarks were counted; in Bush counties, predictably, 6 out of 10 such ballots made it into the final tally.

When the Democrats complained that ballots that didn't follow the rules shouldn't be counted, the Republicans launched a fierce public relations campaign to make it look as if the Democrats were trying to screw the men and women who were risking their lives for our country. A Republican city council member from Naples was typical in his hyperbole: "If they catch a bullet, or fragment from a terrorist bomb, that fragment does not have any postmark or registration of any kind." Republican Congressman Steve Buyer from Indiana even obtained (possibly illegally) the phone numbers and E-mail addresses of military personnel so that he could gather tales of ballot-denial woe to garner sympathy for "our fighting men and women." Even Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf weighed in with the reflection that "it's a very sad day in our country" when Democrats start harassing military voters.

All the pressure worked on the wimpy, spineless Democrats. They choked. While appearing on Meet the Press, vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman argued that the Democrats should stop creating a fuss and not be bothered that hundreds of military ballots were being counted, just because they weren't "postmarked."

Lieberman, like so many others among this new breed of Democrats, should have fought for principle instead of worrying about image. Why? Well, as the New York Times found out:

* 344 ballots had no evidence that they were cast on or before Election Day

*183 ballots were postmarked in the United States

* 96 ballots lacked appropriate witness information

* 169 ballots came from unregistered voters, had envelopes that weren't signed properly, or came from people who hadn't requested a ballot

* 5 ballots came after the November 17 deadline

* 19 overseas voters voted on two ballots-and had both counted

All of these ballots violated Florida law, yet they all were counted. Can I say this any louder? Bush didn't win! Gore did. k has nothing to do with chads, or even the blatant repression of Florida's African-American community and their right to vote. It was a simple matter of breaking the law, all documented, all the evidence sitting there in Tallahassee, clearly marked without question-and all done purposefully to throw the election to Bush.

On the morning of Saturday, December 9, 2000, the Supreme Court got word that the recounts in Florida, in spite of everything the Bush camp had done to fix the elections, were going in favor of A1 Gore. By 2 P.M., the unofficial tally showed that Gore was catching up to Bush-"only 66 votes down, and gaining!" as one breathless newscaster put it. It was critical to Bush that the words "Al Gore is in the lead" never be heard on American television: With only moments to spare, they did what they had to do. At 2:45 that afternoon, the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

On the Court sat Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor and Nixon appointee Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Both in their seventies, they were hoping to retire under a Republican administration so that their replacements would share their conservative ideology. On election night, O'Connor was heard lamenting at a party in Georgetown that she couldn't hold out another four-or eight-years. Junior Bush was their only hope for securing a contented retirement in their home state of Arizona.

Meanwhile, two other justices with extremist right-wing viewpoints found themselves with a conflict of interest. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, worked at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in D.C.; now, she has just been hired by George W. Bush to help recruit people to serve in his impending administration. And Eugene Scalia, the son of Justice Antonin Scalia, was a lawyer with the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher-the very law firm representing Bush before the Supreme Court!

But neither Thomas nor Scalia saw any conflict of interest, and they refused to remove themselves from the case. In fact, when the Court convened later, it was Scalia who issued the now-infamous explanation of why the ballot-counting had to be halted: "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election." In other words, if we let all the votes be counted and they come out in Gore's favor, and Gore wins, well, that will impair Bush's ability to govern once we install him as "President."

True enough: if the ballots proved that Gore had won-which they eventually would-then I guess that would tend to dampen the country's feelings of legitimacy about a Bush presidency.

In their decision, the Court used the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment-the same amendment they've loudly disclaimed when used by blacks over the years to halt discrimination based on race-to justify the theft. Because of the variation in the recount methods, they argued, voters in each district weren't being treated equally, and therefore their rights were being violated. (Funny, but only the dissenters on the court mentioned that the antiquated voting equipment found disproportionately in poor and minority Florida neighborhoods had created an entirely different-and far more disturbing--inequality in the system.)

