Okay, this isn’t exactly a timely topic, but it’s one of those things that have been bugging me for a while; I would have started a thread about this before, but I couldn’t track down a solid reference until tonight…
And with that long-winded explanation out of the way, I’m curious as to whether the collective SDMB Great Debates Hive Mind believes there’s any merit to the theory that Gore lost Florida in the 2000 elections because of e-voting shenanigans from Diebold voting machines. To wit:
Needless to say, there’s a huge pile of supporting evidence at the site, both from Diebold memos and quickly-forgotten American news reports. I don’t see anything on the site to indicate the author is a crank, but I’m not that familiar with New Zealand journalism sources.
Given how much controversy electronic voting in general (and Diebold voting machines in particular) has gotten recently, did Al Gore really lose 16,000+ votes from election skullduggery? Can we look back with 20/20 hindsight and determine if the whole Florida 2000 fiasco was an artificially-induced “tie”? Or has the article’s premise already been debunked by others?
Well, before someone else says it, I’ll say it. Even with any rigged count, skullduggery, malfeasance, or incompetence, it has since become clear that Al Gore won Florida. I don’t know many people – even serious Bushies – who claim that it was right that Bush was awarded the win there. Most of the Bushies I know are also big into states’ rights.
So, having acknowledged that, I’d like to propose a refinement to your question:
Given the evidence at hand, was the discrepancy in the Diebold machines caused maliciously, or accidentally? If maliciously, by whom?
“How could Bush have won?? None of MY friends voted for him…”
You are seriously deluded if you think that only the deluded feel Bush won the election. I don’t consider myself a ‘bushy’ by any stretch of the imagination and I think he won.
I don’t buy rjungs theories either but he knows that already as this has to be at least the 4th thread like this he’s done. And I prolly missed a few.
All’s fair in love, war, and politics.
If someone tampered with the Diebold memory cards to give Bush the win, which Diebold itself considers a reasonable possibility, more power to them.
If they can do it again next election, they deserve to win.
This is so ridiculous. Bush got more votes in Florida than Gore did in Y2K. Just because you don’t like it don’t mean it ain’t so.
For a primer on Florida elections, see Carl Hiaasen’s book: “Paradise Screwed”. Pages 287 through 304 deal specifically with elections, all before the Y2K presidental race.
A lot of right-wingers have called Michael Moore a liar, but he did have all factual allegations made in F911 vetted by a team of lawyers and a former New Yorker fact-checker before releasing the film, and he has provided cites for all of them on his website. From :
So, your impartial sources are provided by Michael Moore? Puh-leeze!
Look, you guys would do a lot better if you’d quit whining about elections lost, Bush’s failings, etc., and start telling about any strong points that Kerry might have to offer.
I agree that this debate shouldn’t still be going on though. It’s been well documented that Gore got the most actual votes in Florida, and I’ve not seen anyone produce any evidence contrary to this. Add in the tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters from democratic demographics and the state would’ve been fairly solidly for Gore.
So simply with the passage of 4 years’ time since the last election, it should no longer concern anyone whether or not vote-rigging took place in Florida. Like, who cares whether the elction was won legitimately or by cheating. Anything that happened 4 or more years ago doesn’t matter anymore. Another great comeback!
Well, according to the CNN Archive there were 5,957,459 votes counted in Florida. We would have to add 140,000 to Gore’s total to give him half of the vote to Bush’s 48%. Had every vote been recorded as intended Gore undoubtably would have had a bunch more than Bush but I think it’s fair to say, as conservatives often do, the electorate was basically split down the middle.
Gore not having 16,000+ votes mysteriously disappear into the ether would have avoided all the hair-splitting over butterfly ballots and hanging chads, n’est pas?
What is particularly interesting about this is that it was the Volusia County’s numbers that led Fox to be the first to call the race for Bush, when the VNS never did. The rest of the networks followed suit.
One thing is clear: the Republicans appeared to know far better than the Democrats that winning over the court of public opinion was going to be crucial. Whether they engineered the only call of the race to Bush prior to Katherine Harris’ or not, I don’t know.
