There was enormous damage to the principle of one person, one vote. Practically speaking, there can be miscounts and really close elections. The Supreme Court committed credibililty suicide in this process, and the Republican party, by purging legitimate voters, eliminated any claim to legitimacy that they may have. That the public, including yours truly, is willing to go along with this for four years speaks more to our desire for peace than our rights as voters.
OK, lawsuits have been filed. Are the beefs legitimate? What exactly does that establish? Has a judge made a decision on these cases yet?
Well, to me it just seems that they pissed away their legitimacy for nothing.
December, interesting take on the panhandle but you are being revisionist. The complaint was the early call and all the bizzarre projections are based on that 10 minutes. Yes, there was a subsequent theory floated last summer about the polls being reported closed but it relied on panhandle republicans listenning to dan rather. I thought you guys didn’t like him?
There were already at least two state-wide recounts done shortly after the election. Bush was ahead after both. Why should he have called for MORE recounts statewide?
I don’t blame Bush’s team for fighting off legal challenges. At no point was Bush behind in any recount between Election Day and the day the Supreme Court ended Gore’s legal challenges. Why should Bush have capitulated? Gore’s team’s challenges looked pretty contrived to me after a while.
This is another one of those dogmatic issues. Facts can be brought to bear on both sides of the argument. Everyone chooses what to disregard and what actually bears weight, and we all come to our own conclusions based on our indvidual interpretations of the “facts”. The “truth” as it were, is NOT out there. Rather, the truth is not knowable.
What exactly does a news report by “reliable media” (whatever that is) establish.
The lawsuits establish that the people who were named as individuals (and you need to read to at least section 3 of the suit), and the organization have staked their reputations on this. It establishes (from other portions of the website) that numerous people gave affadavits under penalty of perjury that these things happened to them. They have accused, in a court, a public official of acts that are a crime. This is in fact far more credible than a news story where everyone is free to b.s. It establishes a historical record.
What will result? What will the remedy be? What will the judge do? I don’t know.
The more important question here is why the U.S. news media has given this part of the events such poor play. IIRC UK and French newspapers gave this aspect of the story front page billing with no holds barred condemnation.
I have never thought that a few hundred votes out of millions can be accurately counted anyway. Life is like that. Same with the screwy butterfly ballot. The outrage is that people were not allowed to vote and everyone is sweeping it under the rug.
Of course I would have preferred a Gore administration. But I would have been a lot happier for our country if Bush had got elected legitimately. (And don’t get me started on Ralph Nader. Hey! Ralph! Can you tell the difference yet?)
Well, to me it just seems that they pissed away their legitimacy for nothing.
December, interesting take on the panhandle but you are being revisionist. The complaint was the early call and all the bizzarre projections are based on that 10 minutes. Yes, there was a subsequent theory floated last summer about the polls being reported closed but it relied on panhandle republicans listenning to dan rather. I thought you guys didn’t like him?
Sometimes I like to imagine how the republicans would have handled the reverse scenario. It wouldn’t have been pretty.
Nope. This the the first state wide full count. The others only looked at the counties that gore asked to have counted. Why is is that Republican’s have such a hard time telling the difference between a full count and a partial one?
Well no wonder it looked contived to you. You don’t actually know what happened. The first lawsuit was filed by Bush not by Gore. It hardly qualifies as a “defending” if you start the fight.
Undoubtedly, but it it sort of weakens your argument that both of the “facts” you mention above are actually wrong.
If you are going to base your view of the election on bad facts, then it isn’t going to be very surprising that you disagree with those who base their views on actual facts.
Now I understand. An well-researched account by a reliable journalist is worthless, but a mere *allegation *in a lawsuit is proof! Of course.
BTW, I skimmed through the NAACP’s civil complaint. Not even those unproven allegations supply the slightest support to your assertion that “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.” In fact the entire complaint alleges that election officials erroneously identified exactly two people as convicted felons, and one of them received written notice of the alleged misclassification by mail months before the election, thereby affording him the opportunity to contest the action. Sounds like a devious plot of large-scale disenfranchisement to me. The other link is equally useless, except perhaps this excerpt from the “non-transcipt/summary” of the “hearing was held to establish . . . possible voter irregularities and voter disenfranchisement on Election Day, November 7, 2000, in the state of Florida”:
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE AND IN BACKGROUND, PANELISTS [Kweisi] MFUME AND [Barbara] ARNWINE CAN BE HEARD SAYING "UNBELIEVABLE. TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE."
