I’m having trouble understanding the specific debate. I mean, I understand the topic and all, but what are we arguing about?[ul][li]Whether the study was accurate? - Looks like it was designed adequately to reflect the probable results of various hand recounts.[]Whether the study produced any startling results? -Color me unsurprised.[]Whether the study is relevant to American politics ca. November 2001? -IMO, no. It’s relevant to historians and future poli-sci majors.[]Whether the study is relevant to the national debate over election reform? -IMO, only insofar as it sheds new light on election law or voting paraphernalia (which is to say not relevant, as it doesn’t shed such light).[]Whether the “early” calls cost thousands of Republican votes in the panhandle? -<snort!>[]Whether erislover actually owns a cat? -I think were erl to own a cat (and I make no claims on this point) the probability is that said feline’s breath would deliver a somewhat cat-food like aroma.[]Whether dogs like Altoids, and does this freshen their breath? -I had a friend who used to brush her dog’s teeth with baking soda and water.[/ul][/li]
Woulda coulda shoulda. Pray for a healthy Supreme Court and vote in '04.
I strongly question the worth of these media-run recounts. Not because of bias, but because of the repeated human handling (stacking, rubber-banding, shifting, loading into trucks, etc.) of paper ballots.
These paper ballots were made to be read by scanner, not by human beings. I see many people (not here on SMDB) assuming that human recounts are hands-down more accurate than machine counts. I doubt that is the case.
What happens with repeated human handling of paper ballots is that chads get damaged – if they are pregnant or swinging, they can break off. This leads to many “false” double votes - which were summarily thrown out, IIRC.
My take is that, given Florida’s outdated voting mechanisms and paraphrenalia, the margin of error of Florida’s process was greater than the actual margin of victory for whichever candidate won the Florida election. That was unfortunate.
Despite backing the Republican ticket, I had no use for the posturing of both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court. I don’t blame the SCOTUS much for making a tough call, though – something had to be done. Perhaps the Florida Legislature should have gone ahead and voted for the President. Personally, I would have even backed a re-vote by the entire state’s voting public – but that is supposedly illegal.
I love republicans. Normally reasonable people who are prepared to grasp any argument. Sure Palm Beach made no difference, besides it was a Buchanan stronghold, and even if it wasn’t it was designed by a democrat. Nah, that two page ballot in Duvall didn’t make any difference either.
But we are going to hang on to our myth that a call by a private media organization 11 minutes before the polls closed cost thousands of votes so it evens out. And lets hang onto the myth that military votes ween’t counted conveniently forgetting that they even managed to get votes postmarked after the election into the count. Hell, they even got a faxed vote in. Nah, they weren’t illegal, they were military damnit, but no, we won’t make that argument in strongly democratic counties.
Ned, the right myth to dengrate is that major TV and radio stations announced that the polls were closed, when they were actually would be open for an adidition hour in the conservative panhandle area. This happened. Of course, the impact is a matter of speculation.
Ironically, Kathleen Harris had alerted the media of the dual closing times beforehand, but they ignored her prescient warning.
Ned, there are two time zones in Florida. Geographically, most of the state is in the Eastern zone, but the Panhandle is in the Central zone. Polls closed in the Florida Panhandle at 8 PM Central – or 9 PM Eastern.
I left work that day about 7:45 - 8:00 PM Central time, and was checking the Net for results from the Eastern states as they were coming in. Florida was called for Bush first (IIRC), then for Gore, before I went home.
The state shouldn’t have been called at all either way until well after the Panhandle polls closed. But that’s spilled milk now.
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Uh, Ned? Sterling? What’s a vote?
A worst-case scenario happened last November in Florida. What all those county clerks and Secretary of State staffers hoped would never happen, happened.
Both sides then used all legal recourses available to each try to turn the basic tie to their favor. Bush was helped immensely by the fact that he had more votes initially, although still within the margin of error.
Have Florida, and many other states, modified their election practices and updated voting technology, in light of the Florida fiasco? Yep.
Have Democrats, who are great at turning out masses on election day, including first-time voters, enacting measures to better educate voters to not vote for more than one, not write anything in after casting a vote, checking to see if all the chads have detached off their punch card, etc.?
Not to my knowledge. They apparently would rather blame this on a nefarious cabal or something - which is really ridiculous. But they don’t seem to care, or notice. Have fun!
And, speaking of fun, check out this site:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections2000/recount/yourvote.html
You decide the standards that should be used to count the Florida votes, press the button, and they tell you who wins under your scenario.
Bush won under mine (chads detached at least one corner, no dimples, and I even counted overvotes where the candidate’s name was written in as well as a vote cast for him).
