Alright, time to talk Seminole...

Great Debates
21

That’s not quite what happened. The applications weren’t filled out wrong by the applicants, there were printing problems.

The Democrats allege that the Republicans were allowed to come in and fix the printing problem on the Republican ballots while the Democrats were not afforded the same opportuntiy in spite of repeated requests.

If true, it’s pretty reprehensible, and probably even criminal behavior. The point is that the voters themselves did nothing wrong that would serve to disqualify their ballots.

An interesting pattern has been going on during this controversy:

There is a large outcry of injustice in the public press, about some kind of irregularity that might overturn the election. It gets seized upon by a few people as “proof” that Gore actually won.

Later on when it gets argued in the court it turns out that something quite different actually occurred.

The Democrats are fighting an offensive to overturn the the election. They seize on whatever weapon comes to hand and flay it about in the court of public opinion. They need to do so to keep Gore alive, and his cause sympathetic to the public eye.

The Republicans are fighting a defensive fight, seeking to downplay events and preserve the status quo. They do not wish to get into a public debate with the Democrats and thereby give credence to their arguments. The save their arguments for the courtroom. Doubtless we’ll here their side of things in the courtroom.

I cast no aspersions upon the Democrats in saying these things. The roles were exactly reversed during the impeachment hearings. It’s simply the best strategy for what they are trying to accomplish.

BTW. I came down hard on Gore in the “Gore is a scumsucking inertebrate” thread because I thought he did such a terrible job that day. In today’s press conference I thought he seemed relaxed, confident, friendly, and presented excellent arguments in a reasonable manner. He didn’t even say “ummm” once.

An interesting sidenote to this whole thing is that both Gore and Bush seem very inconsistent in the quality of their public appearances.

22

I also applaud the cogency and clarity of your post, DS. Like you, I agree that the voters who had no complicity in this illegal act should not, in justice, be (here comes that word again!) disenfranchised. However…

It is reasonable to expect that the Republican operatives involved knew that what they were up to was less than kosher, and they were certainly in a position to find out if they did not. They went ahead, presumably to further thier political ends. If the votes are accepted as legit, they will have achieved their end. Can we permit that to stand, “fruit of the poisoned tree” and all that?

I submit that I am in danger of suffering a Republican administration due to the illegal actions of these operatives. (I swoon, I faint, I ralph). We, the people, are far more the victims, real and potential, of these actions than the absentee voters, if only by sheer mega-numbers.

Notwithstanding the legitimacy of these Republican voters intention, that is too high a price to pay to preserve thier access to what you correctly point out is a privilege.

Conversely, the “butterfly” ballot is patently illegal by design, the voters intent was equally blameless, and they have suffered the consequences of other’s illegal acts (by which I mean the design is technically wrong, I do not accuse the designers of nefarious intent).

I submit that if it is legitimate, however disagreeable, to discount these voters grievance in the light of the gravity of the situation, it is equally legitimate to deny the aforesaid “ops” the fruits of their illegal actions. [jest]If I steal your car, and get busted, do I get to keep your car? And if that is the law in the state you live in, can I have your address?[/jest].

Admittedly, I myself cannot see a truly Solomonic solution, perfect justice for all, but I submit that letting “Landslide” George win using illicit ballots ain’t it.

I must point out that your assertion that we don’t really know who those registered Republicans voted for borders on the precious. However, in an otherwise excellent post, it isn’t worth mentioning.

Well, almost.

23

I don’t think it’s true to say that they did nothing wrong. They were required by law to submit applications containing their votor id. Now the republican party intended to send out applications that already contained the votor id. But they didn’t.

This doesn’t relieve the votors of the responsibility for filling it in themselves.

In any case, there is absolutely no allegation that the ballots themselves were handled improperly, only that one group of people were given preference over another in receipt of absentee ballots.

In my mind, this is analogous to the argument about selective handcounts. If selective handcounts are unfair because they give a larger voice to the counties where handcounts are done, then this selective sending of absentee ballots is unfair in pretty much the same way.

tj

24

I was being lulled into buying it, DS… you sounded so reasonable and reasoned there for awhile…then I got to this:

Which basically treanslates as:

“We cheated and you didn’t. You shoulda. Tough titty.”

