Imagine you had just won a $10 million lottery but because of some foul-up they give it to the guy with the next closest numbers. It sure appears like you should have won but the way the law works and the precedents are set you won’t see a dime. I’d bet dollars to dimes you’d raise hell…I know I sure would!
It seems without doubt that had the voters in PBC not screwed-up their ballots Gore would be President Elect today.
It may very well turn out that this is just tough luck for him as there are no precedents to overturn an election because some yahoo punched two holes in his/her ballot.
Nevertheless you can hardly expect Gore simply say, “Awww shucks” and crawl away. The election is still in real doubt till the recount is finished. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are playing it pretty cool right now just waiting to see what happens.
The fireworks may come later but they’re not here yet.
Except that both Wisconsin and Iowa were decided by around 5,000 votes each; should a recount occur (and it’s already going to happen in Iowa, accoring to the AP) and both those states flip, Bush wins with 271 even if he doesn’t carry Florida.
If the recount doesn’t change the Bush win, then it has to stand. Even if it’s just one or two votes. Otherwise, the message that would be sent is that your vote DOESN’T count. If the new rule in elections becomes, “Well, if it’s really close we’ll have a do-over”, then you might as well not bother to vote.
The Gore camp might be able to force a third re-count if the vote is really, really close. Like under 100 votes or something. But I don’t see how you can nullify an election just because it was close.
The outside chance here for a legal challenge are the spoiled ballots in Palm Beach, but that’s a real can of worms. Because if you throw out the Florida election because of that, it opens the door for the Bush camp to tie up all the other states that were close and demand an inspection of the ballot design and return results in all of them. And that comes dangerously close to election manipulation, when you can selectively go around trying to use the courts to throw out ballots you don’t like. What if there is a ballot in another district that favored Gore? If he can challenge the ones that hurt him and ignore the ones that help, he can manipulate an election. If you allow it here, then the only defense the Republicans would have would be to do the same thing. And that would bog every election down in a morass of lawyers and lawsuits.
BTW, I don’t believe for a second that either party will behave particularly well if the vote goes against them. There is just too much money involved, and too many people’s futures. Bush and Gore are surrounded by hundreds of people that directly depend on them for their jobs for the next four years, plus the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to their campaigns. The pressure to fight is going to be immense.
A Gore spokesman this afternoon said that Gore will not go down ‘without a fight’. They are at this moment evaluating all the possible legal actions they can take.
If the vote goes against Bush, I expect he’ll do the same thing.
I am one of the most liberal Republicans I know, I am consistently far from anti-liberal. They certainly DID go looking for a Gore excuse.
If Bush led by 200,000 votes it would be a non-issue do you agree? It would be dealt with next election, barely a mention from the media.
If the same thing happened in a State with 10 electoral votes it would equally be a non-issue. It would be dealt with on the next ballot, barely an algorian sigh.
But because Florida took so long to count their votes and the race is so close, it has become an issue that some people want resolved now. Not because it is the right thing to do, for that would indicate that the above two situations should be addressed, but because it gives them the victory.
Honestly, I’d almost prefer four years of Gore. Whichever one wins can play lame duck for four years because both candidates have been consistently considered humdrum at best from the majority of their parties. There will likely be a recession in the next couple years and we can all honestly say “We have seen enough” the next time he spouts “You ain’t seen nothin yet”.
The whole election was more a personality contest and Party Platform contest than anything to do with the two and their positions. Gore had no positions, at least not the same one from day to day. Bush’s positions were almost entirely on tax relief, which noone has been screaming for lately. (maybe the rich, but I think even they have been too busy counting their revenues to worry about personal income tax rates). Both have come across as obtuse to the wants of the people, ending in a politics as usual, right nuts, left nuts and which dick do you put in the middle?
Anyway, enough of my banter. I shall hope that whichever looses, they are better losers than those they represent.
I just heard on Fox News that during the 1996 election, Palm Beach County had 14,000 spoiled ballots that were thrown out. Also, other states (like New Mexico) has had scads of spoiled ballots during this election. What do we do every time there are spoiled ballots? Demand that everyone should be able to vote over again?
Well, the idea behind it presumes, not unreasonably given the information available, that the people in Florida would have, if their intentions were carried out fairly, elected Al Gore. The goal I think everyone should agree on is that it be both legal and fair. We are bound to the rule of law, even in cases where it is manifestly unfair. The laws certainly favor Bush, and I think he will be President. However, to maintain that there isn’t pretty damning evidence that a critical number of Gore’s votes were lost due to the ballot irregularities and voter ineptitude in PBC is in my opinion being willfully ignorant.
