# They Threw away 19,000 votes! Gore actually won! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 9, 2000, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427 "2000-11-09T08:30:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Freedom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/161 "2000-11-10T22:03:49Z")
This is the explanation I saw: > [@](#): > > 19,000 invalidated ballots are evidence that thousands of people were allowed to revote when their initial try failed because they punched two presidential votes; the machine kicks the ballot out when this happens, instantly, then a precinct person gives the mistaken voter another ballot and allows them to try again, and up to three attempts are allowed … the do-over has already been done and the 19,000 invalidated but kept for accounting purposes ballots are the PROOF. Get it? Anyone want to challenge it? I’m not posting it here as fact, just as one explanation so far. ---
**Author:** ![SouthernStyle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@SouthernStyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SouthernStyle)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/162 "2000-11-10T22:18:02Z")
**Freedom2** , I certainly hope that you’re correct. My source was a radio broadcast so I can’t post a cite. Do you have a linkable source? ---
**Author:** ![Freedom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/163 "2000-11-10T22:35:47Z")
> [@](#): > > I do not consider the source I heard it from reliable one way or the other. Sorry. No reliable source yet. I posted that explanation because it was a little more detailed version of the story. Hopefully people will keep their eyes and ears open for a final word on this. I also put it on the PalmBeach Debunking thread. I figured this issue needed some attention. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/164 "2000-11-10T22:55:45Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by Freedom2 \* \*\* > [@](#): > > I figured this issue needed some attention. \*\* As I pointed out in my thread, this theory is ludicrous for one simple reason: there are not counting machines at the voting locations. No machine to “spit out” a thing. People turn in their ballot to humans, who put it in a box and take it to the counting location long after the voter has gone home and eaten dinner. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/165 "2000-11-10T23:08:22Z")
I don’t know about Florida but in Chicago, where we also had a butterfly ballot, the ballot was NOT scanned when I turned it in. The ballot goes into a big locked box and they are counted when the poll closes. It would seem that counting ballots on the spot might have the potential for screwing voter confidentiality. Also, just because you screw-up one part of the ballot does not invalidate the whole ballot. If you punched two holes for president then that result is tossed but all of your other votes (for congress, the senate, etc.) are still counted. I can’t imagine a machine being allowed to tell you your entire ballot needs to be recast because somewhere you screwed-up. Finally, if votes were tabulated on the fly then election results could be seen real-time, as it happens. That’s not the case. We all have to wait several hours for results to start pouring in. I believe the 19,000 votes tossed are from double-punch tickets. The rest of the vote was still counted from those ballots (assuming the voter didn’t screw-up another area as well). I also heard that 10,000 ballots in PBC were cast with no hole punched for president bringing the total weird ballot count in PBC to nearly 30,000. ---
**Author:** ![lucwarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@lucwarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucwarm)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/166 "2000-11-10T23:23:44Z")
"It comes down to this: Bush won. However: Gore should have won. There is nearly NO DOUBT about this." Honestly, I am skeptical of this claim. I’ll grant you that it may be possible to find several hundred (or thousand) Floridians who intended to vote for Gore but didn’t. But, I bet there’s a lot of Wisconsin residents, Iowa residents, and even Florida residents who intended to vote for Bush but didn’t, for whatever reason. And of course there’s absolutely no way to measure how many people intended what. Certainly, a lot of the claims that have been made are not very credible (hundreds of people in hysterics in a parking lot? Come on!) Let me add that I’m troubled by the “spin” that’s going on. For example, some people are claiming that certain ballots were “illegal.” Others claim that those ballots are “legal.” Statutes have been quoted, and it seems to me that somebody’s wrong, although I don’t have the patience to figure out who. ---
