Votescum: While the mainstream media are content to look at the weird ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, there's all kinds of other irregularities passing almost unnoticed. In Atlanta, Georgia, people who voted could enter a raffle to win a $1,000 shotgun, a shady move calculated to bring out Republican voters. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Al Gore's campaigners were caught giving packs of cigarettes to homeless people who had been driven in to vote.

A number of overseas Army and Navy personnel didn't receive their absentee ballots, a "mistake" that will surely favor Democrats. The California Democratic Party apparently used info from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to send a letter "from" Bill Clinton to immigrants--some of whom aren't even citizens--along with a Voter Identification Card that would allow them to vote.

Officials in Volusia County, Florida, have admitted that there was a "problem" with a disk containing voting results that caused Gore to lose around 10,000 votes and then, just as mysteriously, gain at least some of that back. Reports from at least five states indicate that people were intimidated at voting stations, while others were lied to about the voting process and told that they couldn't cast their ballots. James Ridgeway is reporting that in some New York City precincts every voting machine was broken, while elsewhere voting machines were locked or missing levers for certain candidates.

The upside: I'm glad this cliffhanger has happened because it's thrust so many problems with the voting system into the limelight: the electoral college, exit polling, the way winners are projected, the media's decisions to "call" races, and, of course, vote fraud. It warmed the cockles of my heart to actually hear the mannequins on CNN discussing vote fraud. Tens of millions of people were told that corruption is rampant in the current voting process, something that I never thought would be admitted on the Corporate News Network. Of course, the mainstream media assuredly won't dig deeply into this issue--especially now that the initial shock is over and they can start working from a script again--but at least the issue is on the table.

Our civic duty, my booty: As in every election year, my ears rang with the familiar tripe: "If you don't vote, you can't complain." "Voting is your duty." "Voting gives us a voice." Wake up, Pollyanna. The president is just the man whose operatives were the best at rigging the election. Your ballot ended up in an incinerator somewhere. Your computerized vote was multiplied by 12 and added to the totals. That little lever you pulled isn't really connected to anything. In short, no matter what the outcome is, we will never, ever know who really won.

Tweedledum and Tweedledummer: Of course, it doesn't really matter who wins. We'll either get a corporate conservative who admits he's a conservative or a corporate conservative who pretends he's a liberal. Fuck 'em both.

Russ Kick
russ@mindpollen.com
www.mindpollen.com
www.disinfo.com

One of the most significant arguments during the mind-numbingly boring campaign was which chump would screw Granny and Poppy less/more. Let's face it, after citizens of the US reach 65, we give them just enough money to scrape by while locking them up in shabby old age homes where they slowly lose the will to live. Isn't it ironic that the state of Florida—where Metamucil, prunes, and Depends undergarments are major cash crops—have the election in the palms of their wrinkly hands?

Erica Feldman
Astrid9787@aol.com
www.disinfo.com

Palm Beach is where old intelligence officers go to die! They all used to hang out at that bar Taboo on Worth Avenue before the Kennedy-Smith rape trial brought the world press down on them. Taboo closed and I guess they now hang out somewhere else . . . If Chapman was a Manchurian candidate, these folks trained him . . . They HATED the fact Yoko had moved Lennon into the community. They feared he would influence decisions made on the 2 billion a year charity ball circuit. So it's a bit weird that all this would be going down in Palm Beach, a town frozen in old south tradition.

West Palm Beach airport flew all secret OSS missions during World War 2, including Project Paper Clip. Buchanan actually has a lot of supporters down there. These extra votes may in fact be his! There are a lot of old Germans in Palm Beach, and not all of them Jewish . . . As a matter of fact, Trump's Mar-a-Lago is the only club that isn't segregated! The common working folks in Palm Beach County are jumping at the opportunity this snafu is providing them to regain some authority. That's why Bush is trying so hard to put a lid on before it blows off the kettle, and why I suspect Gore will eventually let it slide, for the same reason. But if the media keeps wiping this into a frenzy, not realizing the can of worms they've just opened, we might see the unraveling of business as usual. So let's keep up the pressure . . .

What really bothers me is how quiet Nader has been. His website, and websites for the Greens, froze in time on election night, as if they just packed it in and went home, their job well done. Was spoiling the election for Gore their goal all along? Is that why we keep seeing Nader and Buchanan agreeing with everything on Larry King and then shaking hands this afternoon?

Remy Chevalier
remyc@prodigy.net
www.remyc.com
www.endsecrecy.com

What a mess. As a friend said, this carnival-esque election is karma's way getting back at us for nominating two very uninteresting and uninspiring candidates -- Coke and Pepsi. It's a comic spectacle and right now everyone's favorite person to blame is Nader. But before you turn against someone who got only 3 percent of the national vote, why not blame the people who voted George W. Bush, the man who wanted Jesus Day to be a national holiday in Texas?

Meanwhile, in the midst of the election chaos, Mexico President Vincente Fox is pleading with GWB to stop the execution of Mexican-born Miguel Angel Flores in Texas. In 1989, Flores was convicted of the murder and rape of New Mexico college student Angela Tysen. Even though Flores was not permitted to contact the Mexican Consulate at the time of his arrest -- which is standard procedure -- the Texas board of Paroles and Pardons has rejected President Fox's request. Again a person's life is on the line, and Bush won't hear a word of it. With the shouting on both sides of the election, it's not likely anyone else will either.