No re-vote. Gore should have won, but didn’t. Bush can be President because that’s the way that the law reads, or so my informed layman’s opinion says. If the courts get involved it will only further polarize an already divided nation, and I think this Presidency is already substantially weakened, no matter who wins, as it is.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think there is an enormous amount of attention being paid to ballot irregularities that favored Bush, because at this point they are what are likely to impact the election. It is very likely that there were also alot of ballot irregularities that favored Gore. Should the vote be overturned, look for Republican operatives and media people to dig these up.
Ptahlis is right. This is dividing our country and making it tougher for the eventual winner to govern. (And from what I’m hearing, only one side is driving the wedge.) Coupled with continuing signs of a recession, this does not bode well for the immediate future.
Karl Rove is on TV right now telling everyone that the National popular vote is NOT over, and they need to stop trumpeting a Gore popular vote win.
The bottom line is that this thing is just close to call all around. We will have to wait until they count all the votes until we know the result of the (irrelevant) popular vote.
I keep seeing people writing that irregularities crop up all the time in elections and we don’t go to all this fuss.
The reason a fuss isn’t usually made when irregularities occur is because they usually don’t matter. If Bush carried Florida by 70,000 votes no one would give a crap about 19,000 tossed ballots in Palm Beach County because they wouldn’t change a thing.
Even if they would change the way Florida’s electors went if Bush walked away with 320 electoral votes then switching 25 to Gore wouldn’t matter either…again no fuss.
Unfortunately the entire race rests on this one county and what the courts/politicians/country decides to do about it.
Show me a race where the final outcome hinged on some clearly dubious results and the candidate(s) didn’t make a fuss and I’ll buy the position that Gore should just let it rest more easily. (And Nixon/Kennedy doesn’t work because Illinois going to Nixon would not have changed the final outcome of the overall election.)
If the recount doesn’t change the Bush win, then it has to stand. Even if it’s just one or two votes. Otherwise, the message that would be sent is that your vote DOESN’T count. If the new rule in elections becomes, “Well, if it’s really close we’ll have a do-over”, then you might as well not bother to vote.
The Gore camp might be able to force a third re-count if the vote is really, really close. Like under 100 votes or something. But I don’t see how you can nullify an election just because it was close.
The outside chance here for a legal challenge are the spoiled ballots in Palm Beach, but that’s a real can of worms. Because if you throw out the Florida election because of that, it opens the door for the Bush camp to tie up all the other states that were close and demand an inspection of the ballot design and return results in all of them. And that comes dangerously close to election manipulation, when you can selectively go around trying to use the courts to throw out ballots you don’t like. What if there is a ballot in another district that favored Gore? If he can challenge the ones that hurt him and ignore the ones that help, he can manipulate an election. If you allow it here, then the only defense the Republicans would have would be to do the same thing. And that would bog every election down in a morass of lawyers and lawsuits.
BTW, I don’t believe for a second that either party will behave particularly well if the vote goes against them. There is just too much money involved, and too many people’s futures. Bush and Gore are surrounded by hundreds of people that directly depend on them for their jobs for the next four years, plus the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to their campaigns. The pressure to fight is going to be immense.
A Gore spokesman this afternoon said that Gore will not go down ‘without a fight’. They are at this moment evaluating all the possible legal actions they can take.
If the vote goes against Bush, I expect he’ll do the same thing.
I heard on the radio that there may be as many as one million absentee ballots that have not yet been counted. This seems awfully high. Has anyone a cite to the number of outstanding ballots?
I do not want the election to be desided by a revote in one county. The implications are staggerring.
That is the funny thing. Gore is challenging the votes in counties where he one by big majorities. Alachoa, Broward, Dade and Palm Beach, all are Gore wins. The problem is they didn’t win enough to take the state, and that is why they want a recount.
And now they are calling for a manual recount (more susceptible to error) in counties that use automatic (electrical/electromechanical) voting machines. (I’m not sure all counties in question do or not, I’m assuming that since these are large population counties, that they use voting machines)
I don’t have a cite backing up or denying those numbers but I have heard that stat being bandied about.
I think (and this is just a WAG on my part) that the reason they aren’t getting more play is that they are spread over the entire country and are likely to break along the nearly 50-50 lines that the votes have gone for so far.
So, in essence, the states that are already decided are likely to remain so.
Florida is a big question mark and perhaps Iowa and Wisconsin which also have narrow margins.
While I don’t think anyone is expecting anything surprising from the absentee ballots this election has taught us that you never really know till all is said and done.
Well I found a completely different Florida statute with respect to paper ballots which seems to give much more leeway. Nothing about being to the right.
Whoa, have much trouble staying on the saddle so far up there? :rolleyes:
He has a legitimate, legal beef, as would Bush if he were in the same position (and it’s not like Florida had a choice - by law it had to have a recount). We just have to wait to see how it plays out. I don’t see this (yet) as political machinations; if the lawsuits start, we’d have to re-evaluate at that point.
According to the latest from CNN.com, they’re calling for a hand re-count in those counties because voters there have ALSO complained that the ballot was confusing.