JamesCarroll wrote:
I’ll have you know I didn’t even go to my High School prom. So there!
If the article linked in the OP of this thread sounds believable to you, you’ve taken partisanship to the level of outright bigotry (not that the average partisan is very far from it to start with.) Surely to God you don’t find THAT article believable? Please tell us you meant another article.
Sam Stone is right about a lot of things on this thread. He introduces the issue my friend and I discussed the first day Gore called for recounts in specific counties, but not the whole state. “Er,” we said, “isn’t that an Equal Protection Clause violation?” “Wasn’t the county provision just for county elections, or when a specific county had mechanical problems or fraud?,” we opined." Well, the SCOTUS agreed. Those on the SCOTUS that did not wanted a statewide recount, as I recall. Whatever, Gore blew it. He had a short period of time to act, and rather than take the stand up approach and count the whole state, he cherry picked the big Democratic counties–and it backfired! Amazing, but true. Nobody could, or did, think he would not get the votes in those counties with their all Democratic canvassing boards, but he didn’t.
Bricker has a very important point. If one looks at spoiled ballots, Florida does not stand out–Chicago does! There were over one hundred thousand spoiled ballots in Chicago alone. That number being well above the Florida or national average. Other places had horrible results as well. To obsess over Florida is to ignore the lessons of the 2000 election. The main lesson is that voting system in the U.S. is archaic, disorganized, and cannot hold up in close elections. My God, if we did not have the electoral college as some suggested (Hillary “no cause too venal” Clinton), we would still be counting ballots, in all 50 states.
IMHO:
On September 10, I looked at Dumbya as one of the lesser chunks floating at the top of the GOP septic tank…
But now, I am standing on top of my desk saying: “My Captain, My Captain.”
Partisan politics will return in good time. Till then we all have a job to do.
dos centavos
I live in Florida.
I’m a Democrat.
I voted for Gore.
But, according to every recount except for this one, Gore lost.
So…Bush is President. He has been for 9 1/2 months.
I’m over it.
I’m with Shayna on this one. Of course Gore won the election, in the sense that a majority of Americans and a majority of Americans in the states with the majority of electoral votes either voted for Gore, or meant to vote for Gore but were thwarted by a confusingly-designed ballot.
Few people on either side dispute this. It’s something we’ve known for ten months or more.
But still, Gore lost the only vote that, in the end, mattered: the 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Case closed.
I’m frustrated and angry about it, of course, but it’s a done deal. There’s no story here.
Because you WANT to believe them. You want to believe so badly that Gore won that anything you read will sound believable to you.
He didn’t win the election, otherwise he’d be President.
My friends Irish mother has a saying “Woulda Coulda Shoulda never made a Dida”. Gore would have won if this happened, Gore could have won if this happened, he should have won if that happened. But, alas, he did not win.
Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Those who dwell in the past are found dead, all alone, surrounded by 40 cats. Move on already.
In related news, after dogged research, “The Consoritum” has concluded, inequivocably, that the Confederate States really SHOULD HAVE WON the U.S. Civil War.
We shouldn’t stop discussing this because we haven’t solved the fucking problem yet. This doesn’t seem like a particularly tough concept. Our electoral system is broken. We should be working on fixing it rather than sweeping this inconvenient fact under the carpet.
Just my 2sense
Truth: Every government is dependent on the failure of the people to overthrow it; this is usually achieved by gaining passive assent. - Pjen
This thread has been both heartening, and disheartening.
Net effect = 0
This is not a time for divisiveness. Anyone suggesting that W and his administration allowed 9/11 to occur to boost his ratings and manipulate the American public is just as far out there as the One-World Militias sitting in a bunker in Montana looking for Black Helicopters.
Fix the voting system, so Indecision 2000 can never happen again, and move on with our lives, and our country come 2004.
Now, what recount are you talking about again? Oh yes, the one done by the well-respected “consortium of news media.” The one that REALLY, TRULY, MOST DEFINITELY determined the Mayor of Munchkinland…er, I mean, the President of the United States and effectively negates the 350 OTHER independent re-counts done to date. Gotcha.
George W Bush must be SO relieved that those terrorists timed their strikes so conveniently. Now, instead of focusing on how he figuratively got away with murder we stupid Americans are instead focused on how terrorists got away with the LITERAL murder of 5000 innocent civilians on U.S. soil.
I swear, these news media people really ought to get their freaking PRIORITIES in order!!!
I don’t think much of the source rjung posted, but I don’t see why he or anyone else should be criticized for the raising the subject with more solid info at hand.
If you are a miffed Democrat too personally heartsick to face the subject again, so be it. If you are a Republican, uninterested in learning of evidence that delegitimizes the Bush presidency, I’m not in the least surprised.
But once we put these kinds of personal investments aside, I see no grounds for discrediting informed analysis of what went wrong in Florida and elsewhere, or of what the 2000 election says about our democracy.
As to the idea that we somehow can’t discuss this issue because of 9/11 and the current military campaign, that’s just silly. Our brains, like our computers, are set up to multitask. 
FTR, I think the Bush administration is doing pretty much what a Gore administration would have done. The main foreign policy difference between the parties had been that the Republicans (as per the debates) were favoring greater isolationism and less interventionism of the Kosovo kind. Bush expressed that prior to 9/11 by keeping at arm’s length from European and other allies on his missile program. For obvious reasons, the administration now wants to garner world support, not alienate it. And so, on the terrorist problem, I think we have pretty much the same kind of policy as we’d have had with a Gore white house.
