I know you’ve all been waiting breathlessly for my take on this subject, so …
Here’s the deal as I see it. The ballot’s design was approved by both Democrats and Republicans prior to the election. The ballot was made available for public scrutiny prior to the election. If ANYBODY felt their candidate wouldn’t get a fair shake, that would have been the time to say something. Nobody did, to my knowledge. Silence indicates consent in this instance.
Nothing was said about the “confusing” ballot until AFTER the Florida race was deemed “too close to call.” That’s whining, pure and simple.
Gore should concede the election, for two reasons:
Dragging this out over technicalities such as the confusing ballot demeans his stature;
Should he want to run again in 2004, he will undoubtedly have greater support if he looks “presidential” now by conceding. He will be perceived as doing what is best for the country, in my opinion. Since neither candidate has a clear mandate, I think dragging this out is a recipe for getting your butt beat in 2004.
But why should he concede an election he would have won if it wasn’t for some fucked up ballots? No one has made any mention of the invalidated double punched ballots that were were a result of people realizing their mistake.
Let’s face it. Pre-approved by the Dems, Reps, AARP, whatever, at the end of the day there clearly was a problem with the ballots. Writing it off as too bad for people too stupid to vote is moronic. We’ve all had the benefit of looking at the ballot from the position of “What’s wrong with this picture?”. It seems so obvious, because we all know there was a problem with it. Should there have been? Seems pretty straightforward to me, but again, lots of people misvoted so clearly something was wrong.
That being said, the election is not the same as a football or baseball game where a blown call results in an erroneous win. In sports, that’s just the way it goes. We owe it to ourselves to ensure we get it right.
To be honest, I never felt strongly about either candidate. However, I am concerned about the ability of a President to lead a nation and be respected by world leaders, after he not only lost the popular vote (not the deciding factor, I know) but also won the electoral vote as a result of some screwed up ballots.
Bush will ultimately win. He dodged a bullet. But how does it effect him as a president that he should have lost?
But see, that’s my point … we don’t know that “lots of people misvoted.” What we’ve got now is a situation where folks who didn’t like the outcome of the initial count are saying “I MUST have voted accidentally for Buchanan.” Nope, sorry, doesn’t wash.
I have seen in several different places (but not from a reputable news organization, at least not yet) that 15,000 votes were tossed from this same county in 1996 because of double-punched ballots. So precedent is there (or MAY be there) that at least some Palm Beach County voters don’t understand the balloting system. When do you make an issue of that? Before the election, not after.
But we DO know that people misvoted! There have been reports of as many as 19,000 double-punched ballots. Even with all the confusion, I doubt that anybody thought they were supposed to vote for two people for president. Here are votes that can’t, and never will count, that would conceivably have changed the outcome of the election.
This only goes on to support the Buchannan votes…those who punched twice realized their mistake. Why is it so hard to believe then, given people’s reactions, the county’s demos and Buchannan’s overall results, that some of those votes tallied up to Buch should have gone to Gore?
That’s my POINT. This happened in the previous Presidential election, to the tune of (allegedly) 15,000 votes. You cannot go back at this point and say “Oh, most of those folks obviously intended to vote for Gore.” It doesn’t work that way.
In fact, that strengthens my point. If both Republican and Democratic officials knew that 15,000 ballots were thrown out in the last election because of double-voting, then they should have made damn sure the ballot was much more clear this time around. Apparently neither side did so. If you’re not gonna act to change what is obviously a problem, don’t whine about it when the problem comes back to bite you in the ass.
What’s the point of having an election, then? Why not just figure out the counties in Florida (or any other state) that have heavily Democratic or Republican leanings and award those counties to each candidate?
I’m not saying the system is perfect; it obviously isn’t. But it sure beats saying “Oh, these people obviously meant to vote for Gore” and arbitrarily changing ballots.
Incidentally, I’ve seen at least one quote on a news site (CNN, MSNBC, or some such) that indicated some people thought they had to vote for both Gore and Lieberman, so they punched both holes. Dunno if this is accurate or not, but again, not understanding the rules of voting disqualifies your vote. Can’t go back at this point and change that.
On this I agree…you can’t go back to changing the votes, nor would I advocate that.
My original point was that when all is said and done, Bush will be president, even though all indications are he would have lost the electoral vote, had people voted correctly. That being said, how does this affect an individual’s ability to govern, knowing that he wasn’t the real choice of the people? How does this affect the views of foreign leaders? Or, does it?
This is an article that mentions that a judge ruled that the Palm Beach County election board can decide what the voter’s intent was on a ballot with merely a dimpled chad. I.E., a chad with all four corners attached.