Sorry if this fails to move me.

stoid

25

So, because some third party “cheated”, unbeknownst to the voters, you want thousands of completely blameless voters’ ballots cast out? You want thousands of ballots that have nothing wrong with them to be cast out?

Oh yeah - every vote counted. “We just want to count votes”. Oh yeah…

26

No, just the ballots that would have never been received had the Republicans not broken the law to see that they were.

stoid

27

No not completely blameless. The republican party tried to hold their hand and failed. That does NOT make them somehow immune from the requirement of submitting applications that are filled out completely.

I think it’s pretty clear that the ballot changing is found to be illegal, then the ballots sent by the people who had their applications fixed will also be illegal. Of course, we don’t know exactly which ballots those are, which makes this a hard thing to remedy fairly.

The ‘count every vote’ standard is quite a bit more lenient than this. Under that standard, this is simply irrelevant to the election.

But make no mistake, the people who submittited incomplete applcations cannot be said to be blameless no matter what the reason for imcompleteness is.

tj

28

Man, you gotta pick harder analogies to pick apart, this one is waaaay to easy.
2 murderers in a room with 13 other innocent people and no way to tell them apart…I guess you would be throwing all in jail for life or executing them. Torture maybe?:slight_smile:

There is plenty evidence of democrat voter fraud. The reason you don’t hear the Republicans screaming about it is because fraud is one of the only legitimate reasons to overturn the election. I admit that I am partisan and therefore not objective on this matter, but trust me, we think the democrats cheated for a good 2-3% of the vote Gore got.

(disclaimer: I do not pretend to speak for any other specific conservatives on this board)

And the voters in Palm Beach were required to punch only one hole, yet you want to divine which hole they REALLY REALLY wanted to punch. I figure this is similiar to the effect holding the polls open late ONLY in St. Louis had in Missouri.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again…

Neither side has the right to be claiming the “Will of the People.” The whole damn election was well within the margin of error. I’ll be impressed if your suffering leads you to get out and work for more accurate elections.

Conversely…I think we had a court decision that found the ballot to be very legal.

IMPO you could have stated this a little more clearly. Here, let me help you.

The damn DNC has been lying:)

Now now…I think it has been fairly well established that the Gore camp is helping with this lawsuit. Read my Orlando Sentinel link up there if you want details.

ummm…I think everyone has pretty much openly admitted since the begining that ALL our elections have fraud, errors and unintended consequences on both sides. I don’t see an * by Kennedy’s name, and yet the same circumstances could have occurred if he had decided to pursue a legal contest.

And that Will of the People thing again…

Don’t you really mean “The will of the People who voted for Gore?”:slight_smile:

Now…you are disenfranchising these voters as well. If they had never received an absentee ballot, they may have made their way to the polls to vote. Once the GOVERNMENT sent out those ballots, the voter had every right to accept that he/she was actually VOTING. The time to contest this is before the actual election takes place.

The only thing we can do now is press criminal charges against anyone who broke the law. I will support this even if it sends Republicans to jail. I do not support law breaking or vote fraud.

29

If we used this standard equally, we would not be counting hanging chads, dimpled chads and pregnant chads. The rules were quite clear, make sure your chad is off your ballot, and for God’s sake, don’t punch two holes in it!!!

Will a democrat please just admit that this is a war and pretty much anything goes at this point to win? I concede that point from my side. Is there a democrat in the house who can or will do the same?

30

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by lawoot *
**

The problem with this is that it would be a great way for an operative in either party to get an opponent’s district thrown out: Fill out X number of incorrect, illegal applications, send them to legitimate voters and poof there goes a whole district’s ballots. Of course you’d do this in a district that’s strong for your opponent and there goes his lead.

