You know the most interesting thing about those counts that showed Gore would have won under Bush’s standard and Bush would have won under Gore’s standards? The recounting wasn’t done until several months after Bush was sworn in. Just something to think about for those who consider a deadline on vote counting to be a bad thing.
As for the rest, any person who argues ‘votes that will probably favor one candidate should be recounted, but all the others shouldn’t be’ deserves a kick in the nuts. That’s just blatant partisan hackery no matter how you look at it. Any judge who delivers that well justified emasculation should have, if anything, their legacy improved by it.
That being said, the real tarnished legacy of it was all the American system. The fact that the Al Frankin thing and the current Alaska mess happened well afterward just shows America hasn’t learned the lesson yet.
The question of whether Gore beat Bush by a 50.01 to 49.99 margin or vice versa never seemed particularly interesting to me. (I do understand it might have been extremely important!)
What really bothered me was that the 9 Justices of SCOTUS voted exactly according to their appointing party. Does anyone sincerely believe that the 9 Justices all voted according to their conscience and interpretation of law, and the political line-up was coincidence?
Also bothersome is the idea that FoxNews’ premature victory announcement fostered a preconception which carried over to the recounting; i.e. that Gore was a loser trying to overturn Bush’s legitimate victory. Did FoxNews’ premature announcement indeed have that effect?
Then is it possible that SCOTUS got it right and the 4 dissenters were the ones being partisan trying to give Gore the election? I mean 2 of them did say that a (Democrat-heavy) county counting a ballot that was breathed on as a Gore vote was ok even if another county didn’t have the same standard.
Again, I ask anyone who thinks SCOTUS got it right what a proper ruling should be considering that Presidential elections follow different rules than every other election in the US and following Fla law, Fla Constitution and the US Constitution. To paraphase another doper (I think Bricker), just because you disagree with the decision doesn’t mean it was wrong.
Huh? All the networks originally called it for Gore, then they switched it to Bush early the next day, then they switched it back to undecided a little bit later.
Either you’re responding to someone else, or you’ve misread my post. I offered no opinion on whether the 5 got it wrong, the 4 got it wrong, or some combination thereof. I merely asked whether other Dopers view the political alignment as coincidental.
Interestingly, that analysis completely fails to mention – one might even say “conceals” – the fact that it was not five, but seven Supreme Court justices that decided Florida’s decision was violative of Equal Protection. I’m quite confident that the reason they gloss that over is it would destroy the narrative that “five conservative thieves stole the election.”
But since you generally agree with that analysis, and since that analysis fails to answer the question I asked, I’ll ask you again: do you disagree with both the finding of EP violation and the remedy proposed, or just the remedy?
It’s not clear whether you disagree that Fox News was first to call Bush winner (it was), or whether such media pronouncements influenced the public perception on post-election manoeuvres (perhaps debatable). When Fox called it, other networks may have followed in “self-defense.”
I wonder if you would agree that America’s failure to simply count those votes in a straightforward fashion made a travesty of American democracy, regardless of which party benefited.
That’s not what happened. Fox – and every other network – first called the election in Florida for Gore.
So I assume you’d now like to explore how much of an effect that had in helping Gore? Or is your view that it’s of interest only if it goes the other way?
It’s quite plausible. As a general principle, “conservative” judges tend to strict letter-of-the-law types, and liberals judges more “living, breathing law” types. This decision, distilled down to the essence of “what does the printed law say about deadlines?” fits perfectly into those pigeonholes.
You too are in the trap of thinking it’s only a partisan-advantage issue, not statecraft. Tell us, what do you think they should have done if they were interested only in having the true winner determined? If they had been following actual Constitutional and democratic principle instead, as they should have?
After all this time, the facts should be known. Bush wanted no recount at all. Gore initially wanted only “undervotes” (a euphemism for votes not counted at all) to be counted, but changed his position to wanting a full count (not “recount”) of the whole state. That is what the Florida Supreme Court, the competent authority in ruling on Florida election laws, was heading toward when a panicky, partisan contingent on SCOTUS decided there was too much risk of their man losing, and issued the injunction.
Wouldn’t that be a sexist, even condescending, view to take, rather than considering her legacy to be what she actually did with the job she was given? What matters more?
You’re factually wrong. It’s as simple as that.
Same question as above. If they had voted in favor of the Constitution and democracy, whose vote would have been different and whose the same?
Of course, as it was intended to. Fox’s coverage was being directed by GWB’s own cousin, who was in close contact with GWB’s brother, the FL Governor, the entire night to coordinate reporting.
*Following *Fox’s “lead”.
UNinterestlngly given your partisan record here, that statement fails to mention – one might even say “conceals” – the fact that they did not say what the violation was. As we know, including you , two justices found that there was an underlying EP violation in the use of different voting technologies, which is obviously true. Only five asserted that the differing amounts of correction thereby required to fix the problem were themselves an EP violation.
By what, 30 seconds? And this is after all the networks, including Fox had earlier called it for Gore.
May have? They all used the same polling data from… can’t remember the source, but they all had the same data.
But if I had to pick a reason why Americans might have thought Gore was “the loser” it would be because he conceded the election at one point. Not that I agree that Americans thought that, but if they did, that was probably why.
Well, that’s the problem righ there. There wasn’t a “straightforward” fashion for doing the recount.
Puh-leez. Your first link is to a wikipedia article that looks like it’s about 20 pages long. If something in that link talks about that mean old Fox News network, quote it.
William Rehnquist - Republican
John P. Stevens - Republican
Sandra Day O’Connor - Republican
Antonin Scalia - Republican
Anthony Kennedy - Republican
David Souter - Republican
Clarence Thomas - Republican
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Democratic
Stephen Breyer - Democratic
Seven Republican justices, 2 Democratic justices.
None of the decisions reached by the justices broke down on appointing party.
The polls were already closed. Any helpful effect was in the coming days, as controversy developed.
I’m insulted when someone replies without enough consideration to realize they’re arguing only against an inadvertantly self-invented strawman.
I don’t know what the delay was between Fox News declaration and other networks’ (was it as little as 30 seconds? Cite?), but however small, sources I read suggested other networks did follow Fox’s lead. Does Mr. Mace disagree that there is a pressure for a network to call an election after a competitor does? (I mentioned the long Wiki article for the thread’s benefit, e.g. to reference the peculiar glitch in Volusia County.)
FLORIDA Supreme Court. Gore attempted to recount only Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia County. These were Heavily Democratic counties and he was trying to mine discarded votes in only those counties. This is not disputable. He also tried to invalidate absentee military votes.
A point often overlooked by those who would much prefer to. By strict standards, a lot of those irregular ballots weren’t valid, but were made valid by the process of shrieking, screaming, and tearing hair over thie ghastly disrespect for Our Heroes displayed by the unpatriotic Dems.
And, IIRC, the Dems caved, the votes were counted.
