How about a Statewide re-election, or throw out Florida?

Great Debates
1

I just heard someone say what I’ve been saying since the beginning: instead of JUST palm beach, which everyone says would be SO unfair because Palm Beach is so Democratic, how about they throw out the results for the whole damn state and start over? That would certainly address the bitch about the Panhandle, right?

So…why not?

And they could always throw away Florida results altogether. (Never happen, gore would win)

The person who said this on CNN prefaced it by talking about the fact that what we are looking at is a legal victory for Bush and a moral victory for Gore, which leaves both of them with a dark shadow over their heads. So the best way is for both to agree to throw out the results for the whole state and start over, and may the best man really win out of 6mil + votes.

(And if you argue that Gore would STILL win…well, then doesn’t that mean he SHOULD??)

stoid

2

**Add this to be Debunked: **

It is an explanation of the 19,000 ballots.

3

Well, that’s EASILY debunked: the voters are standing there as the ballots are being counted!! How ridiculous!

4

I should always check my work.

The voters are ** NOT [/b ]standing there as the ballots are being counted.

5

Please explain in detail how this could be a “moral” victory for Gore? He lost the election. Pure and simple.

A moral victory for the country would be if he conceded like the loser is supposed to.

And how would a dark shadow hang over Bush’s head since he won a legal election?

The best way is to throw out the state? Are you going to re-mail absentee ballots? Can everyone vote, or can you only re-vote?

What about New Mexico, I hear that state is now undecided and it looks like the process was compromised there. (106 vote difference between Bush/Gore and 256 missing ballots.)

Wisconsin is very close as well. Maybe we should do a bunch of re-counts and then vote all over again there.

Doesn’t Iowa have a razor thin margin? Maybe we need to take a closer look there, we can’t be unfair and not respect their right to be counted evenly.

Michigan…yeah…I think that was pretty close too.
Where do you want to stop?
One Country. One election. One day. One person. One Vote.

6

Florida’s election statutes allow for a contesting of an election in court. One remedy is to invalidate the election result. It is not clear if this means a return to the voting booth. Presumably any revote would have to be statewide, since it is a statewide election in question.

Read the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court in Beckstrom v. Volusia County Canvassing Board, (1998), citation unavailable, which can be found here.

7

Stoidela…

Your whole contention is that they threw out 19,000 votes. There is now an explanation floating around that says those 19,000 were BALLOTS that were double punched by the voter, returned to the Election person, exchanged for a new ballot and then the person proceeded to vote.

The 19,000 may not be discarded votes, they may be discarded ballots. They have to keep a pile of the ballots that they exchange so that there is a full acounting at the end.

They don’t just give the precincts a stack of empty ballots and let them do as they will. They have to account for each and every one of them. This includes the ones that people messed up on and then had to request a new one.

The new ballot becomes a vote, and the old double punched ballot goes in the reject pile so they can zero out the ballots they recieved.
Do you understand what I’m saying?

8

A re-vote of the whole state would certainly give a true reading of the preference of the citizens of Florida as between Gore and Bush.

For that very reason, Bush will fight that option tooth and nail because he knows he would lose. A good number of those Nader voters, knowing with certainty that a vote for nader would be wasted, would switch over to Gore.

By the same token, I’m sure a good number of Buchanan and Browne voters would switch over to Bush, but their poll numbers would not make their voters a significant factor.

As to Freedom2’s explanation of the double-punched ballots. I don’t really buy it, at least to the extent it implies that all 19,000 spoiled ballots reflect voters who have already re-voted. A simple comparison of the total number of people who voted in Palm Springs with the number of ballots, spoiled or otherwise, would prove the point one way or the other, though.

And as for this statement:

It just ain’t true. (Where are you getting your info, Freedom2? Straight from Rush Limbaugh’s lips?)

The punch cards are placed into a ballot box. They are not run through a machine until later. A voter who spoils their ballot is not given another one unless they catch the error themselves and request a replacement ballot.

