A Freedom of Information Recount?

Great Debates
21

I don’t consider anything I say about a public figure to be a “personal” attack. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, they don’t even know I’m saying it. Big difference between me calling Dubya an asshole and calling YOU an asshole.

Here on the SD, and any similar place where people are communicating directly with each other about various topics, I never attack the people I’m debating or discussing with. I’ve expalined this before. I think it’s cheesy, rude, and lame. Calling Dubya an asshole doesn’t hurt anyone, and it expresses my feelings about him. Calling you an asshole, especially as a response to something you have said, even if it is assholian, is unproductive, nasty, and rude. It also does nothing to bolster my argument, not to mention making me into a big or bigger asshole than the person I’m speaking of. What does anyone expect to prove by being snotty and nasty? Cuz it shore don’t prove that they are right or worthy of respect.

I don’t do it, and I don’t communicate directly with people who do it to me, though some people are a little slow to pick up on that fact.
As for whether or not Bush stole the election…I’m not going to re-debate what has been debated to death, except to say this: there were many things that worked together to give Florida’s electors to Mr. Bush. What was not among them was the plurality of Florida’s voters wanting it to be so. Errors were made, and we all know what they were, who they favored and who they screwed. You can stand around all day saying “gee, we can never know what people meant to do unless they did it properly, now can we?”, and that still won’t make it true. We can and do know.

stoid

22

I don’t know if you’ve heard of them before, but they’re called laws.

23

[Moderator Hat ON]

::looks around bewilderedly:: Musta taken a wrong turn in MPSIMS. I thought I was headed towards Great Debates, not third grade recess…

Y’all know the rules, guys. (Yes, I do know “poopypants” was sarcastic. Still not A-OK.) Let’s try to wrench this thread back into GD territory, m’kay?

[Moderator Hat OFF]

24

I picture you facing the wall with your fingers in your ears mumbling to yourself as you hope the bad men will go away.

As you jump from thread to thread high fiving people involved in actual real debate, and throwing around personal attacks like there is no tomorrow, you invite the ridicule that is often thrown your way. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Things that worked together to give Bush Florida:

Winning the majority of the votes.
Winning the recount.
Winning the handcount.
The local democrat canvassing boards.
The Florida courts.
The SCOFLA.
The USSC. (unanimously I might add:))

25

I just wanted to say that I know that does not exactly qualify as "wrenching this thread back into GD territory, m’kay? "

Gaudere kinda slipped in there. Sorry:)

26

No we don’t. And there is no way within the law to count those supposed votes for Gore. I honestly cannot fathom why someone would put multiple holes in a ballot. If they don’t understand that they can only vote for one candidate, I really don’t want to try to read anything else into their ballots.

And no, you do not make personal attacks, but you do make comments about Republicans/conservatives/bush supporters in general. You also try to claim that the liberals on this board are, without one single exception, completely innocent of name-calling. That’s simply naive.

27

Not to mention the simple fact that we won’t ever know what ‘errors’ would have been revealed had it been Mr. Bush who had spent his time and effort trying to ferret out the needed votes to win. We do know that there have been ballots that, counted in accordance with the same standard advocated by the Democrats (“count anything that looks like it could have been a vote for someone”) would have resulted in an increase in the lead of Mr. Bush.

And for what it is worth, I think that arguing by attacks ad hominem regarding public figures is no more acceptable than debating someone you know. Such discussion has no value other than letting out your feelings in a way that eschews logic, hardly a way to promote your position with effect. Reminds me much of the way my children behave…

28

Actually, to my recollection, which I admit is imperfect, I started one thread about Republicans (which has been hashed to death, btw) …I do not make it a continued practice or strategy to “make comments about Bush supporters in general”.

Well, I can’t recall any instances in any threads I’ve read. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, I just haven’t noticed it. A little sarcasm here and there, but no personal attacks. On the other hand, I could pull out dozens and dozens of personal jabs and attacks made by folks who are on the right side of the aisle. Pick a thread, any thread, and I’m sure you can find 'em too. The left side may (or may not) slip here and there, the right side seems to make it a habit. Sorry, but it doesn’t speak well of them.

I would say this is also true of the pundits and politicians. There was an editorial in yesterday’s LA Times that I tried to find online, but it didn’t seem to be available. It examined the way the GOP viciously demonizes the Democrats, in a manner that goes way beyond politics as usual. It was interesting reading, and dead on for my money.

Didn’t someone around here start a thread about “Why do republicans Hate while democrats dislike?” - certainly it became a debate as to whether this is in fact true…but why the perception in the first place? At some point that question has to be asked.

stoid

29

And you are entirely entitled both to your opinion, and to express it. But I do not use ad hominem arguments to debate, I just happen to throw in some personal attacking along the way.

