This is sort-of true, but IMHO the article left an implication that the study used analysis of variance. Perhaps I’m making that assumption because this is the same techniques used by the US Civil Right Clmmission study – the one that found that a disproportionate number of Black ballots had been discarded. (As I read it, Glassman and Lott don’t claim that their result is a correct description of what happened; but that their study is a as good as the Civil Right Commission study.)
Right, as to race. Of course, the actual vote indicates which party the voter favors.
Not exactly. The US Civil Rights Commission study looked at all districts and used ANOVAR to reach certain conclusions. I looked briefly at their study, and it seemed reasonable to me. However, as ITR pointed out, you cannot tell the race of a voter from a ballot, so no such study can be conclusive.
No doubt right-wing web sites were thrilled to reprint this article. However, it originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a responsible (and left-leaning) newspaper.
When you say “futher delegates” you should think, “adds additional legal requirements that do not ultimately supercede the Legislature’s role in determining presidential electors.”
Indeed Florida’s law does say its presidential electors would go to the candidate with the most votes. But ultimately, the authority to make the decision on the electors rests with whatever manner the Legislature of that state deems fit. It’s written in plain black-and-white in the U.S. Constitution, and its bolstered in the Florida case by the federal law dealing with a federal, presidential election, in which the electors are undetermined on the date at which they are supposed to be determined (dates, in this case, as the Florida Supreme Court kept doing their best to help out their buddy).
You’re aware that no law supercedes the U.S. Constitution, right? The way I read it, on any given election a state Legislature could decide their electoral votes will go to the candidate with the funniest hat. They may have hell to pay with their electorate over it, but they would be acting in a manner consistent with the powers granted them in the U.S. Constitution to determine presidential electors.
But then, I’m one of those “strict constructionists” who could never wear a black robe and write Legislation on the fly from a bench in Tallahassee.
Additionally, the Legislature had a certified election total from its Secretary of State. The legal battles were exceeding deadlines. Florida ran a legitimate risk of not having its electors tallied.
The exact scenario that the federal law that I cited foresaw, where the Legislature steps in and makes a determination.
Tejota:
Count the votes, count the votes, count the votes. Didn’t want “the votes” counted.
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So … I’ll just keep asking it. What’s a vote?
That was the whole damn problem with this election, and you know it!
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And others might argue that, given that what constituted a vote was varying from place to place, and there was evidence that partisanship may have been shaping that interpretation, the only moral position was to follow the law.
And to recognize that there isn’t a whole lot you can do about an election involving anonymous ballots to divine voters’ intent, if their ballots are improperly cast in certain ways. The more incorrectly cast the ballot, the more open to interpretation what the voter’s intention was. And because they’re anonymous, where does that leave you?
It sure as hell wouldn’t be right to have an election where the numbers are fairly solid, and a person knows the amount they need to overtake their opponent, as the intent of voters on individual ballots is then discerned by partisans with standards that could be described as nebulous and shifting at best.
The Florida Legislature recognized the lunacy and fundamental unfairness of giving Gore crack after crack at achieving a number of votes that was no longer uncertain, but that he knew he needed to win. That’s why they were preparing to put the puppy to bed, regardless.
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If Bush’s legal battle was “no-holds-barred,” please give me your description of the Gore camp’s post-election activities?
This is where you say “count the votes” several times.
Who says Bush should have taken the Gore strategy and ordered recounts in hand-picked counties? The more logical option is to say, “We had a count, and I won. We had a recount, and I won.” To follow a tactic Gore was undertaking would have undermined his position that Gore shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing.
It’s not a question of morality; it was a question of strategy. Come on, Tejota. Do you honestly think Gore was motivated by morality, or attempting to find an effective strategy?
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Again, what’s this “legal though it may have been, it was wrong” crap?
Secondly, give me examples of what Bush did that was “immoral” and examples of Gore refusing to do something that was “immoral.” If you bring up overseas absentee ballots re: Gore, I will assert that again, that was a calculated political strategy, not white-horse-riding morality.
Gore would have taken too damaging a political blow by voiding the ballots of American servicemen and women who, unlike the Gore-voters in Florida who cast their ballots improperly, did everything right, and their ballots did not have a postmark through no fault of their own.
Could he have won such a battle in court, legally? Probably. Would the political fallout and popular support damage have been worth it? No. He recognized this.
Like everything else involved here, it was a strategic, political move.
Politics is unsavory stuff. And nothing is more political than an election. If people are operating within the law, morality has little to do with it.
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Funny how the world works. Because I supported McCain. I was really outraged at how successfully the Bush camp tarred McCain as a non-conservative following McCain’s victory over Bush in the Michigan primary (my state).
In hindsight, I see it was just successful political strategy by the Bush camp. They were able to effectively do it, and it got them the critical South Carolina primary, and from there, momentum to the Republican nomination.
All that said, I found Bush almost consistently in the right and Gore consistently in the wrong in the Florida aftermath.
For example, all the whining about the Gore-Buchanan votes in Palm Beach. What did you expect us to do about it after the election?!? Come up with a percentage that we think Gore should have gotten, and give it to him? Nonsense!
Or how about claiming that Katherine Harris was completely impartial and fair-handed in her actions, had no bias whatsoever in her decisions, and was never eying any sort of lucrative ambassadorship in a Bush administration? This still gets a round of chuckles at my house.
Geez Millo, your guy is in. It is time to restore your intellectual honesty and recognize that whole mess as a successful political ploy to villify Gore and get illegal votes counted. Hell, they were so successful they even got in ballots postmarked after the election.
So, Ned, it was Bush that prevented Gore from challenging unmarked overseas military ballots. It wasn’t a decision Gore decided would be political suicide.
Aw, c’mon, Milo you knew you wouldn’t get away with that cute little bit of spin.
When it served thier political interest, the Forces of Darkness intoned thier committment to the Letter of the Law with somber bloviation, resonant with percieved threat to the well-being of the Republic.
The ballots in question were not kosher. By this standard, they were not acceptable, and should have been discounted. Whereupon the F of D wrapped themselves in bunting, great round tears rolling down thier faces, as they blubbered about “our boys” being denied thier right to vote.
This does for hypocrisy for Stonehenge does for rocks.
Further, by what legal mechanism does the Gore forces acquiesence become fact? If the law is the law, of what relevence is thier submission?
You missed the point millo, I don’t think that is an example of Gore playing fair. I think it is an example of Bush being prepared to do or say anything to achieve his objective.
Actually, I read the passage to which my attention was drawn in its entirety. What I did not go on to read was a paragraph that began with these words:
I apologize if my interest in this sort of drivel waned at that point.
Congratulations, however, on having provoked my curiosity. I’ve now gone back to the site and surfed around a bit, hoping to discern just how faithful the site is to its assurance that “To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source.”
I got this one:
I guess the column’s standard for having an entry “considered” is more rigorous than the standard it uses when deciding what to publish
