???
What are you talking about?
ExTank I’m impressed. To me, the definition of partisanship is where one’s position on an issue depends NOT on a philosophy, but on how it effects one’s own party. In this war of words, there’s darned few who are willing to say what you did. I agree that it’s deplorable. I also agree that the rule of law, as it exists, requires this action. Since all of the conditions described as problematic for military and overseas ballots were known in advance of this election, the exception should have been made then. What is saddest is that before this election, the military ballots were apparently thought as so “expendable” that they would overlook potential issues with them and leave them unprotected by the law.
For those who keep emphasizing the fact that the Democratic partisan are observers and not vote counters. What do you think of the fact that many people have been doubling as Democratic observers and vote counters, serving as each on alternate days? This according to Sunday’s NY Times. The canvassing board people say they see no problem with this, and have a shortage of manpower to deal with. (Apparently this shortage is not severe enough for them to draft any Republicans, however).
Izzy a. link please. b. First, please tell me what you think about the person certifying the entire election being not JUST a party member, but the co-chair of one candidate’s election campaign?
point being, that all elected officials have a party affiliation. The board of canvassers in any area is no different. It may be, (and please check this) that the board of canvassers may or may not be able to supliment their staff. I don’t know, suggest you look it up.
**I mentioned that it is in yesterday’s NY Times. They don’t keep articles past one day. If you chose to disregard it, fine.
I am referring back to the OP of this thread. Several people, possibly including yourself (I don’t recall) suggested that the attitude described in the LA Times article is not as significant as had been suggested, due to the fact that the people described were observers, not counters. To this I am pointing out that there is some overlap between these two groups, and that the attitudes of the observers are likley present among the counters as well.
Regarding the general issue of bias, I agree with you that everyone is biased. As your attitude is also such, I would expect you to attach less significance to the fact that Ms. Harris is a Republican. But it is more significant in the case of these vote counters. This is because there have already been two counts of the Florida vote. The only reason for the manual recount, especially in light of the state deadline, is the purported added accuracy of such counts. Once it is acknowledged that it too is flawed, there is no reason for it to go forward, and the previous counts should stand.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by IzzyR *
**
Izzy. I’ll try to point out the difference again. Yes, every one is subject to bias. However, it becomes a problem when one has a personal stake in the outcome, and one has an ability to ** change** the outcome. So - my state’s SoS is also a republican. a. the outcome in my state wasn’t an issue (ie it wasn’t even close) and more importantly b. She was NOT an active campaigner for either candidate. She had the presumption of impartiality. Once a public official gets into the area of having a demonstratable personal interest in the outcome of a decision, that public official, by general rules of conflict of interest has the duty and obligation to recuse themselves. Mere party affiliation is ** not sufficient**. Co-chair of the campaign (as in SoS Harris) is.
Re: reliability of hand counting in the first place. If they are inherantly flawed and unreliable, then why do so many states (and we’ve pointed out that Florida and Texas) ever allow them? I’ll help you out with the answer. It’s cause they aren’t inherantly flawed. And, frankly I suspect they’d be LESS flawed in this case since the attention of the world, cameras, the public AND members of both parties are witnessing the entire process.
RE: partisanship - To me, the clear cut example of paritisanship thinking comes from people making inconsistent arguements (“lets follow the rule of law, except here where it’s not fair to our military folk”) or repeating the “party line” without applying critical reasoning.
FTR. I’m not registered in either party, don’t subscribe to either newsletters, have supported and voted for members of both major parties as well as many independant ones.
Think about it. What the party line is alleging will happen is that under the scrutiny of cameras, the public, AND members of both parties, there will be 1000 (at least) ballots that will be identified as having no mark for President AND surreptitiously have a tiny hole punched out IN the exact place for one candidate ALL without anyone noticing AND knowning that if caught they’ll face criminal prosecution?
I’d like to see some one try and demonstrate how it could be done. 1000 times. When you’re voting, you have the card in a plastic sleeve that only allows for punches to go in the correct column, then you have arrows on the ballot to correctly identify which hole, and EVEN with all this help, there were thousands of folks in PBC who couldn’t correctly do this. And you really believe that there’s going to be 1000 more marked without the sleeves and arrows pointing to the correct one???
Have you even seen the films of the recounts ? there’s the canvasser, holding up the ballot showing it to the two party designees each in turn, cameras, members of the public etc.
People are acting like recounts and hand recounts never happen. They do. Where was all this concern about their failability for the past number of years?
It makes my head ache.
It should be mentioned that Burton seems, of all the Democratic vote people, to be the least partisan, and the fairest. In fact, the quotes that I heard him make didn’t single out the Republicans - he merely said that both sides are unfairly blaming the vote counters, who are doing a good job considering the circumstances.