I just have a standard that I have always found very useful. It also happens to be a standard that is found on almost any public board that has ever existed…including this one, which (unusually) makes allowances for such behavior by having the Pit. (The existance and use of which is entirely debatable in itself, but anyway…) The fact that this standard can be found almost everywhere you look tells me that there is probably some value in it.

As far as I am concerned, I agree with Al Rantel (conservative radio jock) that public figures are pretty much fair game. Especially politicians. It’s part of the gig.

You, on the other hand, are not.

30

Mind explaining how Katherine Harris fits into this little world of yours?

31

Can a historian step in here for a second?

Well, this is what we historians do for a living, or, at least, some of us. During the course of work for my dissertation I’ve looked at a lot of (16th-century English church) evidence that was handled, moved around, water-damaged, bombed, set on fire (in one case) etc. Some of it was missing, some of it was deliberately destroyed by persons unknown. On first glance, you might say that it was impossible to extrapolate any information.

But this is where historical “detective work” comes in. Using statistical and geographic methods, I was able to plot the incomplete information and begin to analyze what remained. I found trends and significant aberrations within the evidence. By studying these trends and aberrations, I was able to come up with conclusions which affected the result. And, yes, after accounting for various factors, I was able to extrapolate some information.

Now to the Presidential punchcards. (Please note here that I’m only talking about a historical study, not a legally-binding certification of results.) We can assume for the purposes of an historical study that rough handling of the punchcards affects all ballots equally. In other words, if 55% of the total of unaffected punchcards were for Gore, 55% of the damaged punchcards were Gore cards. Actually, it really shouldn’t matter–if these punchcards are handled in the same way as historical documents are supposed to be handled, any damage to the cards should be noted on the card itself. Either way, it would not be impossible for a historian to come back to the cards, identify significant trends and aberrations, and extrapolate a result. In no way would this be a legally-binding count, no more than my dissertation is a legally-binding account of parish church records in the 16th century. However, such an extrapolation would be of great historical interest, wouldn’t you agree?

32

elucidator: Help me out with this sarcasm thing. Republicans being the “Force of Darkness” is sarcasm, right?
So, if somebody said, “Democrats are the party of stupid people who, ironically, think they are smarter than everyone else. All of their problems in Florida are because most of their voting base marches in lock-step without thinking and does what it is told; and this time they weren’t given good enough instructions. They also think laws only apply to other people.”

Is that sarcasm?

Help me out. It’s too much for my brain to figure out, and Rush Limbaugh doesn’t come on to think for me for another 20 minutes.

And Stoidela? I never attacked you or anybody. I said, hypothetically, that anyone who thinks delegitimizing their president-elect is a goal worth working toward is a dimwit. You only qualify as being attacked if that’s what you believe. And you certainly don’t believe such a non-productive thing. Do you?

<HIGH FIVE!!!>

Anyway …

Exactly! Doesn’t Bush know that the correct way to be presidential is to walk from one building to the other in front of cameras with your wife and wave; and then go on every television station in the country and say the words “votes” and “count” 50 times each?

Duke: I don’t think the people who want to look at the ballots will take a historian’s approach. They will want to count the ballots using the standards some of the canvassing boards doing Gore’s recount used. Doesn’t it make sense that every additional time those ballots are moved around and handled, they become less and less accurate, or at least different from the way they were on election night?

**

I agree. But taking an assumption like that to a higher level points out why it proves NOTHING to look at an isolated segment of the vote that happens to fall heavily to one of the candidates.

The judge in Leon County yesterday noted that in his ruling, a point that I think all of the media skipped over. This vote for Florida’s electors to the national electoral college was a statewide, winner-take-all vote. Anything done to treat ballots specially on less than a statewide basis will not be working toward accuracy.

And unless you can find some truly non-partisan people to do the hand-counts, and dispense with the nonsense of trying to discern voter intent from pregnant chads and ballots that don’t have a punch on the presidential portion at all, I don’t think the winning side is going to be too keen for it, anyway.

33

Milossarian:

Er, actually, I really was talking from a historian’s point of view. I mean, put the ballots in a box and do this 30 years from now, using the Freedom of Information Act. (As I understand it the FOI doesn’t allow you to see anything at any time. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be cool to steal an election by demanding under the FOI to see all of the ballots–on the night of the election?)

