So how soon is it going to become clear that Shrub lost Florida, too?

Great Debates
41

I don’t get this. We can’t have it both ways. Now, granted I am not up on 100% of the details here. But isn’t it true that Palm Beach County’s standard was pretty “strict” (no dimples or pimples counted), and garnered only a few extra votes for Gore. But highly Democratic Broward County, changed its standards after the election to a far more liberal standard (changing their existing standard of 10 years) specifically (IMO) to garner more votes for Gore? (Or if they didn’t do that specifically, that was the result!) He picked up LOTS of votes there, (like 500?) because of the canvassing board’s decision, and their “discretion” to count dimples and pimples. And yet those votes should count, but another canvassing board uses their “discretion” in a way that goes against Gore, and that’s not OK? Why?

The Supreme Court was against all of these screwed-up and inconsistent standards, and I agree. And I suppose if it could be all done over again, perhaps no dimples and pimples would have been counted, and people’s double-marked ballots wouldn’t have been counted, and who knows who would have come out ahead.

42

Oh, I should correct myself. Palm Beach could consider dimples and pimples, but they didn’t have to count them.

43

Frankly, my dear,…

I am curious about the actual vote, nothing else. If Gore has 20,000 legitimate uncounted votes, or 2,000, whatever. They damn sure ain’t gonna find 300,000 for George! And even that 300,000 is just a gnats eyelash in the big picture. The people have spoken and they said “whatever”.

Besides…Democrats are mighty pissed, gonna stay that way for a while, and in two years they’re gonna come out roaring . They’re pissed. If the Pubs had lost on the same technical bullshit that they won with, they would have gone rabies ballistics, frothing at the mouth berserk! We rather dislike the extreme right, they hate our guts!

For amusement, try to imagine what they would try to impeach Gore with. After all, isn’t a terminal lack of charisma as much an impeachable offense as a quick knob job in the Oval Office?

44

Actually, I think they would have had a rabies epidemic if they’d simply lost the way they should have: after the votes had been counted. Which is why we are probably better off this way for now. They get to have Gilligan playing at being Pres for a few years, and the Dems will get back the White House in '04. Probably to keep for another 8, maybe even 12 years. (Again, anyone hear anything about polls for '04?)

It’s a nearly sure bet that Gilligan will have, at best, an uneventful 4 years.

45

Hey Stoid,

That’s President-Elect Gilligan to you :slight_smile:

46

“Gilligan”?

47

Yeah, that’s all well and good, yosemitebabe, but if the Florida State Supreme Court (FSSC) did lay forth a uniform standard, the US Supreme Court (SCOUS) would have thrown it out asthey were writing new law.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t!

48

Nah. President-Appoint Gilligan.

:slight_smile:

49

That works both ways, of course.

Bush’s people did not like the lack of a “uniform standard” in Florida. But I did not hear the Gore supporters complain about it when Broward was countin’ up all those votes! Having each county’s canvassing board decide their own standard was just fine right then, of course.

50

Florida Supremes could not change Florida law, which put the standards of vote counting in the hands of the counties. If they had imposed a standard, they would have been writing new law.

THE Supremes then says “because there is no standard, its not fair to some voters.” Therefore you cannot hand count the votes without setting a uniform standard. Here you go, we’re remanding this back to you, work on it with our blessing BUT this must be resolved by Dec.12th or the original certification stands.

And then release the result at 10pm Dec. 11th.

Saw some guys talking about it on the PBS news show, one of them a Florida 'Publican to advocate giving the ballots the deep six. Vague hints of Democratic skullduggery, appeals to some rather nebulous high principles, but mostly nada. Miami Herald has hired some pros to conduct thier examination. If I get this right, each ballot will be lifted by an election worker (only legally entitled to touch them), raise it to a television camera with a bright light behind it, and the expert panel will assign it to one of several categories: totally punched, mostly, hanging chad, dimpled, immaculate, etc. When all the numbers are in, they will crunch them, release the data, and we can make of it what we will.

I think the data will indicate that a la voter intention Gore won Florida by a miniscule margin, maybe 20,000 or so, if only the clearly impacted ballots are counted.

So the answer: when this study is released, sometime in Janurary. Ta-da!

So wheres my cookie?

51

I’m not disputing the “running down the clock” charaterization- that’s pretty much how I see it- but have to dispute the inclusion of the Attorney General. Florida’s AG was co-chairman of the Gore campaign in the state. He was even a Gore elector- which means he was issuing legal opinions to election boards about counting ballots on which he himself was a candidate. Conflict of interest was hardly a GOP monopoly in this case.

52

Only difference is that the AG had no official role to play, and his opinions weren’t binding even when given.

53

You don’t have to have been alive to nurse a grudge. It can easily be inherited by simply identifying with those members of a group that DO remember it, and people younger than you can inherit it from you, through the generations. One example that immediately comes to mind of is Irish nationalists still pissed about Oliver Cromwell’s work back in the 1600’s, but that’s at least based on fact. You can add certain Christian sects blaming the Jews for killing Christ right into the 20th century.

Your example seemed to be one of signing on to older Republicans’ grudge over the 1960 election. As I pointed out, that is NOT based on fact.

FTR, nobody has ordered the destruction or even sealing of the ballots, nor can they under the Florida state version of the Freedom of Information Act. It would be politically suicidal even if it were legal, anyway.

