I just heard on Channel 9 Australia that Gore is fuming over the Florida mix-up because it caused people to stay at home. Gore believes that when people saw Gore clinch the key state of Floria early in the morning, east coast voters didn’t bother to turn out and vote. Now it looks as though Bush has won the election.
Should / Does Gore have the right to some sort of appeal?
All a candidate can do is request a recount of the votes cast. It’s up to the citizens to decide whether it’s worth voting, regardless of what the media tell them, and it’s up to the media to decide how careful to be in not upsetting the election.
The Australian news is apparently ignorant of the whole situation. When Florida was declared for Gore, all the polls in the East had closed, except New York, which Gore won easily. The only states where it could have possibly cost Gore votes would have been out west, and the only close ones there were Nevada and Oregon. Nevada wouldn’t have made a difference, and Oregon was mostly voting by mail, which happened far in advance. If anyone was hurt, it would have been Bush, but that’s pretty unlikely as well.
In any event, there are no re-elections. Certainly not because the media screwed up the forecasting. Gore can certainly have the votes in the close states recounted, but it’s unlikely that he would. Nixon didn’t in 1960, when there was far more corruption.
Isn’t it mandatory to have a recount if the difference is less than .5%? Stats I just saw showed a difference of less than 3,000 votes. Maybe…?
96% of the vote counted
Florida
Bush - 2,902,733
Gore - 2,902,509
Nader - 96,560
Buchanan - 17,318
Total
Gore - 47,123,818
Bush - 47,063,088
Nader - 2,546,089
Buchanan - 430,176
Crap, wrong thread.
My mistake, I meant west coast voters stayed home.
Spoofe said:
Yup, and they’re doing the recount now.
What will be interesting is that I heard, earlier in the night, that some problem with the way votes were cast in certain parts of Florida meant that people who MEANT to vote for Gore accidentally voted for Buchanan. I don’t know what kind of problem it was, but I really wonder how (or if) they’re going to take that into account.
In any event, I’m going to have to smack the next person I hear say, “My vote doesn’t count anyway.”
Either way, they didn’t, and if they did, it probably helped Gore, although it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. Also, I’ve stayed up watching many channels and using the web throughout the whole thing, and never heard a word about Gore being upset. Not that it matters, as there aren’t revotes, and a media fuckup wouldn’t be reason to have one even if there were.
Yeah…I heard about this too. Although, if you look at the totals Buchanan got in Florida relative to other places, they don’t seem to really be significantly higher. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take all that large percentage of the Buchanan votes to make the difference.
I suppose in any election there are a certain number of mistaken votes. Here in NY, the ballot was also kind of confusing, with the Working Families Party sharing the line with the Libertarians, so if you wanted to vote on the WFP line (which was basically candidates they had cross-endorsed with the Democrats), you had to be a bit careful to make sure you didn’t accidently pull a libertarian one by mistake. [Yes, I know some people on this board would not consider that to be a problem…But I tried to be super-duper-extra-careful to avoid this fate! ;)]
Yeah, Buchanan got less than Browne in Florida, whereas in most states he finished ahead. Doesn’t look likely to swing the required number of votes to Gore. It would certainly be amusing if more people claim to have accidentally voted for Buchanan than actually did vote for Buchanan.
There is no chance that Gore can demand re-election in the sense of redoing the entire election. What he can demand is a recount.
As of now there are three issues outstanding concerning the Florida vote.[list=a]
[li]Recounting the actual vote. This is mandated by law in the State of Florida in this circumstance, as others have mentioned. Even if that recount certifies Bush, Gore can still challenge in court what he and his lawyers believe to be invalid votes or incorrect voting tallies.[/li][li]Absentee ballots. Most of these have been counted, but several thousand have not been. Most of these are from overseas, and are thought to be predominantly Bush-supporting military personnel. I think those ballots have to be postmarked by yesterday, so they may not all be in by now.[/li][li]The issue of the voting machines. My understanding is that the voting machines were not casting their ballots incorrectly, but were confusing to people. In other words, people were incorrectly understanding what they had to do in order to vote for Gore. If this is the case, it is unlikely that Gore will prevail with a legal challenge on this basis.[/li][/list=a]
Another challenge may be underway in Missouri, where a judge allowed the St. Louis polls to stay open three hours after the rest of the state had closed. This was subsequently overturned by an appellate court, but not until the Democratic city had gotten in an extra 45 minutes of voting. The results were a narrow Democratic victory, and the later votes may be challenged.
I think a case could be made that calling FL for Gore helped him. I still haven’t heard the final word on exactly what time they called the state, and it sounds to me that polls were still open in the panhandle part of the state. (which favors Bush) In addition, it is possible that Nader voters out west may have voted for Gore, where if Gore had lost FL early on, they may have seen Gore as the loser and voted for Nader.
All in all, I think I am against all exit polling and “calling” of states before ALL polls are closed.
Does anybody have a link to the Buchanan/Gore mix-up? This is the first time I heard about that one. Did anything go normally last night?
Wisconsin is also being challenged by the Republicans now.
Here’s the contested Florida ballot.
Thanks Drain Bead, I really did not understand about this ballot confusion thing.
I have to say, I would be a little confused if I saw that ballot. But I don’t see myself punching a hole that had no “arrow” by it. For a person to accidentally vote for Buchanan, they’d have to punch the hole that had a line next to it, no arrow. It might be something to make you scratch your head for a bit, but I doubt that many people accidentally punched Buchanan’s slot instead of Gore’s.
Or maybe I still don’t understand what this is all about…
Can anyone tell me if this is legal? I mean, to my uninformed self, this almost sounds like tampering. I am referring to the practice of phoning voters to recheck their choice, to see if they made a mistake.
If you call me and ask “hey Deb, did you REALLY vote for Pat, or did you mean Al?”, can I actually change my vote?
Sorry, I don’t agree with this at all. If you punched it, you’re stuck with it. There must be an assumption that you can READ THE DAMN BALLOT, or you would have one in Spanish, Braille, or whatever.
Of course, the really funny part- if enough drag queens in South Beach turned out, they could decide the election! I can’t wait!
When was the last time a popular vote was so close? 1800’s? I understand that no more than 1200 votes separate Al & George.
Wow. Kind of glad I didn’t stay up…
I meant 1200 votes in FLORIDA, not the whole us.
I didn’t find the ballot particularly confusing, but apparently some people did. If you look at the numbers for Buchanan, he scored five times higher (percentage wise) in PBC than in the neighboring counties. He gained 3 times as many votes in PBC as he did in Pinellas County (his next best result). The total votes for Buchanan, IIRC, was around 3400. If [sup]2[/sup]/[sub]3[/sub] of those were mistaken Gore votes, then that might have been enough to swing the election. We’ll know more once the recount is complete.
Also in the news, apparently 3 ballot boxes from Dade County have been “found”. No details yet on how they were “lost” in the first place.
Ah–politics. For those who thought the WWF was getting too tame and predictable.
*Originally posted by EJsGirl *
I am jealous of you right now because I DID AND I IS TIRED!