Palm Beach County: Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money (well OK, maybe not guns...)

Great Debates
1

Seemed like we needed a thread specifically about the problems with the Palm Beach County ballot, and what, if anything, should be done.

The story so far, for those that have somehow missed it:

On election night, there were a number of complaints from people in the county who realized, after having voted, that while they’d intended to vote for Gore, they might have unintentionally voted for Buchanan. And if you’ve seen the ballot, you can see where some people might get a bit confused by it. Apparently the number of confused voters was not exactly down in the white noise.

In PBC, where Gore got 62% of the vote, Buchanan got 3407 votes. Buchanan only got 17,358 votes in the entire state. No other FL county (Pinellas) gave Buchanan more than 1010 votes; only four FL counties other than PBC (Pinellas, Hillsborough, Broward, Duval) gave Buchanan more than 600 votes.

Due to the layout of the ballot, the first candidate listed was pretty much immune to the confusion; however, voters intending to vote for candidates further down the list could have much more easily punched the wrong hole.

As it turns out, Bush was the first candidate listed; Gore was the second candidate listed on the left (and third overall, hence the confusion). So there is little likelihood that any Bush votes were mis-punched as a result of the poor ballot layout; Gore voters clearly were the vast majority of the victims of the confusing ballot.

In addition, 19,120 ballots in PBC were disqualified because they had been punched twice for the same office. (There were 432,000 votes recorded for President in PBC, so the 19,120 disqualified ballots represents over 4% of the total. That’s an extremely high % of disqualifications for a particular reason such as that.) This specific issue is being discussed in the They Threw away 19,000 votes! thread.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the recount, Bush’s lead in FL is down to something like 1200 votes. The likelihood that at least twice that many Gore voters were turned into Buchanan voters, or knocked off the count altogether, is extremely high. If Bush’s lead in FL remains under 3000, say, there is the real question of whether some legal remedy should be undertaken.

It seems to me that there are a few obvious ways to fix this. One is to award 2400 of the Buchanan votes to Gore. It’s reasonable to assume that that’s appropriate, but it’s kind of arbitrary.

Another, along the same lines, is to take a look at the twice-punched ballots, and see how many had both Gore and Buchanan punched. These ballots could be allocated between the two candidates relative to the overall voting strengths of the two in PBC. That might settle things all by itself. But it has some of the arbitrariness problems of the first solution.

A better choice is to do a revote of Palm Beach County. IMO, such a revote should be restricted to those who voted on Tuesday. Since it’s clear that a lot of people who actually showed up at the polls didn’t get to vote for the candidate they intended to vote for, but it’s impossible to say which ballots should be changed, the most fair and sensible thing to do, if the election is still in dispute after the overseas votes trickle in, is to let the PBC voters who cast ballots on Tuesday set the record straight in a new vote.

And finally, if all of the above are rejected, it seems that the only fair thing is to admit that Florida is too close to call, and split its 25 electoral votes 12-12, and flip a coin for vote #25.

But for Bush to be awarded Florida on the basis of a thin margin among those votes that can be counted, if it’s clear that Gore was swindled out of a larger number of votes that can’t be counted, would be the equivalent of stealing an election. IMO, that can’t be allowed to happen.

So what do my fellow Dopers think?

2

This must be a conservative/liberal thing. The only people who find that ballot confusing are liberals who are terrified of a Bush Presidencey, and will say anything to prevent it.

Do you guys ever take responsibility for anything? Do you ever get tired of being victims?

Does this include military and regular absentee ballots?

Who finds this appropriate? Gore supporters? We have something called the LAW in this country. You don’t get to pull a solution out of thin air in a situation like this. You play by the rules on the books, and when you lose, you admit it.

That is why we have had so many succesful peaceful transitions of power in this country.

Are you crazy?

Would you honestly support this random county picking the president in a re-vote if this was the other way around? Any bets on how many votes Nader would get this time through?

ummmm…

They did have just as much opportunity and chance to vote for the person they intended to as the rest of us. This isn’t 3rd grade, there are no “do overs.”

It seems to me that if Florida is in question, Bush will ask for a recount in several other states. If that doesn’t do it, we get to find out if any Electoral voters will change their vote.

Then, if THAT doesn’t do it, the whole thing goes to the House of Representatives, and the VP selection goes to the Senate.

I know this little thing we have called a Constitution is not all that popular around here, but it is what sets the rules and keeps these things peaceful. We all agree to the rules up front, and then we live by them if we lose. Now is not the time to be bickering about the process or trying to change it.

3

I’ve been trying to stay out of these threads because it’s not my country, but I have to disagree with this. Now is the time to bicker about the process.