54

Actually, it was worse than you remember. They released the decision at 10pm on Dec. 12th! At least if they had hurried themselves, and got it out the day before, it would have been just possible to get the count done. (Yeah, no one would be sleeping that night, but we would have known.)
[sub](or maybe the SCOUS shouldn’t have conned themselves into believing the phony-baloney deadline.)[/sub]

However with that ruling, a time machine would have been required. I started preliminary work formulating theories, writing equations and designing the thing, but when midnight came, and I didn’t see myself (or anyone else) materialize on the Court steps, I gave up. Sorry everyone. Maybe the final numbers turned up on Scalia’s desk the day before and was thrown away. But it won’t be because of this scientist’s work (as far as I know).

55

What I am curious about is - were any of the Gore supporters complaining about “no uniform standard” when Broward was counting? When Gore was getting all those votes from dimples? When Broward voted to change their 10 year standard to allow the counting of ballots that favored Gore? Did I hear anyone from the Gore side complaing about this change of standards?

I don’t think so. It was OK that there was no uniform standard then.

56

The media/Judicial Watch recount will be useful because it is being conducted by several newspapers both liberal and conservative as well conservative group Judicial Watch, and relies upon a non-partisan accouting group to do the actual counting. With all of these different groups watching, we will certainly get an accurate account of how the ballots are marked, though the groups cannot say what this means…

The second step is deciding what marks should be counted. The original Florida law says to look for voter intent, which would mean including those double marked ballots from Lake county. The “Chad” questions would be decided according to local standards – some counties counting only hanging chad, others counting dimpled Chad.

However, the Supreme court ruled that “intent” is too broad a standard, and you have to have specific standards to be legal. In California there are standards that say hanging chad “yes” dimpled “no.” Under Bush Texas established a law which says hanging “yes,” dimpled “yes” as well.

So what he will learn is what would have happened if

A)Gore’s original call for recounts in some counties had been carried out

B)The Florida Supreme Court’s plan for a statewide undervote count had occured

And, Much more importantly

C)A statewide recount had been happened with a strict “California” standard

D)A statewide recount with a loose “George W. Bush’s Texas” standard.

If A or B, show a Gore or Bush victory, then we will know what might have happened if the Supreme Court had not ruled.

If C or D both show a Gore or Bush victory we will know what should have happened if all votes considered legal by the Supreme Court (if counted validly according to, say California or Texas standards) had been counted. If one shows a Bush victory, and the other a Gore victory, then the whole thing is probably a wash.

Of course legally none of this counts! Bush is president. It would be historically valuable to know who would have won if all legal votes were counted (remember, the Supreme Court ruled that votes were legal if incorrectly cast but legally counted according to standardized means, just that there was not time to do this in Florida). It will also be interesting to see whether Gore’s or the Florida Supreme’s partial recount ideas would have resulted in Gore victories, and whether these would have “matched” the winner of a statewide count.

57

Boy, she’s got us there, guys. Al Gore is capable of hypocrisy. Damn, well, that’s it. Good thing the Supremes put a paragon of civic virtue and public honor in power rather than the heinous scumbag, Al Gore. [/sarcasm]

Whatever.

58

But that’s not an answer to my question. I am not even implying that Al Gore is a hypocrite. I am talking about anyone from the Gore side - which would be anyone who wanted Gore to be Pres. On this thread, the Gore “side” is complaining that certain ballots with unread Gore votes were thrown out in a certain county. While in a different county, simulary ballots were counted. And you complain about this lack of uniform standards now - why? Because Gore got the short end of the stick in this instance, right? And so you complain about the lack of uniform standards. But, like I mentioned before, I did not hear this complaining from the Gore side when Broward was counting. Such a change of tune you now have!

I am sure Bush is no prince, but at least “his side” was complaining about a lack of uniform standards from the git-go. Maybe if both sides had been complaining about a lack of uniform standards from the beginning, something could have been done sooner.

59

By its very nature, this election demands scrutiny. The only correct position for either party would be that when the machine recount gets below 1,000 votes out of nine million, a hand count of those votes that the machinery did not count, for whatever reason, is called for. Too much depends on it for it to be shrugged off.

Neither party did so, a curse o’er both thier houses. But and this is a big but, that doesn’t change the fundamental fact: an hand count to capture those votes which did not register is the obvious course of action when the vote is so close.

I don’t care who’s the bigger jerk about this. This should have happened regardless of who advocated it and who opposed it. The kind of examination now being launched by news organization is precisely the remedy that should have been applied in the first place.

The “standards” issue is a smokescreen, pick any standards you want. The assumption is that all errors are evenly spread, a Republican is no more likey to suffer from voting error than a Democrat, and this is for the most part true.

But error-prone voting machines are unequally located in the less advantaged coutines (duh!). The votes of persons who are likely to have been disenfranchised must be counted. As it happens, let’s pretend, sheer coincidence: if you live outside the affluent counties, its a bit more likely that your vote didn’t quite get there.

As a result, if a hand count were performed in all situations where machine error was plausible, such a count would have favored the Democrats by mere thousands of votes, not enough to matter in any other year.

But this year was different.

But there isn’t any doubt about which group labored most strenuously to prevent this from occuring. Most likely they were right, most likely if it had proceeded they would have lost.

It should have been done. They managed to prevent it and seize their prize. Mazel tov, as the Irish say, much good may it do them.

60

We all know who stole the election, now I wanna know who won it.

I never cared what standards were used. I just wanted them to do a damn count instead of stonewalling it…I mean really, how disgusting WAS that, anyway?

America, home of Kleptocracy.

stoid