That much you can be virtually sure of–and it might be the only thing you can be sure of. These various scenarios provide no genuinely useful insights; they only supply the stuff of which endless arguments can be made. To be sure, each side has its arguments, but that’s all: a bunch of unpersuasive arguments based on little more than surmise and speculation, subject to equally unpersuasive counterarguments based on artificial, if not wholly unsubstantiated, assumptions that have never controlled the outcome of * any * election. Enough already.
If there was a complete manual recount of the Florida ballots and Gore lost, then that’s the breaks, sorry Al. At least the ballots would have been counted.
But having the Supreme Court stop the recount (on the flimsiest of excuses) and having a President appointed before the numbers were known is still inexcusable.
It just shows that Gore and the Florida Democratic Party messed up big-time. He should have gone county-by county, vote for vote in the first place. That he went for certain counties only, that was illegak in Florida law. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld Florida state law stating that all ballots must be counted. It also said that the election dispute almost came to a point where the Florida legislature would decide on who won Florida, regardless of where the count stood in West Palm Beach county, or anywhere else for that matter. Then it would have been a real mess.
Also, the Democrats messed up big time allowing that ballot confusion that gave Buchanan that extra 3000 votes.
Many liberals and Democrats have devoted an enormous amount of mental energy since the election to promulgating the notion that Bush is only president by virtue of the US Supreme Court handing it to him. As a result, the fact that this is not actually the case is news indeed. I see in this thread that liberals have fallen back on other lines of reasoning to justify the “Gore is really President” mantra, or taken up the notion that the USSC was wrong anyway. Which is fine, FWIW. Nonetheless, the fact that the actual decision was not what gave the election to Bush remains an important and relevant part of history.
I came to this forum to post this, and there’s already a thread going about it! Cool.
I see that some have mentioned the N.Y. Times article on Nov. 12. I get the email newsletter from http://www.smartertimes.com. The notes about the Nov. 12 article are here at
http://www.smartertimes.com/archive/2001/11/011112.html
Sorry, for reasons that are too long, I can’t clean up the code. Just click it.
It makes the point that the recounts “might” have had Gore winning, but that replicating the situation that existed after the election is impossible, because re-running the punch cards changes the result as the chads get knocked off, etc.
In general, I LOVE this newsletter. This guy really holds the Times’ feet to the fire. He finds logical inconsistencies, unstated biases, and other problems with the paper every day.
The most important thing to remember here is not what the outcome would have been had a fair recount gone forward, although that is important.
The most important thing about this whole fiasco is the stonewalling by the Bush team. It shows that Bush did not care about being elected fairly, and that he was willing to take the win under any circumstances. If he would have had any integrity, he would have called for a full state-wide recount himself, instead of trying to stop the recount at every turn.
He cares not about democracy, or the will of the people, and this has been borne out by his extreme Right wing agenda after gaining office, despite his more moderate claims during the campaign.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011112/us/florida_ballot_review.html
AP: Vote Review Concludes Recounts Sought by Gore Would Have Yielded Bush Victory
“A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome - by the barest of margins - had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount.”
http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/news/overvotes.html
Palm Beach Post: If Clearly Marked ‘Over-Votes’ Had Counted
“Had election officials eyeballed every ballot rejected by tabulating machines as over-votes to see whether any were clearly-valid votes, Al Gore would have won last year’s presidential election by 350 votes.”
Thanks! And I love your sig!
I don’t think that this story does justice to the crimes committed. There were illegal voter role purges of 20,000 voters in heavily democratic counties of supposed felons by names taken from the Texas felon list, by a Texas contractor Harris hired to do it. These people who had identical names were not felons in Florida. These people were denied the vote
themoon forgot to mention that he also screws penguins. 
Good grief. Let’s see a reliable news account in support of that whopper.
The author of Too Close to Call, Jeffrey Toobin, was interviewed by Fresh Air’s Terri Gross last week and said that it is fairly clear that more people intended to vote for Gore than Bush. However, Bush prevailed because his advisors were more experienced (e.g. James Baker had run every Republican Presidential campaign from 1976 to 1992), more focused, more passionate, and more politically savvy than Gore’s. Gore’s team was not as coordinated (e.g. David Boies was not their first choice; Joel Cohen was but he didn’t call back right away because he was on his honeymoon), not as passionate (after the election, only 1 of Gore’s staffers wanted to see Gore run again) and were too preoccupied with public perception.
To listen to the interview, try this:
http://151.200.0.60/communications/press_releases/florida_lawsuit.asp
Is the link to the NAACP lawsuit. This got a lot of press in the UK at the time, and virtually none here. The existence of a historical event is not based on whether “reliable media” chooses to report it or not.
http://www.naacp.org/news/press2000.shtml is a more general link to the NAACP’s alleged irregularities.
For whoppers, if you like them, Ari Fleisher holds a daily press briefing.
Just hadda repost that. The most salient point, I think, and mostly missed.
Come sit by me, won’t you?
And ** Hazel, ** watch it, there, that’s MY toady you’re messing with! <whip crack>