The ballots (as far as I know) are unidentified. I believe that they have to be. Where I live, we have punch-card ballots (even the mail-in ones…you haven’t lived 'till you’ve tried to punch out one of those things without a card-holder!). Anyway, on my mail-in ballot, there was a voter ID tear-off thingie that stuck out of the privacy folder. The card went into the folder, with the voter ID thing sticking out. Supposedly, when recieved, without opening the folder, the voter ID thing would be torn off and the ballot, with privacy folder would be put into a locked box somewhere. On election day, there would be no way of telling which vote was mine and which one wasn’t.

The only solution I see that won’t open a horrible Pandora’s Box is to throw the book at the people who illegally filled out the applications. I’m talking hard time. Federal Election Fraud type hard time, measured in terms of years in jail, not in terms of community service.

Fenris

31

Are you sure we’re not conflating what happened in Martin county with what happened in Seminole? I never heard that Democrats were refused anything in Seminole. My understanding of that case is that the Democratic ballot applications were fine, and a printing glitch left the voter ID off of some Republican ballots. The Republicans fixed them. The Democrats didn’t have to.

Martin County is the one where people are claiming that Democrats were excluded. I think.

32

Not unlike the Bush supporters claim that voters whose chads were not completely punched are not blameless, eh?

Funny how we should ignore illegal acts of fraud to make sure that some ballots are counted, but we shouldn’t even bother to look carefully to make sure other votes are counted, isn’t it?

Bah.

33

Stoid wrote:

Where is the fraud on the side of these voters? Where is the fraud on the side of all the other thousands of absentee voters in that county? Why should their votes not be counted because someone tampered with some ballot applications, without the consent or knowledge of these voters? Why should these voters (and all absentee voters in that county) have their voices silenced because of something they had no involvement in, and hold no blame for?

34

Why is this different than punching out the dimples so the machine can read them???

I have heard the argument ad nauseum that dimples are the result of voters “STARTING TO VOTE AND CHANGING THEIR MINDS”, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Perhaps the “marks” discussed in these quotes were the result of people starting to vote and changing their minds.

I see no practical difference. Sheesh.

35

Well, I am willing to grant you this to a certain degree…But I will also say, with a certain degree of awe, that your side seems much better at it. (Completely unsubstantiated claims that 2-3% of Gore votes were fraudulent is one example; the attempt by some to try to show by misleading use of numbers that the Buchanan votes in PBC were plausible is another; The “mob rule” in Miami-Dade is a third.)

Seriously though, I don’t understand the facts well enough on the Seminole thing to know for sure how I feel, but I am amazed at how quickly you Reps are willing to dismiss it. After all, even though the effect of the PBC Buchanan problem was clear as day, I was willing to say from the beginning that I wasn’t sure there could or should be a remedy applied. I see very little such measured reflection coming from your side (except perhaps for Scylla’s post here). And, as others have pointed out, it is very generous of you to support tough prosecution, if necessary, of the people involved here but no remedy to the votes…No skin off your back!

36

Except an importance difference is that both sides had equal opportunity to request hand counts. They apparently did not have equal opportunity to correct the absentee ballots.

37

BTW I voted here in Washington State using a punch card and stylus. There were no signs saying anything about chads or instructing us to make sure we made holes. The guy took my ballot and stuck in the box without even looking at it. For all I know, I created an entire ballot consisting of nothing but dimples. The guy took my ballot and stuck in the box without even looking at it. Until after the election, the word “chad” wasn’t even in our common vocabulary. So there.

38

Whoops…make that “absentee ballot applications” to be more correct.

39

**

Guess whose responsibility it is to make sure your chads have gone off to chad-land?

Oh, I’m sorry. You support the party that doesn’t have “responsibility” in its vocabulary.

40

According to the complaint originally filed in the case, the altering occurred over the course of nine days in mid to late October. According to the relevant Florida statute, voters can request abstentee ballots by phone. It is not exactly a leap of logic to think that the Republicans could have gotten all those they sent ballots to to transmit the same information over telephone to the correct parties.

To throw away 15,000 votes because several of them were cast by people who were denied the chance to legally apply for an absentee ballot is severly interferring with the will of the people.