The Certification, Coming Court Cases and What's Next...

Great Debates
61

Uhhh… isn’t that the same thing?

That’s sort of the point.

You missed a “re-” there.

And the facts would be… what? That Bush won two complete recounts and one incomplete recount? That Gore can’t accept the fact that he didn’t win? That Gore lied when he said he’d accept the FSC’s decision and concede?

Or the “facts” that exist only in the heads of a select few, that say that Gore is the paragon of truth, justice, and the American way, and that he can do no wrong? Are those the facts you’re talking about?

The fact remains that a direct corrolation cannot be tied between Florida policy and Texas policy. A majority is not the same as a minority, after all (God, I sound like a Democrat).

If they believe that a fraud is likely, why is it so horrible for them to want to avoid said fraud?

Isn’t there a Pit thread about this? :smiley:

Precisely. Note that I never claimed that the handcounts shouldn’t take place. I simply noted that the reservations that the Bush camp may have DO have their justifications. My apologies for being vague with that.

62

I don’t see how you could possibly consider the OP a logical arguement unless you were willing to ignore the parts where it contradicts its self like you ignore my post.(Im insulted, I thought that my post would make someone mad and respond and yet my logic is just too great for them. Whoz your logic daddy biznach:))

Stoid first goes on to say its much much more personal for gore than bush then she goes on to say its much more personal for bush than gore. Can anyone see this?

Then Stoid says that the republicans are willing to do anything to get Bush in power, when its been shown that the Democrats are the ones trying to get Gore in power. Repeatedly and showing that they can’t even accept the Supreme Courts decision that was made up entirely of democrats. Can’t accept counties decisions to not recount because they don’t have time either.

Then Stoid says that Gore wants every vote counted. When he asks for the hand recount of only 4 counties which shows that he only wanted the democratic votes counted, not all of them showing hes a liar.(his offer to recount the whole state was simply meaningless as he knew it coulden’t happen)Though I don’t really think anyone didn’t think he was a liar before. He also trys to deny military ballots on the fact that he thinks they will support Bush.

I don’t actually expect anyone to read this post though. I do expect people to ignore it or argue with it a little bit then forget about it.

Also elvisl1ves you can’t exactly talk to other people about being insulting considering pretty much all of your posts.

Gore is a inertibrate and ive been listening to too much rap.:slight_smile:

63

**

Prove it. Give us factual, unbiased cites and evidence that it doesn’t “hold up to the facts”.

64

Gore’s a what? Just wanted to show you that someone read your post. Ha!

65

I’m not sure what was unclear about my first post on this subject but I’ll try one more time. Here’s my chronology:

  1. Before the Election there are no state-wide standards imposed by law or custom for hand counting of ballots in Florida.
  2. Gore Asked for recounts in counties that had a large number of known uncounted votes or other irregularities in the machine count.
  3. Bush argued that the lack of state-wide standards for a recount made the recount unconstitutional.
  4. Gore went to court to get it to mandate a standard (and, of course, asked for a permissive standard since that would help him the most).

No since there were no standards before (i.e. no rules).
then defining the standards after the election can’t possibly be changing the rules at best you can call it making the rules.

Both sides knew before the fact that there were no rules, which implies that the rules would of necessity be made after. That is, they implicitly agreed that the rules for recounting would be created after the voting had already happened (but only if recounts became necessary).

(OK, this is a bit of a stretch, they probably never gave it a thought. But this position is consistent with the whole idea that all rules not contested before the election were implicitly agreed to.)

Because the legislature made no rules, it fell to the canvassing boards or to the courts to make them when they became necessary. And this is what happened, with Gore and Bush both arguing for rules that favored them, and neither having the authority to set the rules unilaterally.

Except of course, that Bush has the SOS in his pocket, so at some level he gets to make up rules as he goes along. Still, the canvassing boards have more power than Harris does.

tj

66

No, it isn’t the same thing.

No that isn’t the point, the lack of state-wide standard leaves the issue at the discretion of the canvassing boards and/or the courts. To be ‘re-writing’ the rules after the fact you have to have some rules to begin with.

there is no re- about it.