When else are you going to get sufficient attention to questionable voting procedures or to the merits or otherwise of winner-takes-all college votes? Clearly now is exactly the time to put these issues up for people to think about, when they can see how these things matter in a close call. Mind you it should go without saying that any changes can only apply next time.

picmr

4

No, now is not the time to bicker about the process. One second after this election has been resolved is OK with me, but I think talking about the process in midstride is going to cause problems all around.

All effort should be focused on peacefully transitioning from one President to another (whoever it is), after this is accomplished, we can start talking about change all anyone wants.

5

FYI, approximately 16,500 of those 19,000 invalidated ballots were double-punched for Buchanan and Gore. Occam’s Razor, Freedom.

I’m sick of people being reflexively ideological about this. If it was going the other way, I guaran-damn-tee you I’d still be stumping for a re-vote. This election is going to be decided by a couple thousand votes, and you want to overlook the fact that around 20,000 people likely voted one way when they meant to vote another, tipping the balance? It’s not us who sound partisan, Freedom, it’s you.

6

I did not want Bush to win (I did not like Gore either, but I felt he was the lesser of two evils - I abstained from voting, though). I’ve lived in Texas the whole time he has been governor, and I think it’s nuts that people would want him to be president. But I thought it was ridiculous when people suggested that he shouldn’t get the presidency because of his not getting the popular vote. Like it or not (count me among the nots) the electoral college is the way we choose our president, and this has come up before.

But this isn’t about changing the rules, this is about enforcing them. It is plainly obvious the Palm Beach County ballot has some serious flaws, and it happens to be that Palm Beach County could decide the presidency. Even if there WASN’T a Florida law against a two-page ballot (and there is) this should be investigated. It’s too suspicious and too important to be ignored.

7

I mean if they wanted a credible count shouldn’t they send people with a little more character than LAWYERS? :smiley:

8

[posted a second time to fix some quotes and emphases. My apologies.]

Ah, joy - a target-rich environment!

The problem with the ballot was that it was a biased instrument - where a name was placed on the ballot dictated the level of confusion a voter for that candidate was subject to.

Any reasonable definition of electoral fairness would suggest that the ballot itself shouldn’t be a factor in determining who gets how many votes. If it is, then something’s wrong.

On top of that, the public officials in charge of the election are vested with a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that that is so. In this instance, they failed miserably, and to a degree far beyond that of similar officials elsewhere.

When the people of PBC voted, their task was choosing a candidate. If their task had been figuring out a piece of paper, they’d have gotten that right. But anyone’s going to mess up Task B a bit more, no matter how straightforward it is, if they’re really there to do Task A, and incidentally have to do Task B.

And like I said, it was a biased ballot: Gore voters had to contend with Task B, and Bush voters don’t. Imagine two typists: one only has to type, and the other also has to answer phones. No matter how much they each try to take responsibility for their work, the one who has to answer phones is going to make more mistakes than the one who doesn’t, all else being equal. That’s not a matter of shirking responsibility; that’s how life is. Similarly, a few thousand Gore voters (out of 270,000 or so) apparently punched two holes, or punched the wrong hole, while almost none of Bush’s 153,000 apparently did so, because Bush voters didn’t have to do a second task that they weren’t really there for, at the same time.

As I said, it was the responsibility of the local authorities to provide an unbiased survey instrument, to use the terms of the trade, and they failed. The persons that they failed not only include the local voters, but also the candidates affected, who of course did not have the opportunity to ‘take responsibility’ in the first place. When someone fails in their fiduciary duty, those who’ve been harmed are entitled to be ‘made whole’, as the legal phrase goes: they have a right to have undone (by the fiduciary) the damage done to them.

You bet we’ve got law. When you’ve been swindled out of something, you get to sue to get it back. Even if it’s a transparent scam that the ‘scammee’ should have seen a mile away, the scammee has the right to seek restitution from the scammer. In this case, it was an unintentional swindle, but a breach of fiduciary duty nonetheless. Gore has been done out of several thousand votes, and deserves to be made whole. As do his supporters all over the country.

Well, Bush could just do the honorable thing and concede Florida. After all, character is his big selling point. :slight_smile:

If it were the other way around, I’d be glad that I still had a respectable alternative open to me that gave my side some chance to win. Then I’d bombard the hell out of Palm Beach with ads for my candidate.

I think I’ve dealt with the ‘just as much opportunity’ argument pretty thoroughly, earlier in this post. And this is a bit more important than third grade; we’re deciding which of two very different candidates will be the most powerful man in the world. If a ‘do over’ is what it takes to do it right, to do it in a manner that at least gets the more obvious, blatant, and biased irregularities out of the way, then why the heck not?

