Civil war sounds appealing to you?
So far, everything that’s occurred with the process seems to be both legal and constitutional. Barring anything crossing this threshhold, the winner will be determined by the recount. Period.
Other than the obvious, I’m bothered by several things in this process. Al is acting anything but presidential when he starts tell us that he won the popular vote and his aides won’t discount court challenges.
Most of you on the board are too young to remember this, but even the most hated president of this half century, Richard Nixon, when told that the Daley machine had delivered Illinois with fraudulent votes and the VP-elect’s machine had done the same in Texas, said, “this country needs a President, it doesn’t need a scandal” and quietly walked away.
It’s frightening to think of the Gore campaign sinking below the actions of Nixon simply because they don’t like the outcome.
Southern Style-would you please provide a source as to where Gore said that?
- Print out the alleged bad ballot.
- Now place it horizontally about chest to collarbone level and at half an arms length away.
The arrows seem a lot closer together!
If it is like my poll the holes are physically under the ballot book by nearly the distance the holes are separated from each other. This means that unless you can look at it from above, which is not possible if you are short and the ballot and book are in fixed positions, again like at my poll, then the arrow appears to point between two holes.
In other paper ballot elections I attended, the ballots and books were designed so that unneeded holes were covered and there was never any doubt which holes to punch.
The palm beach ballot design my seem ok at first glance, but in use it would be quite ambiguous. This also explains why it was initially approved by the dems.
My ballot had similar problems but only on pages that were for the reelection of judges. Some other issues had several places between them. I noticed when i got to the right half of the page and the punch was already punched. This is a bigger problem for me since i am short.
The thing I think is most important, that I hope both sides never lose sight of in this, is that Florida and West Palm Beach County are the focus of the nation and the world right now for obvious reasons.
But Florida is one of 50 states; and West Palm Beach County is one of thousands of counties in this country. Any special consideration given to either that is not or would not be afforded to other locales in the U.S. would be wrong.
I don’t imagine Palm Beach is the only place in the country that used a butterfly ballot. I also don’t imagine it is the only place where somebody mistakenly spoiled their ballot, or voted for someone they didn’t want to.
What do you do?
A re-vote, in West Palm Beach County or Florida, would be obviously unfair, with the stakes known. It would change. That’s not fair to the rest of the country, which could vote only once.
I’ve seen the clip on both CNN and MSNBC. I’m sure the other networks have also picked it up.
I’ve seen the ballot in question on TV and it is far from confusing. An arrow runs directly from the candidiates name to the corresponding punch hole. If a person is confused by this, then:
a: They must be too stupid to understand political issues…and they shouldn’t vote.
or
b. The have a mental deficiency (probably brought on by old age), cant tell one candidate from another…and they shouldn’t vote.
Either way the attention paid to the voting “irregularities” seems to be one sided. I’ve yet to hear any real discussion of voter fraud or other problems that might have taken votes away from Bush, despite the fact that democrats have been known to oversee massive voter fraud in the past (Kennedy in 1960 is the best example).
I think our elections are fraught with voter fraud, and that is the dirty secret of amarican politics. That is the real story that should come out, but instead we will have microscopic scrutiny of minor “problems”. The patient is dead, and we are considering trimming his fingernails.
merckx
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. This is the Presidential election here, and any rational individual should feel that things are askew with Palm Beach Co.
Besides, Gore won the U.S. popular vote. If it had been a landslide to Bush, maybe then only liberals would be decrying the vote fraud (though I doubt it). But as it stands, I think we should fight to make the EC consistent with the American people’s vote. Would I say the same thing if circumstances were reversed? Given my opinion of Bush, I probably wouldn’t speak out; but I would definitely admit to myself that Bush should win if the circumstances were reversed.
SouthernStyle, I think you have it reversed. Bush has acted anything but presidential. Gore has not discounted the lawsuits, but he hasn’t supported them, either. He has been cool and collected, while Bush has acted like a teenager, like this is silliness and he should be handed the presidency.
merckx, people who thought that Bush SR. was running again were allowed to vote. Your sentencing of stupid voters doesn’t float.
Go to http://www.cnn.com and look at the front page picture.
