Now, what do you make of this? Set aside the fact that Tammany Hall didn’t start in the boonies and “grass roots” doesn’t mean concrete. Set aside the fact that some of these larger urban cities, like Chicago, have always had somewhat shady reputations for dishonest elections. If you can, leave those things out of your thinking and tell me what other conclusions you can draw?

No matter how much you might want to avoid it, there are certain racial, minority and socio-economic differences involved here. Particularly, when other analysts are telling us that the African American population seems to have voted as a democratic “bloc” with a turnout of 80 to 90 percent of registered voters. Cast that against a national turnout of 49 percent and what have you got?

We may never get figures on the number of Latino, Asian or other minority voters to factor against the eligible voting population on November 7th, but the only source for population figures told us that there were 206 million eligible voters in the country. On October 23, 2000, two weeks before the vote, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a press release with this 206 million estimate. Every news organization in the country received it, despite the “massive turnout” they were telling us about on Election Day and shortly thereafter.

If the African Americans are 13 percent of the population and the Latinos make up another 12 percent and they too voted in a high turnout democratic bloc, then suddenly we’re not really talking about "minorities" are we? Especially, if less than half, only 49 percent, of the total eligible population went to the polls. How many other democrats would it take to bring the democratic side up to 24.5 percent of the eligible voters and a 50-50 split of those who went to the polls? Not many when 25 percent of the population votes 80 percent or better for Gore.

Well, we would have to know how many African Americans, Latinos and Asians were registered and eligible to vote. Want to start looking at poverty levels in large cities versus the rest of the country? Lower income groups? Single mothers? The gay crowd? Who do the Democrats bus to the polls? Pretty soon, you might appreciate all the trouble it was for the Clinton News Network (CNN) to find all those pink, blue, and gray-haired griping geezers in Palm Beach County. The ones CNN brought together complaining about how confused they were. The eight card bingo players that couldn’t handle arrow directions, then went outside where they suddenly and miraculously realized that they might have made a mistake.

Want to also throw in the groups most likely to call on local government to resolve problems with their neighbors or difficulties they get into on their own? The people expecting government to take care of everything for them.

Before long, and if we are not careful here, we could push even more of a division between people of this country and create a national crisis no one should want. Besides that, there are many other problems and possible corrections that need to be examined.

Other considerations

We should have learned many lessons from what has happened this November. Among them, is the question of major election reform that should not be swept under the rug when the legal debates are over.

If nothing else, the three wealthiest counties in South Florida have taught us that better, more reliable, election equipment is needed, not only by these three but across much of the nation. We also need to crack down on things like double voting and dragging people to the poles who are totally unprepared to vote. The freedom and right to vote goes hand-in-hand with some modicum of individual responsibility. And we need to define and accept what that responsibility is at the simplest levels like being able to read, follow arrows, recognize pictures or something. We should never be hung up before the world again.

David Schipper, a Democrat from Chicago, Chief Consul to the House of Representatives during the impeachment trial, had some interesting information in this area. In his book “Sell Out” he covered a major election point in Chapter Four.

While waiting for the Starr Report, Schipper’s team of investigators was getting warmed up by looking into shenanigans in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They were on the track of criminal violations of our immigration laws when the Starr Report was delivered to them and their INS investigation had to be set aside.

What they were finding was that during the 1996 election year, the Clinton dirty tricks teams were pressuring the INS to give citizenship to people waiting for their tests. Some immigrants that had only recently entered the country. The idea was pure Tammany Hall. If these people knew that the democrats expedited their citizenship, most would vote Democratic.

As a result, many people and some with criminal backgrounds, people that might not have otherwise been given citizenship, were let into the country without even having their fingerprints checked.

The pressure was put on immigration people in selected areas of the country. Areas like Southern California, Texas, South Florida and Chicago where the most immigrants might be found. And guess who was in charge of the operation? You got it, Vice President Al Gore. It’s the sort of thing Vice Presidents have the time to head up.

In his book, Mr. Schipper went on to say that he would suspect that the same sort of thing would probably be going on in the 2000 elections. About the time that we heard about cartons of cancer sticks being given the homeless in Milwaukee, wasn’t there at least one story about a woman from the same city receiving a voter’s registration card in the mail? In a letter supposedly signed by Clinton and explaining how she could sign this card and take it to the polling place? I seem to remember some radio commentator saying that just thinking about that made him sick.

And the “Sore, Loserman” team accuses the Republicans of intimidating the Board of Election Commissioners in Miami. Isn’t that part of the normal procedure for the Clinton people? First they deny, then they attack the messenger, and then they accuse the other guy of doing exactly what they, themselves, have been doing? Isn’t that the pattern that has proven successful for them? It’s predictable.