I shoulda voted for A Dead Chipmunk on a Stick.
Can you all imagine if Gore had to have his sperm counted and what a nightmare that would be?
Kathryn Harris will go down in history as the greatest threat to democracy ever? Excuse me?
Are future historians going to forget the unmarked mass graves of those Stalin had executed, or do you honestly think that not allowing ample time for a third count of votes that could swing an election is a worse threat to democracy than genocide? If the latter, I suggest that you get a sense of perspective. If the former, a brain.
Incidentally, liberals, does or does not Bush want to be President? MadPoet says that Bush is bad because he has an overwhelmingly strong desire to be President, while Stoidela (in another thread, you know, the one she started about the election) says that Gore is better for the same reason. The two statements are directly contradictory on two different counts.
Asmodean said:
That’s about the size of it. The pro-Gore types would be howling if the situation were reversed and the Bush people were pulling this. (Would the Bush people try this in a reversed situation? Of course they would.)
I’m actually pretty excited. Bush is our next president. That’s a done deal, has been for weeks now. But that’s not why I’m excited.
I’m excited because Gore is acting like a spoiled child who can’t understand that the people spoke, and it doesn’t matter how many recounts he demands, the music has stopped playing and he ain’t sitting. And every day that fact becomes more and more clear to the American people. Gore’s political career will shortly be over.
Being a loser isn’t nearly as bad as being a classless loser.
No, no, it’s not that… it just seems that way 'cuz Republicans can’t win gracefully*.
(*Apparently, “winning gracefully” includes letting the guy that lost be President)
Boy, isn’t this thread typical of every debate of heard on the situation.
First, Gore is accused a “recounting until he likes the answer” and “trying to count votes that were disqualified because neither candidate or both were picked.”
These arguments are then shown to be false (Thanks Opalcat and Wring and others).
The Republican response?
“Gore is a spoiled child!”
“Can you imagine if Gore got his sperm counted?”
Tell you what folks, refute the explanations given by Opalcat and Wring with logic and/or facts instead of name calling, and I’ll start to believe that Bush didn’t steal the election.
Revtim, please post the explanations you are talking about.
Bush has a strange way to steal an election - He wins on the first count; it is close so there is an automatic recount which he also wins.
So to you, Bush “stole” the election when he decided to run for election in Florida. He apparently did not realize that the Florida election “belonged” to Gore and that by running for election, and giving the voters a choice, he was really “stealing” from Gore.
The delays in recounting occurred while the counties waited for the Florida attorney general, a Democrate and chairman of Gore’s Florida campaign, to tell the counties how to count unmarked ballots. Even with this “advise” on what to count, Gore could not come up with enough votes to win.
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*Originally posted by starfish *
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PGUP key broken? I was referring to the posts that OpalCat and Wring made in this very thread.
Revtim, I thought you meant something new.
Do you mean:
Opalcat’s post “People keep going on like Gore is saying “count those votes again” which he is NOT. He’s saying FINISH COUNTING THOSE VOTES. They still haven’t counted all of them.”
Wring’s post “a “no vote” is not the same as an invalid vote.”
These have been looked at. The counties either can’t get enough of them to come out for Gore, or they ran past the state deadline and the Florida sumpreme court’s extended deadline. All “votes” have been counted.
There are stacks of “invalid” ballots that are not going to be given to either party.
The same with ballots with “no votes”. If a voter votes for no one, then it does not count for Gore or Bush. The ballots have been looked at, and they are counted when they could be, again subject to the state deadline and the court’s extended deadline.
Not exactly. At this point, since certification, Gore has specifically asked for the 10,000 “no vote” ballots in Dade county be counted. They haven’t yet. And again “no vote” registered by the machine, even according to the manufacturer, is not necessarily not a vote. (and, oddly enough, in New Mexico, the Republicans agree…)
Moderator’s Notes: Sigh. Why do you guys make me do this? Off to Great Debates. (If the software co-operates.)
Wouldn’t it be simpler if we just torch Florida, and let the insurance company handle it?
No, this 10,000 is ONLY ballots for which the machine saw no presidential votes. Double punched and otherwise invalid ballots are not included in this number.
tj
What I am amazed at is that some people seem to think there is some actual true vote count, or even some objectively fair vote count (this certainly seems to be the moral hihg ground that Gore wants to take). Any tally that comes out would be subject to a certain degree of randomness, arbitrariness, and downright deceitfulness…on both sides. And this is the case with every election. There maybe an underlying “truth” but the actual process of voting is so chock full of errors that any result will leave the winner with a veneer of illegitimacy. The bottom line is we will get a winner becuase we have too, but it has little to do with the “counting every vote” and everything to do with rhetoric.
The claim that Gore wants all ballots counted is simply false:
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Gore asked for handcounts only in a few counties: there were other counties with high rejection rates. One had over 26,000 ballots tossed out.
