Florida 2000, Again: Times’ Paul Krugman Keeps Hoax Alive!

Florida 2000, Again: Times’ Paul Krugman Keeps Hoax Alive!
By Nicholas Stix
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Men’s News Daily

[See my Middle American News exposé:

“The Great Florida Disenfranchisement Hoax.”]

There he goes again!

Paul Krugman is still repeating the Big Lie of 2000 – that Republicans stole the presidential election, by suppressing the black vote in Florida.

If Krugman is right, the GOP must also have exercised mind control over or bought off Democrat election officials in Palm Beach County, when the latter designed the butterfly ballot that confused many voters. The GOP must also either have bought off or exercised mind control over the black Democrat activists who illegally entered polling places, and went up and down lines of black Democrat voters, exhorting them, “Vote on every page!” and who in some polling places illegally handed black voters fliers, telling them whom to vote for. Since the presidential candidates covered more than one page, those voters illegally voted for two candidates, thus invalidating their votes.

My letter to the Times follows below.

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman’s September 2 “correction” was truly amazing. He wrote, “… the recorded vote was so close that, when you combine that fact with the effects of vote suppression and ballot design, it becomes reasonably clear that the voters of Florida, as well as those of the United States as a whole, tried to choose Mr. Gore.”

Almost five years after the myth of the GOP theft of the 2000 election in Florida was refuted, Krugman is still repeating the old, discredited lies. No evidence was ever provided that the Florida vote was suppressed in 2000. After the NAACP claimed to have thousands of affidavits from black Florida voters who claimed their voting rights had been violated, Mary Frances Berry of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission convened hearings on the suppression of black voters. Not one of those thousands of affidavits materialized. The NAACP had lied.

And only three black Florida voters showed up to testify, none of whom testified that their voting rights had been violated, or that they knew of anyone else’s voting rights having been violated.

As for the ballot design issue, the ballot was designed by Democrat officials. Hence, if Democrat voters’ wills had been thwarted, they were thwarted by officials of their own party. But there is no more evidence today that Florida voters’ wills were thwarted, than there was in 2000.

Mr. Krugman has distinguished himself yet again, in keeping hoax alive!

Nicholas Stix

I violated the Times limit of 150 words, but that’s beside the point. The Times hasn’t published any of my letters to the editor since 1997, in spite of my having sent them about 100 during that time, virtually all of which kept to the word limit. Besides, if the letters editor wants to run a letter, he reserves the right to cut it down. Since I know the Times won’t publish any of my letters, and I planned on publishing the one above on the ‘Net, I also didn’t censor myself by refraining from using the “l” word, as in Krugman and the NAACP lied.

Postscript, September 15, 2011:

Note how, when caught so egregiously misrepresenting the facts that even the Times forced him to write a “correction,” Krugman still twisted the facts and logic into a pretzel.

Correction: From Paul Krugman
Published: September 2, 2005

In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by the Miami Herald, I relied on the Herald’s own report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush.

The later study, by a group including the New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore “won” all six hypothetical recounts on the majority basis. He lost one – in this case, the one using the loosest standard – on the unanimity basis.

None of this has any bearing on my original point, which was not that the outcome would have been different if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened - the Florida Supreme Court had not, in fact, called for a full statewide manual recount - but that the recorded vote was so close that, when you combine that fact [what fact? That’s a hoax!] with the effects of vote suppression and ballot design, it becomes reasonably clear that the voters of Florida, as well as those of the United States as a whole, tried to choose Mr. Gore.