Just fighting ignorance, King.
Y’know, Milo, I don’t claim to be a nice guy all the time. And if you want to think of me as a lizard-felching scumsucker, that’s fine with me.
But I can understand pldennison’s point of view when we’re arguing over Napster, even though I disagree with it. I can understand something of UncleBeer’s point of view when we’re debating guns, even though we disagree strongly. And I can understand the points of view of Freedom, techchick, or Scylla on any number of issues where we disagree.
But there’s facts and logic associated with their positions, which makes it a damned sight easier.
Cool, Milo. You’ve read the entire first paragraph of the article I cited. I always knew you were as intelligent as you were hardworking.
Y’know, this is what makes toying with you fun, Milo. You’re not even bothering to develop an argument; you’re just doing what would be crowd-pleasing rhetoric, if you were speaking to…damn, that’s a stumper.
Well, if one considers three directly conflicting statutes to be an ‘invitation’, they’re spot on.
The courts had the duty, as they always do, of resolving conflicts of laws. In order to find out what the applicable law was on 11/7/00, applicable conflicts have to be resolved. Legislative scrambling after 11/7/00 can’t undo the conflict that existed on that date. For the legislature to ‘uninvite’ them would have been ‘writing new law’, which of course you once were against.
Here’s one I couldn’t find when I posted that batch of cites recently–
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0107-02.htm
Originally published in the Boston Globe-- “Democrats Make Nice While Bush Runs Hard Right” by Robert Kuttner
Kutter perfectly describes the way I feel about the outcome of the election, and the post-election behavior of the Democrats in Congress: “What is the matter with the Democrats? They are rolling over in a blissful haze of bipartisanship, which George W. Bush appoints a hard-right Cabinet and pursues a hard-line program. It’s like a country after a bloodless coup d’etat. Daily life goes on. The lame media makes soothing noises. Rituals of democracy endure. The out-party simulates opposition, toothlessly.”
That should be, “WHILE George W. Bush…” not “which”. Sorry!
Chance the Gardener said, “All votes in America should be equal. The rural privilege should be done away with.” I agree absolutely.
And thanks, Rillian, for the data. I’ll follow your link when I can find the time.
Questions for Bush supporters: Look, Bush is President. That can’t be changed. It would be perfectly safe now to admit that a few things went wrong with the election in FL. Don’t you think we need to try to see to it that no future election is this badly botched? If we are to fix our electoral system, we must first admit that there are problems that need fixing. Do you really think that everything’s fine? No need for change or reform? Nothing to fix?
Let’s not forget the road blocks set up by Florida State Police in predominantly black districts as “routine” checks of vehicle safety features. A friend of mine, who’s a Florida state prosecutor and Republican, even admitted that this smelled pretty fishy.
What I fou7nd interesting is his revelation that a majority of overvotes were from people who marked Gore’s name and then wrote-in Gore’s name.
Is anyone gonna tell me they weren’t trying to vote for Gore? Shouldn’t their votes have counted? If not, why not?
Agreed. Actually,what they did was very logical. Think about it – You’re a first-time voter; not very sophisticated about the electoral process. You’ve never heard the phrase “write in candidate”; you’ve never heard of writing in a candidate other then the ones printed on the ballot. So. You go into the booth, you punch holes in the card next to the candidates of your choice. But your main reason for being there is to vote for Gore. That’s what you’re focused on. You work your way down the ballot, and you come to the phrase “Write in candidate” with a space in which to write in your candidate. Who is your candidate? Gore! So naturally, you write “Gore” or “Al Gore” in the space.
Supposedly, the official legal standard in Florida is “the intent of the voter”. Surely, on these ballots, the intent of the voter was really very, very clear? I absolutely do not see the justification for not counting these as votes for Gore.
In fact, I would say that catching and counting such votes is one of the purposes of a hand recount.
I read the entire article. I quoted the lead graphs of your “evidence.” The rest of the article is an expansion upon the premise introduced in the lead graphs. Is this true or not true? If it is not true, Mr. Cut-and-Paste, show me the points that I am not getting from the article that you think are relevant, beyond what I quoted. I know it’s easier to be an insulting ass, but just give it a try.
There’s a reason why you didn’t. You can’t.
Hurray! You got another insult in! Now then, want to address my point? Care to point out how, unlike all those other debators you respect and admire, there’s no logic there?
There’s a reason why you didn’t. You can’t.
So, dumb old Milo’s premise in this debate point is: “Bringing up overvotes in Florida is as irrelevant as Invisible Pink Unicorns, in that it is an absolute impossibility to know with certainty, on a ballot with two candidates punched or marked, which candidate the particular anonymous voter intended to vote for.”
