The objection that people had about Katherine Harris was that the law required her to end the recount, but a liberal reading of the rules would have allowed the recount to continue until her office opened the next day, which would have given the Gore folks 8 more hours. Instead, she called a halt at exactly midnight, as the law allowed. A strict reading of the law, to be sure. The Gore supporters went absolutely ape over that.
Tejota said:
Listen, sparky. You want to call me a liar, you can knock off the ‘sir’, part. It doesn’t make you look any more tolerant.
Gore should have made his case for a statewide recount. It DID come up later on in negotiations, so clearly the Gore camp felt that a judicial ruling could have allowed it. So you, sir, can go take your nasty extremism, roll it up real tight, and cram it.
That small and insignificant thing called the Constitution, which I assume you’ve heard of (THIS is sarcasm, BTW ), mandates that the President-elect be sworn in on 20 January of the year after the election.
By my reckoning, that’s about 8 weeks after the vote. There was urgency for a decision just as soon as the polls closed. That they waited as long as they did is really the big surprise here.
That’s just not true, and understanding that it’s not true is key to avoiding future debacles.
Throw out the charges and counter charges and “If Gore had asked for this” and “But he didn’t, he asked for that” and “Katherine Harris did this” and “Evil (party) tried to prevent the votes of (innocent would-be voters).”
At the end of the day, the overall system in Florida (and many other places, for that matter) wasn’t and isn’t adequate to the task of counting an election as close as this one was. Basically, they were trying to come up with a measurement of inches using a car odometer.
Persons of good faith on both sides would do well to recognize this and work to improve the quality of election systems to parse close elections.
And what does the Constitution say shall result if, for any reason, that deadline is not met? The dissolution of the Republic? Dogs and cats, living together? Ozzy Osbourne installed as Emperor?
And why should the presence of a deadline favor the candidate with a bogus claim of election? Which, as it turns out, was precisely the case. These facts are not in dispute however you may ignore them: if the will of the voters of Florida was realised as they intended, GeeDubya would not currently be staining the Oval Office. Indeed, the nationwide count is also not in dispute: more voters voted for Gore. Period. The spirit of our laws is such that the will of the voter has dignity above and beyond the letter of the law. In its headlong rush to seize power at whatever the cost, the Pubbies revealed the true substance of thier values. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
The determination of the Florida legislature to forward a Bush slate of electors regardless of any recount speaks volumes. They were entirely willing to brush aside the will of the people as though it were nothihg but a minor annoyance, rather than the fundamental principle on which our nation is founded.
The men whose courage we celebrate today were of a different opinion, and I stand with them.
This is what I said in the first message I posted - the result of the election was inside the margin of error for the process. In other words, the the true winner was impossible to determine.
If a partial recount would have had Gore leading by 200 votes, I’m absolutely positive that the Gore supporters would have screamed that this was ‘more accurate’, and therefore Gore was the winner. But if the results were STILL within the margin of error, all you’re doing is re-interpreting ‘noise’.
I would be surprised if a systemic analysis of most state’s voting mechanisms showed that they could have a repeatable accuracy of greater than a thousand votes or so. To find out, you’d have to add up all the potential error in every step of the system. Even automatic voting machines must have failure modes. The devices used to punch holes in the paper have flaws (hence the ‘hanging chads’). The paper itself may not be of uniform density, nor the perforations of uniform size or spacing.
Then there are harder to spot errors, like the usability error with the butterfly ballot. Other ballot types also have usability errors which can bias results.
Then there are the random uncontrollable factors, like a car accident in a neighborhood predominantly Republican or Democrat, which may prevent a bunch of voters from getting to the polls in the first place.
Another source of error is non-uniform closing times of polling stations. Even if they are all supposed to close at say, 8 PM, a difference in watch synchronization may cause them to close a few minutes earlier or later than each other.
I’m sure there are many, many other sources of potential error. Any real-world vote tallying system is an approximation of the will of the populace. Usually, the vote differential between candidates is great enough that it swamps these errors. But the fact of the matter is, if the vote results fall with the range of error, all you can say is that the result is unknowable.
But Florida law doesn’t allow for a tie, or a do-over. And Florida law was written rather poorly, which gave both sides’ lawyers some manoevering room. So both sides manoevered.
In the end, Bush maintained the lead in votes that he had right from the start. I will be the first to concede that it’s irrelevant, and that it could just as easily have been Gore with the lead. And then Gore would be president.
So a more accurate statement might be that Bush was the lucky benefactor of a coin flip - with an election that close, ‘noise’ could have given either candidate the lead. Gore definitely got dealt a bad hand.
But SOMEONE had to be President. And by the laws of the land, that someone turned out to be Bush. That doesn’t mean he ‘stole’ the election.
Upon preview, I should state that, of course, I have no disagreement with Manny as regards our future course of action to ensure that all the votes are counted as they are cast. But of course.
My only point was had this resolution been realized prior to the election, President-Elect Gore would currently occupy the Oval Office.