Fine with me.

If you’re talking about ‘finding out’ about that to the extent that we always do, sure. If we’re discussing an active campaign to get electors to change their votes, I refer you once again to the character issue.

And in what way do any of my proposed solutions clash with the Constitution? States are allowed a certain amount of freedom in deciding how they will apportion their electors. (Consider Maine and Nebraska, where they have two at-large electors and choose the others one congressional district at a time, despite the Constitution making no mention of such a system.)

As I see it, we’re in the blank space between the lines of the Constitution; as long as we do what it says, and don’t do what it prohibits, we can make it up as we go along. I believe that we should consider that we are setting a precedent for future generations, and invent the fairest solution possible to our current dilemma.

Bush could do this unilaterally by conceding Florida, and with it, the election. But failing that, a revote of Palm Beach County seems to be the next best solution.

9

Sorry, Gadarene, but those votes should be thrown out. (FWIW, I voted for Browne because I didn’t like either candidate).

Let me share an obscure little bit of recent Indiana history with the SDMB. In 1996, about 200 votes were thrown out in the town of Jasonville because of a confusing ballot (I don’t remember the exact details – old age is catching up with me – but I remember there were no allegations of fraud, just confusion). This had an impact on a hotly contested school board race in a town of about 2,200 people and a school district with maybe 1,000 more people than the town. The numbers may be smaller, but 200 votes in an area that small is about like 19,000 in Florida.

Despite the impact and a local media buzz, there was no re-election. The candidates who lost requested a recount, as was their right, but when that was done, they decided to be men and women and abide by the results.

I think the Gore people should do the same. I don’t blame the Gorebot for not conceding the election, I don’t blame him for asking for a recount and I certainly don’t blame his people watching the recounted ballots like hawks watching pigeons. However, if Bush ends up barely winning the Florida vote, then the Gorebot should do the honorable thing and admit he has lost in the EC.

Allowing people to vote again, especially when the results are known in the rest of the state and the nation, chills me. The potential for voter fraud is just too great.

Whether the Palm Beach voters like it or not, it was THEIR responsibility to ensure that they understood the ballot. I looked at it (I have bad eyesight) and I didn’t think it was that hard to understand.

10

Gadarene, do you have a link on that? I don’t see anything about that on cnn.com or washingtonpost.com .

If that’s so, then that’s major, and the only proper response by Bush would be to concede the election.

At any rate, CNN reports that Bush’s FL lead, in mid-recount, is now down to 830 votes.

(No, Freedom, I don’t know if that includes domestic absentee ballots. Since overseas absentee ballots have until the end of next week just to reach Florida, they’re clearly not included.)

And a hearing is scheduled for 2:30pm today in Federal court in Tallahassee over the Palm Beach irregularities. Rule of law, and all that. :slight_smile:

11

Ah, yes. The school board of Jasonville, Indiana, and the Presidency of the United States. That’s the same. :rolleyes:

Look, Coyote, the ballot was illegal. What part of that do you not understand? Statutory language mandated that there be text on the ballot saying that the punch hole was to the right of the candidate. There was not, and, in the case of Buchanan, it was not. Statutory language mandated that no ballot take up two pages–this one did. The sample ballot handed out in line at the polling place was different than the actual ballot inside the booth. Some people weren’t given new ballots when they requested them, as is mandated by Florida statute. Finally, Florida law defines “electoral fraud” not necessarily as an intentional act, but merely something which subverts the will of the voters. That clearly applies here.

With the stakes so high, shouldn’t we be making every effort to rectify a situation in which statutes have been violated?

12

The reason for allowing a revote is that we don’t know the results. We know some numbers, but we know they’re not very honest numbers. If a statistician had designed a survey with that much bias as that poll, he’d be looking for work.

Responsibility frequently resides in more than one place. Sure, the voters had a responsibility to follow the little arrows correctly, but the local authorities also had a responsibility to design a ballot where people would have little problem in voting for the intended candidate. They clearly failed. Where’s their responsibility?

I expect that, absent a concession speech by Dubya, they will be legally required to face their responsibility, and rectify the situation in some manner. (We’ll find out soon enough. :))

13

Well, precedent has already been set for this.

Read this link in the National Review.

According to the Second District Court of Appeal in Nelson v. Robinson, 1974:

So precedent has been set to leave those Buchanan/Gore and double-cast votes as they stand.

14

I’m happy to oblige. Providing a target rich environment seems to be my job around here lately. :slight_smile:

This is a subjective opinion. Even if there is a real problem, then there was ample time to correct it before the elction. The votes over, count’em up and call the results.