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Gore claims that he suggested for a statewide recount and Bush declined: sure he suggested it, but only after the state-mandated deadline for asking for recounts–he could have asked all counties for recounts and didn’t.
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The infamous military vote. Gore has changed his mantra from “know the will of the people” to “count the ballots” to “count the legally cast ballots”, implying that the military votes weren’t legally cast.)
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Even after several recounts, the number of ballots keeps changing–not the votes for Gore or Bush (which are also meandering around), but the total number of votes keeps changing.
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In the US, approximately 2,000,000 votes for president were rejected by the machine count. That’s nearly 10 times the number of votes separating the candidates in the national popular vote. Yet Gore claims that he won the popular vote, and isn’t crying for a national recount.
Sigh. It was Gore’s right to ask for recounts on a county-by-county basis. He chose three counties, Broward, Palm Beach, and Dade, not only because they were strongly Democrat but because there were HUGE irregularities. This is strategic thinking, and shrewd, and partisan, but illegal? No. Unfair? Not even–Bush could have done the SAME FECKING THING and asked for recounts of solidly Republican counties, but stupidly didn’t. This is his fault. (And you want this dumbshit as your Commander in Chief? Whoops, end flame, back to the subject.)
Bush could have chosen Duval County, which also used the punchbox ballot at the heart of the controversy, and recorded 5000 ‘undervotes’, just like Palm Beach. BUT . . . here’s CNN: “Congresswoman Corrine Brown, a Florida Democrat, calculates that 1,400 of those Duval County undervotes came from four African-American precincts, which overwhelmingly supported Gore on Election Day. Her estimate accounts for 28 percent of the Duval County undervote.” I’m not going to claim this as necessarily factual, but I will throw this out as food for thought.
Gore’s issue isn’t to recount every vote; it’s to make sure all votes legally cast are counted. Which brings us to . . .
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Quiz time, people: What kinds of ballots do Repubs define as “valid”?:
1: Military ballots that have no postmark, which are by law invalid;
2: 4700 Seminole County ballots that GOP election officials added registration numbers to after the election, making them appear valid after they were disqualified (a similar incident happened in Martin County);
3: Palm Beach County ballots that the machine says didn’t have a vote, but a hand recount would tell for certain.
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I don’t think there will ever be 100% certainty about this election, but what’s wrong with trying to resolve the blocks of questionable votes? I’m talking about the 19,000 in Palm Beach, the 4700 in Seminole County, etc.
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What an irrelevant point. Gore gets eviscerated for wanting 19,000 votes examined by hand and you think he should demand a nationwide recount? The nationwide popular vote doesn’t matter, it’s the Electoral College vote, and in that there is only the issue of Florida to settle.
Personally, I think what happened in Seminole County was the largest scandal of this whole affair; what the hell was the election official thinking, letting the GOP officials tamper with ballots after they have already been disqualified? Howsabout a compromise: No counting or recounting of any valid ballots (i.e. Palm Beach), but anything that should have been disqualified according to the law is–that includes the military ballots, the 4700 Seminole County GOP ballots, and the Martin county ballots? That should piss off everyone equally.
More interesting reading that shaped this post: CNN http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/30/jackson.undervote/index.html
What is your source for the claim officials tampered with ballots after they were disqualified? Everything I’ve read says it was absentee ballot applications which were amended by Republican officials. Even if that is ruled illegal, there were over 10,000 absentee ballots cast in the County, and as I understand it, no way at this point to separate the ones with valid applications from those with the improper applications.
Sigh…I am getting too tired to join this fray. So, I will just contribute a good link entitled “13 myths about the results of the year 200 election”:
http://www.moveon.org/myths.html
Happy reading!
Anybody else find it amusing that Gore says things like “we need to count all the votes; the people’s voice must be heard; etc., etc.;” then, when it’s pointed out to him that he doesn’t really want to count all the votes, just those in areas where they would most benefit him; it’s “mumble-mumble-mumble law mumble-mumble-mumble rules mumble-mumble-mumble I had the legal right, and so did Bush.” ?
He seems to be really keen on following certain laws and rules, but not pesky laws and rules like the Secretary of State certifying the vote one week after the election, or the subsequent Supreme Court-mandated deadline, or the Miami-Dade initial decision not to hand-count, or the Miami-Dade subsequent decision not to hand-count, or the Palm Beach County decision to not give any spec of fly shit on the ballot as a vote for Gore.
You know, laws and rules like that.
I would be kinda afraid with Gore as president. You know, seeing as how he’s trying to get all the rules changed in his favor (They’re not “interpreting” the laws, they’re being changed), if he becomes president because of all of it, he would then have this small power called “Executive Order”. He could make up almost any rule he wanted, and while not a law per se, it comes pretty damned close.
I can see it now…
“Um, Mr. President, you’re not allowed to do that”
“New order: Now I’m allowed to.”
(Disclaimer: I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything of the sort. Just something to add dark humor, I guess)
That’s scary. Thank the Deity of your choice that Bush won (Legitimately, I might add).