I would like to point out that Florida law allows ANYONE to help out with filling in the aplication. Florida law limits who can help fill out the ballot. This whole mess over there stems from the application, not from the ballot.
A lawsuit seeking to determine the President of the United States based on a hyper-technicality of who filled out what information on the application is crazy.
Ridiculous point of illustration…
I have heard that the judge who is hearing this case is an elected official who did the exact same thing in her election.
Interesting how Palm Beach County had anticipated NO problems with meeting the deadline until the day they were due. Interesting how they did not have enough votes to shore up a Gore victory. Interesting how after over a week of counting votes, only two more hours were needed to complete the count. Talk about believing rhetoric! Interesting how she opened up her office specifically to support the Florida Supreme Court in their overriding of her jurisdiction under Florida law.
Actually, they gave her that decision, final counts were due to be completed at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday in a case that Gore won! He can’t even get his own Party to support him. The man is a complete failure in every sense of the word. Abandon the sinking ship before you tarnish the good names of Democrats throughout the country.
Opinions on who the asshole is in this legal positioning varies by the asshole spewing the accusation. Saavy may not be her forte, but it certainly isn’t a Gore trait. Why some rhetoric lovers believe that following the law hurts Bush is beyond my comprehensive capacity. Try reading something other than the DNC website, maybe you can get a new perspective.
How many court cases does Gore have to win and how many counts must he lose before accepting defeat?
Oh yes, of course, following the Florida Supreme Court decision provides Gore with more ammunition. Do you really eat the shit you’re shoveling?
Have you seen the tragically desperate acts of a sinking Gore-Love Boat of late? Not smart, it is going to put a black eye not only on Gore, but on the entire Democratic Party.
DSYoung: I recognize that Michigan has a different standard for dimpled chads (a better standard, IMO). The thing that I felt was important from that Novak excerpt was that Engler apparently witnessed one of the two definitive judges making up the Democratic majority of canvassars reviewing the Broward contested ballots give EVERY questionable ballot to Gore.
It would seem from a statistical standpoint that such an occurance would be far-fetched, leading to the distinct possibility that she was allowing partisanship to color her judgement - the Republican argument against hand counts in heavily Gore-favoring counties with a majority of canvassars being Democrats.
As wring said earlier (paraphrasing), “Well, what if it means there were really votes there, and it was the Republican trying to subvert the process by saying there weren’t?” Still proves my point. The hand-count is subjective and partisan; not accurate, objective and fair.
Tejota - I think for myself. And I find it more than a little amusing that you accuse me of parroting the party line one post after I told Dr. J that I agree with a liberal columnist and not with the stated Bush-camp line on a particular issue; and about 10 posts after I said I agree with Democrat Chris Matthews and not with the stated Bush-camp line on another particular issue.
I also enjoy your reference to my “rhetorical nonsense,” followed by this middle-of-the-road, carefully researched and impartial analysis from you (boldings mine):
Did you channel Harris’ thoughts, then? Did she say this in some press conference that I missed? Or are you saying, “C’mon; it’s obvious that it was her intent to help the Republicans and hurt the Democrats, while working within the law.”? And would that not be the exact argument that Republicans are making about what the Gore camp is trying to do with hand counts in heavily Gore-supporting areas only? Except in that case, the law is being rewritten and rules re-fashioned when it isn’t quite as helpful to Gore as he (and you) would like.
Let’s continue with Tejota’s pearls of wisdom:
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The Supreme court gave her this option, and she took it. The fact that it allowed her to discard Palm Beach’s hand count was a bonus. No, she didn’t break any laws. Yes she made herself (and Bush by association) look like an asshole. This action did nothing but damage to Bush. The lady really isn’t very savy.
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I’m glad you’re so far above all that partisan slanting and rhetorical nonsense about what’s going on in Florida, Tejota. :rolleyes: Your arrogance in thinking what you say is all-important and what everyone says is just partisan parroting is positively Gorian.