Eventually the press got around to conducting their own recounts of the votes, doing their best to spin the jumbled ball of public confusion into orbit. The headline in the Miami Herald read: "Review of ballots finds Bush's win would have endured manual recount." But if you read the entire story, buried deep inside was this paragraph: "Bush's lead would have vanished if the recount had been conducted under the severely restrictive standards that some

Republicans advocated.... The review found that the result would have been different if every canvassing board in every county had examined every undervote . . . [Under] the most inclusive standard [that is, a standard that sought to include the true will of ALL the people] Gore would have won by 393 votes.... On ballots that [suggested] a fault with either the machine or the voter's ability to use it . . . Gore would have won by 299 votes."

I did not vote for Al Gore, but I think any fair person would conclude that the will of the people in Florida clearly went his way. Whether it was the counting debacle or the exclusion of thousands of black citizens that corrupted the results, there is little doubt that Gore was the people's choice.

There was perhaps no worse example of the wholesale denial of the right of each voter to have his vote properly counted than in Palm Beach County. Much has been made of the "butterfly ballot," which made it easy to vote for the wrong person because candidates' names and punch holes were crammed unevenly onto facing pages. The media went out of its way to point out that the ballot was designed by one of the county's election commissioners, a Democrat, and then approved by the majority-Democrat local board. What right did Gore have to complain if his own party was responsible for the faulty design of the ballot?

Had anyone bothered to check, they would have discovered that one of the two "Democrats" on the committee-the ballot's designer, Theresa LePore-had actually been a registered Republican. She switched her affiliation to Democrat in 1996; then, just three months after Bush seized office, she resigned as a Democrat and switched her voter registration to Independent. No one in the press bothered to question what was really going on.

Thus, the Palm Beach Post estimates that more than 3,000 voters, mostly elderly and Jewish, who thought they were voting for A1 Gore ended up punching the wrong hole-for Pat Buchanan. Even Buchanan went on TV to declare that no way in hell did those Jewish voters vote for him.

On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush, positioned with his junta on the Capitol steps, stood in front of Chief Justice Rehnquist and took the oath that Presidents take at their inaugurations. A cold and steady rain fell over Washington throughout the day. Dark clouds obscured the sun, and the parade route, usually jammed with tens of thousands of citizens all the way to the White House, was eerily bare.

Except for the 20,000 protesters who jeered Bush every inch of the way. Holding signs denouncing Bush for stealing the election, the rain-soaked demonstrators were the conscience of the nation. Bush's limousine could not avoid them. Instead of cheering crowds of supporters, he was greeted by good people moved to remind this illegitimate ruler that he did not win the election- and that the people would never forget.

At the traditional point where Presidents since Jimmy Carter have stopped their limos and emerged to walk the last four blocks (as a reminder that we are a nation ruled not by kings but by, uh, equals), Bush's triple-armored black car with its dark-tinted windows-favored by mobsters everywhere-came to an abrupt halt. The crowd grew louder-"HAIL TO THE THIEF!" You could see the Secret Service and Bush's advisers huddling in the freezing rain, trying to figure out what to do. If Bush got out and walked, he would be booed, shouted down, and pelted with eggs the rest of the way. The limousine sat there for what must have been five minutes. The rain poured. Eggs and tomatoes hit the car. The protesters dared Bush to step out and face them.

Then, suddenly, the President's car bolted and tore down the street. The decision had been made-hit the gas and get past this rabble as quickly as possible. The Secret Service agents running beside the limo were left behind, the car's tires splashing dirty rain from the street onto the men who were there to protect its passenger. It might have been the finest thing I have ever witnessed in Washington, D.C.-a pretender to the American throne forced to turn tail and run from thousands of American citizens armed only with the Truth and the ingredients of a decent omelet.

Once the American Lie put the pedal to the metal, it ran for cover to the bulletproof reviewing stand in front of the White House. Many of Bush's family and invited guests had already left to get dry. But George stood there and waved proudly at the marching bands, their instruments disabled by the rain, the long parade of floats wilted and crumbled by the time they arrived at the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. Every so often a lucky convertible passed by, carrying the few dampened celebrities Bush had convinced to honor him-Kelsey Grammer, Drew Carey, Chuck Norris. By parade's end Bush stood alone in the stands, drenched, even his parents having deserted him for shelter. It was a pathetic sight-the poor little rich boy who came in second showing up to claim his prize, with no one there to cheer him on.

