A group is trying to raise money to file a suit contesting Florida’s results. They say they need $50,000 to file the suit by the deadline, which is today. It appears that they’ve raised the necessary funds.
By my calculations, they’d have to shift 56,456 votes to give Clinton a 1 vote Florida victory. That assumes that they’d even win the suit and can have a recount.
Could we see another Florida recount drama like in 2000? Florida’s 29 votes by themselves wouldn’t make a difference, but faithless electors could in theory make the difference.
It is a circus. Recounts, due to the “fuzziness” of vote counting, whether manual or machine, may change the results by a couple hundred votes in the state. Not by 50K.
So, if any group has the lofty goal of improving the public’s confidence in vote counting, they can easily do it, without lawsuits or dramatics, by counting the votes, slowly and precisely, with no pressing deadlines, several months after the election. Like what was done in Florida in the year following the 2000 election.
By the way - Wisconsin recount so far I think increased Trump’s total by a couple of votes.
To be fair at least 2.5 million more people voted for Clinton than Trump, but that’s irrelevant because of the Electoral College. As to the OP; I think a Florida recount is even more of sideshow than Jill Stein’s efforts. This is just fodder for SNL skits. All its going accomplish is another Trump tantrum. Although it would be hilarious if the GOP appealed to SCOTUS to stop the recount only to have them deadlock 4-4.
Maybe it would have been 3-1 for Clinton if the ballots had gone out. You don’t rig elections by totally flipping the vote against expectations in any given area (at least not if you’re smart about it). You decrease the margins in areas your opponent is strong and increase them in areas where you’re strong. In a close race that can flip the overall results while more or less maintaining local expectations.
I’m not saying that any of that happened, just pointing out that a candidate winning in a given county or precinct doesn’t mean that any rigging must have been in their favor.
Edited to add: I may have misunderstood your point. You may have meant that since it was a heavily Democratic county, the person in charge of mailing out the ballots is statistically more likely to be a Dem than a Repub. If that’s the case then I see your point. However, it’s still possible that there could have been human error, which is just as much a problem as deliberate fraud.
I think you missed my point. The ballots would have gone out if someone (almost certainly a Democrat) had done their job properly. That person, not the Republicans or the Russians, is responsible for ballots not being sent out like they were supposed to be in Broward County.
I agree about the “human error, which is just as much a problem as deliberate fraud.” The voters of Broward County should fire her (although they’ll have to wait another four years to get the chance, because they just re-elected her). BTW, her name is “Dr. Brenda C. Snipes” and she is a Democrat.
As I said, it has no legal impact. It doesn’t decide the winner. I never claimed otherwise, so why are people arguing with me?
As to your point about caring about it: Are you seriously comparing football statistics to voting for the President of the United States?
Do you seriously believe that the fact that no one cares much about a football statistic logically leads to the conclusion that no one should care about a totally different and much more important thing?
I’m beginning to see why this election went the way it did. Too many people were thinking about it as a team sport.
Otherwise known as: just because a statistic exists doesn’t make it relevant.
A similar game can be played with votes for the House of Representatives. You can aggregate those results nationwide, and decide who should have “won” the House, and by how many representatives. But that’s silly; the result is built in from what happens in each district. The fact that James Clyburn (D) won his district by 110,000 votes, but Mick Mulvaney (R) only won his by 60,000 votes next door doesn’t mean diddly squat.
Which is, of course, nothing at all like the Presidential vote. Representatives represent the people in their districts. The President represents everyone.
