The 2000 Election "I was not elected�" were the truest words from Mr. Bush. Will he really serve your interests? Does he expect our respect without respecting us? http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/politics/14BUSH.html

News Analysis: A Balancing Act of Sorts And even as Mr. Bush was hailing Mr. Ashcroft as a man of rectitude "guided by principle, not by politics," his opponents were already turning to issues like Mr. Ashcroft's role in persuading the Senate to vote last year against Ronnie White, a nominee for a federal judgeship, to question Mr. Bush. Mr. Ashcroft described Mr. White, the first black judge on Missouri's State Supreme Court as "pro-criminal" and as an "activist" jurist. President Clinton at the time called the Senate vote as a "disgraceful act" tinged by racial considerations. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23ASSE.html?pagewanted=all

A Stalwart of the Right: John David Ashcroft Mr. Ashcroft is Mr. Bush's most conservative appointment so far and, if confirmed by the Senate, in what could be bruising confirmation hearings, he would be the most outspokenly ideological attorney general since President Ronald Reagan's era of social conservatism at the Justice Department. A pro-death-penalty, anti-abortion Republican senator from Missouri who lost a re-election campaign last month, Mr. Ashcroft's selection raises the possibility of potentially serious fights over the myriad flash points of legal policy, like judicial selection, civil rights, criminal justice and antitrust matters. Mr. Ashcroft shares Mr. Bush's admiration for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. Mr. Ashcroft praised Justice Thomas in a recent article in the law review of Regent University, which is operated by the evangelist Pat Robertson. He said that Justice Thomas was a leader on the court and a powerful defender of respecting the limits of federal power. "Too many judges believe they can legislate from the bench," Mr. Ashcroft complained. In contrast, he said that Justice Thomas subordinates his personal views to the Constitution. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23ASHC.html?pagewanted=all

New Privacy Rules Are Challenged Leaders of the health care industry said today that they would immediately ask President-elect George W. Bush to revise new rules issued by President Clinton to protect the privacy of medical records. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/national/21PRIV.html?pagewanted=all

The Powell Perplex I had mixed feelings. One was relief: Mr. Powell's answers to reporters' questions demonstrated a sharp and intuitive grasp of global issues. Whether you agree with him or not, this is a serious man. My other feeling, though, was: I sure hope Colin Powell is always right in his advice to Mr. Bush � because he so towered over the president-elect, who let him answer every question on foreign policy, that it was impossible to imagine Mr. Bush ever challenging or overruling Mr. Powell on any issue. Mr. Powell is three things Mr. Bush is not � a war hero, worldly wise and beloved by African-Americans. That combination gives him a great deal of leverage. It means he can never be fired. It means Mr. Bush can never allow him to resign in protest over anything. It will be interesting to see who emerges to balance Mr. Powell's perspective. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/19/opinion/19FRIE.html

Transcript of a Live Discussion With Rev. Jesse Jackson Reverend Jesse Jackson joined a live online audience to answer reader questions and discuss the rifts between African-Americans and the Republican Party. A transcript of this event follows. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/politics/18TRAN.html?pagewanted=all

Florida Ballots Are Getting New Scrutiny, by the Media While at least one news organization said it wanted to count the ballots and see which candidate would have won, other news organizations said they had no intention of going that far. The goal for some here is to provide detailed descriptions of the untallied ballots for their readers and viewers and let them decide how to add them up. With 67 Florida counties and tens of thousands of uncounted ballots, the process that began here today may take several weeks. "What we want to do is show the general public what is on these ballots," said Martin Baron, executive editor of The Miami Herald, a newspaper represented here today. "I don't think we are going to count ballots as such, but we will record, document and tabulate them. Readers can draw their own conclusions about what qualifies as a vote." The reporters and editors who inspected ballots today included representatives of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. They started in the warehouse here because Broward County election officials became the first in the state to open some 6,600 ballots for public examination. The ballots, stored in metal boxes stacked in the county warehouse, included only those that did not register a choice for president, those known as the undervotes. The undervotes were at the core of the post-election struggle between President-elect George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. Representatives for Mr. Gore argued that vote- counting machines around the state ignored votes legitimately cast for each candidate, while spokesmen for Mr. Bush argued that standards for counting such ballots were too varied and too subjective for accuracy. Mr. Gore believed that the uncounted ballots might have cost him Florida's 25 electoral votes and hence the election. Canvassing boards in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and other Florida counties hand-counted all or some of the undervotes, but the United States Supreme Court stopped a statewide hand count of undervotes, saying among other things that the standards used to count them differed too much from county to county. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/19/politics/19BROW.html?pagewanted=all

Armed to Send Chads Into Voting Oblivion Americans have quibbled over voting methods since landowners in the 13 colonies first spoke their candidates' names to an election officer. By 1888, voters were marking their first secret ballots. Like voice votes, the paper ballots still used by 1 percent of voters are vulnerable to misreadings or mischief. The modern voting machine industry was born in 1869, when Thomas A. Edison patented a mechanical device intended for members of Congress. In 1892, Lockport, N.Y., held the first public election using a lever- operated machine, made by a Rochester safemaker, Jacob H. Myers, according to Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment. Sequoia inherited the company that Myers created in 1895 to "protect mechanically the voter from rascaldom." A Century later, the rascaldom and error-prone systems persist. The counties and municipalities that oversee elections in the United States have patched together a quilt of varied voting systems. Each has problems. The most- often reviled culprit in the 2000 election was the punch-card ballot used by one in three voters. Voters pick candidates by poking out pencil-point sized holes � or chads, in election parlance � in the ballot. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/technology/17ELEC.html?pagewanted=all

Chicago Tribune | News - Columnists - Clarence Page TURNING `EQUAL PROTECTION' UPSIDE DOWN Al Gore sounded so gracious. Even though he did not agree with it, he said he would abide by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that virtually handed the presidential election to his opponent, George W. Bush. Well, not so fast there, Mr. Future Former Vice President. You can be as gracious as you want, but some of us still have a quarrel with the way the Supremes arrived at that monumental decision. http://chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/page/