My thoughts exactly.
As for your suggestion that Ari Fleishcher issues at least one whopper per day, I’d invite you to identify just one * ever*, but I’ll resist. At this point I know what passes for “proof” in your mind, and how recklessly you hurl accusations.
I doubt this will end the “debate,” but heck, I live in hope. From the New York Times:
None of ya’s knows who “won,” and you’re never going to know. That’s the bottom line, much as it might gravel some or all of you.
How about his “real and present danger to Air Force One” lies?
Or how about the lies about the White House being trashed by the previous administration?
Or how about his lies that most economists agreed that the W tax cut would be good for the economy?
I don’t know if anybody else has pointed this out, but you can’t spell LIAR without an A, an R, and an I.
Yet a winner was declared. And that, as they say, is the bitch.
I’ll go along with what themoon said. George W. Bush displayed (and, by omission, still displays) a singular lack of fairness by insisting on a victory in such ambiguous circumstances. Granted, a Gore victory with a similar margin would be equally suspect. Which leads me to this hypothetical case…
Allow me to extend this scenario. The Democrat electors send their votes to Congress, where the U.S. House rejects the votes because the >200 vote margin made the result unreliable. Florida’s votes are legally, constitutionally disqualified. Gore is elected president based on the remainder.
Oops. I guess that would never happen with a GOP-controlled House. Which is probably why this very sensible option was, and still is, ignored. The House is the final arbiter of electoral votes. Someone should have argued that House members had a duty to reject the Florida electors on account of the impossibility of determining a real winner in the state.
How is that “the bitch”? Obviously a winner had to be declared. You’re now object to having a winner (any winner) declared? Are you now suggesting a nation-wide “do over”?
How about his “real and present danger to Air Force One” lies?**
[/QUOTE]
What exactly did he say, and how do you know it was a lie?
Or how about the lies about the White House being trashed by the previous administration?**
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same
Or how about his lies that most economists agreed that the W tax cut would be good for the economy?**
[/QUOTE]
Oh? You’ve done a survey of “all economists,” have you? Was it all “leading economists” or just your college roommates? Are you aware of a survey conducted by someone else? (Four out of five economists surveyed said . . . ") What was the sample group? Was it limited to academics? U of Chicago or Cal-Berkeley? Did it include economists who work for investment banking firms? Oh please tell us. Let me guess. 94% thought a tax cut would be “bad” for the economy, right?
I don’t know if anybody else has pointed this out, but you can’t spell LIAR without an A, an R, and an I. **
[/QUOTE]
How witty! Try evidence. Nah, never mind. Witty is so much easier.
This is one of those issues where the partisanship on both sides seems to cloud an honest, matter-of-fact evaluation. I just don’t understand some of you guys. Especially the ones saying that Bush’s handling of the whole situation was somehow less ethical than Gore’s.
When Gore sought a recount, he deliberately chose the one which his team thought would give him the greatest chance of winning. NOT the one that was the ‘fairest’. Choosing to count only undervotes, and only in heavily Democratic districts, was a calculated political move. If he had prevailed and won, do you think that the Bush supporters would have as much reason to claim that Gore ‘stole’ the election?
If you ask me, both candidates brought out the best, toughest lawyers they could lay their hands on, and fought out a no-holds barred fight for the presidency in the courts. NEITHER side is at fault for this - it’s what they were *supposed to do. That’s why we have laws, and how the legal system works. Your lawyer tries to use every tool at his disposal, and your opponent’s lawyer does the same thing. The Supreme courts of the state and Federal government are there to adjudicate in case there are abuses. What’s the problem? Why can’t you guys accept this?
