ACK! Mandelstam is a GURL?!?!?!?
This is getting maddening… I think we should have a little gender icon next to our names…
Although now that I think about it, your wisdom, equanimity and charm all do have a distinctly feminine quality… 
stoid
Ann Coulter? What is up with her?
I take it as a principle that I will read opinions I already know I wont agree with, just to keep myself honest. So I always read Molly Ivins, may the good Lord bless her and keep her, and sometimes Peggy Noonan (read her book, not too bad} and sometimes Ann Coulter.
I had been thinking the Peggy was getting rather maudlin (read her latest panting tribute to macho-macho-man). Then I read a couple of Ann Coulter’s latest couple and man, she has totally lost contact with the mother ship, the bats in her belfry have rabies, aaaaRRROOOOOOOga! aaaaRROOOOOga!
Anybody got a clue as to what happened?
elucidator, your diagnosis sounds right on to me. An excuse offered for her (hopefully temporary) insanity is that she may have been set off because the 9/11 attack included the murder of her good friend Barbara Olson. But, AFAIK this excuse is pure speculation.
As a result of her recent articles, she no longer writes for the National Review.
IF Gore had won Florida, the media would have announced it.
Remember all those organizations that were going to do a top to bottom investigation and recount of the Florida vote? Notice how they aint said jack shit ever since.
That tells me that if anything, Bush had a larger margin of victory than was officially reported.
Follow the link to the article in the OP, the same writer apparently wrote a faux-Coulter piece which was pretty funny, wherein “she” advocates nuking pretty much everybody off the face of the earth.
There were two completed counts prior to the election, and at least three (that I know of) that took place after the election. They all pointed to Bush.
I completely agree that we shouldn’t even bother with “partial recounts”. That’s why Gore’s attempt at only partially recounting Florida was dismissed by the Supreme Court.
Okay guys, let’s get back to basics here.
First, those of you who keep claiming that Bush STOLE the election: Please tell us HOW. What actions did he or his people take that prevented Al Gore from winning?
For those of you who think Al Gore won: Please tell us how. If Bush had climbed under a rock and let the world sort out that election, how would Al Gore have possibly come up the winner?
For the record, the recounts that MATTER are the ones that picked up where the Supreme Court stopped them and finished the count. Under Gore’s rules, in the districts he was fighting to have counted. I believe two major competing media organizations and one University did those recounts. ALL of them showed Bush as the winner.
So let me repeat: Let’s say Bush is in a cave somewhere, the recounts are free to continue, and the Supreme court declares that they must continue as requested by Gore. Please explain how Al Gore becomes President. Oh, and if you come up with a way, please explain how that result is any more legitimate than the one that had Bush win.
If you can’t do that, SHUT UP with this nonsense about ‘stealing’ elections, which is a pretty serious charge in the first place, and extremely divisive.
I think what you Democrats are mad about is the fact that the election of the most powerful guy in the world essentially came down to a coin flip, and your guy lost. That doesn’t mean you keep getting do-overs until your guy wins. Suck it up, and get on with life.
Or, you could just follow the lead of Mr. Al Gore, who has gone on record to say that Bush won the election ‘fairly’, is without a doubt the legitimate president of the United States, and has Gore’s full support.
Sorry, guys - I spent pretty much all my board time today on one post in a thread I’d already gotten involved in. So you’re going to have to wait another day.
But just to clarify things:
If you can find in there, Sam, a claim that Bush stole the election, be my guest.
Anyhow, the paper was titled, “The Butterfly Did It”, and I’m hoping my copy is here at home, so I can pull the URL off the title page. I won’t try to summarize its arguments before I find it, since after two months, I’d mangle them.
I think you can figure out what it’s about, though. 
Dagnabbit, RT, I’ve been waiting for you all dang day!
And Sam, I haven’t been saying he stole it either. But as far as taking Gore’s lead, fortunately I don’t have to concern myself with the 2004 election, so I don’t have to say these things.
I’m absolutely certain that in Gore’s heart, he feels quite differently. There’s just no damn good to be had for him in saying so.
stoid
A very cogent and respected poster, above, suggested that commentary on how to prevent the Florida disaster from recurring in any state in 2004 would be most useful.
I thought I would repeat his wise words here.
