New Mexico issued a conditional certification that Al Gore won their election by 483 votes and their five electoral votes. It would have been a final certification had the Republicans not protested, citing the fact that 570 ballots (out of 5114) in Roosevelt County showed no vote at all for any Presidential candidate. They say it’s odd that 10% of the ballots should show no vote for President. They want those votes recounted because they may give the state to Bush.
In Miami-Dade County, Florida, more than 10,000 ballots showed no vote for any Presidential candidate. The Republicans do NOT want those votes recounted because those votes may give the state to Gore.
If that isn’t hypocritical, I’ll eat this keyboard.
This really does take the cake. Although in fairness I will say that a 10% undervote is quite a bit more unlikely than the 2% that we are seeing in Miami/Dade.
Still the chances of 570 ballots giving Bush enough MORE votes than Gore for it to change the outcome of the state is also pretty unlikely.
So is Gore contesting the recount in New Mexico? or is the hypocracy in this one-sided?
Bush is so hypocritical because republicans are contesting this.
Though it is odd New Mexico does not matter.
“In Miami-Dade County, Florida, more than 10,000 ballots showed no vote for any Presidential candidate. The Republicans do NOT want those votes recounted because those votes may give the state to Gore.”
I thought it was like 2000 in the whole state? Ah well I don’t know, who cares about New Mexico?
Gore and Bush arent contesting New Mexico because it doesen’t matter.
But im sure there are democrats trying to stop the recount.
The way I look at it, you have to pick who was right and wrong in your own mind from the first week or so. After that, it was pure warfare and if you thought a particular candidate deserved to win, then they had to get down and dirty to stay in the fight.
Right about now all bets are off and I think we could see some stuff much worse than the New Mexico mirror image.
I guess that’s about as hypocritical as the Gore campaign saying they want a ‘full and fair count’, while simultaneously trying to get almost 15,000 votes thrown out because Republicans wrote a voter ID number on the application for the absentee ballot. This is about as trivial a technicality as you’ll ever find.
In case you’re not familiar with the details - voters have to apply for an absentee ballot. The Democrats pre-printed the voter ID on their applications. A computer glitch resulted in the Voter ID on a number of applications being left off, so a Republican staffer hand-wrote them on. This is not the ballot itself, just the *application for a ballot. No one is suggesting that the votes are wrong, and they were filled out correctly.
As usual, you only mention the details that support your preconceptions. Here’s a few more details that don’t.
Gore is not involved in this lawsuit.
The law in Florida is very clear on this one. ONLY a person or his/her legal guardian may fill out an absentee ballot request. No exceptions. This laws is aparently designed to prevent absentee ballot fraud (which Florida has had a bad problem with in recent years.)
So, ‘rule of law’ says that these aren’t valid ballots. And it certainly isn’t fair to count invalid ballots only for republicans.
If you want to count these, then Gore should get to count the Buchannan/Gore double punched ballots.
Like the butterfly ballots, It’s the votor’s fault that their ballot was invalidated. They didn’t follow the rules.
tj, you forgot to mention the other convenient fact left out:
the additions that were done by the Republicans after the ballot requests had been returned, and in the Seminole County case, had been slated for disposal.
In the other counties where this went on, **only ** republicans were allowed to add info to the ballot requests. dems were specifically denied.
Faulty applications from Republicans were fixed and their ballots were sent to them. Faulty applications from Democrats were dumped and their ballots were NOT sent.
Further, the Democrats were never informed of it and never had the opportunity to do fix their ballot applications.
This is not a “hypertechnical point of law”, it’s a matter of simple fairness. The Republican voters were franchised while the Democrats were disenfranchised, systematically. Is there any disagreement about that?
The Alabama precedent would seem to require dismissing all absentee ballots in both Seminole and Martin Counties. Yes, that means Gore wins, without even getting into the PBC butterfly ballots, the Duval racial mess, DeLay’s Miami-Dade shutdown, etc.
(But I frankly hope it comes back and bites 'em somehow. All it would take is for three Bush electors from some other state(s) to change their minds - assuming Bush wins Florida - and vote for Gore for Gore to win.)
