minty: What you see as nefarious disenfranchisement by the Republican power structure, I see as Florida getting busted after previously getting lucky whistling through the graveyard election after election.
Voting equipment and localized staffing and procedural decisions are made at the county level. There’s plenty of blame for both Republicans and Democrats to go around re: the Florida fiasco.
And I’m sure they aren’t the only state hoping they never have a microscopically close statewide election.
in Milo’s dictionary, the words “specific” “uniform” and “rigid” are all synonmous.
Using your quote of the Bush/Gore decision:
A specific and uniform standard **could ** have any of the ones chosen (hanging chads, pregnant chads, no chads). Any of them, as long as they were specific and used uniformly across the counties.
I totally agree with you that everyone shares the blame for the screwed up voting system in Florida: state and counties, Republicans and Democrats. They all ought to be ashamed of what they created.
But given that the system was screwed up and that the election was impossibly close, it seems legitimate to me to look at how officials reacted to it. The R’s closed ranks behind an initial vote count of questionable legitimacy and performed every maneuver they could think of to run out the clock. The D’s cried foul and attempted to fix the problem by overly-selective, standardless recounts. So there’s blame to be shared there too.
But my default position is still that there were an undetermined (but perhaps determinative) number of ballots where voter intent was perfectly clear, but that never got counted. And that, my friend, is inexcusable disenfranchisement.
It’s been estimated that modernizing our voting systems nationwide will require $6-7 billion.
Given that Dubya has just proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut, I think there you’ve got a ‘pet project’ that could be trimmed sufficiently to pay for voting system modernization, without anyone noticing the difference to the pet project in question.
With respect to standards, ‘consistent’ doesn’t generally imply ‘rigid’.
For instance, social-services workers that have to make decisions on whether a child needs to be removed from its family all are guided by the same laws and regs in making their decisions, and are supposed to exercise their judgment in a consistent manner. But they still have judgment that they must exercise, hence no rigidity.
I agree. And while I personally don’t think a pregnant chad equals a vote, particularly when all other spots on a ballot are fully punched, at least that would provide a standard that almost removes subjectivity from the equation.
Personally, I rather like our home state, Michigan’s, standard, which I believe is at least two corners detached on a punch-card chad.
minty:
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But those votes weren’t determinable without violating the Constitution (the equal protection problems of standardless voter intent-searching) or breaking the law (Crafting new rules that affect the conduct of an election that has already occurred - Indeed, one in which the vote totals and the amount needed to overturn the result are known.)
My default position is that the correct time to fix the problems was before the election or after it. Not during it. Following the rules, the Constitution and the law, the correct outcome was achieved.
(Without getting into the fact that Freedom-of-Information recounts are indicating Bush likely won by your standards, anyway.)
And why is the disenfranchisement inexcusable in Florida, but not Michigan or New Jersey or North Dakota? Because it may have changed the outcome here? To that I respond, “So what?” Are all votes equally important or aren’t they? This logic is precisely why problems in the Florida voting apparatus and procedure weren’t changed. It didn’t affect any outcomes before at a statewide level; therefore it didn’t matter.
Firefly:
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Criteria as to what constitutes a vote will still involve some human judgement; just much less of it.
And in your above scenario, the social worker isn’t a relative of the family for whom she is making the child placement decision. Nor does she stand to gain financially or otherwise from the outcome of her decision.
Roughly the situation that was present with Democratic Party members (on canvassing boards in key, Gore-leaning counties) having the power to change the result of an election to a Democratic candidate, using varying and undefined standards.
You seem to have shifted your position now Milo. (I’m sorry, or is your ‘default’ position the one where you avoid admitting that you were wrong by shifting your stance 180 degrees?) Your position, as stated before, was that the SCOTUS defined searching for the ‘intent of the voter’ as being unconstitutional etc. and, in fact, you personally expounded on this as well
From page one:
and
hmmm. no concession about ‘well, all I’m looking for is consistent standards’.
More from page one:
Yep, here he is again, force feeding the word “rigid”
and here on this page:
But now he’s saying “consistent standards”, but just not last November, then it would have been wrong to issue consistent standards after the vote (even tho’ the SCOTUS indicated that there simply wasn’t enough time to do so).
ooooookay. Time to find another ‘default position’. By the way, you are the only one who has been saying that we only care (present tense) about Florida’s standards and voting equipment. The disenfrachisment of voters (any) should be of concern to all.
wring: Do they have any “Reading is Fundamental” programs in your neighborhood? I suggest you scoot up a chair with the third-graders.