34

Duke:

I might not have made it as clear that I could have that I understand what you mean. But most of the people who are interested in reviewing the ballots via FOIA from what I’ve heard so far want to see who actually won (that conservative watchdog group from Washington D.C., the Miami Herald, etc.) and for the reasons I’ve cited above, how they think they will able to discern the actual truth from ballots that weren’t designed for this much handling and scrutiny is beyond me.

But hey, it’s their right under the law.

I don’t see how historians could discern who won, either. This election was so close to being a tie, unless you had every scrap of data (which is impossible, given the inherent margin of error that always exists), who “should have” won will remain speculative and subjective.

Under the rules that existed when the election took place, though, Bush won.

35

There is no objectively correct count of the ballots as they stand. Any count, re-count, historical count, or scholarly count would be just another interpretation. Like someone pointed out it appears to be 50-50 with the “noise” working in Bush’s favor on the certified vote.

36

http://www.herald.com/content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/104268.htm

Which is why this mess has pissed me off so badly. It would be one thing if Florida really had chosen Dubya and meant to choose Dubya. But they didn’t. It was a series of screwups that worked in his favor, not the intention of the voters.

Y’all know those “Sore Loserman” signs? Check out this one, I’m getting the T-Shirt:

http://www.democrats.com/images/bushcheated5.jpg

Good thing for me in all this…I’m fired up. I’m ready to stuff envelopes and man the phones for the Dems from now until '04…

stoid

37

You just don’t get it do you? The SoreLoserman shirts work because they are grounded in REALITY. Nobody but the most partisan democrat shill thinks that Bush cheated.

38

And nobody but the most partisan Republican believes that more people voted for Bush than for Gore. Either in the country as a whole, or in Florida.

Unfortunately for Gore, the vast mojority of spoiled, uncountable ballots were cast by his supporters. So the legal result of this contest is going to be different than what the people wanted.

You keep making the claim that the errors in this contest would balance out, but you have yet to show even ONE piece of evidence for that assertion. All of the evidence of errors that we have in this race are either neutral or harm Gore.

tj

39

Um, Tejota, I don’t think that’s really relevant (to say nothing of the fact it misrepresents what Freedom2 said.

We can assume that, had the intent of the voters who stepped in the booth on Nov. 7 been accurately determined by some magic touchstone, there would have been a plurality for Mr. Gore. Hell, we know that from the result in Palm Beach County alone, where we have more than three thousand votes for Mr. Buchanan and several more thousand for Mr. Gore PLUS someone else, when we know with reasonable certainty that the electorate in that county did not intend to double vote, or to vote for Mr. Buchanan in such heavy numbers.

All of which is irrelevant. The only relevant issue is: using the law applicable to the election, who ended up with more votes. Votes aren’t intentions. They are the results of actions, and, thus, because of humanity’s tendency to err, unlikely in ANY election to precisely represent the intentions of the electorate. We do try, of course, to make it as hard as possible to screw up; the most classic screw up of the day (don’t you love the term butterfly ballot, it sounds so pretty…) was an attempt by the county to CURE a problem that tended to result in error. So, as voters, we try our best (everyone hopes) to cast our ballots properly; as counters of those votes we try (or we should; frankly neither side in this contest has shown any inclination in actually trying) to determine what the voters wanted from what they did. Unfortunately, because people’s viewpoints differ, we are often left with arbitrary rules that frustrate our efforts to seek out the ‘true’ intentions of the electorate.

So, we are left with this perhaps unfortunate, but nevertheless true fact: The electors in Florida pledged to select George W. Bush president received a plurality of the legal votes cast on or before Nov. 7. The fact that, in a perfect world this wouldn’t have happened is, unfortunately, irrelevant. Bitter pill to swallow for suporters of Mr. Gore? Undoubtedly. Should Mr. Bush and his supporters be somewhat more conciliatory and humble about the result? Undoubtedly. Should we accept the FACTS and stop letting our unhappiness cause us to behave poorly? NO QUESTION.

40

Tejota,

Actually, I’ve seen plenty of allegations, but very little evidence, and apparently the courts agree. Since judge Sauls found NO evidence to justify ANY of the things Gore’s team was asking for, how can you say with such confidence that you have the evidence? Or that the errors would not balance out for the two candidates? OK, I’ll just accept your word.

I also find it absolutely hilarious that the Democrat party line has been ‘Every vote should count’ and then they turn around and do their best to get absentee votes thrown out because of the way the ballot application was handled even though the voters made no erros on the ballots and their intent was crystal clear, and overseas military votes thrown out because of postmarks.

I did catch one portion of a news conference in which Mr. Daily was talking about the ‘every vote’ deal, then asked about the military ballots he said ‘Yes, every legally cast ballot’! Oh man, the hypocricy is just so blatent.