Explain this whole Bush election/non-election deal to an ignorant Swede

Great Debates
121

Re: the Palm Beach butterfly ballot–I do not believe that the poor design was intentional. However, the assertion that people “should have been able to figure it out” holds no water, either. The ballot design resulted in a particular error made by a small but significant number of people, and as it happens, that error hurt one candidate far more than the other.

The only way to really prevent this sort of problem is to scramble the names of the candidates on ballots. This would have spread the result of this error evenly among all the candidates. I know this would be expensive to both implement and count, but given that our last Presidential election was a complete failure in that it put the wrong man in the White House (and I don’t see how you can look at the W. Palm situation and disagree with that), we can stand to spend a little more money on precision.

I have long asserted that George W. Bush is in the White House because he is the luckiest man alive. When the election came down to the short rows, everyone who was in any position to make ultimate decisions–namely Katherine Harris and the SCOTUS–were on his side. He got every lucky roll.

However, when you consider the situation in W. Palm (which, again, I do not believe was intentional), the removal of supposed “felons” from the voter rolls, and the fact that the Secretary of State, in charge of administering the election, was Bush’s state campaign chair (a conflict of interest that should never have been allowed in the first place), plus the fact that the election was so close, the only fair thing to do would have been to invalidate the results of Florida’s election. An impartial SofS or SCOTUS should have done just that.

This would have left three possible remedies: repeat the election (which would have been an unspeakable mess), split the electors evenly between the candidates, or send no electors from Florida at all.

“But what about the people of Florida? Why don’t they have a voice?” Well, for one thing, they would have their government to blame for that. For another thing, I maintain that either of my latter two solutions would have reflected the will of the people of Florida far more than giving the electors to one candidate or the other–any way you look at it, the voters were split almost evenly.

The fact that Katherine Harris is now in Congress both disgusts and baffles me. Don’t the words “appearance of impropriety” mean anything to anyone anymore?

Dr. J

122

George W. Bush was lucky to graduate from Yale and Harvard graduate school and to become an accredited jet fighter pilot. He was lucky enough to earn millions of dollars as Managing Partner of the Texas Rangers. And, he was lucky to defeat a popular incumbant Governor of Texas, Anne Richards. He was lucky that the Supreme Court helped him to win the Presidency. He was lucky that Congress enacted two large tax cut laws. And, he was lucky to have overthrown Osama bin Laden’s rule in Afghanistan and Saddam’s rule in Iraq. He was lucky that the Republicans gained seats in an off-year election. And, he is lucky to be far in the lead for re-election.

Branch Rickey said, “Luck is the residue of design.” Maybe Bush chain of successes is more than luck.

123

I love this controversy, I really do. Whenever it comes up (again and again) on the SDMB, I try to contribute, in hopes the controversy will continue controverting so that I can do it again.

So much for the (“wishes he were”) humorous portion of the post.

  1. Why the “Bush wasn’t really elected” comments? It’s shorthand for “given the whole mess, GWB shouldn’t have emerged as President.”

  2. The (legally qualified) candidate who receives the majority of the votes of the Electoral College (or, if no one receives a majority, is selected by the House and Senate jointly as prescribed by the Constitution) really, truly is entitled to be regarded as the duly-elected President of the United States. (The “elected” refers to election by the EC, or by Congress.) To his credit, Al Gore never challenged that fact, his disagreement focusing on various issues surrounding the manner by which the electoral slate from Florida was to be determined. This was true of GWB as well.

  3. Nitpickers are entitled to distinguish between (a) who “won the election,” and (b) who “was elected President.” There is a significant sense in which VP Gore did indeed “win the election of 2000” in that he received more of the popular vote than did Gov. Bush. This entails the truth of the statement “Bush lost the election of 2000 but became President anyway.” But that’s just a manner of speaking. There is no doubt that GWB was indeed elected President.

  4. There were two actions of the US Supreme Court regarding the Florida case. In the first (Gore v. Harris, I think) SCOTUS unanimously declined Gore’s plea to intervene on his behalf. Contrary to what one poster here has said, SCOTUS did not issue any kind of “order” to the Florida SC (other than vacating the FSU’s first decision overturning Harris’ decision not to permit further recounts in the initial recount phase). They remanded the case back to the FSU for “clarification.” The matter became moot as the matter moved on to a different case. (It is my understanding that under the US federal system, SCOTUS cannot “demand” anything of the State courts, though of course it can overrule them.)

  5. The early phase of the Florida recount procedure allowed the contesting parties to designate which counties were to be recounted. Gore selected those most likely to change the outcome in his favor; Bush could have demanded recounts in those counties most likely to increase his lead, but did not. I don’t recall at this point whether Gore was alleging statewide irregularities, or only egregious irregularities in certain counties. If the latter, there was no reason, even in theory, why recounting the entire state would have been especially “fair”–given that the nature of the irregularities cited by Gore at that earlier phase were of a limited kind. Later actions were based upon these earlier challenges by Gore. I believe Gore would have had to file a new lawsuit (or perhaps have gotten approval to amend his earlier one) to ask for an entire-state recount…and of course several clocks were ticking. (IMHO, he should have nonetheless.)