The fact that there is nothing for the re- to relate to. Bush has won nothing, the result of the election in Florida is still too close to call.

Gore promised to drop his lawsuits and accept the results of the handcounts that he requested. Since those counts havn’t been completed yet (Dade county) then it’s a bit early to be calling him a liar because he hasn’t conceeded yet.

Don’t know anyone who thinks that, though I can point you to quite a few people who think that Bush is the antithesis of Truth, Justice, etc.

Can’t think what majority or minorty has to do with it. Bush signed a law governing rules for counting punch cares that he doesn’t want to have applied to the counting process in Florida. That seems to me to the the very definition of hypocracy. (But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably never read the law before he signed it. In fact, rumor has it that he’s barely literate)

Not horrible at all, except that their ‘solution’ for avoiding fraud also happens to strip Gore of his legal right to a hand recount.

Yeah, um. What a meant to say is: You loose goose you. :rolleyes:

[/quote]

Agreed, their reservations are valid. Their remedy is not.

tj

67

:rolleyes: Like that’s not biased…

You’re right that there weren’t statewide standards. It’s up to each county to make those rules, and each county did have rules before the election.

The rules that were changed after the election has taken place (Which is against the law, but why don’t we change that law as well to suit Gore as well? :rolleyes:) were the rules in place in each individual county. That’s part of this debate.

I’m not quite sure this is accurate. I’m pretty sure (according to news sources I’ve seen) that Bush argued they were not provided for in State law, not that they were unconstitutional.

Gore went to court to get the court to change laws to allow “dimpled chads”, which were previously not recognized as votes under county standards. Like I said earlier, changing ballot counting laws after the vote is against Federal law.

**

Your whole argument is based on biased, Democratic rhetoric and spin doctoring.

If you look at a republican SOS as being in Bush’s pocket, then you could look at a democratic FSC as being in Gore’s.

68

Now that was rather unexpected…I knew I should have previewed it twice. Or thrice, if you support Gore. :smiley:

69

Yeah, right to left parsing is a bitch, ain’t it?

70

The case against manual recounts in general, and the Palm Beach County manual recount in particular, might be strengthened by the outcome, as described in the Palm Beach Post, under the headline “PBC vote totals just aren’t adding up”.

71

Stoid: Mr. Winkle for President! Yes?
:slight_smile:

72

It has also been pointed out repeatedly (by me at least) that much of what the Republican observers are claiming to observe is being dismissed as partisan rhetoric, making your claim that their presence adds authenticity hollow. (Your statement that both parties are represented on the commissions is also incorrect. In PBC at least, there are no Republicans, and I don’t think there are any in Dade either. The Republicans are there as observers only. And in all these counties, Democrats are at least a majority of the deciding votes in declaring what the “intent of the voter” is.) Also note that the Democrats are evidently not so keen on allowing Republicans to look too closely at the ballots in acording to this Washington Post article.

**But are you at least capable of agreeing that the manual recount as it is being done is biased in favor of Gore? This tends to take away from the urgency and importance of doing such recounts altogether.

73

In a previous post, I noted that election results in Florida from the two machine counts showed considerable variation in totals between the two. With some hyperbole of my own (and based on a fuzzy memory of the chart), I asserted that no county had had both counts come out the same.

Reviewing the totals listed in USA Today’s November 15 issue, on page 3A of that paper, one sees that, in fact, only 10 out of 67 counties managed to count the votes for each of the two main contestants and come to the same total for each. Two additional counties had only to subtract one vote from one of the two contestants. The remaining 55 counties had discrepancies running from 2 votes to as many as 892 votes total. Twelve counties had recount totals that came out less for one candidate or the other, including the possibly soon to be infamous Nassau county, which failed to tabulate some 200 votes the second time through.

The statistics show that what I contended about the machines is true: they are not inherently any more accurate than manual counting. Indeed, one suspects that, pressed to do so, a manual count followed by a manual recount would produce numbers without such significant variance, depending on how it was conducted. Mr. Bush’s insistence that machine tabulation is somehow more accurate inherently than manual tabulation is not supported by the facts in Florida. All states understand this, and that’s why they all allow manual recounts when needed.

