NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 9, 2000

Wexler, D-Fla., best remembered for his boorish performance during the House impeachment hearings when he embarrassed his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee by ranting and raving while questioning witnesses, claims he saw "about 3,000" Floridians vote for the wrong man "with my own eyes," according to Robbins, a patently absurd accusation on its face.

Wexler, Robbins writes, "must have either 1) been a partisan illegally watching the polls from inside, which is a serious crime in Florida; 2) have X-ray vision; 3) be fibbing to the country."

Democrat Produced Palm Beach County Ballot

The ballot, now widely known as the "butterfly ballot," was produced by the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, a Democrat not likely to have been involved in some kind of scheme to deceive fellow Democrat voters.

The ballot requires voters to punch a hole in a space next to their candidate’s name, which appears on the left side of the page. The space is to the right of the name. In the butterfly ballot, other candidates’ names appear on a facing page on the right with the space to be punched to the left of the candidate’s name. It abuts the space to be punched for the candidate’s name on the left-hand page.

Some voters complained that they were confused and might have punched a hole next to Buchanan’s name rather than the one for Gore. (See accompanying Exclusive: Palm Beach Ballot Complaint Not Valid.)

Says Robbins, a Florida voter himself: "I've never known this simple process to fail. Ever. There are no moving parts. The push pin thing always perforates the card. And the print is large enough for even the visually impaired to read with ease."

Wexler, Robbins concludes, is trying "to set Mr. Bush up for future accusations that the Democrats really won this unprecedented race. And perhaps the move is also calculated to steal from the soon-to-be president-elect the strong moral position and mandate that a clean and clear victory in Florida will necessarily carry.

"In any event, it is not going to work. And that's not because Mr. Wexler doesn't have the will to try. He surely is doing everything he can to confuse and skew this issue. The real reason that he will fail is because our system and our voters are too strong and too wise to swallow his type of ill-conceived poison."

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Presidential Race 2000