What should be done with the disputed votes in Palm Beach?

[Odesio]

*Originally posted by Groundskeeper Willie *
**Yet another thread on the election, this one about the question above.

Let me start with by stating that I have no axe to grind in this election. I am Canadian, and furthermore I personally reject the whole idea of representative ‘democracy’ as a travesty of true, Athenian-style democracy.

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Fantastic. Then in true Athenian style democracy only free males can vote. Oh, and you only have the rights the majority of those free males decide you should have. What a fantastic system. Of course I could be mistaken but I don’t think Canada has a true Athenian style democracy either.

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In addition, I find neither of the two main candidates to be ‘worthy’ of the office of President of the USA.

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Believe me when I say we haven’t hit rock bottom. We could have had Joseph Jacques Jean Chretien if his ancestors had moved a bit farther south.

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What I am interested in is finding out what exactly happened in Palm Beach, Florida.

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People were confused by a ballot that really wasn’t all that confusing. At the very least they should have asked a few questions if they were having problems. They punched holes for two candidates Pat Buchanan and Al Gore or they just punched holes for Pat Buchanan. If there are two punches then the vote is invalid and it is tossed.

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The first question is: did a significant fraction of votors, intending to vote for Al Gore, instead mistakenly vote for Pat Buchannen?

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Some voted for both on mistake. Some just voted for Pat by mistake apparantly.

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Clearly there were a very high number of Buchannen votes in that county. The argument has been made that even more people voted for him in 1996, and that, therefore, the 2000 vote was in line with expectations. This argument is clearly spurious.

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It isn’t clearly spurious. Since we can’t track down every single voter (secret ballot) we can’t ask them who they meant to vote for. It is possible, if not likely, that Pat has a lot of supporters in that area who voted for him.

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1. Do nothing. Accept that Bush wins the Presidency because of a poorly-designed ballot in one Florida county. The Republicans are all for this option, of course. The main argument for this is that normally, once a vote is cast, it stands, whatever the intentions of the voter.

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You blow your wad you blow your wad.

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2) Re-allocate the Buchannen votes to the candidates according to statistical analysis of the relative votes in other counties in Florida.

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Can’t do that. I think they call that tampering with votes. Since we don’t know who meant to vote what we can just give them all to Gore.

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3) Have a re-vote among those citizens in Palm Beach who voted the first time. The main argument for this is that every voter would know that their vote has been cast for the person that they intended to vote for.

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I don’t think we’re allowed to do that. I don’t think the Constitution forbids a revote but there may be past Supreme Court rulings that prohibite this.

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4) Re-do the entire national presidential election. The main arguments are the same as in option 3) above.

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Probably can’t do that for the same reasons as above.

Marc

[Groundskeeper_Willie]

MGibson wrote:

Fantastic. Then in true Athenian style democracy only free males can vote. Oh, and you only have the rights the majority of those free males decide you should have. What a fantastic system

Of course I could be mistaken but I don’t think Canada has a true Athenian style democracy either.

True. Unfortunately.

Perhaps I should not say Athenian style, with its free-male only citizenship. Of course women would be citizens as well (And there would be no slaves either, sorry). What I want to see is the essential idea behind Athenian-style democracy: that the citizens themselves run their own government,not elected representatives. The fact is that under the Athenian constitution, almost all of the offices of their government were filled by lot, in the same fashion as juries are supposed to be filled today. The ‘executive’ function was filled be a council of 500 randomly chosen citizens, and other boards were filled in a similar manner. The Athenians regarded elections as profoundly antidemocratic, since it greatly multiplied the influence of Big Money.

The argument could be made that 500 random citizens would be too uninformed to properly run the state. If so, why are 12 random citizens allowed to decide criminal cases? Why are 100 million citizens allowed to vote on their next president? In fact, 500 randomly select citizens would, IMO, do a better job of representing the citizenry because they would be a true cross-section of the general public. Every sub-group of citizens would be fairly represented in the council, and with preliminary courses in critical thinking, I would trust their decisions much more than the current highly politicised mess.

Bill

[SouthernStyle]

*Originally posted by jshore *
<<deletia>>

**And, she is supposed to recuse herself why exactly? So that the case can be decided by say someone appointed by George W.'s father or by the President that his father served as Vice President with? If you are going to want to recuse judges on the basis of who they were appointed by, I don’t see how you are going to find a “fair” one! **

Reportedly she is a Democrat, appointed to the job by the current administration, and a substanial campaign contributor. (I’ll try and find a cite.)

If this is true then she has a personal and financial interest in the decision. Exactly the reason she should recuse herself.

jshore, I don’t recall you raising any fuss when Jeb Bush recused himself from his constitutionally authorized position on the review board.

[jshore]

*Originally posted by SouthernStyle *

jshore, I don’t recall you raising any fuss when Jeb Bush recused himself from his constitutionally authorized position on the review board.

Southern Style, first I am confused because the judge in question is not even a “she” anyway. But, leaving that aside for the moment, I hope you can understand the subtle distinction between being one of the candidate’s brothers and being a member of one of the candidate’s parties! What are they supposed to do, search around for a judge who is a member of the Greens or Reform party? I mean, get real here!!! Last time I looked, nearly everyone in this country was not closely related to one of the two candidates in this election!

P.S.—For what it is worth, I read in the mainstream media that the judge in this case, while appointed by Clinton, is respected as an independent thinker by Republicans and Democrats alike. Don’t know if a similar statement can be made about the Florida Secretary of State whose ruling has effectively superceded his.

[Sam_Stone]

AP is now reporting that Broward County has abandoned their hand-count because the difference was too small after 3% were counted. Volutia (sp?) county finished their hand count, and the difference was only two votes. That leaves Dade and Palm Beach county, which wasn’t nearly as heavily Gore as Broward was.

There’s a good chance that the deadline tomorrow will stand - legal experts are saying that the language of the statute is pretty clear and airtight. That means Dade can’t finish anyway. And if the deadline IS overturned, it’s doubtful that Gore can pick up enough votes to win, especially considering the absentee ballots are expected to go heavily for Bush.

That leaves the ‘Buchanan Votes’, but that seems like a real longshot to me. I can’t imaging anyone allowing a re-vote of just that county, nor can I see anyone arbitrarily awarding any of those votes to Gore.

If I were betting on this election, I’d put 5-1 on Bush.