9

do you ever read anything except what you want to read? in THIS very thread, a few posts above, you will see why this is a perfectly ridiculous theory. Stupid, in fact. But I’ll say it one more time:

THEY DO NOT COUNT THE BALLOTS ON THE SPOT!!!

In your voting place, did they pop your ballot into the counting machine right in front of you? NO. And they don’t do it in Florida either.

Jesus, F2, we know you are attached to the outcome on this, but don’t sacrifice your logic in the process.

stoid

10

We vote once on election day. We don’t keep voting until you somebody gets the answer he wants. We don’t keep recoiunting until somebody gets the answer he wants.

We set the system up to be as fair and equitable as possible beforehand, and then we live with the results. We use our experiences to make it better the next time.

The election system must be nopartisan and final.

You don’t get a second chance, because then the obvious question is “best 2 out of three?”

Florida does not get to decide the election. Florida does get it’s fair say. Nothing more, nothing less.

They had it, they voted. It is fair and reasonable to do unbiased recounts in areas where the vote is very close, but that is it.

Every time one of these complaints or suggestions comes out, everything from the missing ballot box, to the claims of racial prejudice, to the 19,000 votes, the purpose is not to correct an injustice, the purpose is to use any appearance of impropriety to put Al Gore in the White House.

The motivations here are not sincere, or worthy of the process.

In any election where you have 100 million people vote, a small percentage of them are going to have problems. There are going to be irregularities. Democratic party officials did illegal things trading cigarettes for votes and busing people to the polls. Florida results were preannounced affecting the Panhandle and other states. The Florida ballot is ugly, but everybody had the chance to complain about it.

We are at the point now where anything possible is being done to discredit the election, true or not, simply because any action can only benefit Gore.

That is not democratic process. That is trying to beat the system into submission.

The Democrats will do what they are going to do, but on the 17th when the results are certified, whatever they are, that should be that.

You do not sue to pick up a couple of votes, because that leaves no alternative but for the other party to do the same thing. With 100 million voters that leaves a lot to play with and the process and our system, the fairest in the world suffers.

You do not attempt to manipulate and bypass the system to achieve the results you want.

Look at what’s happening to the stock market today. This bullshit hurts the country. Examine the results, and live with them. Don’t fuck with them.

11

> One Country. One election. One day. One person. One Vote.

Amen. Why is it that only the Gore voters were too stupid to read the ballots? That should tell you something.

12

Scylla wrote:

Speak for yourself! :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Only that Bush voters would have to be complete morons to miss hitting the FIRST hole for the FIRST name.

stoid

14

spoke

I cut and pasted that from another thread where I posted it. I had a disclaimer included that made it clear I wasn’t presenting it as fact, but that it was an explanation floating around that needed to be considered.

And no…I am not a Rush fan:)

That would do it for me.

Ok. Take out the machine spitting part. Could this be where the 19,000 ballots came from? They have to keep a record of how many ballots were exchanged SOMEWHERE or else they would have no accounting of all the ballots they received at the end of the day.

Actually in my area we don’t use a friggin box. We have a mechanical machine with levers. My Fiance even used a computerized voting machine. I don’t think until this election I realized a signifigant part of this country was voting like Uganda.

Yes, I know I am attached. And by your shrill tone so are you. Instead of attacking me personally, why don’t you see if you can find a fact somewhere to explain whether or not the 19,000 were discarded ballots, or votes.

15

Well, maybe the Democrat who designed the ballot should have thought of that. Jeez.

Are you interested in fairness, or are you only interested in results that give you the answer you want?

This is all going to be moot anyway. There are about 1 milion uncounted absentee ballots out there yet.

16

There are now a total of I believe 31 other electoral votes that are in dispute, and all but four of those were either won by Gore or Gore is leading. New Mexico is now officially back in the ‘too close to call’ category along with Florida and Wisconsin, and several other states are teetering on the brink.