- Rick
Tracked it down here:
“The Butterfly Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida”
(Authors:) Jonathan N. Wand - Kenneth W. Shotts - Jasjeet S. Sekhon - Walter R. Mebane, Jr. - Michael C. Herron - Henry E. Brady
Date: Revised September 19, 2001
Forthcoming, American Political Science Review, December 2001
Abstract:
As the paper says in the overview:
You can read the rest of it at the link. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Shoulda known better than to put a colon inside a parenthesis like that! 
Bah! Simulpost.
Gee, thanks Rick but I frankly don’t recall…
The David Podvin page linked to in the OPis not its own home page. Clicking on HOME on that page brings us to Make Them Accountable dot com (I don’t really want to put a link here). I scrolled through a massive list of stories, articles, Op-Ed pieces trying to find out for sure whether this site was an ax-grinder. Up near the top of the page, I found that one of the pieces incuded was an Onion article. The anti-Republican Party tone of the entire site was patently obvious, and the smoking gun is found at the bottom of the page – “This Anti-Dubya Webring Site owned by Make Them Accountable”.
Now, I’m just as Anti-Dubya as the next guy (1196 days and counting down), but I also appreciate intellectual honesty. As such, I find myself unwilling to rely on the articles written by David Podvin as a sole source of information on this issue. As long as he remains the sole source for this story, I don’t intend to actually consider it a story.
I realize that my position here is ad hominem. Nevertheless, it is the one that I feel I must take to avoid being credulous.
RTFirefly, if you do, in fact, have corroborating data to present, I very much look forward to reading it.
…teach me to take an hour to compose a post. Still, I’ve not yet noticed it to be directly corroborative of Podvin’s articles. I’ll have to keep looking. The fact that Podvin is so vague makes it difficult.
Oh fer Christ’s sake…
What the hell difference does it make?!
The dead horse has been beaten to pudding. Jesus! Wake up, look outside…it’s a brand new day!
Onbsessive/compulsive behavior is amusing for only so long, and that time is long past.
Jesus jumping hurdles in Speedos, I swear this is the last “Gore Won!” post I’m going to read.
(balance of thoughts deleted due to inappropriateness of applicability to this forum other than to say, Get out and campaign next time around! Until then, get a blanking life, you blankers!)
RTFirefly: Well you know, ‘swindled’ implies malicious intent just like ‘stolen’ does. Why must you persist in using such loaded terms to describe what was in fact an honest error by an election worker? The Butterfly ballot was certainly flawed, and I already agreed that it cost Gore the election, but that doesn’t mean it was a ‘swindle’. Unfair? You bet. Isn’t that enough?
Okay, on to more constructive things - how to fix the electoral system.
First, we have to keep our perspective: This election was a FLUKE. What are the odds that an election in a country with 300 million people would swing on less than 500 votes? I don’t think we will ever see anything like it again in our lives in the first place.
But if I wanted to fix it, I would approach the problem as a systems analyst. You have to decide what accuracy you are willing to accept in the election, and design the system to that specification. And if you can’t get the ‘error bars’ down to a point where they are unlikely to ever come into play again, then you have to design a reasonable contingency plan for what to do if the accuracy of the election can’t resolve the vote.
It may be that to attain the accuracy desired would be unmanageable, so then you have to focus on the contingency plan and make one that is robust enough to handle the problem. Either a run-off, a re-vote, or perhaps even something radical like a fresh election, and an extension of the current presidential term for another year is in order. I think you could debate all kinds of possibilities.
As far as the current election mechanisms go, we can identify and solve all kinds of problems such as poor neighborhoods not having access to the same quality of tabulating equipment, or nationwide uniform ballot designs. And those things should be done. But that’s not going to solve the problem. What about uneven closing times of polls across the country? How do you handle media bias? What about those polling stations that stayed open another half hour while others closed?
You have to accept some error in the process. It’s a fiction to believe that you can always divine the intent of the voter. Hell, what if a freak storm hits Berkeley on election day? How many thousands of votes, 90% of which would go to the Democrats, would be lost?
If the Butterfly ballot had never existed, and the counts and recounts had been done fairly, then something else could have come along to skew the election. It happens EVERY time, and always will. The difference this time was that the skew mattered. I don’t think that will happen again.
So my ‘solution’ would be to simply fix the obvious flaws in order to make the process as democratic as possible, and then come up with a good contingency plans for a ‘tie’. That’s enough.