Why, then, use machines at all? Because they are faster and cheaper than using humans, and because in 99% of elections, the margin of error from the machine count doesn’t exceed the difference in vote totals. When we understand the limited role we intend for machines in the process, we can then understand when and why manual tabulation will be necessary, without feeling that such requests are inherently a political ploy.

All of which should be kept separate from the other contention by Mr. Bush about manual recounts: the potential for ‘mischief’ when non-objective standards are applied to the tabulation. I wish that Mr. Bush had not mixed the two messages in opposing manual recounts; the blind insistance on relying on the machines (because they gave him the win) instead of properly conducted manual tabulations made him sound much less reasonable (which, I believe, was my point). :slight_smile:

74

DSYoungEsq,

I think the Bush point is more about machines being unbiased, rather than being accurate.

Anyway, I would like to request that you comment from a legal perspective on this thread.

75

Thanks for the link; it’s much appreciated. Essentially, most of the high-population counties use punch cards, and the low-population ones mostly use optical-scan systems. Without adding census numbers, it would follow that most of the ballots in Florida are on punch cards.

76

If you can point out any factual error, or logical error, that I’ve made, I would actually welcome the correction. If I’ve written anything that points out an error in fact or logic on your part, that’s hardly being insulting.

77

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by IzzyR *
[BIt has also been pointed out repeatedly (by me at least) that much of what the Republican observers are claiming to observe is being dismissed as partisan rhetoric, making your claim that their presence adds authenticity hollow. (Your statement that both parties are represented on the commissions is also incorrect. In PBC at least, there are no Republicans, and I don’t think there are any in Dade either. The Republicans are there as observers only.

Exactly - there are Republicans looking closely at everything that’s being done, whether they decide on votes are not. Have you really heard of any concerted effort by anyone on the Democratic side to rig the counting? It seems to me that the Republican counters or observers, whichever they may be, would be quick to go to the media with it, wouldn’t they?

If you have the necessary odd number of people doing the counting, then there will be more of one party than the other by necessity, of course. But the burden is on the complainer to show that the results show partisan bias.

Now how does that lead to lack of urgency of all things? I don’t see the connection, other than delay being in Bush’s favor under the circumstances.

78

They have done so constantly. I’m surprised that anyone who follows this issue even slightly could be unfamiliar with these allegations.

Don’t know about that. I would think the burden should be on the one who wants to reject the count already in place to show that the new method that he wants to use is likely to be more accurate than the one to be discarded. If the proposed method seems logically to lend itself to bias, there is no reason to reject the previous results in favor of it.

I meant urgency as in “of overriding importance”, not urgency as in “of extreme timeliness”. Sorry if I misused the word. (Don’t have time to run for the dictionary just now.)

79

Apparently, Elvis didn’t watch MSNBC over the weekend as it showed Broward County re-counting ballots. I’ll re-cap:

Republican counter: (studies ballot for 15 or so seconds) No clear, visible voter intent.

ballot is handed to …

Democratic Counter 1: (studies ballot for about 5-8 seconds) Vote for Gore.

*ballot is handed to … *

Democratic Counter 2 (studies ballot for about 5-8 seconds) Vote for Gore.

Ballot goes into Gore pile.

Repeat this process dozens of times over, and you get the picture.

Now, why on Earth would Republicans have a problem with that process? It’s bi-partisan! There’s a Republican involved in the counting! :rolleyes:

We’ll forget what message the above scene from my TV screen this weekend sends to me. What it should send to any impartial person, however, is that the hand-counting process is highly subjective and falling along partisan lines. To a person who is impartial, that might seem unfair, and not necessarily moving toward an “accurate, total, final count.”

I think that has a lot to do with why a majority of Americans want this over with now.

Pat Caddell, a former Democratic pollster who is a self-professed lifelong liberal and is now a consultant on NBC’s “The West Wing” (which I would love to see someone argue is a show slanted toward conservatives) on MSNBC last night, called what Gore is trying to do “one of the biggest lies in the history of presidential politics.”