For those of you with slow connections it’s a protester, allegedly in Palm Beach county, holding up two signs one of which says, “Does My Vote Count?”, the other says, “I did NOT vote Buchanan”.
To respond to her “15 minutes of fame”: If you filled out a legal and correct ballot your vote counts. So you didn’t vote for Buchanan? Neither did I. What’s the problem?
For more details, including how the behind-the-scenes activities differed from public appearance, click this:
http://slate.msn.com/HistoryLesson/00-10-16/HistoryLesson.asp
Turns out there wasn’t enough fraud to make a difference, the recount in Illinois actually COST him votes, and the recount in Hawaii cost him the state.
Nixon LOST the popular vote, and understood that his legitimacy would have been shaky even with an electoral win. He did the the best thing for the country and accepted it.
Bush LOST the popular vote, and his legitimacy would also be shaky even with an electoral win. Will he also do the best thing for the country, if the official recount goes to Gore? I have little confidence that he will; do you?
Milossarian wrote:
Though I am a Democrat through and through, I am inclined to agree with you.
At first, I thought, “Well, they could just re-vote West Palm Beach. After all, they have a list of who actually voted there. They could allow only those people who voted in the first election to re-vote.”
But the thing that throws a monkey wrench into that idea is the Nader vote. I’d be willing to bet that a whole bunch of people who voted for Nader the first time around might switch over to Gore if they knew in advance that their Nader vote had a very good chance of throwing the election to Bush.
For that reason, I agree that it would be unfair to Bush to re-vote either the state or the county.
If I were Gore, I would chose the statesman’s path and accept the recount. That can’t do anything but raise his stature in the eyes of the American public, which would put him in a good position to try again in '04.
By the way, how many votes did Nader get in Palm Beach County?
Jumblemind wrote:
merckx, people who thought that Bush SR. was running again were allowed to vote. Your sentencing of stupid voters doesn’t float.
merckx replies:
My God, are people really that stupid and uninformed? And did those morons vote for or against the older Bush?
I hate stupid people and the politicians who court their votes.
merckx
I take great exception to the idea that EITHER candidate should emulate Richard Nixon in any way! I’ve heard this before, last night in fact from John Sununu. Give me a break please!!! Richard Nixon the great stateman! Aren’t there consiracy theories out there suggesting that he had something to do with his rival’s assasination? Now I don’t for a minute believe any of that, but wasn’t he almost impeached? Didn’t his “indescretions” have something to do with campain fraud, not a blow job? Oh that’s right he’s such a gracious loser that he went on to wire tap his opponents headquarters. Don’t even go there with that shit. When I heard that last night I almost fell out in a faint. If the Democrats should be careful to separate themselves from Bill Clinton and his “indescretions” I certainly don’t think they should be expecting the Democrats to emulate one their own who’s “indescretions” were out and out criminal!
Needs2know
Actually, I do. If Gore gets the most votes in Florida’s recount, he wins the 25 EC votes and the election. Simple. I would be horrified if the Bush people dragged this through the courts or attempted to discredit the tally (unless actual fraud was committed–and there is no evidence for that on either side). On the other hand, alas, I don’t see Gore being as gracious in defeat. Maybe he would be, but at least to this point the Democratic machine seems to be cranking up the lawsuits/protests and what have you.
Count the votes. Winner of Florida, and by extension, the EC, is president, as dictated by U.S. law. End of story.
It would be wrong to jump the gun and say that those 19,000 votes all should belong to Gore.
But whether a monkey could’ve figured out the ballot is irelevant:
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The task people were there for was to vote, not to figure out which hole went with which line. Lots of tasks are easy if you’re on task, but are easy to bungle when you’re really working on something else.
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This being Palm Beach, a fair proportion of voters were elderly, with bad eyesight, and are understandably easily confused.
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The results of the ballot confusion were biased due to the placement of names on the ballot. It would have been nearly impossible to goof up which hole to punch for the candidate in the upper left; after that, it gets at least mildly confusing. Bush was the candidate in the upper left. Gore was the second candidate listed on the left, and third overall. (Hence the confusion.)