**Author:** ![Freedom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/167 "2000-11-10T23:44:42Z")
> [@](#): > > As I pointed out in my thread, this theory is ludicrous for one simple reason: there are not counting machines at the voting locations. No machine to “spit out” a thing. People turn in their ballot to humans, who put it in a box and take it to the counting location long after the voter has gone home and eaten dinner. And as I pointed out in your thread. Even if there was no machine “spitting out” the ballots, then how do we (as people on this forum) know that those 19,000 ballots are not ballots that people knowingly exchanged for another ballot? They have to keep a record of exchanged ballots somewhere, or else they would not be able to account for every ballot they initially received when the voting was over. And BTW…you are the only one insinuating that the machine in the explanation was “counting” ballots on the spot. The explanation made it seem much more like the machine was “checking” the ballot to make sure it was not double punched. ---
**Author:** ![Sn-man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sn-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sn-man)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2000, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/168 "2000-11-11T03:54:05Z")
Let the votes be counted. There have been several close races. The last, being between Kennedy and Nixon. There seems to be some selective memory going on by the Democratic Party and by democratic supporters. It seems that the same ballot was used in Florida FOUR years ago. If I remember correctly, all ballot formats must be approved prior to actual use (both parties approved this one). I do not remember anyone making an issue about it before. I also seem to remember that somewhere around 16,000 votes where tossed due to the same problem in the last presidential election. I do not remember anyone crying foul, or going on about being “raped.” The big question; if this were really a problem, it “coulda shoulda woulda” been changed by now. It has only become an issue because people are pulling out all the stops to try to change the election outcome. Something that I think goes against the concept of a Republic (that’s us folks). Wasn’t JJ’s son elected with the same type of ballot? All of this posturing will not do either party any good, only the lawyers being paid. I will get down off my soapbox now. Hopefully I will allowed to step down under my own power instead of being shot. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![KellyM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@KellyM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyM)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2000, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/169 "2000-11-11T04:00:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sn-man \* > **It seems that the same ballot was used in Florida FOUR years ago. If I remember correctly, all ballot formats must be approved prior to actual use (both parties approved this one).** Ballots in Florida are designed by the county supervisor of elections (in this case, a Democrat) and approved by the state board of elections (which in Florida is controlled by the Republicans). The parties themselves have no direct role in creating or approving the format of ballots. My understanding is that this is the first year that a butterfly ballot has been used in Palm Beach County. I have a friend in the Chicago area who had this style of ballot for some issues and she said that it was confusing for her and that she almost certainly cast votes other than what she intended as a result. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2000, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/170 "2000-11-11T23:31:24Z")
Washington Post-- 11/11 "About 26,000 votes with more than one candidate or no candidate marked were disqualified in Duval county and never counted, elsection officials said Saturday. Duval county is as solidly republican as Palm Beach county is Demcratic. Texas Gov. George W. Bush carried Duval county by 44,000 votes." ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2000, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/171 "2000-11-12T00:17:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Milossarian, I can’t believe they still make you. I’m quite tired of the liberal this, liberal that, especially since the “liberal media” as been pro-Bush the entire campaign. You sound like a right-wing crazy when you say that stuff. I’m quite independent, somewhat anti-liberal, and see absolutely nothing here that indicates liberals are whinily up to no good. then you havn’t been watching ---
**Author:** ![Esprix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprix/32/7899_2.png) [@Esprix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprix)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2000, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/172 "2000-11-13T15:14:05Z")
Last time I checked it was the _Republicans_ who were using the courts to _stop_ the recount. Esprix ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2000, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/173 "2000-11-13T15:58:50Z")