  6. The FSC now issued a second decision. It enjoined the various county election authorities to proceed with a recount, based upon the general principles for counting ballots stated in the Florida elections code. However, it apparently added some supplementary details that seemed, to some, to authorize guessing and divination. So Bush v. Gore was sent to SCOTUS, asking on various grounds that the recount be halted. The court did so by a vote of 5-4. The majority could not agree on a reason; Scalia expatiated on various matters, but the man point of clarity seemed to be that SCOTUS was authorized to step in in order to forestall electoral chaos.

  7. If you want to joke that GWB is our first president to win by one vote (ie, the 5-4 SCOTUS vote), an extension of the game is to ask whose one vote that was. Though a poster above has focused on O’Connor, I think she has always been somewhat the more partisan of the two regular swing votes on the Court. For that reason, I would say Kennedy’s vote was the crucial one.

  8. At that point Gore chose to concede. It may have been both patriotic and politically wise to do so, but the action of SCOTUS did not literally require him to do so, nor did it literally appoint Bush President. It simply blocked an ongoing route of appealing the outcome.

  9. Gore and the Democrats, acting under authority of the Florida Attorney General, could have instituted a process ending with an alternate EC slate being transmitted to the President of the Senate (ironically, VP Gore himself). It would then become a procedural matter for each house (not just the Senate) to accept or reject said slate. Here, details count big. IMHO, a move to accept the alternate slate would have been accepted by the Senate, denied by the House: thus the motion fails. But likewise, a followup motion to accept the EC results as including the “official” Florida slate would likewise have failed. It seems to me that in such case no Florida electors would be counted, and a majority of the remaining electors would determine the President.

  10. And what about the elections law of 1888(?)? Seems to me Gore could have taken that law to SCOTUS as unconstitutional, in that it designates the Executive authority of each State the final arbiter of a State’s authorized slate, whereas the Constitution specifies the Legislature. As to the Florida legislature picking the Electors by direct action: that same law of 1888 prohibits altering the selection rules after a certain point prior to the Presidential election. Also, some provisions of the 14th Amendment seem to me to rule-out legislative selection (though no one seems to agree with me).

  11. That the Constitution specifies a date when the EC ballots shall be opened by the President of the Senate gives no guidance as to what happens if a challenge to a State’s slate is not resolved by that time. In fact, I believe “late ballots” have been accepted in the past.

  12. IMHO, the Court would have been more faithful to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution if they had allowed the FSU process to go forward and left it to Congress to resolve the issue of whether or not to accept a slate of electors.

  13. It was almost certainly best for the Democratic party that GWB became President of the US.

124

Aren’t these both true? Wasn’t Bush slotted into pilot training when insufficiently qualified simply because of who he was? Even I could make money out of the Rangers deal. Put up $606,000, acquired by running companies bust, for 12% of the Rangers although it only represented 2%. Then sell out after the team acquires a publicly funded but privately owned $135,000,000 stadium.

125

**Hmm, not sure how you inferred this.

You’re welcome. Hope you enjoy it.

126

I am inferring that you took the portion of the article you quoted seriously when I have shown it to be nonsense.

127

For whoever wrote it, I have previously read the Math against Tyranny article and do not agree with it. I disgaree with the most nasic premise of the article, which if I remember correctly is that the best voting system is one in which one vote can change the results of the entire election. That is what caused the whole fiasco with the 2000 election. The best system is one in which every vote is equal. The analogy to the World Series used by the author is erroneous, also, because not all the states are equally important in the election as they are in a World Series. The “wins” by a state are weighted by the size of the population in the election. In the World Seies, all wins are equal. The World Series analogy would actually be more appropriate to a system where each district is one electoral vote and there is no “winner take all” state syste. Then it would indeed be like hundreds of individual wins a candidate would need to win the election.

128

Since no system can be perfect (and it’s folly to think you can EVER run an election and achieve an accurate result down to a single vote), the best voting system is one in which the error is known and either corrected for, or rules are built up before the election which clearly spell out how to detect results that fall within the margin of error, and what corrective action should be taken.

I’d prefer to see something like this: “If the election is a statistical tie (meaning the voter differential between the two leading candidate was less than .0xxxx% of the total), then the election shall be called null, and a supplementary election between just the two leading candidates will be held exactly 15 days from the day of the void election. Repeat until a clear victor is determined.”

That would at least make the system fair, because the rules would apply to both candidates, and they would know the rules before the election and could plan accordingly.