I agree.
(but I still don’t trust him, I know he is up to something:))
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by wring *
**
I don’t agree with this distinction.
Well, the position of some is that they are useful in cases where there is suspicion that the machines have malfunctioned. Also, if the manual recount was more evenly distributed by Republican and Democratic districts (and precincts), the biases would cancel out. In this instance, even leaving aside allegations of deliberate impropriety, there is a subjective bias which will disproportionately benefit Gore. I don’t see how you are responding to this.
I once saw a study of studies of ESP, which claimed that the testers were prone to make errors in recording the data, and that the errors were biased in the direction of the testers’ personal beliefs about ESP. Something to think about.
Hey, thanks. Glad you cleared that up.
This claim seems strange. Yes, there are members of the Republican Party witnessing the process. But these very observers are claiming that the process is skewed in favor of the Democrats. You are essentially dismissing the arguments of these people by saying they must be wrong about what they claim to have seen, because after all they are there and would have seen if there was anything wrong.
I’m not sure about the “Party Line”, but you would do well to respond to the more reasonable allegations, besides for the “Party Line” ones. As mentioned earlier, the ballots are being subjected to interpretation by those who are biased in one direction.
And I don’t know why you need to think it will happen a thousand times in order to be concerned. At this point, it is unlikely that Gore will pick up the votes he needs even with a full manual recount. (For this reason, his forces have begun focusing on loosening the interpretations of legitimate ballots). If he wins, it is likely to be by far fewer than 1000 votes.
wring, since your comments were probably pointed at me, but you didn’t go so far as to say so, for some reason:
I agree. There are several people on this board who say the same things over and over and over, despite the facts. One I know threw a straw-man into an argument, completely out of context, involving the national breakdown of the presidential election by county. The point the poster was initially making with the county map was the importance of the electoral college keeping vital the smaller states in the middle of the U.S., but that didn’t stop the poster to whom I’m referring from using it negatively in a completely different argument.
And as for the “let’s follow the rule of law, except here where it’s not fair to our military folk” comment, Freedom2 posted the law which allows overseas absentee military ballots that have no postmarks.
Some people’s partisan blinders would let them skip right past that, to make yet another point critical of only one side in the debate, all the while pretending to be impartial.
And for all who believe this is a fair, impartial, non-partisan hand-count, bringing us to a more accurate reflection of the will of the voters in Florida, please explain this little item from a USAToday editorial Monday:
Are Republicans less likely to do anything that works to Gore’s advantage? I would imagine so. All of this is precisely the reason why hand-counting is flawed, and a statewide hand-count would not be more accurate, either.
An LA Times article from this week-end (if someone insists I can try and dig up the article) mentioned that one of the problems with the recount is the problem of finding enough Republican observers, not a lack of desire to draft any Republicans. Some people’s interpretation of that lack of Republican observers is a desire by the Republican party to delay the hand recount as much as possible. If I wanted to provide a partisan generalisation, similar to the one in the original post in this thread, I could say the following: the Republican party is claiming that it wants a swift resolution, but is doing its best to slow down the hand count. One Republican vote counter, according to the LA Times, quit after witnessing the behaviour of some republican vote counters, e.g. one republican systematically challenging every sixth vote to slow down the process.
I agree with the original post’s condemnation of this lawyer’s comments, but I disagree with the intent to tar all democrats with the same brush. In the same way, the examples I mentioned above concerning Republican vote-counters do not apply to all republican vote-counters or to republicans in general.
I do agree that the amount of partisan bickering and insults provoked by this election is staggering and diminishes my faith in the ability of voters to make impartial decisions.
Arnold,
You seem to be focusing on attaching blame, or combatting stereotypes. What’s more the issue is whether the overall process of manual recounting is fair, or whether it is biased towards the Democrats. Even if a minority of those doing the counting are biased, it biases the overall process.
Sounds familar… like the argument about the 19,000 lost votes in PBC.
The shame of this election is it reflects well on what America has become. Save a minority percentage of the population, we have become reactive rather than proactive. The problems were known on both sides of the fence 4 years ago and rather than take the ‘EVERY VOTE COUNTS’ line when it was forseeable that every vote didn’t count, they waited until they REALLY could count to take any action. And who even knows if any corrective action will be taken? Perhaps the electoral ballots should be federalized? I don’t think so, but perhaps at least States should look into standardized voting practices after this fiasco.
Wring, I agree with you almost 100% on this, both sides have acted without the interests of the people since election day. They have acted selfishly, with complete bias and malice and contempt toward one another. I do not picture any galas in DC this year, the like of the Clinton galas, no matter which mumbleasshole*mumble candidate wins.