Let’s take a look at what the Florida Supreme Court actually said(emphasis mine):
A few points:
So then, does it depend on what your definition of “must” is?
The court appears to recognize that SoS offices aren’t open on Sunday. They called this situation a “special purpose” for which to BE open.
I don’t interpret that verbatim ruling as, “Well, see how things are going; talk to the counties and have a shifting deadline over the course of 5 p.m. Sunday and 9 a.m. Monday for accepting their counts, based on what they tell you.” I see it as:
“We are changing the legislature’s deadline to this deadline: Decide if you will open the office for the special purpose of accepting the ballots on Sunday; let all the counties know if that’s what you’re doing; and the deadline is 5 p.m. on Sunday (not 5:01; not 7 p.m.) If you aren’t opening the office on Sunday, let all of the counties know THAT, and the deadline will be 9 a.m. Monday.”
That’s an opinion based on the facts as pasted above. Just like everything you said is, Tejota.
The fact that you want to blame this on Harris and not the Florida Supreme Court that the Gore camp so desperately wanted to rule on this indicates your not exactly above being skewed by partisanship.
That is the day the Seminole County lawsuit is scheduled to be heard, and, perhaps, settled. How they can find it in favor of the Republicans is beyond me.
and frankly, I hope they do. Why? Because that will strip Dubya of any shred of legitimacy he could have hoped for.
Here’s the facts:
Florida has electors. They are George Bush’s electors. They are the electors that are going to vote for President and they are in place.
If Gore wins in court, then new electors are certified, those for Gore.
In either case, electors have been chosen by the method provided for. Should there be dissent remaining in Florida about which electors to send, they send both, at which time it becomes the Congress’ job to decide which are more valid.
At no point in this process is it necessary or provided for that the Legislature lock it up for their guy. They have had this explained to them in detail…that’s how I know. Yet, because they don’t like the reality, they pretend it is something different to serve their interests.
I think DSYoungEsq explained that in detail. While what happened was in violation of the law, it cannot be clearly shown to have interfered with the will of the voters. Since the interference would have prevented the ballots from being sent, it cannot be assumed that had it not occurred, these people would not have voted.
Basically, while the Republicans seem to have been in the wrong, the solution is not to discard the votes.
It should be noted that the Gore team has not joined in this case, due to the fact that to argue it would undercut their “count every vote” argument. It is for this reason (among others) that the Bush team tried (and failed) to have it combined with the general election contest lawsuit.
Does anyone have a cite to get the accurate answer to the following questions:
Were the “repaired” applications EXCLUSIVELY Republican?
If so, were similarly screwed up Democratic applications TOSSED OUT?
If the answer to the above two questions are YES, then can someone explain to me why it is ok? If the answers are no and no, then certainly they should not be tossed out. But if Republican voters got theirballots thanks to illegal assistance provided by Republican operatives, and Democrats did not get the same assistance and as a result did NOT receive absentee ballots, then damn straight the ballots should be tossed!
Waterj. that seems a bit odd. My understanding, which I have explained is limited, is that these are applications sent and received by the elections office, not by either party. This is all handled by a supposedly neutral office…or it is supposed to be. yes? No?
A cite! A cite! My kingdom for a cite!
stoid
BTW: Anyone read Dennis Pragers thoroughly ludicrous and laughable “Open Letter to the Democrats” in the Wall Street Journal?
Maybe someone can explain to me why the Republicans asked for all the ballots to be brought to Tallahassee, and why the judge acceded to that request. At this point, any counting done will not be in the context of an official recount, under which one might call for the count to be of all the ballots. Rather it would be as part of a determination by the judge as to whether the counts so far were accurate, and the disputed ballots would be looked at as evidence. THe ballots which are not in dispute are not evidence of anything, so there’s no reason to do anything at all with them.
