GOP Goes Nuclear

Great Debates
41

Edwino has a point.

Let play a game for a moment.

Lets assume that: 1. Katherine Harris is biased against the democratic party. 2. The Florida Supreme Court is not at all biased and reached a perfect and true decision. 3. None of the Democrat leaning canvassing board acted in a biased manner whatsoever.

Take all of that and answer this:

Al Gore claims to be interested in a “full fair and accurate count” which reflects the “will of the people”.

Ok.

He then asks for manual recounts in 3 counties which favored him at a margin of 2:1 or more.

In these manual recounts previously disregarded undervotes will be re-examined and re-included into the count. This will inevitably lead to a gain of votes for Al Gore. All the while however, all other counties are relying on a count which excluded all undervotes.

How, logically, can this lead us to a “full, fair and accurate count”? There is no justificationm for this.

There have been three counts. The first two used a universal system across all of the state (the machine counts). The third used a system which targeted specific areas which would inevitably skew the vote because it was not balanced by its being used across the entire electorate.
I have heard a few feeble attempts at justification:

  1. Al Gore did offer a full state recount.

Yes, he did after a week of fighting for selective recounts when it looked like he would be torpedoed by Katherine Harris. It was a last ditch effort. If he really believed that manual recount would give him the election, wouldnt he have asked for a manual recount in THE ENTIRE STATE??

  1. Bush had the right to ask for recounts too.

So?? Again if AL wanted a fair recount he would have asked that the entire state be recounted from the start.

  1. The law allows for it.

Perhaps yes and perhaps no (depending upon the legal outcome). But so what? That doesnt answer my question which was ‘How, logically, can this lead us to a “full, fair and accurate count”?’ Not, “Is it legal”?
This is the only issue. Forget Katherine Harris, forget Carol Roberts. This is the issue which has no answer.

I did not vote for President on Nov. 7 due to indecision, and I am appalled. The PR spin is such bold-faced bull that it makes me ill.

I would love to hear some attempted justifications for this. I have yet to hear anything which approaches legitimacy and truth.

Edwino had a point when he said:

But, the flaw in the Democratic policy is not seeking a manual recount of ALL of Florida. Picking and choosing areas with disputed counts does nothing except make some of the counts more precise. The overall count is still limited by the areas with the lowest precision – the non-recounted counties. Ick, language.

But then he ends with

Does this make any sense? What are the Republican arguments against this?

Against what? That IS the Republican argument. And that is the entire point.

Good luck

42

TQMshirt, there is a small, but important, mistake in your chronology.

Gore asked for manual recounts in only 4 counties, BEFORE he officially took the position that a ‘full and fair’ was necessary. At the time he said ‘full and fair’ he also said ‘recount the whole state’.

In the early days of the recount, both played partisan politics and win-at-any-cost. But at some point, a few days into this Gore seemed to realize that once this was over whoever won would have to govern. At that point the DEM’s begin to tone down the rhetoric. And Gore made his offer.

But, by then it was too late for him to force a full recount, so we can only speculate whether this was spin or a genuine request for fairness.

I will say that I believe if Bush had taken him up on the offer, and both had requested a full statewide recount, that they could have made it happen. (They might have had to go to court, but I can’t see a court turning them down, and in fact, the Supreme Court indicted in their decision that they would not have).

tj

43

As someone who disagrees with most of what Sam Stone posts, I must nonetheless second Bob Cos on this point. [Maybe it’s because I’m a dual citizen!] Besides, Sam helps to remind me that even though Canadian discourse is generally to the Left of that here (yea!!!), there are [for better of worse! ;)] even some libertarian sentiments alive and well north of the border!

44

TQMShirt :

As I see it, the Democrats are proceeding imprecisely under a mantle of precision. But, the Republicans are closing their eyes to any imprecision in the vote and insisting that two (now three) fairly arbitrary numbers represent the will of the electorate.

When I asked for a Republican position, I was asking for a justification of ignoring the inherent imprecision in the vote.

It is obvious no one is walking away from Florida with a clear mandate. But that is basically exactly what the Republicans are insisting IMHO.

The Democrats have in some ways a more insidious thing going. I agree with you that they are claiming that they want a precise “every vote must be counted” approach to Florida, yet they are making no effort to do so except in places where it is absolutely crucial for them. All other counties’ can go suck eggs. This is pretty two faced, IMHO.

So, I put it to you SDMBers – what is worse :
Making assumptions on worthless data
or
Saying you are collecting good data while basically ignoring anything you don’t like.

