Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE
L041105     Bush begins mulling Cabinet reshuffle
L041105E   All eyes on Sen. Specter
L041106     Judiciary chairmanship looms as abortion issue

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H041104    Electorate took control of defining marriage
H041105    Gays take fight on marriage to court
H041105E  Mass. justices cost Kerry
H041106L  Protecting traditional marriage
H041107    New marriage laws facing court tests
RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R041101     Pagan rituals on Web site rile Episcopalians
R041101     SOUTH DAKOTA  Teacher resumes leading religious club
R041102     Rehnquist reveals chemotherapy treatment
R041103     Churchgoers, white men strongly support Bush
R041105     Bigger GOP caucus hopes to break Senate impasse
R041105     GOP tells of success wooing Catholic vote
R041106L   Future judicial appointments
R041107     Rectors repent of druid 'error'
R041107C  A narrow escape
R041107E  Bush and the high court

EDUCATION
E041102    Charter schools make bid in Anne Arundel
E041106    Texas school panel forces changes to books on health

MEDIA
M041101    Study finds press pro-Kerry
M041101E  Kerry's dishonorable response
M041102    Networks vow strict new standards in vote projections
M041103    Networks struggle for restraint
M041104    Republicans complain exit polls were erroneous
M041104    Sackcloth and ashes
M041105E  Americans not fooled by media
M041105E  Media missteps
M041107C  Among the losers

OTHER
O031103     Mikulski easily defeats Pipkin
O041101     'Ghost' voters slip through cracks
O041101     Group demands probe of Soros
O041101     Voters angered by observers
O041101L   Sign vandalism and civilized behavior
O041102     Absentee voting surges this year
O041102     Judges bar challengers at polling places in Ohio
O041102     Norman stormin'
O041103     Bush wins re-election
O041103     GOP majorities grow in Senate and House
O041103     Minor problems, record turnout reported at polls
O041103     Voters endure long lines at polls
O041104     Decisive battle
O041104     Focus on moral values tipped vote for Bush
O041104C  Slouching toward Canada
O041104E   A question of values
O041105     Conservatives urge Bush to go his own way
O041105     'Proud' Bush declares mandate
O041105     Bush pushes new agenda
O041105C  Virtuous victory . . .
O041105C  'Partisan' is what IRS says it is
O041105E   Eulogizing the left
O041105E   Why Bush won
O041105L   Moral standards are necessary
O041105L  ' Wake up and listen'
O041105L   Why John Kerry lost
O041107     Pelosi conciliatory, but firm on issues
O041107C  Opportunities ahead

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O041105   Conservatives urge Bush to go his own way
 

By Ralph Z. Hallow and James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Conservative activists say President Bush should push forward with his second-term mandate ratified by 59 million voters on Election Day, including a constitutional amendment banning same-sex "marriage."
    On issues ranging from tax cuts to Social Security to abortion, Republican stalwarts yesterday said the president should stick to his winning campaign agenda, rejecting calls to "reach out" to the Democratic minority in Congress.
    "Democrats still don't get it," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "What they want Bush to do — change the goals he told voters he'd get done if they gave him a second term — isn't going to happen. Why? Because even more than Reagan, Bush is an agenda president."
    Pat Buchanan yesterday declared Mr. Bush's re-election — with 22 percent of voters naming moral issues as most important — a victory in the "culture war" that was the subject of Mr. Buchanan's famous 1992 Republican convention speech.
    "George W. Bush was re-elected president because he turned this election into a triumphal, epic battle of the cultural war as his father refused to do in 1992," said Mr. Buchanan, who challenged the first President Bush in the 1992 Republican primaries. "The son stuck by his party's platform and themes as his father did not."
    The surprising emphasis on moral issues found in exit polls heartened social conservatives, as did the results from 11 states, including the battleground of Ohio, where bans on same-sex "marriage" were approved by voters.
    Robert Knight of the Culture and Family Institute called the success of the marriage amendments a reaction to the Massachusetts court ruling that legalized such unions in Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry's home state.
    "What Bush should do first," Mr. Knight said, "is to send a bouquet of flowers to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, whose clinically insane ruling against marriage ... set the tone for the showdown that occurred [Tuesday]."
    A wide array of conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), declared Tuesday's election a ratification of their positions.
    The NRA said 95 percent of the candidates it backed, including 14 of 18 Senate candidates, were elected. The NRLC cited a poll showing that of the 42 percent of voters who said abortion affected their vote, 56 percent voted for Mr. Bush.
    Steven Moore, president of the Club for Growth, cited victories for 14 candidates backed by his group — including six winning Senate candidates who got $2.3 million from Club for Growth members — as proof that "on Capitol Hill, tax cutting is in, big government is out."
    Democrats, however, denied that the election provided the president with any kind of mandate. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said Wednesday that Mr. Bush "didn't have a case to make on the issues" in his campaign and won by exploiting "wedge issues" that have little relevance to setting a domestic agenda for the country.
    But a spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, said Tuesday's Republican gains in both houses of Congress were an outright rejection of the Democratic agenda.
    "Republicans gaining seats in the House and Senate for the second cycle in a row and winning the White House for the second presidential election in a row is clear evidence that the voters trust the Republican Party as the governing party of choice," said DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella. "Democrats would be foolish to insist that Republicans can't get the job done without them."
    In the wake of Mr. Bush's re-election, several pundits, commentators and editorials called for the president to seek compromise with congressional Democrats. Gary Bauer, president of the conservative advocacy group American Values, sees a double standard behind such calls for moderation.
    "If Senator Kerry had won by 3.5 million votes and had taken five Republican Senate seats with him, no one in the chattering class of Washington, D.C., would be saying anything other than he had a mandate and that conservatives have lost the country," said Mr. Bauer, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
    Cooperating with Democrats should not impede the president's agenda, Mr. Bauer added: "There's nothing wrong with sitting down and working out details on issues. But the president would be very wise to move ahead on the things he cares about. That's what the people voted for him to do."
    A senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Democrats would be deluding themselves if they think their strong opposition to Mr. Bush — including filibustering his judicial nominees — is going to work any better the next four years.
    "They are sending the wrong signal to the president and voters by saying that right after the Republicans win, it's time to trim their sails and the mandate they sailed in on," the aide said. "Does anyone believe it feasible that we would embrace a Democratic agenda after we just won all over the country with ours?"
    Describing Democrats' opposition during Mr. Bush's first term as an "extended temper tantrum," the aide warned that Democrats could render themselves "politically irrelevant" if they repeat that performance in the president's second term.
    "They lost," the aide said. "They have to come to grips with that."
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H041105   Gays take fight on marriage to court
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Homosexual rights groups said yesterday that they will head back to the courtrooms to achieve legalization of same-sex "marriages," which voters in 11 states barred Tuesday, as two lesbian couples filed a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma's new marriage law.
    This week's election results "ended nothing," said Matt Coles, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.
    In a federal court in Tulsa, Okla., yesterday, the lesbian couples challenged the amendment passed Tuesday, which defines marriage as only between one man and one woman and says same-sex "marriages" from other states will not be recognized there.
    The couples claim that the state amendment violates their due-process and equal-protection rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No state constitution can abridge federally guaranteed rights.
    Lawsuits seeking same-sex "marriage" rights "will go forward in New York, California, Washington, Maryland and New Jersey," Mr. Coles said. Legal challenges to amendments also are expected in Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Mississippi.
    Exit polls showed significant public support for legal protections for homosexual couples — including 35 percent support for marriagelike civil unions — and these issues must be kept in the forefront of conversations, said Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest homosexual rights advocacy group.
    "No elected official can reverse the American people's support for equality," she said. "To win at the ballot box, we must also keep winning at the water cooler."
    Privately, though, homosexual rights activists were reeling over the re-election of President Bush, who supports amending the U.S. Constitution to allow only traditional marriage, and the passage of the 11 state marriage amendments, all of which define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
    Homosexual rights activists talked on e-mail lists and blogs about moving to friendlier places such as Canada or Europe. Some felt personally attacked by the votes; others worried about whether their domestic-partnership benefits were in jeopardy.
    "There is no sugar coating that will help make yesterday's election results easier to take," said Ron Schlittler, executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. "Given the impact on our families and friends, it is very personal."
    Still, homosexual rights leaders worked to lift the spirits of their friends and allies.
    "Painful as these discriminatory measures will be ... they will not stop our advance toward marriage equality," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry.
    "If we can move even George Bush to profess support for civil unions — something that didn't exist five years ago — we can surely continue to move the middle toward fairness," said Mr. Wolfson, referring to Mr. Bush's televised statement in October that he didn't think "we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."
    Mr. Bush's comment widely was interpreted to mean that he supported states' rights to enact civil unions, even though that is out of step with traditional-values groups, who oppose civil unions as well as same-sex "marriages."
    Homosexual rights activists saw other bright spots in the Tuesday elections.
    An analysis by the Williams Project, a group at the School of Law at the University of California at Los Angeles, showed that homosexual, bisexual and transgender voters made up 4 percent of the vote, essentially the same as before.
    Ironically, support for Mr. Bush also held steady: In 2000, he received 25 percent of the homosexual vote; on Tuesday, he received 21 percent, "not a statistically significant difference," the Williams Project said.
    But, despite passage of the 11 marriage amendments, "openly gay elected officials had a better day," the project said. "All openly gay members running for Congress and the California Legislature were elected or re-elected."
    Similar cheers were sounded in Massachusetts, where homosexual rights groups are planning to sink the constitutional marriage amendment that passed this year. Lawmakers must approve the amendment a second time before it can go to voters.
    But all 50 incumbent lawmakers who voted against the amendment have been re-elected, and at least nine new amendment opponents have been elected, said Arline Isaacson and Gary Daffin, leaders of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.
    In addition, they noted, Ron Crews, the former leader of a traditional-values group in Massachusetts, was "trounced" in his bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern.
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R041105   Bigger GOP caucus hopes to break Senate impasse
 