That you choose to be insulting rather than counter that point (which you certainly haven’t done with one shred of logic that I see, for someone who claims to be so above me as a debator) speaks to some personal issues that you apparently need to work out.
Why don’t you just start pretending I’m not here, and I’ll do the same with you? That even gives you an out on those debate points you were unable to counter.
really? I can think of two cases where the intent could be extrapolated.
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The oft used example of the folks in PBC (predominately Jewish) voting for Buchanen and another candidate. I believe that it’s likely they weren’t trying to vote for Buchanen, which would lead to the assumption that the other vote was the intended… however I don’t believe that it’s possible under any concievable set of circumstances to count those votes for any candidate. (however, I think it’s possible to be pretty damned certain who the intended vote was for, but not with the certainty we’d like for an election - kinda like the difference between ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ and preponderance of the evidence’)
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When the voter marked both a specific candidate and under ‘write in candidate’ when they wrote the same name, I think it is very easy to determine voter intent. Did they vote properly? no, but it’s also very clear who they intended to vote for. Note this happened with both Bush and Gore votes. In this case, I believe that the vote should be counted under the Florida law that asks for the voter intent to be determined. Here, the voter intent is unmistakeable.
So, if it is indeed your position that it is an ‘absolute impossibility to know with certainty, on a ballot with two candidates punched or marked, which candidate the particular anonymous voter intended to vote for.’ in the cases of overvotes, I would say that you are wrong.
Now, of course, we’ll hear your disclaimer that you didn’t mean those overvotes, right?
There is another media recount being done by a media consurtium (sp?) that will count the overvote, too. Gore will win one of these times.
wring:
And I agree with both scenarios that you cite. However, as you pointed out in Scenario 1, there is no way to know for sure which individual ballots were intended for whom.
Precisely the reason why they cannot even be considered as votes.
As for Scenario 2, I agree that it is much more clear. I do not, however, believe there were 29,000 such votes for Gore in Florida. I have yet to see any evidence that this is so, even reading Hazel’s links, some of which make salon.com seem like Pat Robertson. I also recall that there were many thousands of votes for Bush along the same lines in some county in northern Florida.
You have to have some standard of what is a vote and what isn’t. “Intent of the voter” absent any hard standards was shown to a great many people to be unworkable, particularly in an election where the results involve multiple jurisdictions. I understand there are a few of you out there that disagree.
We don’t count overvotes. Never have. No court, even the pretty clearly liberal Florida Supreme Court, suggested or suggests such a thing. (My interpretation of the Chief Justice’s comments about overvotes was that they were to point out the folly in hand-counting undervotes after several machine counts.)
So how does your extrapolation help determine a winner in an election? You have circumstantial evidence that many people who intended to vote for Gore screwed up. I have circumstantial evidence that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted women and accepted bribes for political favors. Where does that leave us, exactly?
Should efforts be made to thoroughly educate voters on how to effectively exercise their right and end up with a legal vote that reflects the candidate for whom they want to vote? Absolutely! Who is against that? In fact, I already provided a link to this article, which indicates that Republicans see that as equally crucial as updating outmoded election machinery. (I vaguely recall someone saying something about not reading every word of a linked article. I thought it was a requirement. ::shrug:: )
If you are part of a party that wants to heavily rely upon last-minute bloc-voting, herding people onto buses and giving them their marching orders, which they dutifully carry out except they don’t know what they are doing exactly, then you should feel it pretty incumbent upon your party to be leading the voter-education drive.
Two words: “Christian Coalition.”
Hey RTF, get over here and gimme a high five!
I honestly don’t care much about who won the Presidential election, but I’ve got to ask the folks who are complaining about the Gore count – do you actually want the president of the country chosen by folks who don’t know how to vote?
I recall seeing on CNN an interview with a woman as the whole “confusing-ballot” issue was brewing. She said she bounded out of the polling place and told her husband “I punched five! I punched five!” (or whatever ballot number was supposed to correspond to Gore). Her husband looked at her and said, “Five was Buchanan’s number.” She was appalled. I was too, but for a different reason: Why on earth would she be interviewed by a national news organization and voluntarily admit she was, at best, unobservant, or at worst, stupid? She took the time to remember the number she punched, but she was too dumb to realize it was the WRONG number?
I’m pretty sure that both the Republican and Democratic officials in all Florida counties had to see and approve the ballot form, so complaining about the design is fruitless. I’m not saying the design isn’t confusing, just that all interested parties saw the ballot design and signed off on it. There was no conspiracy there.