All of these states have differences in a range from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand votes. If we expand that to any state where the difference is less than 20,000 votes (since Gore’s people want 19,000 ballots overturned in Florida), then you have a huge mess.

Apparently, even California could be disputed because of some severe accusations of election tampering by Democrats. Supposedly there was a Democratic campaign to get homeless people to vote for Gore by bribing them with cigarettes, along with numerous other irregularities.

So if Gore does manage to overturn Florida, Bush will then contest the elections in those other states. They aren’t doing it now because there is no reason to put everyone through that unless Florida switches.

So if Gore gets his way, there will eventually be hundreds of lawsuits filed in dozens of districts all through the U.S.

And Bush would be right for doing this, BTW. If only Gore is allowed this challenge, it thwarts the will of the people.

Is that really what you want? A nation mired in lawsuits over who gets to be President?

And those lawsuits would almost certainly not all be settled by the time the Electoral college is supposed to meet, which means the decision could go to the House and Senate. And we all know who controls those, so Bush would get to be President anyway.

17

Two facts are undeniably clear:

  1. The machine counts for florda votes have not been reliable in several counties. A simple look at the disparities in two results which should have been identical demonstrate this.

  2. The election process in Palm Beach County was flawed.

If anyone cares to disagree with either of the above, then they are free to post a meaningful dissent, assuming they can type while keeping their heads buried in a dark, smelly place.

The solution to #1 is simple – take a fair and accurate hand count. I have seen no meaningful objection to this. I have heard quite a bit of: “Where will it stop?” whining. It stops when an accurate count is recorded. How can any proponent of the democratic process object to an accurate count? If the Bush campaign has other counties that they have reason to suspect were counted inaccurately, for instance a significant disparity between two machine counts that should have been identical or nearly so, then let the Bush camapign ask for a recount in those areas.

The solution to #2 is far more difficult. Certainly, the election process in PBC must be corrected going forward. I have little sympathy for those who argue from insult that voters who had their votes discounted due to confusion are stupid or perspiopic. Perhaps they are. So what? a democratic election demands that the concerns of all citizens be considered, even those who become confused or have poor eyesight. Frankly, I find mockery of those whose votes were discounted to be both cruel and shortsighted. If your partisanship overrides your concern for a fair election then you are a fool. Your “side” will not always be the beneficiary.

Now, the question of whether anything can or should be done about the results of this election is more troublesome. there is merit to the argument that recording an accurate count of the people’s will should be the predominate concern in any election, but I find the idea that a legal electoral result might be overridden or adjusted by the judiciary to be extremely troublesome. Frankly, I think this is one where Gore, should he lose Florida after an accurate recount, should “take one for the republic”. Let this unfairness serve both as a catalyst for reforms of the process in Palm Beach County and as a tonic to two decades of increasing voter apathy.

18

Sam,

I support any efforts to get an accurate vote count. If Bush has serious concerns about the vote count in other states, he should raise them. And he should raise them before the counts are certified.

Of course, if this is simply an example of politicla binksmanship, then he should just carry the bluff as far as it will take him.

One thing people seem to forget is that the Florida recount was mandatory under Florida election law. People also seem to gloss over the simple fact that the machine counts in several counties have been demonstrated to be unreliable. I place no blame on the Gore campaign for wanting an accurate count of the votes in a state where the contest is so close.

19

Spiritus:

Your presence is refreshing here. I tend to agree with what you’ve said.

BTW: Since Fred is infinite, how many votes does he get? :slight_smile:

20

After reading all the bickering here, which apparently leaked over from other threads, I uuge you all to read the OP again. There is no suggestion there of the revote that many of you are arguing about. The topic is the possibility of throwing out the entire Florida vote.

In response to that: All that would do is throw the election into the House of Representatives. There are not enough electoral votes available, without Florida’s share being awarded, for either candidate to get the requisite 270 needed for a win.

If the House were to decide it, more state caucuses have Republican majorities. So, Bush would be the new president, almost surely.