By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Republican gain of four Senate seats on Tuesday and defeat of Democratic Leader Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota has bolstered Republican hopes of ending the gridlock that plagued much of the administration's legislative program and judicial appointments, party leaders say.
    On Tuesday, Republicans took six Democratic seats, while losing two of their own, giving them a 55-44 edge with one Democratic-leaning independent.
    "The sheer numbers will help. There's not as much concern about losing two or three Republicans on a given issue, including judicial nominations," said Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
    "We can pass a budget, which we couldn't do this year. The Democrats still have the ability to filibuster, but these numbers also give us more options with respect to how we handle the confirmation of judges," he said.
    Nine new senators will be sworn in next January — seven Republicans and two Democrats. In addition to the eight seats that changed parties, former Rep. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, won the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Don Nickles, who has a 100 percent favorable vote rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU) and zero from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).
    "In terms of the Republicans, with the exception of Don Nickles, every one of them is more conservative than the person they replaced," Mr. Kyl said. "It is both a conservative and experienced group."
    Former Rep. John Thune of South Dakota, the victor over Mr. Daschle, received a 92 percent favorable ACU rating and a 5 percent ADA rating in his last year in the House. Mr. Daschle was rated 22 percent by the ACU and 85 percent by ADA in 2002.
    Similarly, retiring Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina got 15 percent conservative and 85 percent liberal ratings, while three-term Rep. Jim DeMint, his Republican successor, got a 100 percent ACU score and zero from ADA.
    The pattern is the same for all Republican Senate pickups in the South.
    •Rep. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, with a 96 percent ACU rating, succeeds defeated Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards with a 30 percent score.
    •Three-term Rep. David Vitter of Louisiana, with a 100 percent ACU score, succeeds retiring Democratic Sen. John B. Breaux with a 42 percent conservative rating and 65 percent ADA score.
    •Three-term Rep. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, with a 96 percent ACU score, succeeds retiring Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, who has 47 percent ACU and 30 percent ADA scores.
    •Mel Martinez, Mr. Bush's former Housing and Urban Development secretary, also is more conservative than Florida's retiring Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who scored 20 percent ACU and 75 percent ADA ratings.
    But potential snags lie ahead.
    Republicans have four liberals who often join Democrats — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine; Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island; and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
    Mr. Specter, who is expected to head the Senate Judiciary Committee, fired a shot across President Bush's bow on Wednesday, saying, "I would expect the president to be mindful of ... what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster.
    "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Mr. Specter said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion a legal right.
    The prospect of Mr. Specter as Judiciary Committee chairman has prompted protests to Senate Republican leaders from citizens nationwide, using e-mail lists and conservative Web sites and blogs.
    "We have to let our senators know that the long-suffering conservatives who finally won their chance at turning this country around are not going to let Specter or anyone else get in the way," Dan Arnold of Manassas wrote to one large national e-mail list, saying that Mr. Specter was "effectively telling pro-family conservatives to stuff it."
    Mr. Specter backed off a little yesterday, saying he "did not warn the president about anything" and pointing to his support for all of Mr. Bush's judicial nominations and for the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
    And from the other side of the aisle, Democrats warned that the filibuster option was not foreclosed to them.
    "We will not flinch from using the tools available to us to protect and advance our party's views and values on behalf of the American people," said Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic State Campaign Committee.
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L041105   Bush begins mulling Cabinet reshuffle
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush yesterday said he has not made any decisions about his Cabinet's status, although some members are rumored to be ready to leave, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, the target of left-wing activists, civil rights groups and some members of Congress.
    "There will be some changes. I don't know who they will be," Mr. Bush said at his first press conference since his re-election Tuesday. "But let me just help you out with the speculation right now. I haven't thought about it. ...
    "I'm going to Camp David this afternoon with Laura, and I'll begin the process of thinking about the Cabinet and the White House staff."
    Mr. Ashcroft, who underwent emergency surgery in March to remove his gallbladder because of a stress-related illness, reportedly has told colleagues he is exhausted after four years leading the Justice Department's war on terrorism.
    But a high-ranking department official yesterday said Mr. Ashcroft was "energized" by the Bush re-election and probably would not make any decision until after talking with the president.
    Mr. Ashcroft has been under constant attack for his staunch enforcement efforts in the war on terrorism, and for his defiant public defense of the USA Patriot Act, which has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
    Civil rights and other activist groups berated him as an enemy of blacks, women and "working people," saying he would ignore hate crimes, restrict abortion rights and even allow rat poison in drinking water — a reference to his vote as a U.S. senator to weaken the Clean Water Act.
    Speculation and conflicting reports have swirled around the status of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. If Mr. Powell does leave, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is considered a potential replacement.
    The State Department, however, noted yesterday that Mr. Powell has embarked on several foreign policy issues that will require his personal attention through the coming months.
    Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Mr. Powell had not talked about his future with top aides since Mr. Bush's re-election and was spending his time and energy on a foreign policy agenda that extends through Iraq's planned elections in January.
    "Ultimately, as the secretary always says, he serves at the pleasure of the president and that's the only thing that matters," Mr. Boucher said.
    Miss Rice also has been cited as a potential successor to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in the event of his departure. Another potential contender for that position is Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
    Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also are widely expected to step down.
    Mr. Ashcroft was one of Mr. Bush's first Cabinet picks in 2000, described as someone who would "perform his duties guided by principle, not by politics" and as a man of "deep convictions and strong principles."
    His high visibility, however, often clouded the Bush message, department insiders said, although he stood firm in his commitment to defend the nation, noting the United States was at war with terror and that "thanks to the vigilance of law enforcement ... we have not suffered another major terrorist attack."
    Justice Department spokes-man Mark Corallo told reporters yesterday that the attorney general had not officially informed his staff of his plans.
    A short list of potential replacements for Mr. Ashcroft include Marc Racicot, former Montana governor and the 2004 Bush campaign chairman, White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty in Virginia and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
    Others mentioned as nominees are former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, although he also has been identified as a top candidate to replace Mr. Ridge, and former Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, who recently was hired as vice president and general counsel at Pepsico Inc. in New York.
    Asked by reporters in New York whether he was interested in a Cabinet position, Mr. Giuliani insisted he was not, but added, "You never say no to the president of the United States, absolutely not." A Pepsico spokesman, Mark Dollings, said Mr. Thompson was "excited about his opportunities" at the company and was "fully committed to that effort."
    Mr. Racicot, now in private legal practice in Washington, did not return calls yesterday to his office. He reportedly has told colleagues he would consider accepting the nomination if offered.
    • Bill Sammon contributed to this article.
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R041105   GOP tells of success wooing Catholic vote
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Northern Virginia architects of the Republican Party's wildly successful plan to add a winning clump of Catholic votes to President Bush's evangelical base in the 2004 election are talking about how they did it.
    State Sen. Kenneth Thomas Cuccinelli II, Centreville Republican, said a massive leafletting of cars in church parking lots in 11 battleground states by thousands of volunteers on the Sunday before the election helped sway the vote.
    "It totally overwhelmed the Kerry folks," said Mr. Cuccinelli, adding that he thinks Mr. Bush's 2.5 percentage-point margin of victory in Ohio was largely achieved by wooing Catholics, who are 25 percent of that state's electorate.
    Mr. Bush carried Ohio Catholics by 10 percentage points — 55 percent to 45 percent — over Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat.
    Nationwide, the Catholic vote swung eight points from 2000, when 50 percent backed Al Gore to 47 percent for Mr. Bush. This year, it was 52 percent for the president and 47 percent for Mr. Kerry, a Catholic.
    "The change in the Catholic vote was crucial to the margin of victory," Mr. Cuccinelli said.
    "We began recruiting field operatives for this special task. Many of our ultimate recruits had never performed jobs like this before, but they overwhelmingly did a spectacular job."
    The apex of the plan was an Oct. 31 placement of 5 million voter guides on the windshields of cars in parking lots of Catholic churches on the Sunday morning before the election. The teams of volunteers were able to distribute their leaflets in 80 percent of the targeted churches.
    "We did 5 million pieces of literature in six hours," Mr. Cuccinelli said. "Evangelicals were doing the same thing in other states."
    The Catholic voter guides, which were paid for by state Republican committees, "was a straight issue comparison" on where the two candidates differed, Mr. Cuccinelli said. "We had to cut to the chase, hook our audience, convince this was important and worth acting on two days later. And we did it."
    Mr. Bush obliquely referred to the role Catholics and Protestant evangelicals played in his victory when he noted at a press conference yesterday that, "I am glad people of faith voted in this election."
    What helped the Republican National Committee's Catholic outreach was Sunday's balmy fall weather nationwide.
    "We got lucky on Sunday," Mr. Cuccinelli said. "God was shining down on us — who knows? All the battleground states on Sunday had weather good enough to flier churches. You put a flier on someone's windshield in the rain and you'll lose their vote because you wallpaper their car."
    Mr. Cuccinelli said he and a fellow Northern Virginia Catholic activist, Terry Wear, approached the RNC earlier this year to brainstorm how to "bring relevant Catholic issues to people in the pews without turning them off."
    Mr. Wear had helped the state senator form networks in Catholic parishes that lured large numbers of parishioners into voting for the Republican Party. This strategy helped Mr. Cuccinelli, 36, win two uphill races in 2002 and 2003 in his western Fairfax County district.
    "The RNC has not done this before for Catholics and they relied on outsiders to do this for evangelicals," Mr. Cuccinelli said. The two men persuaded Martin Gillespie, deputy director for Catholic outreach for the RNC, to hire several dozen field operatives to work the Catholic vote in several states.
    "They appreciated what Karl Rove said about getting out your base. It's a party that's never been known in my lifetime for doing grass-roots efforts," Mr. Cuccinelli said.
    "A lot of people [who] never engaged in politics before really sank their teeth into this. Many people were shy about expressing their views but not about dropping literature on cars."
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O041105   'Proud' Bush declares mandate
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush clinched a second term yesterday after Sen. John Kerry decided against forcing a dramatic political standoff, clearing the way for the Bush team to declare a mandate for four more years.
    "America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens," the president told supporters at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. "I'm proud to lead such an amazing country, and I am proud to lead it forward."
    Mr. Bush also issued an appeal to "every person who voted for my opponent."
    "To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it," he said. "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."
    The speech was delivered shortly after 3 p.m., one hour after Mr. Kerry publicly acknowledged the futility of legal challenges aimed at reversing his loss in the pivotal state of Ohio, where Mr. Bush bested him by 136,483 votes.
    "In America, it is vital that every vote count, and that every vote be counted," Mr. Kerry told supporters in Boston. "But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process.
    "I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail," he added, after being introduced by his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
    Mr. Kerry came to this conclusion late yesterday morning and telephoned the president at 11:02 a.m. to convey his congratulations. Mr. Bush took the three-minute call in the Oval Office and praised his foe as "very gracious."
    "I think you were an admirable, worthy opponent," Mr. Bush said, according to an aide. "You waged one tough campaign."
    He added: "I hope you are proud of the effort you put in. You should be."
    On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, traders cheered news of the president's victory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 101 points, and the Nasdaq closed above 2,000 for the first time in four months.
    Mr. Bush's win was welcomed by world leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who telephoned Mr. Kerry with condolences, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who openly had pulled for the president.
    Leaders of France and Germany, who opposed the president's liberation of Iraq from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, vowed to make the best of the situation by trying to work with Mr. Bush.
    The decision by Mr. Kerry ended any possible challenge to Mr. Bush's margin in Ohio. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Bush had 2,796,147 votes to Mr. Kerry's 2,659,664 — a 51 percent to 49 percent victory.
    Yesterday's victory, although delayed, differed dramatically from the president's razor-close electoral win in 2000, when he lost the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore by more than 500,000 ballots. This time around, Mr. Bush garnered about 3.6 million more votes than Mr. Kerry.
    With 99 percent of precincts reporting nationwide, Mr. Bush garnered a record 59,017,382 votes, to Mr. Kerry's 55,435,808 — a 51 percent to 48 percent margin.
    "President George W. Bush won the greatest number of popular votes of any presidential candidate in history," marveled Vice President Dick Cheney while introducing his boss. "President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation's future, and the nation responded by giving him a mandate."
    Mr. Bush plans to use that mandate to enact an ambitious second-term agenda that includes an energy bill and the partial privatization of Social Security for younger workers. He also views his victory as validation of his aggressive prosecution of the war on terror.
    "Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope," he said. "We'll help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan, so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom."
    The president's victory speech ended hours of political deadlock that began late on election night, when both sides seemed within reach of garnering the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory.
    When the pivotal state of Ohio broke for the president, Mr. Kerry pinned his hopes on the provisional ballots that might somehow eradicate Mr. Bush's advantage.
    "We can wait another night," a defiant Mr. Edwards told supporters early yesterday.
    But as dawn broke and the morning wore on, it became obvious that Mr. Bush's six-digit lead in Ohio could not be surmounted, even if virtually all the provisional ballots were accepted as legitimate and went to Mr. Kerry. Provisional ballots are filled out by voters whose legitimacy has been called into question, with the understanding that they will be counted 11 days after the election if no clear winner emerges.
    By acknowledging the mathematical impossibility of his predicament, Mr. Kerry spared the nation a repeat of the postelection recount wars that raged through Florida for 36 days in 2000.
    "We worked hard and we fought hard, and I wish that things had turned out a little differently," Mr. Kerry said in Boston. "I'm sorry that we got here a little bit late and a little bit short."
    Ohio election officials said yesterday that they will start determining the legitimacy of the more than 150,000 provisional ballots cast in their state, despite Mr. Kerry's concession.
    The process of verifying residence and age and citizenship requirements will take 10 days
    "The pressure is off in the eyes of the media," Jeff La Rue, spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections, told reporters. "The pressure to count every vote and validate every vote that is a valid vote — that pressure is never off."
    Mr. Bush initially had considered declaring victory before sunrise yesterday, even if Mr. Kerry refused to concede defeat. But he decided to give his opponent more time to accept defeat.
    When the time finally came for concession, Mr. Edwards introduced Mr. Kerry with remarks tinged with disappointment and a trace of defiance. Some regarded his speech as the beginning of a new bid for the White House in 2008.
    "In this campaign, we worked hard, and we hoped that the results would be different," the North Carolina Democrat said. "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away.
    "This fight has just begun," he added. "Together we will carry on, and we will be with you every step of the way."
    Although Mr. Edwards gave up his Senate seat in his bid for the White House, Mr. Kerry remains in the Senate with a public profile that has been raised dramatically. Still, there was no talk of a second Kerry bid for the presidency.
    "Don't lose faith," he told his supporters. "What you did made a difference.
    "I promise you," he added. "The time will come, the election will come, when your work and your ballots will change the world. And it's worth fighting for."
    Mr. Bush was bracing for a variety of fights in his second term, beginning with his next budget proposal to Congress and continuing through several expected appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. With Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suffering from cancer, the president was expected to face a bruising battle over his replacement, especially if the nominee is pro-life.
    But the president's prospects for success were helped by his coattails in the Senate, where Republicans increased their control from 51 seats to 55.
    But there was no talk of pitched battles from the president, who instead singled out his fellow Texans for special thanks at the close of the campaign.
    "On the open plains of Texas, I first learned the character of our country: sturdy and honest, and as hopeful as the break of day," said Mr. Bush, who was joined onstage by his family.
    "I will always be grateful to the good people of my state," he concluded. "And whatever the road that lies ahead, that road will take me home."
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O041104   Focus on moral values tipped vote for Bush
 