The whole thing looks like a publicity stunt or legal ploy by the Republicans, and I’m surprised that the judge went along with it.
Stoidela, the applications in Florida’s Seminole County were sent out by the parties, not by some neutral office. This has been consistently reported by both USA Today and The (Toledo) Blade, the two papers I read regularly.
What isn’t clear is whether the Republican version of the application failed to have a spot for the ID number, failed to include an instruction regarding filling the number in, or failed neither and simply wasn’t filled in by a large number of Republicans.
All of which is irrelevant. Florida law doesn’t allow the absentee ballots to be tossed out unless there is both substantial noncompliance with Florida law AND that noncompliance results in reasonable doubt that the election accurately represented the ‘will of the people’. There is a logical disconnection between the fact that some 4,700 Republican voters received absentee ballots who would otherwise not have received them, and the assertion that some significantly increased number of votes for any given candidate occured. After all, all the voters who 'shouldn’t
’ have gotten ballots would have had to do would have been to vote in person.
What this issue really boils down to is this: what about Democrats (if any) who DIDN’T get absentee ballots because they failed to fill in their ID numbers. Is it fair they didn’t? No. Is that a reason to throw out all absentee ballots? No. No reasonable argument for doing so has been put forth; to do so would disenfranchise at least 6,000 voters whose applications were handled correctly.
I don’t see the same “logical disconnection” you do. Why would a refusal to allow one party’s voters to vote disproportionately more than the other’s not show “reasonable doubt that the election accurately represented the ‘will of the people’”? Remember that absentee ballots are used, or at least intended to be used, by people who cannot vote at all without them. No ballot, no vote.
Now, if it’s factually correct that only 1 party’s applications were faulty, and that party had the chance to correct them, then the situation was fair and I agree there’s no problem. Too bad we’re having such trouble getting basic facts - I wish the media would do more reporting on facts than the horse-race aspect of this thing.
Given the myriad options available to remedy the situation (voting in person, sending every Republican a new application) that may have been taken had the Republicans not added the numbers, I don’t think that it can be demonstrated that the will of the people was compromised.
Izzy Republican strategy at this point is that any activity for ballots which does not include counting them is good. The Dems had 10,000 ballots in Dade, and some 4000 PBC ballots they wanted counted, both sets were entirely made up of ballots that had registered by the machine as having ‘no vote’ on Presidential ticket. The Republicans said “oh, no, you have to count them all” , so all of them went. They were sent to the Judge ostensibly so he could examine the evidence to determine if counting the ballots at all would have some rational - to determine if it were indeed possible to discern a vote on theses ‘no vote’ ballots.
RE: Seminole Co etc. it seems clear that the glitch on these applications were confined to merely the republican applications. A point being missed, however, is that the problem and the fact that the applications were being ‘fixed’ rather than discarded (as originally intended) was not mentioned to the dems. This gave them no opportunity to attempt legal action before the fact.
In addition, according to the New York Times, there were other counties where the ballot applications were allowed to be fixed only by the republicans, and that the democrats were specifically denied access.
I’ve said for quite a while that Bush will ultimately be declared the winner (and in fact, the rep. slate of electors for Florida has been submitted already), but the amount of ‘irregularites’ coming from this election is cause for concern.
The article I quoted mentioned that the Democrats first complained about the situation on Oct. 30. Florida law does not (at least according to Bush’s lawyers) specifically prohibit people from assisting in the filling out of absentee ballot requests. I don’t see how the failure to tell the Democrats that the Republicans were doing so is an issue.
As for other counties, I’ve only seen vague claims that didn’t even name the counties, so I’m thinking this is more rumor and an attempt to spread the appearance of impropriety than anything substantial. I expect that when we find out what the real story is, it will be even less likely to amount to anything than the Seminole County case.
Waterj2 New York Times, 11/29/00, Martin County allowed republicans to correct several hundred absentee ballot applications, while the dems’ and other requests “piled up”