April 4, 2001

Washington, D.C. -- DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe took exception today to the Miami Herald/USA Today study of ballots from the Florida partial recount. McAuliffe noted that the conclusion that Bush received the most votes in Florida is flawed in several ways.  Most importantly, they did not include a full, accurate tally of the votes in seven entire counties and even used different vote-counting standards within the same county.  Additionally, unlike the canvassing boards conducting the counts, the Miami Herald/USA Today count did not include overvotes -- ballots that upon examination by the local canvassing board could determine a clear Gore or Bush vote.

"The same study that Republicans tout as proving that Bush really won Florida, also shows that if all the ballots were counted on election night, Al Gore would have won,"  McAuliffe said. "And if all the people who intended to vote for Gore actually
got to vote, without being confused or intimidated, the results would have been overwhelmingly in favor of Gore.
Any way you spin this data, you still come to the same conclusion, more must be done to protect our sacred right to vote
and have our votes counted."

McAuliffe also pointed to the results of the study to raise questions about George Bush's hard turn to the right and away from the center of American politics.

"The only mandate that George Bush should have after a careful examination of the 2000 election results is a mandate for electoral reform," McAuliffe said. "But the silence coming out of the Bush White House, his brother's Governor's mansion in Florida, and the halls of the Republican-controlled Congress couldn't be more deafening. The Bush brothers are not only walking away from fixing the system that lead to such confusion and error, but now George Bush is cutting funding for electoral reform from the Federal Election Commission in his budget."