A reader looks at Florida

"Madison" offers a interesting take on the Florida situation:

You may be interested in an unusual pattern I've found in Florida voting this election cycle. There is a dramatic drop-off between votes cast for President and votes cast for Senate. In particular, the statewide drop-off down ballot for the Republican candidate, Martinez, is almost 300,000 votes, or 92% of the Bush vote. By contrast, in neighboring Georgia which held a very similar Senate race to fill a vacated seat, the Republican candidate, Isakson, had only a 50,000 state-wide drop off in votes, or 97% of the Bush total.

I've found that Bush supposedly pulled 73,000 more votes than Mel Martinez in Hillsborough, Pinella and Sarasota counties alone, an extremely unusual pattern. This is made more unusual by the fact that Florida had a hotly contested Senate race between Betty Castor and Martinez. Even though there is inevitably some drop-off down ballot in most general elections and there is some ticket splitting, this is an extremely large margin in light of how hotly contested the Senate race was. In fact, Castor outdrew Kerry by only 10,000 votes, indicating very little ticket splitting. However, these large discrepancies would be consistent with large blocks of Bush votes, and only Bush votes and none down ballot, being distributed around the state to "friendly" counties in an effort to not be detected.
I believe that as many as 200,000 Bush votes could have been distributed around the state to pad the Bush lead and take the wind out of the Kerry campaign sails. It worked. Try to find a paper trail.

If that were the case, Bush still wins Florida, but much more closely, 51-49.