But to say “We will design a perfect, error free election process” is misguided, so you might as well make it error-tolerant instead of error-proof.

129

SAM,

your idea is pretty good, and I’ll bet we end up with something along those lines (in a generation or two).

And you’re quite right to say (in effect) “let not the best be the enemy of the good.”

My shorter-term suggestion would be along these lines:

“In any presidential election, should any candidate not receive at least 50.5% of the legal and qualified votes cast for President in a given State, the total electoral vote of that State shall be apportioned, within the 30 days following the election, between all qualified candidates receiving at least 3% of the votes cast, such apportionment to reflect as nearly as practicable the actual division of the popular vote, the totals for only those candidates being taken as 100%. In this case only, fractional electoral votes may be assigned. The manner of producing said apportionment shall be specified in advance of the election by State law, and the result as certified by the chief executive of the State shall be final and not reviewable by any court, Federal or State.”

130

Sorry, I’d never go for that idea. You win 50.5% of the vote and you get all the electoral votes, but you get 49.9% or even 50% and you get only half the votes? No way.

     Just go to a straight one vote per electoral district.  Then entire states can't be ignored or taken for granted.

     This brings up another issue that could be more of a problem with any change to the electoral system.  What happens if no one has 50% of the electoral vote?  What if Nader has snagged a few electoral votes for himself last election and both Bush and Gore end up with less than 50% of the EC vote?  What happens then?  Does a plurality win in the EC?
131

IUHOMER:

“…You win 50.5% of the vote and you get all the electoral votes, but you get 49.9% or even 50% and you get only half the votes? No way. …”

We’re talking improvement, not perfection. At present, in a 3-person race, someone getting 34% might take home all the candy, and his close competitor, at 1% behind, get nothing. My philosophy is, in effect, if a State is so divided that no one has emerged as a the clear choice of the electorate–then let’s not pretend there IS one, and just divide the electors up proportionately.

(Perhaps my suggestion would be better served if the theshold had to do with the percentile “gap” between candidates, rather than a set minimum percentage. For example, divide proportionately if the gap between the two leading candidates is less than 3%.)

“…What happens if no one has 50% of the electoral vote? What if Nader has snagged a few electoral votes for himself last election and both Bush and Gore end up with less than 50% of the EC vote? What happens then? Does a plurality win in the EC?..”

No mystery there; the Constitution spells it out. If no candidate receives an absolute EC majority, Congress makes the selection from among the EC candidates, according to certain rules. A majority is always required. This recourse has happened twice in US history, and could easily happen next time–if (a) a “3rd” candidate manages to win a State; or (b) in an otherwise equally-divided EC, one Elector decides to vote for John Ashbrook, Ralph Nader, Ann Coulter, or Susan Sarandon.

By the way: there is good reason to doubt that any Elector can be compelled to cast a vote for his pre-announced selection, or penalized for failing to do so. Abstractly, the Electors are free to vote for whichever legally qualified candidate they wish to. There was some talk in the last election of lobbying individual electors to change their (presumed) votes.

132

What’s this based on? Where have you found other Western democracy with “universal election procedures” the size of the US? I’m not saying there isn’t one. But the comment smells of one of those sweeping “let’s pull something that sounds reasonable and fairly swank out of our hat”.

Last time I voted for Swedish and European officials was in New York’s Church of Sweden using little colored pieces of paper.

  1. Yes, Sweden probably has a “universal, efficient, and effective election procedure”. And about the population of New Jersey…

  2. As far as I know EU hasn’t started interfering in how the various constituencies elect their alloted Brussel MPs with any swooping standardizations. I could be wrong…

All I’m looking for is a little backing up here. Some cites and such. Or is this just another one of those “oh America you old backwards fool stuck in Jeffersonian times” cliche?
Thanks.

133

Let’s get real, folks.

The only question is: at what point will we start voting from our homes via e-vote?

On this one Ross Perot was absolutely right.

134

Oh let’s not get so picky, Bob Butterworth, Florida’s AG at the time, was the head of Al Gore’s Florida campaign. And he was intimately involved in the post-election mess, including presenting arguments against the Florida Secretary of State in court.

135

Katherine Harris was not appointed Secretary of State, at the time that was an elected position, and she was in fact elected. The has chaged recently, as Governor Bush appointed former Orlando mayor Glenda Hood to head the office, replacing Jim Smith, who was appointed after Harris resigned to run for the House of representatives. In the future the SoS will be an appointed office, as a Florida Constitutional ammendment passed in 1998 shrank the size of the Governor’s cabinet from 7 to 4.

136

I have not seen anything to support this. As far as I know she was a Democrat before and during the 2000 elections. She has since changed her registration, when she filed for election to the County Election Board, to “no party affiliation”. I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about that, given all the crap Democrats piled on her following the 2000 election. If you have a link to support your claim, please post it.