Milo. You said
(deleted self depreciating remark)
and now you say :
**
So, there ** do** seem to be cases where the voter intent is clear. (other cases would include where the voter punched both the ‘straight ticket’ and the individual candidate matching that party)
Now, since you apparently agree that these ballots show a clear voter intent (regardless of the # of them), can you now :
-
admit that your original statement referenced above is incorrect.
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Tell me why these votes should not be counted?
And please, no more of your
**
We’ve already spent a whole page where you try and equate “rigid” with ‘consistent’, (and now are chosing the word “hard”).
And, according to this post :
by Gadarene it seems that in the first recount, these were counted (or at least for Bush).
So, your further statement of
seems to also be wrong.
we agree on this:
but this:
gets you back into the realm of party-line nonsense that does nothing to further either your argument or your stance in a debate.
She learned that punch-card machines are not accurate enough. She is going to ask the Florida legislature for $200,000,000 to upgrade the entire state to electronic voting machines.
As for people too dumb to vote, every taxpayer in this country is entitled to representation, no matter how careless, clumsy, unobservant or accident-prone.
Sigh.
I’m trying to expect better from you, wring. Not certain others; I know better. But for some reason, I do expect better from you.
So why are you attempting to twist things, take them out of context, or pretend that you don’t understand context that is pretty easy to understand?
I said “more clear.” I didn’t say “clear.” And you’re omitting one teensy little significant point: It’s not a vote. More than one candidate is marked. It’s spoiled. It can’t be counted.
What, my personal opinion? The instructions on how to cast a ballot are made available to everyone. There are people there to help anyone having confusion. All they have to do is ask. Part of participating in this crucial aspect of our Democratic Republic is to take personal responsibility - make sure you vote, make sure your ballot is legally cast and represents who you want it to represent, before handing it back in.
Going by standardless “intent of the voter,” I suppose overvotes where a candidates name is both punched and written in would be counted. Ditto a candidate punched with a straight-party ticket, if and only if the presidential candidate was of that party.
My personal opinion deviates from that of the one taken by Republicans in the Florida election controversy - but only given the state’s standardless, “intent of the voter” criteria. And I think there were some equal protection problems with a vote involving multiple precincts counting with multiple, varying standards that treated ballots marked similarly differently. I wasn’t alone in that thinking.
It makes far more sense to count only legally cast ballots as votes. Florida should fix its law to reflect that, IMO.
Also note, yet again, that the number of these votes on both sides has never been stated, to my knowledge. And I’ll bet anyone who wants to 10 bucks that the assertion that there were 29,000 of those specific kinds of overvotes for Gore is bull.
Now the question is back at you, wring: Do you think overvotes of kinds other than the two we’ve just discussed merit any discussion at all in terms of determining a winner of the presidential race in Florida? Do you consider them in any way valid, legal votes? Why or why not?
**
If you don’t see those words as at least relatively interchangeable, I just cannot help you. You continuing to make a point out of it seems to accomplish no point whatsoever, other than some odd attempt to besmirtch my, what?
The fact that a great many people, including seven U.S. Supreme Court justices, were having trouble with hand-counts under way in Fla. under standardless, varying “intent of the voter?” Dem’s facts, babe. But feel free to continue an odd semantics sidelight.
**
The post I saw by Gadarene on this topic alluded to evidence, but offered none. I don’t recall this at all. If you or someone else has evidence that overvotes were counted for Bush anywhere, I would definitely like to see it.
If someone screws up, it’s their own damn fault. “Freedom” also means “Responsibility”… and a lot of people had the freedom to vote along with the freedom to screw up, but they want to avoid the responsibility of their actions.
I say, “Tough shit for them.”
hmm. didn’t think I twisted things or took them out of context. I quoted you. You seem to repeat that ‘intent of the voter’ cannot be determined, then will qualify it with ‘well, with rigid standards’ ‘well with consistent standards’ ‘well with hard standards’ etc. This seemed to have been the issue in that other thread.
You seem to understand that in **some **cases, there is no problem at all discerning the clear intent of the voter. Why then, do you keep insisting that it can’t be done? only to have to back down and admit in case after case that a clear voter intent can be determined? Wouldn’t it be a better stance to say “when the clear intent of the voter is determinable, by use of objective (not subjective) means, then yes, the vote should be tabultated, even in those cases where the machine would have rejected the vote” ?? That’s been my position. But I phrase it in the afirmative - " votes should be tabulated (when the clear intent of the voter can be determined through objective means). The reality is that in most cases, the vote will be sufficiently diverse as to not require a hand examination of ballots rejected by the machines. However, not the case in Florida last fall.
Please do not keep on repeating the “29,000” figure some one cited when referencing me. In the first place, Gore lost (in Florida) by a couple hundred official votes, not 29,000, and I already said I’m not arguing there were 29,000.