True enough. May I be so bold as to suggest that the candidate with the most votes, some 500,000 IIRC, should have been that “someone”? By what stretch of rationale do you reach the conclusion that the lesser vote count should somehow confer legitimacy? Legitimacy is conferred by the voters, any other result lacks such legitimacy. Whether you wish to use the word “stole” or not hardly matters.
Because that’s what the RULES are. There’s a good reason why you don’t change the rules of an election after the fact.
For example, if the candidates knew that overall votes were what counted, they would spend a lot more time in the more populous states. Today, if a candidate knows that California is never going to vote for his team, then he doesn’t have to spend a nickel there. It’s all or nothing. On the other hand, if overall votes matter, the Candidates are going to spread their money more evenly throughout the country.
Arguing that overall votes are what should matter is certainly a valid point of view. As long as you make sure that the law is changed BEFORE the election season. Anything else is just data mining (i.e. if it had been the other way around, and Bush had won the popular vote, you’d be arguing the importance of the Electoral College).
And in fact, that’s the case. Clinton won in 1998 with less than a plurality of votes, and Democrats at that time were all too willing to talk about how important the EC was. And just before the 2000 election, the conventional wisdom was that Bush would win the popular vote, but possibly lose in the EC. And when that was the supposition, I can remember plenty of Democrats talking about why the EC was important, and why the popular vote didn’t matter.
And to be fair, I can call Republicans at the time arguing for the popular vote and against the EC.
This is why it’s important to be ruled by a system of laws. Because if you just change the law to help attain the outcome you want, you make elections even less legitimate.
While the ‘popular’ vote may be used as a determination of the mandate the country is sending the next president it has absolutely nothing to do with who becomes president. Never has and still doesn’t. If you look further up this page to my last post you’ll see a link detailing why the Electoral College system is preferrable to a straiht majority vote. There’s an easy sense of ‘majority’ being the best and most fair system but on close examination it doesn’t bear out.
And the Constitution doesn’t stipulate penalties for anything. The problem with missing the January 20 inaguration is that there is NO LAW specifying what to do. You now have a legitimate crisis on your hands…a crisis enemies of the US might conceivably take advantage of (e.g. who is Commander in Chief with the authority to order US troops around?).
As to the ‘margin of error’ argument I don’t see it and think you’re hiding from the reality of the vote. I’ll overcome your margin of error right now:
19,120 votes in Palm Beach tossed out.
3,000 votes for Buchanan in Palm Beach (very unlikely).
10,000 jews voting for Buchanan (exceedingly unlikely).
??? how many absentee ballots should have been rejected?
Granted not all of those votes would have gone to Gore but I think it is safe to say the vast majority would have favored him (e.g. Palm Beach…heavily democrat and 19,000+ votes tossed for double punch which most likely occurred between confusing Gore and Buchanan on the ballot).
I’m no statistician but does 30,000+ votes meet your margin of error?
I will say that as the laws were written it pretty much had to be Bush that won. That caveat aside I think it is clear Florida should have gone to Gore and Gore shold be our President. In short Bush got in on technicalities…not on a legitimate vote from the American public.
I believe that is also a reasonable viewpoint, although there is another issue that is not considered here:
The irregularities that showed up in the voting were discovered because of the extreme scrutiny put on them. The problem is that there are no doubt many, many other irregularities in voting that went undiscovered. Not just in Florida, but in other states.
In other words, think of it like this: Throughout the country, votes are counted. Many mistakes are made. Perhaps ones that would have changed the outcome. But then Florida becomes contested, and put under a microscope. An irregularity is found that worked against Gore. Does that mean Gore is the legitimate winner? Not at all. Putting the microscope in other areas would no doubt have found other irregularities, which might have favored Bush.
Think like a scientist instead of a pundit or partisan. If you took a bunch of measurements using a measuring system with known and unknown flaws, and the results were inconclusive, could you ‘fix’ them by taking a tiny subset of the data and tearing it apart looking for irregularities? Or would you fine tune your equipment and take new measurements?
In this case, I will agree that Gore would probably have won if the ‘intent’ of the voters mattered. But since we have no way of accurately divining that, he was out of luck.
I never understood what all the rush was about. Surely the important thing – the crucial thing – was to determine the rightful winner, however long that took. What harm would have been done if there was a delay before Electoral College did its thing? What harm would have been done if the inaguration of the new President was delayed? If the “reason” is that “the rules didn’t allow” any delay, I would cite that as proof that we have lousy rules! A problem about which nothing much has been done since the 2000 debacle. Perhaps for the same reason that we refuse to scrap the Electoral College: too many people want to hang on to these things (the EC, bad voting methods, bad election rules, etc.) because they think that these things benefit their side, or have the potential to do so.
Re the mess in West Palm Beach, I cannot believe anyone is saying that voters who made a mistake should have asked for a new ballot. That was part of the problem! Florida law requires that anyone who asks for a 2nd ballot, and even a 3rd, is supposed to get one. But in WPB, many people were refused even one extra ballot.