I hope that Florida, if not the rest of the States in the Union, can fix their voting method problems over the next two years instead of keeping inadequate equipment just in case they need to rely on legal procedures to win in 2004.
BAN CHADS! Well, not guys named Chad.
BTW… The Palm Beach Hokey was funny, but exactly the kind of problem that our next President will face for four years.
I made a post pointing out the unfair generalizations that were being used in the OP because that’s what irritated me the most.
I would modify your statement to read “What’s more the isse is whether the overall process of manual recounting is biased towards any one particular party”. I am willing to assume that the presence of one Democratic and one Republican observer at each vote count station will help prevent that bias, even if some individual vote counters try to introduce a bias in the process. Of course the method is not perfect, but I think it will be more useful than a machine count to accurately tally votes rejected by machines because of an imperfectly punched chad, which in an election as close as this, would be relevant in my mind.
So Izzy doesn’t agree with the position that an elected official with a demonstrable conflict of interest should recuse themselves from decisions in which their bias may have an effect? I guess no sense arguing that point – although it’s a standard of political office.
RE: Handcounting of votes: Every machine count will have a certain (hopefully small) error rate. When the margin of the win is less than the error rate of the machine, then hand counts are the preferred method. Machine counts are less expensive and quicker, not necessarily more accurate.
And for all of you who keep insisting that fraud is going on, if anyone has any evidence of criminal activity going on, offer the proof to the proper law enforcement personnel, period. Until there is some shred of evidence, it’s shouldn’t be part of your argument… To date, despite the crowds of people there, only republicans seem to be alleging fraud. Not the media (except to quote the allegations), not the law enforcement personnel, not the courts, not the spectators. And, again, there would need to be wholesale activity going on in order to change the results of the election. Numbers of people willing to commit felonies in full view of cameras and member of the public. While it’s impossible to prove something isn’t happening, you should at least be prepared to demonstrate how such a thing ** could** happen to the extent necessary.
As all of you are aware, Mr. Bush had opportunities to request recounts and did not. Mr. Gore did, in counties where Democratic votes were generally more plentiful and the voting apparatus was more prone to error. This was his right under Florida law. Deal with it.
Let me go on record again (I’ve said this before) that I believe that ** even with the hand count** that Bush will win. It is in Bush’s best interest to let them be done, otherwise he’ll hear for 4 years, “but you didn’t count all the votes”.
And Milo, so glad you noticed me. I didn’t direct anything to you, since I felt that it would be improper to take you to task for something you said in another thread. Since you felt it appropriate here goes: A few days after the election, when three entire states still had not posted their results, you (and one other poster) came up with the statement “Bush beat Gore in number of counties by a 4/1 ratio” (I may have the ratio incorrect). And several of us took that on. So, at that point, 3 states weren’t done counting,& national news sources were reporting info like “popular vote count, # of electoral votes won and # of states won” ,I wonder where you got that piece of information? Since states were reporting election results by precincts, the info had to have come from a different source. When you get most of your information from a biased source of information, it behooves you to apply critical thinking to the material. (I don’t call Democrat national headquarters for my info – I check at least 3-5 on line national sources among them ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) So the question you should have asked is “how reliable is this information since the counts aren’t in yet” and “why is this information important”. Has a “county vs. county” count ever been mentioned? Not in my 28 years of voting. So, spin doctors saw that the electoral and popular count at that point were in Gore’s favor, gotta come up with some number quickly to counter it. The rationale you gave for “why is it significant” is identical to the reason we have an electoral college in the first place, and should go hand in hand along with the number of states won (which favored Bush). It was and is an irrelevant piece of information, in that it merely repeats the same arguments that have already been accepted for the electoral college.
RE: Military ballotsRule of law is (and will be here) decided in the courts. Freedom quoted Federal law, others quoted State law. I kept saying (perhaps you missed this) that if all this were true, geez, you’d have thought people cared about the military before this election enough to fix the law in Florida. They didn’t. deal with it.
By the way, quoting editorials is quoting an opinion. Not a fact, an opinion. Let’s please deal with facts supportable by rational argument and unbiased, non partisan sources, if you would.
Just Another Guy: if you’d read my postings, you’d have noticed that I agreed that the argument about the military posts is identical to the argument about the 18,000 PBC votes, and my point was that I agreed that both should be tossed as ineligible to be counted under the current law. So it looks like we’re in agreement here.
I guess the only thing to argue about is what I actually don’t agree with.
Clearly, an official who is in a unique position of conflict of interest should recuse themself. This is, as you mentioned, a standard of political office. Thus someone who has a business or family relationship which would be affected by the decision should recuse themselves. Note in this regard the example set by Jeb Bush.