In the science world, both of these are academically dishonest. Both of them can get you in pretty serious trouble.

In the best of all possible worlds, both sides would meet, and decide on some ground rules and recount the whole damn state. They would live with the results and drop all legal challenges. Since machine counts have been proven inaccurate, this would probably have to be a hand count. It ain’t gonna happen. Ever.

All other situations (except deus ex machina solutions from the courts or the legislature) end in unfair tallies. This thing is a statistical tie any way you slice it. Neither side can claim victory with anywhere near these numbers.

I have absolutely no disillusions – if Gore were ahead by 530 votes, this exact thing would be going on from the opposite direction. All the mudslinging and spinning and bull baiting and general overall shit goin down in Florida does nothing to my already poor opinion of politics.

45

sums it up perfectly:

46

Edwino
You are making a number of flaws in reasoning.

  1. If I have two trucks of apples. One has 2 million apples, and one has 2million and 1. It is true that statistically speaking they have the same amount of apples. HOWEVER, mathematically speaking, one truck has one more. In democracy, that one more wins. If I was testing a medicine vs. a placebo I would conclude that they are the same. However that is not what is being done here. This isnt a poll which is meant to accurately reflect all individuals in florida. It is a vote count of cast votes. It excludes those who didnt vote and if one side has one more then the rules are that it wins. It matters not one whit that statistically it shows that Florida is split evenly down the middle idealogically. Therefore, the republican position to remain with the first two counts is perfectly valid.

  2. If your contention is that there are enough anomalies such that a lead of 570 is meaningless, then you must realize that excluding outright intentional fraud, the anomalies will affect both sides evenly. There is no way in heck to root out all of these anomalies perfectly and to arrive at a perfect number. There really isnt much of a choice.

Your idea of a statewide manual recount is interesting except for a few things. First of all, a manual count under the present conditions of subjective analysis will certainly end in a flawed result. If there was a rock-solid objective criteria, then perhaps the count could be valid. A criteria such as “the hole must have no chad whatsoever. Or two sides or less attached.” Even still, there would be room for shenanigans as canvassing boards have the ability to assess each ballot.

A computer count has the benefit of being absolutely impartial. Two of them revealed Bush to be the winner. IF Gore really believed that a full recount would reveal him to be the winner he would have requested one from the start. He never did. The republican reliance on the computer recounts has a heck of alot more credence than insisting upon recounts in selective counties.

So my challenge still stands.
Oh, and by the way.

If we are playing the statistical extrapolation game then Al Gore almost certainly lost the popular vote based on the millions of uncounted absentees.

And, even though the dems claim to be as concerned about the military votes as the reps, only the reps are filing challenges in the counties that rejected the military ballots. Hmmmmmmmmm I wonder why.

47

TQMshirt :

I believe that neither side has a fair, coherent policy for deciding Florida.

To address some points:

I never said one side didn’t have more – I said that it is impossible using current techniques to separate the two.

How will you count your apples? Let’s say your apple-counting-machine has a 1/1000 probability of not counting an apple. You can’t determine the difference between the two trucks if you count them until you are blue in the face. What you need are new machines. There is too much noise in the system.

Nobody said it was. I don’t believe either side (at least the view endorsed by each candidate) is trying to make up new votes. What the Dems are trying to do is determine the will of the electorate. They claim they will do this by hand counting, which will get rid of the noise. Or so they claim.

The Dems have the perfectly legitimate view that a machine count (which we know is flawed simply by the discrepancy in the two hand counts) could very easily be wrong. Since there is no discernable gap between the candidates, two machine counts don’t matter at all. A thousand machine counts don’t improve anything – just like you can count the apples until you are blue in the face. Any margin is lost in the error, and they wish to go to something with an alleged lower error rate – hand counts.

All the Dems are claiming is that they want to accurately determine the will of the electorate. They claim they have a more effective way to do so. I think it would only work if they could agree on some ground rules, and recount the entire state. Get some Canadians in to make sure it is impartial. Do a trial hand count and a recount. Comapre to determine an error rate. Agree to count 2 corner chads and up. Agree to count any absentee ballot with a postmark or without for military ballots. And count every vote, just like Al says he wants to do. Of course, not in a million years would this actually happen. And, it would probably take close to a million years to actually conduct.

Otherwise we are left with three poor options – the legislature decides it, the courts decide it, or we stick with a count we know is inaccurate. Either way, the will of the electorate goes undetermined and the idea of representative government in the USA takes a hit.