By Joseph Curl and Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Moral values topped the list of issues voters were most concerned about when they went to the polls on Election Day, with Catholics, evangelicals, blacks and Hispanics joining an ad hoc coalition that re-elected President Bush by 3.5 million votes.
    A national exit poll of 13,531 voters found 22 percent cited moral values as the "most important issue," with the economy and jobs second at 20 percent and terrorism at 19 percent, according to a joint survey by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Iraq came in fourth at 15 percent.
    Moral issues were highlighted by ballot measures in 11 states to effectively prohibit same-sex "marriage." Voters approved all the measures by solid majorities, ranging from 57 percent in Oregon to 86 percent in Mississippi — and 62 percent in the key state of Ohio.
    "The overwhelming support that Americans gave to marriage and family issues and the candidates who supported them showed that this is the 'year of the values voter,'" said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a former presidential candidate.
    "For too long, liberal political pundits have been telling us that issues like marriage and life divide us as a people. But it's clear that while those issues may be controversial, they are not divisive because people reach across such boundaries as party, economic status and ethnic group to join together to support and protect the American family," Mr. Bauer said.
    For months on the campaign trail, the president drew the most enthusiastic applause from supporters when he talked about moral values: The "culture of life," a phrase borrowed from Pope John Paul II; the sanctity of marriage; the importance of family; and especially his signing of the partial-birth-abortion ban.
     At each stop, he delivered a variation of the lines he said in Dallas during his final campaign stop on Monday: "Over the next four years, I'll continue to stand for the values that are important to our nation. I stand for marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society. I stand for a culture of life in which every person matters and every being counts," the president said.
    Mr. Bush also highlighted the perception in Middle America that Democrats represent the values of the Hollywood elite by referring to a July fund-raiser in New York City, where celebrities who called the president a "liar" and a "thug" were praised by Sen. John Kerry as "the heart and soul of our country."
    "Most of our families don't look to Hollywood as a source of values," Mr. Bush told audiences during his final campaign swing.
    The Christian Defense Coalition yesterday pointed to a strong evangelical and pro-life voter turnout as a key to the president's victory.
    "It is clear one of the major factors in this presidential race was the strong turnout of the faith and pro-life communities," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the coalition. "Moral issues played a major role across the country as witnessed by the fact that all 11 traditional-marriage voter initiatives passed," he said, referring to homosexual "marriage" bans in states from the Deep South to North Dakota.
    A surprisingly strong bloc of Catholics helped Mr. Bush defeat the first Catholic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy. According to exit polls, Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate and 51 percent went for the Methodist president — a four percentage point increase in Mr. Bush's Catholic support compared with 2000. The most observant Catholics — those who attend church weekly — supported the president 55 percent to 44 percent.
    Roman Catholic leaders and lay activists had criticized Mr. Kerry for his pro-choice stance and his vote against the partial-birth-abortion ban.
    On Sunday, Northern Virginia Catholics received in their church bulletins an insert from Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde that declared: "No Catholic can claim to be a faithful member of the Church while advocating for, or actively supporting, direct attacks on innocent human life."
    Austin Ruse, president of the Culture of Life Foundation and a Roman Catholic, called Mr. Kerry "a gift of God to the Catholic Church in 2004."
    The election "drew lines, it energized Catholics, it made distinctions of what is important and what is less important, and it energized faithful pew-sitters and emboldened a number of bishops," Mr. Ruse said.
    Evangelical Christians handed the White House an overwhelming mandate against abortion, same-sex "marriage" and other issues in the culture wars.
    "This election demonstrates that Democratic Party leaders have moved far away from the moral consensus in America," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council. "If they are to reclaim political relevancy, they will need to re-examine their positions on all the major moral issues including the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the public acknowledgment of God."
    Conservatives credited moral issues with boosting Mr. Bush's tally among black and Hispanic voters. The president's share of the Hispanic vote increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 44 percent this year. The shift in the black vote was smaller — from 9 percent four years ago to 11 percent in 2004 — but may have proved decisive in Ohio, the state that ultimately tipped the election to Mr. Bush.
    Sixteen percent of Ohio blacks — about 90,000 voters — cast their ballots for Mr. Bush, said Matt Daniels, president of Alliance For Marriage, which supported that state's ballot referendum to prohibit same-sex "marriage." If Mr. Bush's black supporters had instead voted for Mr. Kerry, the Democrat would have won Ohio by 40,000, Mr. Daniels said.
    "While the same-sex marriage issue was not the sole reason Bush won these 90,000 votes, there is strong evidence to suggest that it played a major role in Bush's increased appeal with African-American voters in Ohio — and elsewhere," he said.
    •Cheryl Wetzstein contributed to this report.
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H041104   Electorate took control of defining marriage
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The passage of all 11 marriage amendments on Election Day, plus two more earlier this year, shows that Americans don't want radical changes in marriage and are unwilling to wait for activist judges to make sweeping social changes, traditional values groups said yesterday.
    "The courts gave us abortion on demand in 1973," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "The American people stated today that they are not going to allow the courts to do the same by imposing same-sex marriage on the people of this country."
    On Tuesday, nearly one-fifth of the electorate voted on amendments to define traditional marriage in their state constitutions and to outlaw other kinds of marriagelike unions for couples, including same-sex couples.
    Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah approved their amendments by 2-to-1 or greater margins.
    Michigan voters passed their amendment 59 percent to 41 percent, and Oregon voters passed theirs 57 percent to 43 percent.
    Oregon was the one state that homosexual-rights activists had hoped would reject the marriage amendment, and they poured almost $3 million into the effort to defeat it. The result was the largest opposition — 43 percent — to any of the amendments.
    "We are incredibly proud of the fact that Oregonians made this such a close race when other states are passing these amendments by very wide margins," said Aisling Coghlan, campaign manager for the No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign. "That alone is a victory."
    The Oregon amendment now becomes an instant test case.
    A major purpose of these amendments is to clarify to the courts that they cannot redefine marriage, as the high court in Massachusetts did last year when it legalized same-sex "marriage" in that state.
    The Oregon Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case seeking to legalize same-sex "marriage" in that state.
    Now that "the people have spoken, the case must be dismissed because the constitution itself has been changed to protect marriage," said Mat Staver, leader of Liberty Counsel in Orlando, Fla., which is defending traditional marriage laws in several states, including Oregon. "It's over."
    Early analyses showed that the amendments were supported by many groups, including social conservatives and evangelical Christians.
    In Arkansas, where the marriage amendment garnered 75 percent approval, Republicans voted for it 9-1 and Democrats voted for it 7-3. Married voters in Arkansas favored the amendment by a margin of 4-1.
    In Ohio, the amendment received equal support from men and women and blacks and whites. There also is evidence from exit polls that a substantial number of black voters pulled the lever for both the marriage amendment and President Bush, said Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage.
    It's not clear, however, that Americans who voted for the marriage amendments automatically voted for Mr. Bush. Both Michigan and Oregon went for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, and in Georgia, black churchgoers supported the marriage amendment but voted for liberal Democratic candidates, such as former Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, who reclaimed her House seat, said Robert Knight, who studies family issues at Concerned Women for America.
    Homosexual-rights groups said they would keep pressing for equality.
    Michigan's amendment battle "advanced recognition of the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in ways that no other opportunity has afforded in the last decade," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation, a homosexual-rights group in Michigan.
    The next step is to "harness the great energy and commitment to equality" that exists in Michigan, he said.
    Homosexual-rights groups say they will challenge the amendments passed in Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas and Mississippi.
    Earlier this year, Missouri and Louisiana voters passed marriage amendments by 71 percent and 78 percent, respectively. The Louisiana amendment since has been overturned in state court as overly broad, but proponents are appealing that ruling.
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O041105   Bush pushes new agenda
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush yesterday said his re-election proved that Americans have "embraced" his conservative worldview, which he plans to enact through an ambitious second-term agenda.
    "I earned capital in the campaign — political capital. And now I intend to spend it," an expansive Mr. Bush said at a press conference that doubled as a political victory lap. "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals."
    He specifically reached out to evangelical Christians, who were crucial in his victory over Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
    "I am glad people of faith voted in this election," he told reporters at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.
    The remarks came one day after Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed that his boss had earned a "mandate" by beating Mr. Kerry by 3.6 million votes. Mr. Bush agreed, saying he will not be shy about pushing through a long list of policy initiatives over the next four years.
    "Something refreshing about coming off an election," he observed. "When you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view.
    "And that's what I intend to tell the Congress — that I made it clear what I intend to do as the president," he added. "And the people made it clear what they wanted. Now let's work together."
    In the arena of domestic policy, Mr. Bush wants to simplify the tax code, pass tort reform and partially privatize Social Security for younger workers. Although he said he planned to work with Democrats, he acknowledged that will not be easy.
    "I've been wisened to the ways of Washington," he said. "I've watched what can happen during certain parts of the cycle, where politics gets in the way of good policy."
    The president promised to push through his agenda anyway.
    "Results really do matter, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I really didn't come here to hold the office just to say, 'Gosh, it was fun to serve.' I came here to get some things done."
    Mr. Bush said he was equally determined to work with American allies in the global war on terrorism, although he emphasized he was not about to change his principles to curry international favor.
    "I've made some very hard decisions — decisions to protect ourselves, decisions to spread peace and freedom," he said. "And I understand in certain capitals and certain countries, those decisions were not popular."
    He was referring to France and Germany, which opposed the U.S.-led overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
    "The Iraq issue is one that people disagreed with," the president said. "But I believe that when the American president speaks, he'd better mean what he says in order to keep the world peaceful."
    He added: "Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy."
    Mr. Bush was particularly adamant about pressing forward with his policy of democratization in the Middle East.
    "There is a certain attitude in the world, by some, that says that it's a waste of time to try to promote free societies in parts of the world," he said. "I fully understand that that might rankle some, and be viewed by some as folly. I just strongly disagree."
    But with Saddam and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan overthrown and the president loath to extend his doctrine of military "pre-emption" to nations like Iran and North Korea, he seemed more focused on wrestling with thorny domestic initiatives during his second term.
    "I readily concede I've laid out some very difficult issues for people to deal with — reforming the Social Security system for generations to come is a difficult issue," he said.
    "I'm not sure we can get it done without Democratic participation," he said. "But it is necessary to confront it."
    Mr. Bush was asked whether Democrats have an obligation to meet him halfway on his agenda.
    "One of the disappointments of being here in Washington is how bitter this town can become and how divisive," he said.
    He said the divisiveness was "sometimes exacerbated" by the press "because it's great sport."
    "It's entertaining for some," he added. "It also makes it difficult to govern at times."
    But Mr. Bush pointed out that he is "more seasoned" after his first term in office.
    "I've cut my political eyeteeth — at least the ones I've recently grown here in Washington — and so I'm aware of what can happen in this town," he said. "Nevertheless, having said that, I am fully prepared to work with both Republican and Democrat leadership."
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M041104   Republicans complain exit polls were erroneous
 