The issue here concerns political bias. This is widespread. Almost everyone in politics and even many not in politics brings some bias to bear with regard to this issue. For this reason, it is standard practice for elected (and appointed officials) to make decisions that affect their political party, even though they will be biased. Your position, expressed earlier, is that by virtue of being a campaign co-chair, and one who campaigned for Bush, Ms. Harris is uniquely biased, as compared to a typical member of the Republican (or Democratic) Party. It is this distinction that I disagree with.
FTR, I believe the Attorney general, Bob Butterworth, was the Gore campaign co-chairman. My position applies to him as well.
I have heard that he was not only campaign chairman but is also one of the electors on the Gore ticket. As such he would be a candidate in the election Can anyone verify if he is indeed one of the electors?
Sorry for the momentary brainlock- I must have forgotten how to use a search engine.
To answer my question- yes, Florida AG, Bob Butterworth, is a Gore elector. See http://election.dos.state.fl.us/2000elec/Electors2000/2000electors.shtml
Does anyone have any thoughts about what might be going on in Broward County? From what I remember, Broward first said that they wouldn’t do a hand count. Then they said they would do a sample count of 1,000 ballots. Based on that, they decided not to do a full recount. Later, they changed their mind and decided to do a full recount. Then, the standard for the recount changed yesterday, presumably because someone told them that using two corners as a standard was ‘illegal’.
Today, Broward refused to allow any media in to observe the counting (the press had asked for a single pool reporter as an observer, and was refused). Now, three members of the committee have quit.
Any thoughts?
And what about Miami-Dade? They didn’t even submit a reason for hand-counting by the SOS’s demand, because at the time they said they weren’t going to do a hand count. Now they’re doing one. Can they just ignore her initial order that they had to submit reasons for counting by last Tusday at 1PM?
It seems to me that what is going on is that there is heavy pressure coming down from the Gore campaign on the Democratic officials in these counties, but that they’ve been trying to beg off hoping that Gore would pick up enough votes from the other ones. Now that that doesn’t look likely, they’re all being brought into play, and being told to be extra-diligent in ‘sifting votes’. This may account for some of the resignations.
But this is pure speculation. I just find the machinations going on to be fascinating.
Does anyone want to suggest what Gore might do if he either loses in the Supreme Court of Florida or doesn’t get enough votes in the hand count? There is an end-game strategy for him here - tie up the Florida election until Dec 18, and the Electoral college might decide to vote without Florida, or Florida’s electors could be rejected. Either one of those scenarios would give him the presidency. I think he’d be nuts to brazenly attempt a grab at power like that, but some pundits are starting to talk about this.
Hi again wring:
You are correct. Although, in my opinion (and opinion only), I think this portion of the law could eventually be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because it appears to violate the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. The votes of people in a few particular counties, for whatever reason (in this case, because it’s allowed by a state statute) are being treated in a special, different manner than those from voters in the rest of the state and country.
Re: National vote by county map -
As I am a newspaper reporter who has covered elections for years, I can tell you that uncertified vote totals are available by county typically as quickly as the day after an election.
As for my biased source of information, it was that Right Wing, reactionary propaganda leaflet, USA Today. (The map, sourced to USA Today, can be seen here.)
Speaking of spin-doctoring …
Actually, I think what the map shows speaks for itself. Bush likely won this election thanks to all of those small states in the middle of this country, and the majority of voters populating about 80 percent of this nation’s land mass want Bush for president. Further pointing to why those who call for the abolition of the electoral college to a straight popular vote are misguided, because it could diminish the importance and the voice of those of us outside of America’s biggest cities.
-
Who decided that the arguments for and against the electoral college had been accepted? The fact that there’s a thread devoted to the subject in a message board forum called Great Debates might lead one to believe that there was a lack of consensus.
-
Who made you the arbiter of what information is relevant and what isn’t?
You opinion is welcome. But it doesn’t supercede anyone else’s.
Considering Florida Attorney General Robert Butterworth, a Democrat and Gore’s campaign manager in the state, has called for county canvassing boards to go back and count any proper overseas military absentee ballot, postmark or no, because they are legal and allowable, I’d suggest YOU deal with it.
Everyone is free to reject USA Today’s opinion of what the numbers mean. I included it because it reflects my view of what the numbers mean. But do you dispute the percentage of rejected ballots as they are presented? Nice try. Please give me your source for doing so.
It’s not at all identical. The Palm Beach County situation involves voters filling out their ballots incorrectly. The military overseas ballots involved voters filling out their ballots correctly, with the problem in the delivery source. And, it turns out, there isn’t even a problem, as the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Florida (and Gore’s campaign manager) has said in the link I’ve provided above.