You seem to concede that the cases of overvotes the two of us are talking about (where some one marks both the individual candidate and write in the same candidate’s name; and where the voter marks both the straight party ticket and the individual guy of the same party), that there’s a clear voter intent to vote for the candidate, that the machines will reject those ballots.
But, I would count that as a vote. The machine wouldn’t. That doesn’t make it not a vote, that makes it unreadable by the machine. What does this mean on a practicle basis? Well, in a race where 10,000 votes were cast, 8,000 for one candidiate, 1,000 for the other and 1,000 rejected votes, it means nothing. Even if all the 1,000 were for the loser, then the result wouldn’t change. But in the case where the votes were 4800 for one, 4700 for the other and 500 ballots rejected, it means you need to look at those 500 ballots, or construct a system that would look for and read those types of results as well. we’re smart enough to do it, right?
**
Wrong. It can be counted, just not by the machines we have now. When you look at what constitutes a vote, it is the action of a person completing a ballot, not the ability of the machine to read it. When our country was formed, we didn’t have machines reading the ballots, we had people. (yes, errors can be made by people too - my point is that the fact that we now rely on machines to read and count the ballots should not in any way change what the ‘vote’ really is - it’s the marked ballot)
**. Yes, there are instructions. Yes, there are people to ask. (in Florida, remember, there’s testimony that folks asked questions and were not given the correct information/were refused help). Eligible voters include citizens over the age of 18. sometimes they can’t have a felony. I believe in many places, too, if you’ve been declared incompetant you’re not allowed to vote. But that’s it. There is no restriction about reading English, understanding directions etc. Remember the old South and how they’d have ‘literacy tests’ prior to voting? these were outlawed by SCOTUS, right? I agree that if you mark 2 different people for one position and the ballot says ‘mark one’ your ballot cannot be counted. But not because ‘you didn’t follow the instructions’ but because ‘we can’t determine who you intended to vote for’.
I remember after High School, I went on a trip with classmates. My roomie (Shelly), had also just graduated HS, which meant she’d taken and passed “US Government”. She talked about going to college in Florida (yea, I know), and how she planned to register to vote down there but keep her registration up here in MI, so she could vote in the local elections, too. She was surprised when I told her she couldn’t do that.
Point being, stupidity is not an exclusionary rule for voting rights.
we agree on this except that “intent of the voter” does not equal “standardless”. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The intent in those two cases is clear and discernable. And should be recognized, even if our high tech machinery can’t see it.
** again, “standardless” and “intent of the voter” are not mutually exclusive. clear, universal, objective standards can be set forth (and are in many places). Florida erred in not making the standards part of their law, but hell, even Texas standards were clear and universal (not necessarily objective, but that was their call, they’re allowed to do that - wanna bet they’ll change it this year???)
** a non starter - I’ve already answered that before and repeated it again here.
** already answered - in my first posting here - remember, I said from the first that is likely that the overvotes for Buchanen were intended for Gore, but not with enough certainty to count them (for those of you counting this, I am in direct opposition to the official Dem position at the time).
Milo then goes on to
** and if you can’t see that your position has changed dramatically (from “intent of the voter is meaningless”, to “without rigid criteria” to “without hard criteria” to “well, yes, in those two cases there’s clear intent, but in the others, well, no”, then I can’t help you, either. You know the thread we’re talking about, you waffled quite a bit, from a long list of nasty adjectives about voter intent down to the SCOTUS interpretation that (IIRC) was “specific and universal” (as in they could have said ‘dimpled chad’ for all counties and that would have fit both “specific” and “universal”) neither of which is similar to ‘hard’, ‘rigid’ etc. Those refer to the quality and level of ‘evidence of intent’. ‘universal’ refers to it’s application, ‘specific’ just indicates that some criteria be used, it doesn’t imply that it has to be rigid, hard, firm, etc.
finally (whew) Milo speaks about
Yes, I know that it wasn’t linked. I also know that I read a bunch of news articles at that point about the first recount counting those votes. Of course, since it was months ago, none of them are on line anymore. I referenced the above comment to show that it was held as common and unquestioned knowledge then (no one asked for cites). I spent quite a bit of time looking at the old election debate threads. I came away from it overwhelmed with the nastiness that it brought out. I won’t do that to myself again real soon. Shrug. You’re free to assume you’re correct there - I’m sure that you will.
Wow… I would hate for my grandmother (if she was alive today) to be treated in such a manner just because she might not see or hear so good.
You might wish to rethink this. And no, I’m not talking about the seniors in Florida screaming about the ballot. I’m talking about anyone who might have some kind of a disability brought on by advancing age or not, who might need a little help.