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The persons running the elections have a fiduciary duty to provide a ballot that’s reasonably clear, and that, in whatever level of confusion is inevitable, is reasonably unbiased in its effects. (In other words, the ballot itself shouldn’t have a substantial effect on where the votes fall.) They failed in their fiduciary responsibility, and I’m sure the lawyers will be contending that it is their responsibility to rectify the harm that they have done.
In addition to the 19,120 double-punched ballots that were disqualified, there were 3407 Buchanan votes in Palm Beach County. (I started a thread devoted to all the Palm Beach irregularities here, btw.) No other county in FL gave Buchanan more than 1010 votes. And PBC isn’t exactly a bastion of conservatism, likely to produce an unusually high number of Buchanan votes; it went for Gore, 62%-36%. Dade County (Miami) produced less than 600 Buchanan votes; Duval County (Jacksonville), 650 Buchanan votes. CNN says Buchanan only got 17,358 votes in the entire state. It’s not unreasonable to come to the conclusion that most of Buchanan’s votes in PBC happened not because people there intended to vote for Buchanan in droves, but because they intended to vote for someone else (most likely Gore, due to the placement of names on the ballot) and got misled by the ballot design.
Similarly the double-punched ballots. Given the fact that almost nobody in the whole USA was torn between Gore and Buchanan, the logical conclusion (again, given the ballot layout) is that just about every ballot punched for both of these candidates was intended as a Gore vote.
I’d be willing to bet that at least 3000 of those twice-punched ballots involved the holes for both Gore and Buchanan (and those of no other presidential candidates) being punched. (I’m sure this info will come out over the next few days.) Anyone care to put their sig line on the line?
Anyhow, that brings us to the question of remedies. If Bush’s post-recount, post-overseas ballot margin is less than the number of PBC voters who intended to vote for Gore but were misled by the ballot (based on Buchanan’s improbably high vote total and however many Gore-Buchanan double-punches occured), then it will be clear that Bush has won Florida only due to the biased PBC ballot. Not only will he have failed to win a popular majority (or even plurality), but will have won an electoral majority only by a biased ballot that caused his opponent to lose several thousand votes in one county in one state.
In other words, while Bush will not have stolen the election, Gore will have certainly been swindled out of the Presidency. IMO, that would be a totally unreasonable state of affairs.
To rectify this, it would seem that at the very least, Gore would have to be awarded all the votes from any ballots punchde for both Gore and Buchanan, plus the majority of the Buchanan votes in PBC.
Failing that, a revote in PBC would be the only other reasonable alternative. That revote could and should be restricted to those who voted on Tuesday; after all, we’re trying to give the people who voted a chance to have their ballots correctly counted, not to give those who didn’t show up at all a second chance. Sure, it would be inconvenient and cost a bit of money, but it would be a far more honest solution than discounting clear evidence that Gore’s vote total in PBC should’ve been several thousand higher than it was.
Actually, there’s a fourth alternative, but it’s a genuine pipe dream; they’d never do it. In this alternative, the FL officials would admit that it’s impossible to tell who the true winner in FL was, so they’re dividing FL’s 25 electoral votes 13-12 between Bush and Gore, with a coin toss deciding who gets the 13th electoral vote.
In a way, this would be the fairest thing, but they’d never do it in a million years. 
Please people. Gore MAY win the popular vote, but that is far from certain right now. They are still counting, and it is very close. An eletoral college win would not make his legitimacy “shaky,” it would make it Constitutional. Those are the rules everybody signed up for when this thing got started, you can’t just whine about it when things don’t break your way.
That is what seperates America from the third world countries. A lawful, peaceful transfer of power every 4 to 8 years.
Constitutional, perhaps.
The voice of the people? Democratic?
Never.
This whole thing just pisses me off.
There we go again. The winner of the (irrelevant) popular vote has not been decided yet. It very well may be Gore, but they are still counting a ton of ballots.
Here is the Floriday specification for paper ballots.
- Beneath the caption and preceding the names of candidates shall be the following words: “To vote for a candidate, mark a cross (X) in the blank space at the right of the name of the candidate for whom you desire to vote.”
Therefore the holes MUST be to the right of the canidate.