Agreed. In fact, according to the Miami Herald
One significance of all of this is that once you grant that the election is so muddled that it is impossible to determine who really won, you have significantly diminished the argument against letting the Florida Legislature decide on the grounds of “overturning the will of the people”.
hmm. Interesting, too, though waterj, that article you cited ** also** stated that the ballot applications were first denied, then **only ** the Republican applications were pulled and allowed to be corrected, and the dem states he was told to “go fly a kite”.
Oh God, don’t agree with me, it’s all I have left in life!
Re: felons voting etc. I’ve maintained all along that laws prohibiting convicted persons from voting are damned near unenforceable anyhow,(which is not to say that I agree that having illegal voters isn’t a problem). but frankly, most people assume, incorrectly (IMHO) that felons would automatically vote liberal/democratic. While I ran a correction center (1977-1991), I would hear who my folks intended to vote for, and trust me, the phrase “tax cuts” reasonates quite nicely with them as well. Felons have the same kinds of considerations that any other people do, they have (often) families, jobs etc.
Re: the argument about the FSL being justified in their intended actions, well, since they’ve gone into it pretty well spelling out what they believe to be the will of the people, I think it’s highly questionable that their choice is any more valid than any other one. Again, I think it’s all moot anyhow - is there a procedure where a slate of electors, once submitted can be taken back? I suspect that if there is, that there’s some time frame involved, otherwise, the submission to the electorial college wouldn’t have had the date that it did. (Many, uncontested states have not officially submitted their electors yet, why did Florida submit it the same minute as the official word?)
In any event, Izzy I believe if there will be political fallout for members of the FSL (and probably the courts, as well) from these events. as one little old lady was quoted as saying “I’ll be voting again” and you really don’t want to piss off little old ladies…
wring,
The article specifically says that 75% of the illegal voters were registered Democrats.
Regarding the FSL, I don’t think their choice has to be any more accurate than anyone else’s. But in the absence of a clear-cut choice the job has been left to them. As the ball bounced, Bush lucked out.
As for political fallout, I completely disagree with you (happy now?). There will undoubtedly be alot of short term fallout, but by the next election it will have been long since been forgotten. (Remember the impeachment? Big time election issue). Never overestimate the attention span of the voters. Plus, there is a disconnect between what people think of legislative bodies as a whole and what they think of their individual rep. In particular, most of the Repubs in the legislature are from Republican district, who will not be too displeased with them.
As for judicial fallout, I think it’s more likely to be the other way around. One subtext of this issue is that the FSC has clashed with the legislature in past, overturning their laws on various occasions. Thus the legislature is predisposed to take the action that they are contemplating. I would think that regardless of the outcome of this election, the legislature will attempt to clip the courts wings in some manner, if possible.
That would be a “delay tactic.” The Republicans know that it would take another day or two to pack up ALL the ballots and ship them to Tallahassee. And with every day that passes the more likely it is that they will win the election by default.
The democrats no doubt wanted just the ballots in question, but with their “EVERY vote must count” argument, they’d have a hard time arguing against bring every ballot to the capitol.
According to CNN
One wonders whether all this legislative activity will temper the future rulings of the Florida SC in this matter.
Elvis, voting is not something you can’t do if your application for an absentee ballot doesn’t result in the arrival of an absentee ballot. For one thing, you can always re-request the absentee ballot. For another thing, you can actually go and vote in person. As we both know (don’t be ingenuous and deny it), many ‘absentee’ voters do so for the sake of convenience, not neccessity.
Thus, it really matters not if 4,700 Republican voters got ballots who would otherwise not have gotten ballots. We don’t KNOW that this lead to any difference in expressed will. We DO know what votes were received, and what the suit in question really attempts to say is: those who voted because they got a ballot they wouldn’t have gotten thanks to a printing form screw-up shouldn’t have their votes counted.
Given that the same party making this argument is the party screaming about the butterfly ballot, dimpled chads that didn’t fully punch out as they were supposed to, etc., this seems pretty hypocritical. And it will be denied, because it isn’t logical, either. 
It comes down to this:
In Seminole county Republicans were allowed to fix their printing screwup after the fact, the Democrats didn’t have one. So while some of the Republicans who edited the ballot applictions might be charged with fraud for their actions, the votes themselves aren’t invalid.
Does anyone know (or have a cite) to show that the same thing happened in Marin county? My understanding is that this is not really the same situation, in particular the democrats in that county asked to fix applications and were DENIED while the republicans were actually allowed to take the applications home with them fix them up and bring them back.
This seems much more serious to me, although if it’s the same basic issue (republicans fixing a printing error that the democrats didn’t even have), then it’s still not serious enough to discard the votes for.
Also, does anyone have numbers about the ratio of absentee ballots sent out of state rather than to locals? I’d imaging that the number of people who could just go to the polls if their absentee ballot never showed up is actually fairly small, but I’d love to see some numbers to support/refute that assumption.
tj
OF COURSE some people who got absentee ballots did so for convenience and could have voted anyway. But what’s your answer to those who could NOT? For instance, our brave people in the military stationed in Outer Bunghole, or the disabled or elderly who can’t get out of bed, or whatever the reason that’s nobody else’s business but is nevertheless real? Before you call me disingenuous for something I didn’t even say, don’t be disingenuous yourself and deny the reason absentee ballots were created in the first place, and remains their primary use.
You’ve also stated that someone who didn’t receive a ballot could apply again - do you know how long the lead time was?