Was this because the poll workers were afraid of running out of ballots before the polls closed? Because they’d been ordered not to let anyone have a 2nd ballot? Because they didn’t want to give anyone a chance to correct an error that deprived Gore of a vote? Possibly some combination of these causes.
Also, I seem to remember reading that people were being rushed by the poll workers. As in, “hurry up; you’re taking too long; people are waiting!” Being rushed might increase the possiblity of someone goofing. I also read that some voters reported that, when they were refused a 2nd ballot, poll workers told them to punch another hole for the candidate they really wanted to vote for, and circle the vote they meant with a pen or pencil. They were assured that this would insure that their vote went to the candidate of their choice, when, as we all know, it actually insured that their vote would be discarded. Was this something some poll workers made up on the spot, in order to get rid of annoying pests asking for 2nd ballots? Had they been told to say this? Who knows?
The ballot really was confusing. I saw a picture of it in a newspaper at the time. It seemed to me that the arrows were a big flaw. Next to the name of the candidate was an arrow pointing at the hole to punch for that candidate. Except they weren’t arrows, they were pointers. Not clear, simple, bold arrows, but delicate, fillagree-like pointers. Just the sort of thing one’s eye might glide past without even noticing.
I suppose the misleading ballot could have been an honest mistake. An amature designed a ballot, and did not have sence enough to test the ballot or to consult experts (may not have known there was such a thing as an expert in ballot design). Much has been made of the ballot designers’ status as a Democrat. But it’s also been said that she was a temporary Democrat – had been a Republican, and later returned to the Repub fold.
I think someone suggested that the Republicans were unlikely to have worked out any elaborate scheme to steal the election in Florida, because they had no way of knowing how crucial FL would turn out to be. Well, of course they didn’t know how crucial FL would be. Had they known, that might have been a reason to backpeddle a bit on any schemes, out of concern that, if FL proved crucial, a great deal of attention would be paid to every detail of their election. I think it was just a matter of a State Governor being determined to deliver his State for his brother, and letting it be known to a few select subordinates that this was the case.
Interesting statement! Here was me thinking that the ‘intent’ of voters was the whole point and that the electroral system was supposed to be the method of ‘accurately defining that’. Sam Stone, I am intrigued that you have responded to various posts including comment on the pre-election purge of voters from the electoral roles but have conspicuously avoided the issue. What are your views on this? Do you believe it to be an issue that has been over-inflated by “lefties”? Do you contest their charges that thousands of people were illigitimately barred from voting? And that this was done on a basis that guaranteed that a majority of these would be democrats? If you do not contest these claims, then what is your view of the implications for democracy of this process? Is it a concern for you that two people who were central in pursuing the voter purge were so closely connected to one of the candidates?
I have read articles and books setting out the evidence for these charges and am interested in a contrary view. I have read lots of evidence and arguments on the post-election situation, wheras it seems to be that what happened before the election was far more serious and systematic.
What a surprise, Sam is telling lies again. No, Sam the law specifically did NOT require that she end the recount. We know this because there was a court case after she first ended the count. The Judge ruled that she was not required by law to end it, but rather she was required by law to used her discretion whether or not to accept totals handed in after the deadline.
Unsurprisingly, Harris used her discretion to do what she had originally claimed the law required of her.
Don’t kid yourself. The sir wasn’t for respect, it was for emphasis. I have long since lost patience with your continual lies about the 2000 election. Now that I have seen you operate in enough election threads to know that you have the facts. It’s clear that you continue to push baseless claims and distortions out of dishonesty rather than ignorance.
He made his case in the press, rather late in the process. But since never had any legal recourse with request a statewide recount, the fact that you keep bringing it up as if he had that choice but rejected it is dishonest.
Let the record show that Sam chose to change the subject rather than back up his original lie. ESAD
I suspect you have misunderstood, Tejota. While it is true that Sam is partisan to the point of cognitive dissonance, and his devotion to Fearless Misleader approaches the Faith That Surpasseth All Understanding, I don’t think a charge of “liar” can fairly be lodged.
It is true that falsehood tumbles forth from him like fruit from the Horn of Plenty, and you do good work to rebut these. If you can accomplish this in a patronizing and avuncular fashion, so much the better. But it behooves us who toil for Truth and Justice to offer the benefit of the doubt to the mistaken, the wrong, and the adamantly wrong.
Keep in mind that he is Canadian, persons of delicate sensibility easily wounded. Think how much duller a place this would be if he should withdraw and cease to profer such large, juicy targets. I, for one, would be much the poorer for it.
No, the law did specifically require that she end the recount. That the Democrats sued and got an injunction from a sympathetic judge does not change the fact that it was a deadline. All it did was make the judge look like every bit the partisan hack that he was.
So here you are, just like elucidator, advocating the violation of laws when it suits your cause and there’s no specific penalty mentioned. I’m simply amazed by that.
), mandates that the President-elect be sworn in on 20 January of the year after the election.