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Republicans are fuming again over erroneous exit polls that showed President Bush losing re-election and over television networks quickly calling some states for Sen. John Kerry while withholding such predictions for solid Bush states.
    Although the Associated Press-led polling consortium was eventually proven wrong by actual hard tallies, the widely distributed exit polls prompted a number of TV pundits to talk on election night of how Mr. Bush likely had lost.
    The Associated Press and TV networks do not publicly release the spreads, but the numbers leaked out to numerous Internet sites.
    The polls initially showed Mr. Bush losing Ohio and Florida, virtually assuring the president would not achieve the 270 electoral votes he needed.
    "There were a couple of the initial tranches that were way out of line with the final results," said Michael Barone, a columnist for U.S. News & World Report who manned the Fox News Channel "decision desk" Tuesday night.
    Asked whether the polls should be scrapped, as some Republicans have urged, Mr. Barone said the out-of-line polling "does raise that question."
    Barbara Levin, an NBC spokeswoman, defended the polling. "There were instances in which both President Bush and Senator Kerry had leads in early exit polling that everyone knew wouldn't hold up," she said in an e-mail message.
    One problem with initial numbers was that women were overrepresented. Ms. Levin said, "Men and women often vote during different times of the day, but the voting samples do even out through the day."
    In the end, it was the Bush campaign that appeared to have the most accurate polling on the two make-or-break states. Bush operatives, including campaign manager Ken Mehlman, took to the airways to correct the network reporting. They showed, precinct-by-precinct, how the president would pull out a victory, contrary to exit poll projections.
    For Republicans, it was all too reminiscent of 2000, when the TV networks wrongly called Florida for Al Gore at 7:45 p.m. — even while the state's conservative panhandle region was still voting.
    To this day, Republicans say this decision cost Mr. Bush thousands of west Florida votes and votes in the rest of the nation, as discouraged Republicans decided the election was lost and did not vote. The exit poll errors continued in 2002, when they showed Republicans losing key Senate seats, including Republican Wayne Allard in Colorado.
    The second debacle prompted the networks to scrap the old Voter News Service and form a new group, National Election Pool. Like VNS, it is a consortium of AP and the TV networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN. The actual polling is done by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Voters are interviewed as they leave a polling place.
    Each network used its own statisticians to analyze NEP's results, and then make their own calls after polls closed, but before all the hard voting tallies came in.
    Mr. Barone was one of the first network analysts to notice that actual tallies did not agree with exit polls. In Florida, for example, counties around Tampa that normally vote big for Republicans only gave the president a 51 percent edge
     "I thought, 'these don't make any sense,' " Mr. Barone recalled.
    Republicans also perceive that the networks called states for the Democrats faster than for Republicans. On Tuesday night, for example, the networks called New Jersey for Mr. Kerry at the moment its polls closed. But reliable Republican states such as Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, which Mr. Bush easily carried, stayed "too close to call" for more than an hour.
    The refusal to declare them Bush states spawned further speculation by TV political commentators that the president may be in trouble in the South, as well as Ohio and Florida.
    Mr. Barone said the problem with North Carolina and Virginia was that initial returns were too heavily Democratic, so National Election Pool waited for more vote totals.
    Ms. Levin said the networks called 29 states at closing, 16 for Mr. Bush and 13 for Mr. Kerry.
    The same trend developed in 2000. Voter News Service left Georgia uncalled for 43 minutes and North Carolina for 30, though Mr. Bush carried each state by 13 points. Mr. Gore won Delaware by 13 points and CNN waited only three minutes.
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O041104   Decisive battle
    "We're witnessing the political equivalent of Gettysburg," Robert Moran writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
    "The Democrats needed to win this election to turn their prospects around. They needed the White House to win back the Supreme Court. They needed a pliable Senate to water down or halt the House Republicans. They failed, utterly," said Mr. Moran, a vice president at the Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates.
    "The Democrats and all of their institutions (the media, academia, unions, Hollywood, etc.) threw everything they had into this election. Their 527s outspent the Right. They knocked Nader off a vast number of ballots. They juiced turnout to unprecedented levels. They created documentaries. The lied about the draft. They lied about their candidate. They lied about stolen munitions. They fabricated memos. They even got an assist from the now completely discredited exit polls.
    "And they lost."
 