The bottom line is that this election was a tie. The difference between the two men was statistically insignificant. But the U.S. doesn’t have a system that will allow a tie, so a remedy had to be sought in court. End of story.
I’ll be more than happy to admit that Gore would have won if an omniscient power had divined the ‘intent’ of the voter. But absent that power, all we can do is count votes in the way that the state election laws set up.
BTW, for those of you who think that only the Democrats suffered from voting irregularities in Florida, there is this disturbing article: http://www.techcentralstation.com/NewsDesk.asp?FormMode=MainTerminalArticles&ID=112
This article describes a statistical analysis which suggests that Black Republicans may have been screwed by Democrats. Until this study gets some peer review I’ll take it with a grain of salt, but if it’s true it suggests vote fraud by Democrats that is much worse than anything the Republicans were accused of.
TreeGrumpy is touching on my historical pet peeve of the whole deal: If the court had not intervened, then Congress would had to render a decision, but here is IMO one of the unmentioned reasons why the gang of five intervened. Every republican congress member then should had to justify voting in favor of a guy who lost the popular vote. I think Bush would have won anyhow in Congress, but what the court did was protect all the collective butts of the republicans in congress for the elections of 2002.
Of course the just completed elections of 2001 were a disaster for the republicans so I think the people do differentiate between support for America and support for the Republicans. And I do hope that while the president can not be removed, he can be neutered in 2002 and removed in 2004.
No Sam. He chose the only recount available to him. In each county he wanted to have recounted he had to show cause. So naturally he chose those with a large number of ballots that the machines showed no presidential votes on. Now it’s true that these ALSO happened to be democratic counties, even so, the bulk of ALL undervotes in the State were in these 4 counties.
At the time, no-one knew that there were valid ballots within the overvotes, but it seemed highly likely that there were valid balots where there were anomolously large numbers of undervotes.
A full recount of the state was never an option for him, unless it was ordered by the Supreme Court.
{bolding mine)
We can’t accept it because elections shouldn’t turn on who has the best lawyers. It should turn on who got the most votes.
The real question is: Why do you find this acceptable?
Gore fought to have votes counted, Bush fought to have them discarded without ever even looking at them to SEE if the machines had made a mistake. Regardless of who would have won, The only moral position that either one could have taken was to count every vote and let the final result be decided by that.
Bush’s no-holds-barred legal battle to prevent counting was just wrong. If he felt that Gore was looking for advantage in his choice of where to count, he should have looked to balance that advantage by exercizing his right to request recounts in other places that would favor him.
Of course, Bush believed (wrongly as it turned out) that there was no other place that would favor him. Or, to put it another way, that the more accurate the count, the more of a loser he would be.
Given that belief, his action to stop the counting is the moral equivalant of ballot-box-stuffing. Legal though it may have been, it was wrong to even attempt it. Gore, on the other hand, refused to take legal options that were available to him if they were immoral.
Until the election I thought that Bush and Gore were both about the same. I learned from the way that they handled the recount that when the chips are down Gore will do what is right, and Bush will do what is best for Bush.
It was the recount that turned me into an Anti-Bush, Pro-Gore partisan, up until that time I had no strong opinions about either of them.
The article is disturbing indeed. But it’s also quite conclusory; like you, I’d be very interested in looking into the data. If the allegations have merit–and they certainly do not seem preposterous on their face–much reform (albeit not quite the sort the Democrats are clamoring for) is in order. BTW, I ** am ** a Democrat.
They don’t publish their data, so it’s hard to say for sure. But I’m skeptical. One of the authors is John Lott, who is well known for his willingness to cook numbers to support his beliefs.
Help me out here, I hate statistics, so I think I might be wrong, I just don’t understand how.
Ok, so there is a 31% chance that a tossed ballot might from a black might be a republican vote (at best)
One for 20
So if 100 ballots are tossed (1 + 33% of 20) out of 20 votes would be for a Rep.
or am I doing something wrong.
What I believe Tejota means is that Lott has had the temerity to come up with some non-PC conclusions. (Tejota, if you’d care to present some specific examples where you believe Lott cooked numbers, I’d be happy to debate the topic with you on a new thread.)