Where are the Bloodhounds? By Robert Tracinski (December 4, 2000) [CAPITALISM MAGAZINE.COM]
Is the media coverage of the election fiasco biased in favor of Gore?
Many small instances of bias show up in reporters' choice of words. When Democrats take to the streets, for example, they are always described as "demonstrators" or "protesters" -- but Republican protesters in Florida are described as a "mob."
But a more insidious form of bias can be seen, not in what the media says, but in what it does not say. It can be seen in the big stories the press has failed to investigate.
The biggest story is the 19,000 double-punched ballots in Palm Beach County. The Democrats cite these "over-votes" as evidence that the county's ballot format was confusing. But the statistics point to a more sinister explanation.
Here is the pattern, as reported by statistician Robert Cook. The usual rate of double-punching due to error and confusion is about one-half of one percent; out of the 460,000 ballots cast in Palm Beach County, that would explain about 2,300 ballots. But the actual rate of double-punching was more than 4 percent, almost 10 times greater.
Just a bunch of confused voters? Well, consider this. Usually, double-punching errors occur for all offices; you would expect to see the same rate for House and Senate races as for the presidential race. But in Palm Beach County, the high rate of double-punching occurred only on the ballot for president.
And here's the most damning evidence: Most of those double-punched ballots came from a few precincts, where the double-punch rates were 10 or 15 percent -- more than one can reasonably brush off as mere voter error or confusion. Such glaring statistical anomalies, Cook concludes, are prima facie evidence of vote fraud.
The fraud would work like this. An election official forms a neat stack of ballots and runs a long metal punch -- say, a dulled ice-pick -- through the whole stack, punching out holes for Gore. The result: Ballots with no votes for president become Gore votes -- and ballots punched for Bush become double-punched ballots and are thrown out. This is the simplest explanation for the huge rates of double-punched ballots in those selected precincts in Palm Beach County.