Sadder still were the 154 million of us who had not voted for him. In a nation of 200 million voters, I would say we constitute the majority.

And yet what could George W. have been thinking, other than "What, me worry?" There were plenty of hired hands to be installed in the White House, pulling the strings for their puppet President. With Daddy's old buddies called back to D.C. to lend a hand, Georgie could Sit back and tell the public he was "delegating." The puppetmasters moved in, and the business of running the world could easily be left to them.

And who are these fine, patriotic pillars of the Bush junta? They represent the modest and selfless ranks of corporate America, and they are listed below, for easy reference, to help the United Nations and NATO forces round them up when they arrive to restore order and democracy. Grateful citizens will line the boulevards and avenues and cheer their arrival.

Personally, I will settle for nothing less than multiple show trials and their immediate deportation to a real banana republic. God Bless America!

Acting President-Vice President"-Dick Cheney

I'm not sure yet where the "compassionate" part of "compassionate conservatism" comes from, but I do know where the conservatism resides. For six terms Dick Cheney was a congressman representing Wyoming, and he had one of the most conservative voting records of all 435 members of Congress. Cheney voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, against funding the Head Start program, against a House resolution calling for South Africa to release Nelson Mandela from prison, and against federal funding for abortions even in cases of rape or incest. And his record doesn't stop there. Cheney has had his hand in all of the recent Republican administrations, including that of Richard Nixon, when he was deputy White House counsel under Don "Rummy" Rumsfeld. He replaced Rumsfeld as President Ford's chief of staff. Under George Bush I, Cheney was defense secretary, leading the country in two of the largest military campaigns in recent history: the invasion of Panama and the war against Iraq.

In between Bush regimes, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton Industries, an oil services company that has dealings with repressive governments like Burma and Iraq. During the 2000 campaign, Cheney denied that Halliburton had a business relationship with Saddam Hussein. Then, in June 2001, the Washington Post revealed that in fact two Halliburton subsidiaries were doing business with Iraq. Can you imagine the field day Republicans would have had if they'd ever discovered such a thing about

Clinton or Gore? And Alaska isn't the only place Cheney has suggested we dig up: Halliburton has a major construction deal in the development of Mexico's Cantarell offshore oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. When nominated for the vice presidency, Cheney hemmed and hawed about divesting himself of his Halliburton stock. I guess he knew that good times were still to come.

Attorney General-John Ashcroft

The man in charge of overseeing our justice system is a man who has opposed all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest; who is against providing job discrimination protection for homosexuals; who voted to limit the death penalty appeals process (and then oversaw seven executions as governor); and who has been a staunch supporter of out-of-control, over-the-top drug laws. Perhaps this record could explain why he lost his Senate reelection bid against a dead man. For his efforts, however, Ashcroft received substantial donations from AT&T, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Monsanto. The Schering-Plough pharmaceutical company contributed $50,000-perhaps as a thank-you for the bill he had introduced that would have extended the company's patent on the allergy pill Claritin. (The bill ultimately failed.) All this pharmaceutical funding may also explain why Ashcroft has voted against including prescription drugs under the Medicare program. Another campaign contributor, Microsoft, gave Ashcroft $10,000 through his joint fund-raising committee with the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Lucky for them he lost the Senate race, so that he can turn his full attention to running the Justice Department-or, that is, standing back while the software giant, newly freed of the court ruling that would have split the company in two, is allowed to run amok under his watchful eye.

Ashcroft is also to the right (if such a thing is possible) of the National Rifle Association when it comes to gun control. His first pro-gun act as attorney general was to announce that within twenty-four hours of a purchase and background check, all background check files on persons who purchase guns will be destroyed by the Justice Department (leaving the government with NO record of who has a gun or what kind of gun they have).

Stupid White Men

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