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M041104   Sackcloth and ashes
    Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk-show host, said she felt certain that Katie Couric's choice of a black dress yesterday morning on NBC's "Today" was no coincidence.
     "We noticed, Katie," said Miss Ingraham, whose nationally syndicated program is heard locally on WTNT-570. Miss Ingraham said that she herself had reacted to President Bush's re-election by doing a dance of celebration.
    A colleague on Miss Ingraham's show cited the "ashen look" on the face of MSNBC's Chris Matthews as election night wore o
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O041103   Bush wins re-election
 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Bush won four more years in the White House on Wednesday and pledged to "fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power." John Kerry conceded defeat rather than back an election challenge in make-or-break Ohio.
    "I will need your support and I will work to earn it," the president said in an appeal to the 55 million Americans who voted for his Democratic rival. "We are entering a season of hope," he said.
    The president spoke before thousands of cheering supporters less than an hour after his vanquished rival conceded defeat. "We cannot win this election," the Massachusetts senator said in an emotional campaign farewell in Boston.
    The re-election triumph gave the president a new term to pursue the war in Iraq and a conservative, tax-cutting agenda at home - and probably the chance to name one or more justices to an aging Supreme Court.
    He also will preside alongside expanded Republican majorities in Congress. The GOP gained four Senate seats and bolstered its majority in the House by at least two.
    Vice President Dick Cheney told the Republican victory rally that the results of Tuesday's elections translated into a mandate for the president's policies. He did not elaborate.
    Bush sketched only the barest outline of a second term agenda, talking of reforming an "outdated tax code," overhauling Social Security and upholding the "deepest values of family and faith."
    The two public appearances signaled the end of a campaign waged over the anti-terror war and the economy.
    Hours earlier, Kerry had telephoned Bush to offer a private concession. Aides to both men stressed they had agreed on a need to heal the nation after a long and frequently bitter campaign.
    Ohio's 20 electoral votes gave Bush 274 in the Associated Press count, four more than the 270 needed for victory. Kerry had 252 electoral votes, with Iowa (7) and New Mexico (5) unsettled.
    Bush was winning 51 percent of the popular vote to 48 percent for his rival. He led by more than 3 million ballots.
    Officials in both camps described the telephone conversation between two campaign warriors.
    A Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, and Bush agreed, the source said.
    Yet Kerry's public remarks contained an element of challenge to the Republican president. "America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion," he said. "I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years."
    Kerry placed his call after weighing unattractive options overnight. With Bush holding fast to a six-figure lead, Kerry could give up or trigger a struggle that would have stirred memories of the bitter recount in Florida that propelled Bush to the White House in 2000.
    Kerry's call was the last bit of drama in a campaign full of it. While Bush remains in the White House, Kerry returns to the Senate, part of the shrunken Democratic minority.
    He acted, hours after White House chief of staff Andy Card declared Bush the winner and White House aides said the president was giving Kerry time to consider his next step.
    One senior Democrat familiar with the discussions in Boston said Kerry's running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, was suggesting that he shouldn't concede.
    The official said Edwards, a trial lawyer, wanted to make sure all options were explored and that Democrats pursued them as thoroughly as Republicans would if the positions were reversed.
    Advisers said the campaign just wanted one last look for uncounted ballots that might close the 136,000-vote advantage Bush held in Ohio.
    An Associated Press survey of the state's 88 counties found there were about 150,000 uncounted provisional ballots and an unspecified number of absentee votes still to be counted.
    Ohio aside, New Mexico and Iowa remained too close to call in a race for the White House framed by a worldwide war against terror and economic worries at home.
    But those two states were for the record - Ohio alone had the electoral votes to swing the election to the man in the White House or his Democratic challenger. A GOP legal and political team was dispatched overnight to Ohio in case Kerry made a fight of it.
    Republicans already were celebrating election gains in Congress. They picked up four seats in the Senate, and they drove Democratic leader Tom Daschle from office.
    That will be the state of play on Capitol Hill for the next two years, with the chance of a Supreme Court nomination fight looming along with legislative battles.
    Republicans also re-enforced their majority in the House.
    Glitches galore cropped up in overwhelmed polling places as Americans voted in high numbers, fired up by unprecedented registration drives, the excruciatingly close contest and the sense that these were unusually consequential times.
    "The mood of the voter in this election is different than any election I've ever seen," said Sangamon County, Ill., clerk Joseph Aiello. "There's more passion. They seem to be very emotional. They're asking lots of questions, double-checking things."
    The country exposed its rifts on matters of great import in Tuesday's voting. Exit polls found the electorate split down the middle or very close to it on whether the nation is moving in the right direction, on what to do in Iraq, on whom they trust with their security.
    Bush built a solid foundation by hanging on to almost all the battleground states he got last time. Facing the cruel arithmetic of attrition, Kerry needed to do more than go one state better than Al Gore four years ago; redistricting since then had left those 2000 Democratic prizes 10 electoral votes short of the total needed to win the presidency.
    Florida fell to Bush again, close but no argument about it.
    Bush's relentless effort to wrest Pennsylvania from the Democratic column fell short. He had visited the state 44 times, more than any other. Kerry picked up New Hampshire in perhaps the election's only turnover.
    In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.
    A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry - who strongly supports that right - in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohioans expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions.
    In all, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman.
    In Florida, Kerry again won only among voters under age 30. Six in 10 voters said Florida's economy was in good shape, and they voted heavily for Bush. Voters also gave the edge to Bush's handling of terrorism.
    In Senate contests, Rep. John Thune's victory over Daschle represented the first defeat of a Senate party leader in a re-election race in more than a half century.
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O041103   GOP majorities grow in Senate and House
 

