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Title: The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage by Martin Merzer, Miami Herald, the Staff of The Miami Herald ISBN: 0-312-28452-7 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: REQUIRED READING FOR EVERY AMERICAN OVER AGE 18
Comment: Historians will use this book as the chief reference book in documenting the death of democracy. The example after example of immoral and illegal actions that occurred in the 2000 Presidential election should be the rallying cry for reform of the election process for decades to come.
Rating: 4
Summary: Balanced, a bit dry but easy to understand...
Comment: "A recently released University of Minnesota study
estimates that, for example, 93 percent of felons of all races favored Bill Clinton in 1996"
Uh--New York reader-reviewer..is this because they like to vote for one of their own?
I enjoyed this book and felt it showed both sides of the battle. The liberals will always think they had the election stolen from them and the conservatives will always feel the right man won.
I would LOVE to see a book written that discusses ALL the goings-on that happened with the elections, past and 2000. The vote-buying in Chicago, the Haitians being helped to vote a straight Dem ticket, the exchange of votes for liquor or cigarettes.
But this book answered a lot of my questions and I will recommend it to others.
Rating: 3
Summary: Very thorough. Very unbiased. Very dry. Very revealing.
Comment: Contrary to some of the fireworks below, this book does not assign any significant partisan blame for the Florida fiasco. In other words, there is no great revelation that "If the GOP/Dem party hadn't done _____, then Bush/Gore would have won the election!"
To the contrary, the book quite effectively and disturbingly demonstrates how the election system--particularly the technology--was a fiasco just WAITING to happen and, alas, with an election as close as that one was, it most certainly did.
The system itself was a taped-together jalopy that's managed to survive all these years because lopsided victories made the exorbinant tossed votes (undervotes/overvotes) seem irrelevant. In 2000--when EVERY vote became relevant--the flaws in the cracked and decaying system became painfully obvious.
You'll be surprised at the outcome of the recounts; the more liberal standards favored Bush, while the most stringent favored Gore--in diametric opposition of what each campaign was fighting for! Irony with a capital "I"!
This book does NOT get into the behind-the-scenes machinations of either campaign during November--with all the drama--but rather sticks directly to the Florida employees within the election office.
There's a few unsettling tidbits: Katherine Harris' barely disguised partisanship and the stream of emails from her office cheering on a Bush victory, for instance--but for the most part this is a pretty dry telling of the election drama. No accusations of theft, of skulduggery, of conspiracy (except what you may read between the lines)--rather, a conclusion that the system was so screwed to begin with it was just begging to be manipulated... before, during and after.
What you will ask yourself after reading this book is: "What now"? How fervently each party pursues election reform ought to clue you in as to their real agenda.
Definitely worth reading if you want to impress friends/co-workers with the actual facts/findings, rather than partisan assertions and accusations. This is the not-glamorous-but-true "real" story of the election from the ELECTION standpoint, and not the candidates. Recommended.
BONUS UNSETTLING FACT: Florida was hardly the only place with reams of tossed votes. In Illinois alone, there were over 123,000 spoiled ballots!
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