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

Great Debates
21

They DO have the disqualified ballots. Of the 19,000, 16,000 of them had both Gore and Buchanon punched.

Easy solution - split those 16,000 votes between Gore and Buchanon - except Buchanon doesn’t want them. I think the fact that one candidate who seems to have benefitted from these mistakes has a problem with the ballot as well says a lot.

Bush should concede Florida. There is too much controversy about the vote there, he will be unable to accomplish anything when a sizable percentage of the population feels that he did not fairly win the election.

22

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Freedom2 *

Umm…shall I cite statistical journals? They study this sort of thing. The only ‘subjective’ element here is that we haven’t studied this particular ballot rigorously. But stuff like it has been found to bias respondents’ responses to surveys, and if 16,500 of 19,120 double-punches indeed turn out to be Gore-Buchanan double-punches, that’s a direct demonstration of statistical bias, at pretty much any confidence level you care to name.

If Gadarene has his facts right, the local citizenry didn’t get the chance to look over the ballot, as it actually was, ahead of time. Besides, to paraphrase Arthur Dent, most of us don’t pop down to the local Board of Elections ahead of time to make sure everything’s OK.

In many situations in our society, it’s common to deal with problems after they cause harm, rather than before.

In fact, that’s the libertarian philosophy: don’t regulate X; but if X does you harm, then take the people in charge of X to court. That’s what we’re doing here.

Why? The Founding Fathers made up our Constitutional system as they went along. (True, we had a Civil War, but I don’t hear many people saying they failed.)

23

Follow the link, Rufus, and you’ll notice the paragraph:

(As a note, all this speculation might be entirely moot. Does anyone know if Wisconsin is doing a re-count? New Mexico is doing one, and if the results in New Mexico and Wisconsin cause both of them to flip over to Bush, Gore can’t win even with Florida- the best he can do is tie Bush.)

24

I’m still failing to understand you. If you are correct in your assertions, why not follow these same principles in other elections as well? Are you saying that the judges threw out an election challenge that was based on sound law simply because “why bother redoing the whole election for this insignificant office”?

25

No, I’m saying that occasionally it happens that state judges are often political appointees who really don’t know the law very well. They should, but they frequently don’t. And they make decisions that overlook or just plain ignore precedent or statute. The bad decisions don’t get appealed because it simply isn’t worth anyone’s while, and the future of the country isn’t depending on it. We put up with that, because you can’t fix every damn thing that breaks.

But the future of the country is riding on this one, and we should take the time to adjucicate this one as fairly and correctly as possible.

26

Thanks, John. I think I remember that case. IIRC, it was simply saying that being further down the ballot, rather than in the first position, wasn’t discrimination.

This is different in that, due to the makeup of the ‘butterfly ballot’, certain positions were much more predisposed to error than others. So there’s plenty of room for the courts to distinguish one from the other, if they so choose.

27

RTFirefly

I would say that this conflicts with this part:

28

I heard on CNN that they threw out 15,000 votes in Palm County in '96. I don’t know how to confirm this, but if it is true, What the hell is going on down there?

29

Has the ‘will of the electorate’ been heard in Palm County Florida?

To determine this, I believe, one needs to look at the vote in that county alone, and not in comparison to any other margins in any other county. To make the margin in the state relevant means that the number of votes for any candidate in Palm County, is only relevant ex post facto.

The election went to Gore in Palm County, are they saying that wasn’t the ‘will of the electorate’?

Alternatively, it seems the argument the democrats are advancing, if the number of votes in the entire state is within the margin of deciding the electoral votes then the ‘will of the electorate’ in Palm County, Florida is in question.

If you revote in Palm County, you revote in every county in every state. Including, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico, etc…

30

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
**

In that case, you should be able to come up with someone who ruled in accordance with your views. The idea that all the judges who ruled in these matters are political hacks, whereas you, RTFirefly and your freinds, understand the law, is not much to go by.

31

Freedom2 wrote:

That refers to the day on which Electors cast their electoral votes, not to the day on which the general populace votes (this is just to correct the above assertion- I am not advocating a revote in Palm Beach County)

32

Perhaps this has been addressed already, but I must jump in; this is NOT a subjective opinion. It appears to be objective fact.

No matter what YOU think of the ballot, it obviously had a propensity well beyond statistical chance to result in a certain error (voting for Buchanan instead of Gore.) That’s a biased instrument, period; it gave a biased result. Opinions don’t matter.

Beyond that I’m not going to comment on this fiasco beyond saying that no matter what, nothing good will come of this and the 2000 election will be remembered as tainted until our grandchildren’s grandchildren read about it.

33

nebuli

I disagree. I think it is very clear that it refers to BOTH the day the people vote to choose the electors, and the day the electors vote.

Here, this this part of it again:

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors

34

Something is missing here:

It is mandatory that, if you “spoil” a paper ballot, you take it back to the nice check-in ladies and request another. They take and destroy the other one.

My question to those who have been following this more closely than I have (balky Net connection where I’m visiting right now) is: did ANYONE at the time of voting spoil their ballot and take them back? Was this widespread? Were people not informed of this option?

If they weren’t, then I agree there might be a case for fraud or something–however, if people chose to double-punch INSTEAD OF ASKING FOR A FRESH BALLOT, I can’t see how they have anybody but themselves to blame.

Trouble is, when people do a dumb thing that’s the last answer they want to hear.

