From ABCNews.com:
Okay, fine. I’m not even sure what my view on this is exactly. However, what I am contesting is whether or not it is reasonably likely those votes were cast for Buchanan on purpose.
I think that the argument that “Those people will just have to live with their mistake even though it probably changed the outcome of who got the Presidency” is a possible one which I will neither support nor defend at the moment.
The argument that most of those 3400 ballots cast for Buchanan were in fact cast purposely is, I believe, very hard to defend. (At least, I haven’t heard any reasonable argument yet.) I think we have to distinguish between what we know, with a very high degree of likelihood has happened, and what if anything should be done about it.
Just to add to the debunking…
I heard a democrat on a talk show claim that there really was no Independent party. ( Capital I)
He claimed that it was just some guy in a livingroom, and whenever anyone requested to be registered independent (small i), they got registered as an Independent.
I didn’t hear a Republican response, so I don’t know if there is another level to that debunking.
Whoops… I meant to use two antonyms there like “niether contest nor defend”.
There are a bunch of reasons right up above us. They are not iron clad reasons, but when you are trying to peer into a person’s motives, where do you stop? How do you ever know if you are correct?
The bottom line is that voting is not just a right, it is a responsibility. It is the individual voters responsibility to make sure they vote correctly. If this is the gov’ts responsibility, then why bother voting in the first place?
Today, I was listening to Bill Handle (Handel? Whatever, I spelled it phonetically) on KFI AM-640 (more STIM-ulating talk radio). They were discussing the possibility of people “accidently” voting for Buchanen.
One woman called in, and her comments were along the lines of “Y’know, I felt fine about my ballot, but then they started talking about people voting for the wrong person, and I started thinking that I did it too.”
My analysis? A whole bunch of Gore folks are thinking that they may have voted wrong (when they actually didn’t) just because a whole bunch of Gore folks supposedly voted wrong. The “ME TOO!!!” effect.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly *
**
This almost certianly is the case, probably more so then we think.
It seems certain that 19,000 people didn’t came out and ask for a new ballot.
And another anecdotal story…
There was a NY congressman claiming that he got calls all day Tuesday from New Yorkers who said their parents had called them crying from Florida because they think they might have voted for Buchanan.
These people are lying. There is nothing they won’t claim or say.
There’s a major difference between votes being allocated by a statistical procedure (I agree that’s iffy), and a statistical argument being used to demonstrate that the votes didn’t go to the people that the voters intended them to go to.
Except when it isn’t.
No. We should give the citizens of Palm Beach County the chance to properly and definitively assign them themselves, with a clean ballot this time.
That’s like saying, “For those who would use engineering to design a building, think of the engineer-designed building that collapsed recently.” Only more so, because the use of a statistical model in a beat-the-clock situation such as ‘projecting’ a winner has about as much to do with statistics proper, as math questions on the College Bowl have to do with proving theorems. Your argument would be valid if a contestant on the College Bowl blowing one question somehow invalidated the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. The one thing has nothing to do with the other.
Well, we only have ‘real’ vote counts from Palm Beach in the most technical, legalistic sense of the word. I agree that we need REAL vote counts. So let’s send them back to the polls again. IMO, an agreement between the two sides to do that would be the clean, simple, elegant, and even somewhat principle-based resolution to this mess.
Or, having been blocked from that, we could get even more technical and legalistic, demand recounts, and seek redress in the courts.
What you can’t do, really, is say, “THIS level of following the law is right, no more and no less. We shouldn’t take it to court, because that’s too much law; we shouldn’t do a revote, because that’s not enough like the law to suit me.” That’s just saying, “I like this outcome, because I win this way.”
And??
It’s quite possible that it might’ve been just as wrong then as it is now. It just may not have mattered in 1996, so it received no scrutiny.
We should do things as rightly as possible, here and now, because the Presidency of the United States is hanging on it. Saying we should sweep it under the rug with the world watching now, just because we did it four years ago when no one was watching, is a bunch of baloney.
Well, hell - that’s the way to deal with any claim you don’t like - “that person is lying!”
I don’t need any evidence to say it, apparently; I just have to say, “There is nothing they won’t claim or say.”
Cool.
Freedom2, you’re lying. There is nothing you won’t claim or say.
RTFirefly,
Do you seriously believe that
a) numerous people made mistakes about the ballot
b) suddenly realized their mistake and decided to call up their children in NY to cry about it
c) who than decided to immediately contact their NY congressman about it
I’d be surprised if a single person actually did so.
I’ll bet that the whole thing is overblown. These people don’t remember which hole they punched, and now have been convinced by the media hype that they punched the wrong hole.
I’ll bet there’s 100,000 peolle claiming to be the 3,000 who voted for Buchanan.