You can bold that phrase on as many posts as you want, the fact is that the democrat who designed that ballot took all the measures before the vote to give people a chance to complain. The time to change the ballot is over. These citizens are not children. They selected the people in power intheir county, it is all of their responsibility to make sure everything is proper. No one owes them anything. If they don’t like what their civil servants are doing, then they should get new ones.

It is the responsibility of the citizens in that area to check the public display and notices to see if they agree with the stuff their officials are doing. If no citizen carried their responsibility to speak up during the time this ballot was being displayed, then the rest of the country should not suffer.

I agree. and that is why we set up the process to deal with problems BEFORE they occur, and then stick to them when we need them. Otherwise, people are liable to start rioting and shooting. Rule of law must be maintained.

I am talking about both sides here.

Somehow this seems like a path to civil war sooner or later. You don’t just get to vote again when you don’t like the results. If Florida can’t be determined, then it goes into the House of Representatives. Pure and simple.

15

Rufus: I heard it from a friend of mine who’s a producer at CNN–actually, he posted it to another forum. I’ve just e-mailed him.

Something to keep in mind, by the way, for everyone who looks at the Palm Beach ballot and calls the people morons–most online pictures of the ballot, like this one, fail to show that the two sets of names are actually on two separate pages, with the punch holes in the spine. It’s called a butterfly ballot, and I think it would be extremely easy, when voting for Gore, to miss Buchanan’s name altogether until you’d already punched the hole. For more on this, go here.

Great quote:

“I’m not a doddering old fool. I’m a senior citizen with a college degree, a former school teacher and I just retired from a job within the last year. I just don’t understand how they could have given anyone a ballot like this and in a short time make them figure out what in the hell is going on.” --Ellen Richman, Delray Beach

16

I think the same legal principles should apply.

Can’t speak for Coyote, but I’m curious as to whether you would invalidate all such “illegal” ballots, or only the one’s that tipped the election away from Gore?

17

Yes, Gadarene, the principal is exactly the same. Too bad you cannot see that.

Sorry, but since you have presented no proof that you are a lawyer, your opinions about the ballot’s legality are irrelevant, and a judge will ultimately rule on the ballot’s legality, not yourself. Also, as I think many other posters have noted, that ballot was approved by the local elections officials. One can only hope they understand the law.

Aha, if the stakes are so high, then by all means let’s rectify the situaiton. Let’s recount the ballots in every county of all 50 states. After all, ballots are routinely thrown out in every precinct because of irregularities, real or imagined.

18

Dear Governor Bush,

Because you have such a high integrity, we would like you to concede Florida and the election. It doesn’t matter that you won, it is just that some Democrats have claimed that they couldn’t understand how to vote on a ballot that was presented to them over a month in advance of the election. Surely you wouldn’t want to hold these 16,000 feeble minded voters to their next morning doubts. That is like making people live with a satifaction of being a Monday morning quarterback. Surely your integrity runs deeper than that.

If you don’t wish to concede, the honorable thing to do, though we would never ask Al Gore to do the honorable thing, that would be simply ridiculous, we want to hinge the vote for President of the United States on a revote from one County in Florida that just happens to be Democratic in the majority. We just want to do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Democratic Dopers of America

Do you not see the thick and heavy sarcasm that went into writing this ridiculous recommendation? It’s pretty thick. And heavy too.

:rolls eyes

The time to complain about potential confusion was when the ballot was drawn up by a Democratic County’s voting officials and presented to the public.

The thrown out ballots are gone. If there is evidence that anyone who double punched was not allowed another form, let it be shown. Otherwise, live with the stupidity of some voters.

It is an important issue… deceiving ballots. Be sure to address it at a local level before the next election day after.

I hope you can see how ludicrous a revote by one County or the whole Country would be. If not, I fear the Democratic process is completely lost on you.

The media splurge is over. If someone stayed home from voting because the t.v. told them to, then they have sentenced themselves to suffer the consequences.

It’s over folks. Don’t ruin the Democratic process to serve your own selfish purposes. The recount will decide the winner. It is a sad day when people muddy the election process with lawsuits that attempt to blame the election board for their ineptitude and to blame the election board (not their ineptitude) for a lost Presidential election.

19

The language I have seen discusses marking an X, and says nothing about holes. Could you please post the text of the law?

20

John Corrado: the precedent of the FL appeals court doesn’t apply to Federal court, where this thing is headed in about 90 minutes.

Izzy: I agree that the same principles should apply. But I’m willing to settle for a lower standard, and will accept greater latitude, in a school board race than in choosing the President. I imagine more than a few people feel the same way.