35

There is the alternative, according to the television news, of doing a statistical reapportionment of the votes if it’s found that the votes in Palm Beach were significantly out of line with the rest of the state. The newscasters I saw were saying that this has been done before in Florida. This seems to me the fairest way of settling the question, because of the following:

1 - We know that 14000 ballots were thrown out in 1996 in Palm Beach. So the 19000 thrown out in this election is not, as crazy as this sounds, out of line with their experience in that county. (Obviously, they need to get themselves a better balloting system.)

2 - The 3400 votes Buchanan received, on the other hand, was well out of line, statistically, with what he received in the rest of the state. Since the result of the ballot used was to inflate his figures, it seems to me that figuring out a fair way to statistically reapportion the ballots ostensibly cast in his name is the fairest and most practical solution to the problem.

Also, I was a little surprised, in reading this thread, just how vehement the arguments so quickly became on both sides. Really, a revote is just not practical. And for those opposing it, you can’t just let what happened in this county stand. Like it or not, some reasonable way is going to have to be found to get out of this bind. And we have less than three months to do it.

BTW, according to the CNN website, a hand recount of Palm Beach county is to take place on Saturday.

36

I’m not a lawyer, but I am somewhat of an expert in user-interface design. And I can categorically guarantee you that that ballot would absolutely bias the votes in that area.

So yes, I think Gore would have won the election, IF we base it only on this one discrepancy.

However, the time to correct this was before the election. The district sent a flyer out to all voters showing the ballot - no one protested the design. The ballot was approved.

When the people voted, they had the opportunity to ask questions. They didn’t. After they made a mistake, they had an opportunity to ask for a new ballot. They didn’t.

If you open this Pandora’s box with legal challenges, you’ve got a real problem - there are a LOT of close districts in other states, and I’m sure you can find all kinds of fraud, lost ballots, and other anomolies if you look hard enough. This would open the door to legal challenges of EVERY close election, and that would have bad ramifications for democracy. You don’t want judges picking your politicians for you.

Look: When an election is this close, it is statistically CERTAIN that it is being decided by anomolies and errors. You can’t count hundreds of millions of votes without making errors numbering in the tens of thousands at least.

My solution: Announce a new FEDERAL election 30 days from now. That still gives the electoral college time to gather on Dec 18, and gives the candidates time to re-group. I know the Constitution would have to be amended, but I can’t see any other way that the U.S. can avoid a scandalous presidency, no matter who wins.

Don’t allow any soft money for this election - use federal funding for both, with matching federal funds for all the third parties in proportion to where they finished in this election. Schedule one more debate. Then vote again.

This would be expensive, but I think the citizenry would accept it as fair, and the country could go on.

If either one of these guys wins now, it’ll be incredibly divisive for the U.S. If Bush wins, everyone will know that the REAL president lost on a technicality. If Gore wins, everyone will know that he was willing to disrupt the nation with legal challenges to democracy in order to attain power. Neither result would be good for the country.

37

The reasonable solution is to follow the law. And the law says it stands. It might not seem fair, but taken in context of a nation plagued by voter mistakes, allowing only this county to revote is what is unfair.

38

Didn’t you read any of the articles? Many DID ask for a new Ballot and they were REFUSED!!!
ARGH!
HOW MANY TOPICS DO WE HAVE TO HAVE ON THIS ONE LITTLE THING!!!
whew, sorry, tough night

Now: Freedom-quit saying it’s Fair. If Bush just takes office, his presidency will have a cloud of suspicion over it, and people will never accept that he won fair and square.
Are you so afraid your candidate might actually lose?

39

Did 19,000 people ask for a new ballot? And if they were refused, then it is their responsibility to call the board of elections AT THE TIME OF THE PROBLEM.

I’ll tell you what, you let ME pick the county that revotes and then you answer that question.

40

IMO, if we wish choose the President based upon the Will of The People, then Gore wins, either through reallocated Nader votes, reallocated double-votes, or reallocated Buchanan votes. Or perhaps via recount, which would make things simple. Maybe all this is obvious.

But “Rule of law” trumps, “Will of the people”. (Those who’ve taken high school civics will recall that, for example, we live in a representative democracy, not a direct one -the people’s will is subject to all sorts of filters in any existing republic).

So that means we leave it to the courts and lawyers (and 2 former Secretaries of State, BTW -now that’s character, WildBill.) :slight_smile:

I’m not a lawyer, but the legal issues seem pretty knotty here. On the one hand, we have a ballot that happened to be illegal in Florida. On the other, there is some (non-decisive) precedent for dismissing ballot irregularities (Nelson v Robinson, 1974).

I don’t buy the, “opening a can of worms” argument; in California, any ballot initiative of substance is invariably tied up in court for a few years after it passes. If you believe in rule of law, you have to believe in courts and lawyers: they deal with sticky issues all the time.

Freedom’s constitutional point may be decisive. Let’s parse:

That could say that Congress has the option of setting a national election day. If they do so, they can’t set different election days for different states (sounds wise). Could they legislate revotes? If there’s an unforeseen natural disaster during a state on election day, must that state keep to the schedule? What if there is voter fraud? Surely there must be some scope for overturning certain elections.

Again, we should leave it to the lawyers. I suspect that the election will be thrown to Bush and though I’ll be disappointed, I’ll accept the outcome.