I disagree, RT. I can sympathize with people if they chose the wrong one of two candidates. I really can. I once thought I accidentally voted for the wrong candidate in a House race and my heart nearly stopped. But to punch your ballot for two different candidates for the same office takes a willful act of pure stupidity, confusing ballot or no. I mean, what did they think that punching twice would accomplish? Come on. And the fact that the overwhelming majority of people both in that county and in Chicago (which uses a similar ballot) had no problem speaks volumes.
If there are 10,000+ ballots being thrown out in every election in Florida, then obviously Florida needs to get its shit together. But a re-vote? With the rest of the results across the country in, and Nader voters getting a chance to change their votes since Bush may actually win? No way.
At some point, we simply have to accept the Florida votes as counted. Then, Florida needs to fix its balloting problems. With the popular vote separated by a margin less than the population of a decent-sized city it’s not as if either candidate can claim a mandate regardless of what happens.
And, I’ll bet you are wrong…but who knows? However, as I have said before, I think it is pretty easy to come up with some very good estimates of how many of those votes are mistaken just by comparing Palm Beach to the other counties and by comparing back to 1996, etc…Lacking some compelling argument why there was a big ground swell for Buchanan in this one county this one time. (I am avoiding talking about the 19,000 votes at the moment because I haven’t personally seen the numbers from the Florida Board of Elections on this, and given the highly-politicized nature of figures being thrown around, I am only willing to trust raw data from the Board of Elections that I myself analyze.)
Having said that, I am not convinced, asRTFirefly is, that anything can or should be done at this point. I guess one has to look to the law and see if there is a compelling case to be made that the ballot is in some way illegal…one has to look at past precedent, etc. Not being a lawyer at all, let alone one specializing in election law…and not knowing all the facts about the ballot…I am just not ready to take a position on this.
I guess my point is that I think the Bush campaign has a perfect right to make their case that the ballot was not illegal and, while yes, it probably confused a number of people and resulted in that high vote count for Buchanan, there is always some inherent confusion in elections and nothing can really be done about it now. I don’t think it does the Bush camp any credit to try to be making so far very uncompelling arguments that this problem did not even occur. (Not that the Gore camp is entirely blameless here…I originally looked up the numbers because of these claims about how many votes were cast for Buchanan relative to in other counties but using simply absolute numbers rather than percentages because I thought they were essentially meaningless. Although, as it turns out, I guess the counties compared were of fairly similar size.)
RTFirefly
Here…let me re-write that for you.
Even though there were ballots rejected all over the state, we should only let a county that is full of democrats re-vote in order to determine the presidency. Not the state, not the panhandle, not the nation, but just this county. I know the democrats designed the ballots the first time, but we want another chance to design them again so we can win.
There, that makes it a little clearer. I have a couple of questions for you Firefly…
Should everyone in the county be allowed to re-vote? It is my understanding that close to 95% of the democrats voted, and only 65% of the Republicans. And how will you deal with the fact that the third party candidates will get ZERO votes?
Please answer those two questions, before we talk about a re-vote any further.
I am glad we agree. Everything is legal. Case closed.
I’m not quite sure what you are talking about. There is no legal precedent for having a re-vote in a case like this. I don’t care what level of the law you follow this to, a re-vote is not legal.
A re-vote is a feel good solution to the people who lost this election. It is not “another level” of law as you are imagining.
I believe he might…
jshore,
It has been pointed out numerous times that there are a disproportionate percentage of people in that county registered to Buchanan’s party. It’s irrelevent to compare it to other counties. You can’t just ignore this fact, and then turn around and say “lacking some compelling argument…”
It must also be borne in mind for all these discussions, that there were several hundred thousand votes cast in this county. The amount of votes in dispute are a very small percentage of these. Many people overlook this in asserting that the population is a bunch of old Jewish guys who wouldn’t have voted for Buchanan.
I’m trying to stay out of this crap, because I’ve been a whiny bastard about it, but I do have some insight which may or may not be relevant.
Donald Trump has a large estate in Palm Beach County, and a private country club. When the Reform Party was courting Trump, several meetings were held there, according to my non-ballot-reading mother. It would appear as if PBC is one of the few places where Reform Party is highly organized.
On the other hand, PBC residents were angered last year when the Trump organization bent the regulations and did a scrub burn-off on some of their property at the same time that the area was blanketed in wildfire smoke.
What does this mean? Hell if I know. Just thought you might like to hear about some of the local politics there.
I do know this for f***ing certain: of the 3407 votes for Buchanan, at least one of them was a mistaken vote for Gore.
How do you like my new signature?
Here you go again, Freedom2, ignoring the obvious. Should we let that county re-vote? Maybe, only if it is determined that the process by which they voted was unfair and biased. Should we let the entire country? Maybe, only if it is determined that the process by which they voted was unfair and biased.
Should we let everyone re-vote? Of course not. Remember when you went into your voting location, and they asked for your name? Remember that? Well, every single person that voted was asked their name as well. So its very much a possibility to allow only those people who voted on Tuesday to re-vote.
And those completely made up percentages? Keep them off the board. 95% of Democrats + 65% of Republicans does not add up to 50.1% of the voting population.