The Big Lie being, “we want the people’s voices heard, through their votes.” When all Gore wants is the people’s voices heard in counties and precincts in counties where it would most benefit him.

“But Gore offered a statewide hand recount!” you may reply. That was a pretty shrewd political move, as it wasn’t Gore’s place to make such an offer. Bush had already made it clear he felt the hand recount process was inaccurate, partisan, subjective and had ever-changing standards that, coincidentally, seemed to always result in more Gore votes being counted.

By accepting Gore’s offer, Bush would have undermined his stated position. And, more importantly, his challenges to what has gone on with the hand counts in Gore Country.

Fortunately, the rest of the country doesn’t have to wait for Gore and the Democrats to tell them when it’s OK to move on. Let the final court challenges be heard and rejected (IMO, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to side with the Bush camp or take no action) and then it is finally, completely done.

If Gore and his pals then want to refuse to concede, call SoS Harris a Big Meanie, whatever, they can do it to their heart’s content.

(I have this image of Gore as one of those WWII Japanese soldiers on a remote island in the Pacific, who never heard that Hirohito surrendered, and he’s out there 50-plus years later, long gray beard and rusted rifle at his side, still refusing to give up the cause.)

What Gore doesn’t seem to realize (but some Congressional Democrats seem to be beginning to) is that, under any set of circumstances in which courts, lawyers and litigation turned around this certified count and gave the presidency to Gore, his presidency would be viewed as extremely illegitimate by a great many, if not most, Americans.

It would affirm the Democratic Party as the party of trial-lawyers, and the Party of Clinton, doing anything necessary to obtain and maintain power. Even if that isn’t necessarily true; that’s what the perception will be.

80

Izzy yes, I believe that I recall Republican comments about the “mischief” in general, the specifics I recall were that:

  1. A PBC counter was “manhandling” the ballots. There was no evidence submitted that such ‘manhandling’ could or would cause a vote to appear or disappear. If there had been any evidence there should have been police reports made, investigations started. There is no evidence that any such thing has happened, so, you have some one saying “she’s doin’ somethin! and I think it might be really bad, I can’t show that it would be bad, and certainly cannot prove that it’s happened, but darn it, listen to me” Allegation, not evidence.

  2. A statement about “votes with chads taped back in on the Bush vote and a Gore vote punched out” Then, further reports described that there were exactly 2 such ballots and both were absentee. Since the likely explanation was that the individual voter did this (how could a poll worker hide a teeny piece of tape, and manage to tape a chad exactly over the Bush vote AND poke out the Gore vote, all under close scrutiny?), that allegation was no longer mentioned.

  3. Several republicans demanded that the “chads” be removed as evidence of voter fraud. That is, until it was confirmed with places that habitually uses the punchcard systems that chads fall out frequently, some were hanging, some clung due to static electricity etc, and that it was not evidence of anything in particular.

I may have missed some allegations, but the point is that people from the one side who’s aim is to stop the counting, have made statements to the press. If they truly believed they had evidence of voter fraud, other actions would be happening. In point of fact, there was an incident where a democratic canvasser was nearly attacked by the group alleging that he was stealing a ballot, the police surrounded him and the ‘ballot’ in question was an “example” ballot. IOW - allegations have been made, I have yet to see any evidence presented that any wrongdoing has actually occured.

and Milo In addition to the 3 “counters” (1 is a judge, by the way, plus the republican rep and the dem rep), there’s other observers. The other possible interpretation of the events that you see are that there’s two people who clearly see a vote, and another person who desires that no vote be seen doesn’t. Works both ways.

Regarding the supposition that if Gore is declared a winner, ‘substantial portion’ of the population believing that he ‘stole’ the election. well, I would agree, since republican officials have been making that accusation for over a week now, that some people will buy it. It also, of course, holds true that should Bush be elected that people will see his election as the result of an incredible amount of chicanery, duplicity, intidimation etc.

See, those party lines work both ways.