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Republicans swept the five Democratic Southern Senate seats up for election, expanding their majority by at least three seats in the U.S. Senate, and appeared to have scored a major upset by knocking off Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
    In the House, Republicans seemed to have increased their decade-long majority by several seats as well, thanks in large part to a new congressional district map in Texas that helped oust four Democratic incumbents.
    "We had some great pickups this election. We had some tough races, some tight races," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, said on CNN last night. "We're holding the seats we had to hold. We lost a couple, but that was to be expected."
    Returns as of early this morning showed that Democrats lost all five Southern seats in which they had members retire this year: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. They also turned back challenges to incumbents in Missouri and Kentucky, and defended their open seat in Oklahoma.
    Democratic state Sen. Barack Obama captured the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald of Illinois. And Democratic candidate Ken Salazar was leading Republican Pete Coors in Colorado.
    But Republicans also were poised to claim victory in South Dakota, where former Rep. John Thune was leading Mr. Daschle, 51 percent or 168,297 votes to 49 percent or 161,079 votes, with 90 percent of precincts reporting.
    It has been more than 50 years since a party leader lost a bid for re-election to his seat. In 1952, Sen. Ernest McFarland, Arizona Democrat, lost to Republican Barry Goldwater, who won his party's nomination for president a dozen years later.
    Mr. Daschle's loss could produce a power struggle among Senate Democrats, though Minority Whip Harry Reid of Nevada has said he thinks he has the votes to secure the leader's post.
    In Alaska, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was leading former Gov. Tony Knowles in early returns.
    Overall, Republicans were thrilled with their performance, attributing it to good campaigning and to having President Bush at the top of the ticket.
    "We're looking to pick up a couple seats here tonight," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said on Fox News last night.
    With the expanded majority, and particularly with Mr. Daschle's apparent loss, Republicans were talking about the chances to get through some of the judges Democrats are filibustering, as well as push through Mr. Bush's energy bill and medical malpractice legislation, which have been stalled.
    Republicans hold a 51-48 edge over Democrats in the Senate, with one Democrat-leaning independent. Just a third of the Senate is up for election every two years. This year, 36 Republicans, 29 Democrats and the lone independent were not up for re-election.
    In races to fill the seats of the three retiring Southern Democrats, Rep. Jim DeMint defeated Inez Tenenbaum in South Carolina, Rep. Richard M. Burr topped former Clinton administration Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles in North Carolina and Rep. Johnny Isakson beat Rep. Denise L. Majette to win Georgia's seat.
    Former Bush Cabinet official Mel Martinez also topped Democrat Betty Castor in Florida by more than 70,000 votes out of about 7 million cast, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. And, in Louisiana, Republican Rep. David Vitter garnered more than 50 percent of the vote, the threshold to avoid a runoff in that state next month.
 
    Meanwhile, a new congressional map in Texas, which Republicans won only after outlasting Democratic legislators who fled the state to avoid voting on the new district lines, delivered a handful of House seats to Republicans.
    Democratic Texas Reps. Martin Frost, Max Sandlin, Nick Lampson and Charles W. Stenholm lost their bids for re-election last night as a result of the map.
    "The American people have spoken tonight, and all indications are that they have hired a Republican House of Representatives for the sixth straight election," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican and a key author of the map. "That means it's time for our national majority [to] start thinking about the future."
    Republicans also held on to contested House seats in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kentucky and won another seat from Democrats in Kentucky.
    But Democrats defeated Republican incumbents in Georgia and Illinois, and one endangered Texas Democrat, Chet Edwards, appeared to have survived a tough new district as of early this morning.
    Still, Republicans appeared ready to expand their lead by at least three seats. The current breakdown is 227 Republicans, 205 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies in Republican-leaning districts.
    The closest Senate race of the early evening was in Kentucky, between Sen. Jim Bunning and state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic challenger. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee siphoned money into the state in the waning days of the election after Mr. Bunning's support seemed to collapse as recent statements appeared to catch up with him. He recently said the terrorist attacks against the nation occurred Nov. 11, rather than September 11.
    But Mr. Bunning held Mr. Mongiardo to win 50.54 percent, or 861,424 votes, to 49.46 percent, or 843,011 votes, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
    In Missouri, Sen. Christopher S. Bond fended off a challenge from State Treasurer Nancy Farmer, another candidate Democrats had touted but who failed to gain traction as Mr. Bond became the first Republican to win a fourth term from Missouri.
    And, in Oklahoma, Tom Coburn defeated Rep. Brad Carson, a Democrat, in the race for the seat left open by retiring Sen. Don Nickles, a Republican.
    Republicans and Democrats traded open seats in Georgia and Illinois where incumbents didn't seek re-election.
    Mr. Obama has become the Democrats' newest star, based largely on his address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston this year. He is the first black senator since Carol Moseley Braun, also from Illinois, who was elected in 1992 and lost to Mr. Fitzgerald in 1998.
    Mr. Keyes, a Maryland resident and two-time long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was a last-minute addition as the Republican candidate after Jack Ryan dropped out when salacious details of his personal life were unsealed from his divorce records.
    In the House, Rep. Anne M. Northup, Kentucky Republican and a perennial target for Democrats in her Louisville district, easily survived to claim her fifth term.
    In a neighboring district, Republicans won the seat of retiring Rep. Ken Lucas, a Democrat. Geoff Davis, the Republican candidate, defeated actor George Clooney's father, Nick Clooney, who Democrats had hoped could hold on to the seat.
    Democrats managed to defeat Republican Rep. Max Burns in Georgia, which canceled out Republicans' net in Kentucky.
    Democrats also defended a Republican-leaning contested seat in Kansas, the seat left open by Mr. Carson in Oklahoma and the seat left open by Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, who lost in his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania.
    The strong performance by Republicans follows their history-making showing when they won House and Senate seats in 2002 — a rarity for a party that held the White House.
    They netted two seats in the Senate that year, defeating incumbents in Georgia and Missouri, and picked up a half-dozen seats in the House, thanks in large part to redistricting efforts in Florida and Pennsylvania, which they controlled, and Democrats' failure in Georgia, where they controlled the state house and governorship, to create a favorable map.
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R041103   Churchgoers, white men strongly support Bush
 