As someone who deeply opposes Bush’s domestic agenda, I regret the outcome of the election. I also think our electoral system needs some overhaul, and that the Supreme Court decision was egregious and regretable.
But that certainly doesn’t mean that I can’t support Bush as I would have supported Gore (where his actions seem right to me based on what I know).
I too would like to hear about this statistical analysis.
Informed analysis, no. I am still awaiting any of that.
What the OP consists of is a link to a website set up by some highly partisan liberal I never heard of who claims that someone else he can’t name told him that a bunch of other people told him that some other people have figured out that Gore really won.
Gosh - I’m just shocked all to pieces.
What does it say about our democracy? We don’t have a democracy; we have a republic. And all this kind of rehashing tells us that if you make enough of the right kind of assumptions, Gore would have won in Florida. And if he doesn’t, just change your assumptions and count 'em again.
Basically, because Gore really polled strongly among voters who are too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel.
Give it up. If you go back and count the votes anywhere the right way, you can make the results come out just how you want them.
It’s over. Gore lost. We all agreed on the rules ahead of time, and it has been time to abide by them for the last eight and a half months. Yes, it would be clearer if the winner of the Electoral College was also the winner of the popular vote, but if those were the rules, both men would have run their whole campaigns very differently.
And the implications that the media is conniving in keeping Bush in office, or that Bush welcomed the terrorist attacks, are both obviously stupid and beneath contempt.
Regards,
Shodan
Here’s a simple question… no, two simple questions, rather:
-
How many recounts, in total, have there been?
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How many have even had the slightest indication that Gore stood much of a chance of having had “more votes”?
SPOOFE, are we including partial counts, incomplete counts, interrupted counts? Cuz I don’t have that number, it’s much too large.
But I think we’ve had no complete recounts at all unless the one this article refers to is for real. And I may have read it too quickly, but my understanding is that it was in fact a recount of the entire state, not only the disputed counties. But I could be wrong.
Cuz ya know, you could count 85% of the ballots 1001 times, that doesn’t really prove anything at all, now does it?
stoid
Well, the point is moot only if you aren’t paying attention to politics. It may be moot in a legal sense, but in a political sense, the stealing of this election is going to be a talking point until Bush II is out of office.
Having said that, if there were any chance that an article that starts out “According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate…” actually is true, Rush Limbaugh would be a God.
You never heard of him, yet are entirely informed as to his political persuasion? Odd.
A shattering revelation. I am sure we are all grateful. Now, if you could just clarify how that is remotely relevent to the issue at hand?
Tsk, tsk. Steaming piles of ad hominem. Thousands of people went to the polls to vote for Gore, and left thinking they had done so. This is well documented, and accounts for the failure of the exit polls: the people polled reported they had voted for Gore. Or so they thought. If the intent of the voter was the actual fact, Gore would be sitting in the Oval Office. Do you deny that, or would you point out that we have a bi-cameral legislature?
OK, go recount Clinton/Dole so that Dole wins. I’ll wait right here.
You simply must be kidding. Both candidates beat their brains out to win Florida, since both recognized that it would be crucial. More voters went to the polls to vote for Gore. Ergo, Gore should be President. Seems rather cut and dried to me, but maybe I’m too stupid to piss in my own boot. Or something.
Indeed. Which is why no such argument is being made, only being sternly refuted.
As I understand it, the news is being down-played only so as not to embarass Our Leader or cast aspersions on his, uh, “legitimacy”. That’s all, and it is quite enough.
If Our Leader were to state simply and candidly “Things were screwed up, if they had not been, I wouldn’t be President. There is no remedy for that, but I will humbly serve as best I can, fully recognizing that I occupy a place that belongs, by all rights, to Al Gore.”
I would then “get over it”. I would also invest every dime in umbrella company stocks, for when pigs fly umbrellas will be very valuable.
Note…yes, they appear to have been recounting the whole state. They refer at one point to “Lake County”, which is a Republican county…not one of the ones Gore asked for recounts in.
Shodan: "We don’t have a democracy; we have a republic.
Shodan, my good man, these are not mutually exclusive. A republic is simply one kind of democracy, or representative democracy, to be precise. The typical modern democratic alternative to a republic is a constitutional monarchy such as Britain.
As to “getting over it,” as someone who used to make her living as a historian, and cohabits with someone who still does make a living as a historian, I consider it a point of professional pride never to “get over” anything…
Come to think of it, we could say “we don’t have a democracy” on the grounds that our current president (head of a republic though he putatively is) was selected by the Supreme Court, rather than elected by the majority of voters… <ducks>
Onion Headline alert!!!
Sam-can I say that I agree with you-hehehehe…calm down, here are the smelling salts.
Seriously, the thing is-right now, I can’t see Gore doing anything different than what’s being done.
The site struck me as a parody, at least, I’m HOPING it’s a parody. Although I wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s what Ann Coulter REALLY wants to say, but can’t.
Seriously, right now, this is NOT what is important. I mean, yes, we need to fix this system, but right now, I’m too busy worrying about whether or not there’s even going to BE a world to worry about who’s going to be president. I’m seriously getting SCARED. Maybe I’m being totally irrational, but I can’t help it.
And what did Gore say-let’s stand behind Bush right now, and worry about partisan politics later!
AAAAHHH!!!