You may want to scroll back to where I said:
**
A. As I pointed out in my lengthy, quote-after-quote citation from both the SCOTUS majority opinion and dissenting opinions, virtually all of them saw standardless intent-of-the-voter as problematic, wrong and/or unconstitutional. Making your “even tho’ the SCOTUS indicated that there simply wasn’t enough time to do so” statement ludicrous.
I was a bit leery of making such a lengthy post, but hoped that seeing the message hammered home in bolded quote after bolded quote would sink in for people like you. Clearly, I underestimated you.
It mentions similar sentiments that refute your assertion about 20 or so more times. Want me to post them for you to ignore, too?
B. My position hasn’t changed a bit. I clarified it (as quoted above) for people like you who don’t seem to understand it.
And it’s cute of you to make it sound as though it’s my partisan assertion that the rules for conducting an election shouldn’t be changed in the process of that election.
I’ve already stated (several times) that the recounts should have occurred under uniform standards to determine voter intent. Doing so would not, as I read Bush, violate equal protection.
Also, the Court’s initial opinion (remanding to Florida to reconsider the basis of its decision postponing Katherine Harris’ certification deadline) expressed concern that Fla. had improperly based a decision on the state constitution rather than normal judicial interpretation of the legislature’s pre-existing statute. Nowhere in the subsequent majority opinion did the Supreme Court express the slightest concern that setting uniform standards would violate the federal statute regarding the election of the electoral college. If formulating uniform standards to determine voter intent after the election violated federal law, it would be pretty silly of the Court to say that, but for the time crunch, they’d remand to Fla. for the court there to work out such standards. Thus, your second argument here is not recognized as valid law, and it’s also a rather weak argument at that.
Fine by me, if true. I have no problem with counting votes. I have a big problem with refusing to let them be accurately counted.
Disenfranchisement is inexcusable no matter where it occurs. But it ought to be obvious that the problem of disenfranchisement is far more serious when it may have affected an election.
How is it that your repeated assertions for “rigid” standard now becomes “consistent” standard and isn’t a backtracking? As I pointed out before, a consistent standard could have easily have been what Texas had - ie the pregnant chads, which not only are substantially less than “rigid”, but as subjective as they come, which, to quote you again would make them: “illegal, unconstitutional, subjective, partisan, ineffective and dogshit.”. I don’t think anyone has had a difficulty in reading and understanding your position (as it changes), we’ve just pointed out when and where you are mistaken or have changed it.
As far as quoting the federal law etc. Minty details nicely the problem with your assesment of the situation and the SCOTUS decisions, or did you think the Supremes were ill aquainted with the relevant federal statues?
Now, for the rest of it, I didn’t agree with the poster on the first page who got nasty with you. The worst I’ve said to you is that you switched your position/equating ‘default position’ with refusing to admit you were wrong (a stance I maintain). Your references to reading ability, and user name nonsense well, let’s just say that other people are able to disagree without such personal attacks.
And that’s just another thing to laugh about. Canada uses the hysterically high-tech, advanced, and foolproof system of having the voter mark an x or a check mark beside the name of the candidate of his or her choice.
We count our mail-in and advance ballots prior to election day.
Certainly true. However, whatever voting problems we may have had didn’t serve to delegitimize the entire election.
Foolproof? You underestimate the ability of fools to screw things up. Tell me, how difficult is it to mark an X beside the names of two candidates for the same race? Foolproof, my leg. My instincts tell me that such a system leads to a decent proportion of discarded, screwed-up ballots.
In any case, the method of balloting is neither here not there as it relates to the process of counting them.
See, there’s that equal protection thing again. The entire state of Oregon went to mail-in ballots this year. The date of the presidential election is a Federal matter. You cannot have 49 states allowed to vote on Nov. 7, and have one state required to have their mail-in ballots already mailed-in and counted (as opposed to postmarked) prior to Nov. 7. Despite what you may think, we do make our best efforts to treat people by the same rules.