By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush won a majority of white men, churchgoers and white, born-again Christians, while John Kerry drew his strongest backing from blacks and led among Hispanics, according to voter exit polls yesterday.
    Bush voters said moral values and the war on terrorism were what mattered most to them, but roughly half of those polled said the economy in their communities is worse now than it was four years ago, and they went overwhelmingly for Mr. Kerry.
    Three-fourths of those who filled out polling questionnaires at voting places around the country said they worried about another terrorist attack. About half of them voted for Mr. Bush and half for Mr. Kerry. Young voters favored Mr. Kerry over Mr. Bush by 15 points.
    Notably, the poll found that the president was the major motivating factor behind Mr. Kerry's overall vote. Seventy-four percent of the senator's supporters said their dislike of Mr. Bush was the primary reason for backing the Massachusetts Democrat.
    Despite Mr. Kerry's heavy emphasis on his wartime experiences in Vietnam, military veterans went strongly for Mr. Bush, as did independents and rural voters.
    The exit polls, conducted for the Associated Press, generally reflected voter surveys that preceded the election and painted a picture of an electorate split down the middle about the state of the economy and the situation in Iraq. As earlier polls showed, voters who liked Mr. Bush's policies in both these areas supported him and those who didn't sided strongly with Mr. Kerry.
    Bush voters named strong leadership and taking a clear, unambiguous stand on the issues as the qualities they most admired in the president. About half of all voters interviewed said that most of the time Mr. Kerry says what he thinks people want to hear.
    Half the voters polled said the president paid too much attention to the interests of big business and not enough to the needs of ordinary Americans, and that they voted for Mr. Kerry because "he will bring about needed change."
    The chief issue for Kerry voters was the economy and jobs, an issue the Massachusetts Democrat chose not to emphasize in the closing weeks of his campaign, which focused far more on Iraq than economic concerns.
    About four of 10 voters who said their financial well-being went largely unchanged over the last four years strongly supported Mr. Kerry. The rest were evenly split between being better off and worse off.
    Notably, voters were about evenly divided about whether they approved or disapproved of the postwar situation in Iraq, but those who said things were going badly there strongly backed Mr. Kerry.
    Long lines of voters showed up at polling places around the country in a fiercely fought election that analysts predicted could bring out as many as 125 million people, many of them first-time voters who were drawn into the electoral process by massive registration drives by both campaigns.
    More than 105.4 million Americans turned out to vote four years ago, 51.2 percent of the voting-age population. But election forecasters were predicting that voter turnout could sharply boost that number to 58 percent or more, once all the votes are cast and counted.
    In an election where the mood of the electorate has been volatile, both candidates ended the race in what most of the independent election surveys said was a virtual tie. In its last pre-election survey, the Gallup Poll had President Bush barely leading Sen. John Kerry 49 percent to 47 percent among likely voters. Gallup said the race would be a dead heat if the remaining undecided vote went to the Massachusetts Democrat.
    In the first national election since the September 11 terrorist attacks, voters went to the polls with deeply divided, sometimes contradictory opinions about the direction of the country, the war on terrorism, Iraq and the economy.
    When Gallup asked likely voters the weekend before Tuesday's election if they were "satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time" 52 percent said dissatisfied versus 46 percent who said satisfied.
    But when Gallup rephrased the question, asking, "How well are things going in the country today — very well, fairly well, pretty badly or very badly? " 59 percent said very or fairly well, while only 40 percent said pretty badly or very badly.
    Those numbers in part reflected an economy that has turned around for Mr. Bush in the past year, creating more than 1.8 million jobs since August 2003, pushing unemployment down to 5.4 percent and increasing annual economic growth to nearly 4 percent.
    Mr. Kerry has tried to make the economy a major issue in his campaign, but as the economic numbers improved, he turned increasingly to foreign-policy issues, especially the war in Iraq, a strategy some Democratic pollsters and state party chairmen said turned off some in their party's base, who were more interested in domestic issues such as jobs and health care.
    There was some polling evidence going into Election Day that Democrats were not pulling the level of support they have traditionally received from some of their party's most-loyal voting blocs — blacks and Hispanics.
    A Washington Post poll released Monday showed that 59 percent of Hispanic likely voters were backing Mr. Kerry, a sharp decline from previous Democratic nominees, while Republican campaign strategists were forecasting that Mr. Bush would exceed the 34 percent of Hispanic voters he won in 2000 — possibly by an additional 4 to 6 points.
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M041103   Networks struggle for restraint
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Broadcasters gravely promised not to delve into incomplete exit polls and make erroneous predictions about election night winners and losers, but that promise did not include early flirtations with those polls and a tidal wave of partisan personal opinion.
    Some seemed reluctant to state the obvious, however.
    Though President Bush led in Florida by 300,000 votes with 92 percent of the vote counted by about 10:30 p.m., CNN did not call the race for Mr. Bush until 12:10 this morning — with commentary by a noticeably mournful Judy Woodruff.
    NBC waited until 12:20 a.m. to call the state for Mr. Bush.
    The network initially seemed eager, though: NBC's Brian Williams announced with some urgency at 6:04 p.m.: "We're getting the first real data from our exit polls now."
    "If George Bush can control Ohio, then he may well end up president" again, predicted a fearless Tim Russert less than hour later.
    CNN began making projections of early victories for Mr. Bush in such solidly red states as Georgia and Kentucky at 7 p.m., although anchorman Wolf Blitzer said, "It's still extremely, extremely early."
    But many of the big guns displayed their newfound caution.
    "When are you smart guys going to start predicting?" asked a waggish Ted Koppel on ABC midway through the evening.
    "They'll be no predictions yet from this anchor chair," replied anchorman Peter Jennings.
    Although sporadic — and unconfirmed — early poll numbers favoring Sen. John Kerry began circulating on the Internet in early afternoon, some bloggers were at the ready to police their online peers.
    "There is a ridiculous rumor on the Web that Kerry is ahead on exit polls. There is no evidence of this," wrote Scott Johnson of Powerline, the Web site that first took CBS' Dan Rather to task over his bogus memos on Mr. Bush's National Guard service last month.
    "This untrue rumor was started on the Web by two Internet gossip columnists, and one of them now admits that her source is 'not exactly trustworthy.' No one knows who is winning right now," Mr. Johnson cautioned.
    The role of the bloggers — anxious scribes poised over computer keyboards — was not always seen in a positive light, though.
    "If you want to be the first kid on the block to know who's winning, check out the blogs. With inside sources and a willingness to pass along rumors, Webloggers are likely to be the first place you'll see confidential information about polling, lawsuits and vote counts," noted Frank Bamako of CBS News Market Watch.
    Meanwhile, some were fixated on the idea that big voter turnout was a sure sign of an absolute victory for Mr. Kerry.
    "I haven't seen anything to shake the idea," Time magazine writer Karen Tumulty told CNN as the network played a clip of a huge crowd of Florida voters waiting outside a polling place.
    "If you want change, you get out and vote. This all favors John Kerry," U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon agreed.
    "Some of these people may be standing in line for more of same," said CNN analyst Paul Begala. "But I really doubt it."
    Some still had a little habitual Bush-bashing to do.
    "Was he or was he not exhausted this morning?" asked Mr. Jennings, referring to the president.
    "He did look tired. He did look weary," ABC correspondent Terry Moran agreed.
    At the same time, all the networks designated "oversight teams" to control the urges of anchormen and correspondents to make early calls and to sign off on them when the magic moment actually arrived.
    ABC and NBC each had three-member teams, Fox News a quartet of guardians. CBS and CNN had 12- and 30-member teams, respectively.
    •Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
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O041103   Minor problems, record turnout reported at polls
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