Acording to [Salon.com](http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/12/hand/index.html): > [@](#): > > At a Tallahassee press conference on Saturday, Florida election officials revealed that in last Tuesday’s election, there were far more problems in counties using the punch-card system than the optical scan system, or OpScan. In punch-card counties, 32 ballots per thousand cast had to be invalidated. But in counties using the optical scan system, or OpScan, only two per thousand were thrown out. Around Florida, and throughout the county, election reformers are trying to move away from the punch-card system. Massachussetts has stopped using them entirely; so has San Francisco. > Coincidentally or not, Florida counties using the OpScan system tend to be Republican, while the punch-card counties are disproportionately Democratic. And one Republican county still using punch cards, Seminole, voluntarily hand counted its ballots when it conducted its state-mandated recount last week – and gave another 98 votes to Bush, his largest county gain in the recount. This explains the disporportionate gains for Gore in the first recount, the attitudes of the Gore/Bush camps towards future recounts, and why Gore is likely to be the next president of the US. One quibble: from what I’ve read, Seminole County did not do a manual recount, as this article claims, but instead manually counted the absentee ballots only. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2000, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/174 "2000-11-15T18:36:39Z")
We certainly don’t need another election thread, so I thought this would be the best place for the following snippet from the [AP](http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=HOME&SITE=NA012&enter=Go) newswire. It is from 11/15, 12:05 EST. > [@](#): > > WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A judge ruled Wednesday that Palm Beach County elections officials cannot arbitrarily toss out all ballots where the presidential choice was not completely punched. > > Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that so-called ``dimpled chad’’ - where the punchcard was not perforated, but was clearly indented - should be considered. But he said the county canvassing board may decide on individual ballots whether the dimple constitutes a vote. > > ``No vote is to be declared invalid or void if there was a clear intention of the voter,’’ Labarga said after a 90-minute hearing in West Palm Beach. This brings up several obvious questions, unless of course, I have missed something or become confused. How will this ruling be reconciled with the earlier ruling that the deadline does not necessarily have to be extended. Does this comprise a legitimate reason for turning in an amended count of ballots? Is this reason to continue with the Palm Beach hand-count? What happened to all the election questions going to the Florida Supreme Court? Is that just new lawsuits? Or did this judge rule on the case before the SC could decide to take it on for themselves? Taking this at face value, and assuming that it is not overturned on appeal, does this mean the 19K ballots (give or take the ones that are truly indiscernible)are back in? What say Dopers? ---
**Author:** ![SouthernStyle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@SouthernStyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SouthernStyle)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/175 "2000-11-16T16:36:52Z")
I’ve heard precious little about the 19,000 ballots since late last week. If they were really a potential source of Democratic votes you can be sure that someone would be trumpetting them as much as possible to gain public support. The day after the election I’d heard that these 19,000 ballots were rejects that had been culled prior to the voter casting his ballot. Yesterday, for the first time in days, I heard a radio mention of the 19,000 ballots and a reference to them being “red enveloped” – ballots that were clearly NOT intended to be included with the cast ballots. Since other races were also on these ballots I cannot image them being culled from the cast ballots just because one race was indeterminate. I’m puzzled. Does anyone else have a better update? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427/176 "2000-11-16T23:48:37Z")
Counting ‘dimpled’ chads is nuts. First, it’s much easier to accidentally or deliberately ‘dimple’ a chad while counting, whereas it’s much more difficult to tear one out. Also, it’s much easier for a chad to be accidentally dimpled. For example, any vote on the card _beneath_ the disputed card will create a gap below the same spot on the top card. Any pressure on that card may cause a chad on that one to dimple into the hole below. By trying to get away with these outrageous rulings, the Democrats are playing into the Bush claim that the hand count is arbitrary and biased. I think what Bush should do now is agree to a state-wide hand-count, but with some stringent limits on questionable ballots. The only chad that should be counted must have at least two corners detached (“Swinging Door”), and all election officials must be matched by Republican counterparts. He won’t do it, because he’ll probably lose. But it’s the right thing to do. I think most of us are slowly coming around to the point of view that Gore probably got shafted here - Bush is standing on technicalities, when the statesmanlike thing to do is to get together with Gore and his team and come up with a rock-solid, mutually agreed-upon way to conduct a state-wide hand count. I think Bush’s current course runs a big risk of having the State Supreme Court invalidate the election as not representing the will of the people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-threw-away-19-000-votes-gore-actually-won/40427.md?page=8)