You don’t have an electoral vote system. If we didn’t, the Florida vote totals would have been irrelevant.
Bully for you and for her. Is she also quietly moving her chair north?
A hell of a lot more difficult to do accidentally than not punching a chad all the way through, or misreading a butterfly ballot.
Excuse me, the format of the ballot you use is of primary importance as to how certain you can be that what you see on the ballot is what the person meant.
If they’re the same ridiculous, naive, and ineffective rules, that makes things worse, not better.
But it was, Blanche, it was. Are you saying that the only reason that disenfranchisement due to electoral incompetence is only a worry if the election is close? That it wouldn’t have ethically mattered if gross irregularities like this had occurred in Podunk, Iowa, where the election was uncontested?
She moved her chair quite definitively north quite some time ago when she decided that she felt the same way about the States that I eventually would.
And about that: if an elephant was stumbling about clumsily in your immediate vicinity, I imagine you’d move your chair too.
wring: I consider ‘rigid’ standards and ‘consistent’ standards the same thing. Sorry if you don’t.
From the New Webster’s Dictionary:
rigidadj. - Stiff; unyielding; not pliant; strict; stern; rigorous.
consistentadj. - Fixed; firm; not contradictory; compatible.
To characterize that as a flip-flop is insulting, and puzzling.
The words are interchangeable. So what in the hell are you talking about?
And if you can’t read the quoted citations from the SCOTUS justices that clearly indicate that there was far more going on then simply running out of time, my comments on your reading and comprehension stand.
Just look at the definitions above. They are not interchangeable. They, in the manner of English words of all kinds, cover a range of meanings, but they’re different ranges, in the case of these two words. Those ranges may overlap slightly, but on the whole, “consistent” and “rigid” are not the same thing.
Which you agreed with me on, after I explained the difference earlier:
If that’s what you said about ‘consistent’ standards, then ‘consistent’ is not ‘rigid’; the latter leaves no room for human judgment.
So I can only conclude that you’ve flipflopped once - to salvage some debating points with me - and now you’re flipping back again, in hopes of scoring on wring.
You’ve forgotten we can all read this. Speaking of which:
And you might want to give GD a rest until you’ve caught up with your grade level.
Let’s see, how exactly did FL law define a ‘vote’ before the election?
Did it define it as “whatever the machine read as a vote”?
No.
Did it define it in terms of “the intent of the voter”?
Yes.
Seems that the Supreme Court was the party that decided to “fix the problems” “during” the election.
So - according to Milossarian - the Supreme Court ruled correctly, but fixing the problems while matters are in play is wrong.
You can’t have it both ways. Not here.
And the Supreme Court majority was above such concerns how? (I understand that Justice O’Connor is sighing with relief that she can now retire during a GOP administration.)
RTFirefly: The Supreme Court wasn’t looking at ballots and determining whether they contained votes and for whom; it declared a portion of Florida election law unconstitutional. That’s what it, on occasion, does. It also stopped the Florida Supreme Court from trying to fix the problems and change the rules after the election had taken place.
You’ve read the ruling, right? You really need me to tell you this?
As to your follow-up post, You do realize that any activity involving millions of humans will contain human error, always? That at some point, the time for trying to tidy up all that messy and inevitable human error comes to an end, and then it’s moving-on time? That time is outlined in Florida election law, federal law regarding presidential elections, and the U.S. Constitution (the deadlines).
This was pointed out perfectly by the mess the Florida SC created when it messed with the deadlines.
No, no, no. How many times do I have to repeat this point before you actually understand it? Fuck it, let’s let the Court speak for itself:
Tell me, milo, why the hell would the Court say that it could be done with “substantial additional work” if doing that work were unconstitutional? Still fail to understand? Fine. Read on:
I will say this one last time. The recount as ordered by Fla. was unconstitutional because it failed to order uniform standards that would comply with equal protection. That is bloody well NOT the same as saying that developing complying standards after the election is illegal. In fact, the per curiam majority specifically says that it cannot remand the case to Florida for the (post-election!!!) development of such standards because there was no time for them to do so. You do not even contemplate such a remand if it’s fucking illegal!!!
The Court NEVER, EVER, NOT EVEN ONCE says or even implies that setting uniform standards for the legislature’s “intent of the voter” standard is either contrary to federal statute or the Constitution.