[Cutting and pasting from your post for parallelism]
Given that the same party making this argument is the party screaming about allowing absentee ballots to be counted from people who couldn’t bother to get a postmark, signature, or even a freakin’ signature, this seems pretty hypocritical. And it will be denied (at least in the court of public opinion), because it isn’t logical, either.
Counselor, please try to understand a statement before calling it hypocritical, and don’t condemn an argument that hasn’t even been made. Fair enough?
You’re welcome to try again if you can think of something.
tj I posted the link about what happened in Marin County around 9 am in this thread. Basically, in that county, only republicans were allowed in to ‘fix’ the ballot requests, the others were allowed to collect in a pile.
interestingly enough, poll numbers are showing a downward slide since Sunday in the number of people who believe that Bush won fairly. I believe I’ve said all along that the person who really should be pushing hard for a count of all votes is Mr. Bush, otherwise the stigma of “but what if they’d been counted” will hang over him. and while I agree with Izzy (god I hate doing that 
) that voters will not necessarily hold on to grudges, I don’t believe for one second that this situation is analagous to the impeachment. we are seeing some nasty background stuff on how people have acted in this election.
Here’s the cite on the poll: Bush numbers slip
Supreme Court decides not to decide.
Old election rule: It’s over when all the votes have been counted.
New election rule: It’s over when all the lawsuits have been settled.
I saw this sign and had to pass it on.
DUI fine: $150.
Campaign contributions: $100,000,000.
Having your brother be the Governor and your campaign chair be the Secretary of State: Priceless.
Here’s a legal question: The USSC “vacated” the FSC decision, asking for an explanation of its legal grounds. Presumably this explanation will soon be forthcoming from the FSC. What happens next? Does the USSC rediscuss the decision in light of the new explanation and issue a new ruling? If they, at that point, do nothing at all, does the decision revert to “active” status on its own, or does it now require a positive action by the USSC to restore it to its previous position?
The US SC vacated the FL SC ruling which means the ruling no longer stands. The FL SC will now reopen proceedings and issue a new ruling, using the US SC decision as a guide. The US SC will not automatically review the decision of the FL SC. It is up to a party to file a writ of certiorari (which asks the US SC to take the case on appeal). The US SC may or may not decide to review the new ruling.
Elvis your rant about the absentee ballots ignores a basic point: it isn’t that people who wanted to vote were precluded from voting, it is that people voted who might otherwise have had to vote in person.
Say what you like, the request to throw out the absentee ballots will be denied, and, frankly, the only people who will be upset by that are the die-hard supporters of Mr. Gore, who can’t conceive that there exist logical grounds to deny their desire for the President to be someone other than George W. Bush (a problem shared in its obverse with even greater intensity by many of Mr. Bush’s supporters.
DS, the point certainly IS that some people who wanted to vote couldn’t and others could, based only on their party affiliation. That seems to have been the result of the conscious actions of the Martin (and maybe Seminole, that’s not clear) County elections board chairpersons, both Republicans. What part of that is giving you difficulties?
Your implication that anyone who really wants to vote can easily just show up in person is nonsensical, and I listed a few counterexamples for you. You can’t cover that up by using ad hominem arguments, and I’m sure you’d be thrown out of court if you tried that in your job.
Gore said last night on 60 minutes that in fact, Dem applications lacking ID numbers were * thrown out*, while the GOP applications were (illegally, but that’s being hypertechnical) fixed.
IF that does turn out to be the case, then I do believe the absentee ballots should be discarded. They were illegally obtained in a manner that goes beyond mere technicalities and right up to attempts to fix or change the election.
If not…then they should not be.
Gore’s assertion was the first time I’d heard that. I wonder what is really up?
stoid
If the reporters would do some reporting, instead of all this atmospheric and horse-race crap, we might know. Some reports have said exactly what Gore said about Seminole and essentially the same thing about Martin, while others have said the Seminole Democrats got it right the first time while the Seminole Republicans were allowed to fix their screwups. If the latter is the case, then I don’t see a problem, really - everybody who made a reasonable attempt to vote would have gotten to.
The Martin allegations are that the defective Democratic applications were “set aside” while the Republican ones were fixed, and I’ve seen no reports to the contrary.
So I don’t get worked up about the court decisions yesterday - they were a longshot for Gore, anyway. The cases that will decide the election are the keep-or-toss decisions in those 2 counties.
Change of topic, slightly:
The Miami Herald had a study done of what the Florida vote would have been if there had been none of the problems we’ve heard so much about lately. They figure Gore really had more voters intending to vote for him, by well into 5 figures.
*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
Just a quick partial rebuttal from Jacob Weisberg in Slate:
Basically he disputes the Herald’s inclusion of overvotes (votes with more than one choice for president), which acount for almost 2/3 of the “uncounted” ballots. In addition, he allows for a baseline rate of people who actually did not want to vote for president (a possibility the Herald apparently ignores). After all of the number crunching he comes up with a hypothetical Gore margin of less than 1000 votes. Even this is wildly optomistic as even Broward county, which used the most liberal criteria for determining voter “intent”, managed to recover only 35% of the undervotes. Factoring this in, Bush still wins by 700 votes.
He does agree however, that it is likely that more people went to the poles intended to vote Gore than Bush. For all legal and practical purposes though, the correct choice seems to be Bush.
Even though I prefer Bush to Gore, I can’t fault his analysis, nor can I ignore my objective impression that Gore would have won Florida and thus the election if so many people hadn’t screwed up (voters, election officials, racist cops, etc).
Ahh well, nobody said democracy was pretty.
gEEk
Well, it’s been said that Jefferson was an advocate of the electoral college because he didn’t trust the ignorant masses to make the right choice…