State election officials and watchdog groups yesterday reported scattered but minor problems at polls nationwide and said they expected turnout, which caused long waits in several jurisdictions, to break records.
    Demos, a nonpartisan, public-policy organization, last night predicted that turnout could exceed an "unprecedented" 120 million, about 15 million more than the 105.5 million in 2000, which was 51 percent of the electorate.
    The modern record for voter turnout was set in 1960, when 65 percent of those eligible cast votes. In that election, Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican Richard M. Nixon.
    "The extremely high voter turnout [in] this election reverses 30 years of declining voter participation. This is wonderful news for our democracy, and we applaud voters for braving long lines to make sure their voice is heard," said Miles Rapoport, president of Demos.
    Precincts across the state of Pennsylvania and Ohio stayed open past the scheduled closing time of 8 p.m. because of huge lines.
    Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project, a research group, said voting-machine breakdowns, missing poll workers and incorrect names on ballots were reported at several polling places, including in New York City, Richmond and New Orleans.
    "There have been no big [problems] but lots of little ones," Mr. Chapin said.
    In New York City, where voters still pull levers on old-fashioned machines, some more than 40 years old, there were several reports of breakdowns.
    An official of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said New Orleans should win an award as the "worst place" to vote in the country because of its dismal handling of electronic voting yesterday. Precinct workers were forced to tell some voters to come back to the polls because of problems including new electronic voting machines, which replaced lever machines, that did not boot up properly.
    Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State's Office, said turnout throughout that battleground state seemed likely to break the state record of 70 percent set in 2000.
    Ms. Nash said there were some glitches with the state's new touch-screen voting machines, but no votes were lost.
    "There have been very minor problems statewide," she said, offering examples: "A handful of precincts opened 15 minutes late, and one county had a poll watcher who became disruptive."
    Florida was mired in voter problems in the last presidential election, and that chaos resulted in an overhaul of voting technology there and in many other states. Fifteen counties replaced the so-called pre-scored punch-card voting machines — with the hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads that wreaked havoc in those jurisdictions in the 2000 elections.
    "Florida is redeemed," said Marty Rogol, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Board of Elections, which, he said, experienced only "minimal problems" with its new touch-screen voting machines. In 2000, many voters in that county were confused by the so-called "butterfly ballot" used with punch cards.
    In Minnesota, a state where the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, was considered especially close, election spokesman Kevin Kaiser said voter turnout probably would exceed 70 percent, up several points from 2000.
    "There were some lines a couple of blocks long in St. Paul," he noted.
    Several state election officials, including ones in the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan and Arizona, last night were not certain that they would be able to declare a winner immediately, saying it will depend on the number of provisional voters who show up at the polls.
    "We'll have final statewide results by midmorning Wednesday," said Ramon de la Cruz, director of the Division of Elections for New Jersey.
    Despite concerns about punch-card voting machines, more than 12 percent of voters nationwide used them.
    Punch cards were used in most counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the race between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry was seen as a virtual dead heat. No electronic voting machines were deployed in Ohio.
    "Electronic machines do not allow voters to overvote, but punch cards do," said James Lee, spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State's Office.
    But Aviel Rubin, a computer-sciences professor at Johns Hopkins University, who is a specialist in touch-screen electronic voting machines, has predicted that this election "could be a disaster" if it's close, given that 30 percent of voters will rely on touch-screen machines.
    They "can give results, but no one knows if they are accurate, because they can't produce a recount," Mr. Rubin has said.
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O041102   Judges bar challengers at polling places in Ohio
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Two federal judges yesterday blocked the posting of political challengers at polling precincts throughout Ohio's 88 counties in today's presidential election, but Republicans and Democrats continued preparations to send an army of poll watchers into the field.
    Meanwhile, in Florida, Democrats yesterday accused Republicans of preparing to challenge the eligibility of black voters, while dozens of lawyers hired by both parties prepared for potential litigation surrounding the election.
    Florida Democrats also accused Republicans of planning to use Creole speakers at the polling precincts as "friendly helpers" to encourage Haitian voters to back President Bush — an accusation denied by the Republican Party, which said Democrats had lined up the Creole speakers to urge votes for Sen. John Kerry.
    In Ohio, Republicans have assigned hundreds of challengers to look out for voter fraud, while Democrats vowed yesterday to watch the Republican challengers, whom they accused of being ready to intimidate minority voters.
    Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, says the state is key to "the most important presidential election in our lifetime" and that Ohio has been the target of "widespread, systematic voter registration fraud this election year involving groups working on behalf of the Democratic Party."
    Mr. Bennett said Ohio's voter rolls contain more than 122,000 apparent duplicates, that at least four counties have higher voter registration totals this election year than voting-age population, and 10 counties have reported voter registration fraud cases to local authorities.
    "These ongoing investigations exclusively involve Democratic Party front groups that were created to bypass campaign-finance limits," he said. "The Democrats outsourced their voter registration efforts to these groups, which, in turn, engaged in illegal tactics that have produced widespread, systematic fraud."
    The anticipated clash, which may have to be decided in a federal appeals court, is expected to spread to other battleground states.
    Democrats yesterday warned that poll watchers in other swing states who prove too aggressive face legal sanctions if they intimidate minority voters.
    "When we have Americans of every background fighting to spread freedom around the world, it is un-American to harass or intimidate people who are exercising those freedoms here at home," said Rep. Chaka Fattah, Pennsylvania Democrat. "If we need personal legal liability to drive that point home, we will have it."
    Mr. Fattah has assembled a multistate coalition of lawyers, known as the Voter Protection Network, who are set to file lawsuits individually on behalf of voters who say poll watchers harassed, intimidated or interfered while they were trying to cast a ballot.
    U.S. District Judge Susan Diott in Cincinnati said the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional, while U.S. District Judge John Adams in Akron said poll workers already were in place to determine the eligibility of voters.
    Judge Adams said in his ruling that persons named as challengers cannot be at the polls for the sole purpose of challenging voters' qualifications.
    Judge Diott, appointed in 1995 by President Clinton, said there was no evidence to support accusations by Republicans that "the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio's interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges."
    Her ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a black couple in Cincinnati who said Republicans planned to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County, Ohio, to intimidate and block black voters. The lawsuit sought an emergency restraining order barring partisan challengers from polling stations in all counties in Ohio.
    Mark Weaver, chief counsel for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party would ask the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to overturn the decisions.
    But Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office sent a memo to county election boards yesterday advising them to prohibit all challengers from Ohio's polling places.
    In Florida's Miami-Dade County, officials rejected a request by Republicans that uniformed police officers be dispatched to polling precincts today to ensure a peaceful voting process. County officials said the presence of police officers at the polls could intimidate some voters.
    Also in Florida, a sheriff's deputy in Miami punched and arrested a freelance journalist for taking pictures of people waiting in line to cast early ballots in West Palm Beach. A spokesman for the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Department said the deputy had been enforcing a county rule prohibiting reporters from interviewing or photographing voters outside the polls.
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M041102   Networks vow strict new standards in vote projections
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The networks have vowed caution tonight, adhering to a strict new set of standards meant to discourage eager broadcasters from dramatically declaring early winners to garner high ratings and big audiences.
    No one wants a repeat of the 2000 presidential race.
    Two years in the making, the National Election Pool (NEP) has arrived, boasting overhauled computer systems, stringent vote-counting and polling techniques, multiple safeguards and assurances that no victors will be projected in any race until the last polling precinct is shut up tight.

    The NEP replaces the Voter News Service, the old consortium consisting of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press and pollsters. It foundered four years ago when four of the networks prematurely announced Al Gore had become president, based on erroneous and incomplete voting results.
    The new pool has promised fact-based methodology. The onus, however, is on the networks.
    "A dose of humility is not a bad thing. We learned a lot in 2000 and again in 2002, when we realized the system was not foolproof. Maybe we won't make the call first — but I don't really care," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief. "We've simply got a lot of faith in the new organization."
    Still, the network will provide a dozen of their own statistical analysts and a legal team, plus a snappy delivery of all those numbers: CNN will flash real-time voting data on a 96-screen video wall behind celebrity news anchors in a studio above New York's Times Square.
    "If we're not comfortable with the data we get, we won't make the calls. The most important thing of all is to get the information right. Being fast and first is nice, but being correct is best," said Thom Bird, executive producer at Fox News.
    It is a far cry from days of yore: Few will forget CBS anchorman Dan Rather's brassy guarantee on the night of Nov. 7, 2000: "If we say somebody's carried a state, you can pretty much take it to the bank."
    This year, CBS News election analyst Linda Mason said her network will get the voter data right in an "exciting night, and a very long one."
    Meanwhile, NBC has promised an "abundance of caution before calling any race" and "much more detailed information."
    The newfangled NEP actually consists of the same old VNS consortium. It is a chastened one, however, with a cast of thousands.
    The very earliest "guess estimate" for the winner of the presidential race will not be issued until sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. according to the Associated Press, which will be responsible for actually tabulating votes.
    According to new guidelines, the AP will employ 5,000 "stringers" to report from regional election centers, phoning in the raw vote to 16 collection centers once the first polls close tonight at 6 p.m. in Indiana and Kentucky. Some 450 "vote-entry clerks" will then feed the numbers into state and national election tables — the main resource for newspapers and networks alike.
    The count will "taper down" at 4 a.m. tomorrow, then at 9 a.m. "to chase down the final results and obtain 100 percent of the votes." The count will also be continually compared with historical data and existing voting patterns to detect discrepancies or inconsistencies.
    Even the best-laid plans can go awry, and the consortium knows it.
    "There is no way to guarantee that a mistake in identifying a winner will not happen again," the NEP said. "If it does, the public can be assured that the mistake will be publicly acknowledged and corrected as soon as possible."
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O041102   Norman stormin'
    Retired Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf yesterday demanded that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stop telling voters that he endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president, United Press International reports.
    "The Democratic National Committee is making fraudulent phone calls claiming that I have endorsed Senator Kerry," Gen. Schwarzkopf said. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I demand that they stop immediately."
    The phone call, which says it was "paid for by the Democratic National Committee," has a voice identifying itself as Gen. Schwarzkopf say: "In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush, but this year I'm voting for John Kerry. ... John Kerry has a real plan to make our military stronger and to go after terrorists wherever they hide. We need a vote for change. Vote for John Kerry."
    Gen. Schwarzkopf's statement cites the Democratic presidential nominee's opposition to President Reagan's defense buildup and to the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf war and his support for proposed billions of dollars in intelligence cuts after the first bombing of the World Trade Center.
    "His attempt to make up for these deficiencies by falsifying my endorsement only confirms my impression that he is not the man we need to lead our nation," Gen. Schwarzkopf said.
    According to the Associated Press, DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera accused Republicans of splicing an ad by Gen. Merrill McPeak, a Kerry supporter, to make it sound as if Gen. Schwarzkopf was speaking so they could accuse Democrats of dirty tricks.
    Republicans denied being involved.
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R041102   Rehnquist reveals chemotherapy treatment
 

By Gina Holland
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist revealed yesterday that he is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for thyroid cancer, signs that he has a grave form of the disease and probably will not return to the bench soon.
    The election-eve disclosure by the 80-year-old underscores the near certainty that the next president will make at least one appointment to the Supreme Court, and probably more.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist had planned to join his colleagues when they returned to hear arguments yesterday after a two-week break. Instead, he issued a statement from home about the treatment he's receiving. The statement said he plans to work from home, but does not mention leaving the court.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist did not disclose which type of thyroid cancer he has, how far it has progressed, or his prognosis.
    Dr. Ann M. Gillenwater of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said the combination of chemotherapy and radiation is the usual treatment for anaplastic thyroid cancer, a fast-growing form that can kill quickly.
    About 80 percent of people with that type of cancer die within a year, even with tre