Firstly, I’m not trying to make any comments about neccesity or accuracy of media re-counts for the Florida election. There are plenty GD and Pit threads on that topic, I’m sure.
I’m just asking, what happened to the NTY/LATimes/WSJ/Washington Post sponsored recount that used the University of Chicago’s NORC (National Opinion Research Council) to count all of the Florida votes? I remember that it was supposed to take eight to ten weeks to be completed, and that it started perhaps three months ago.
Will it be completed soon? When did it start, exactly? Any news leaking out about the results?
I did a Google search and found only articles from January when the count was starting. Can anyone help?
If I recall correctly, there were two major “post-election recounts”, one done following the standards ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the other following the standards that the Florida Supreme Court allowed. The former showed more votes for Bush, while the latter showed more votes for Gore.
Of course, both recounts were immediately denounced by the “other side”… just like the original counts! Nice to know some things never change, eh?
SPOOFE, I didn’t know that the US Supreme Court ever set any standards for which votes were legal in Florida. Are you sure about that?
As far as I remember for other re-counts, one media count found that the Palm Beach Butterfly ballot cost Gore something like 6,000 votes. But of course no one really thinks that those would be legally countable. Just tragic. Or comi-tragic if one is so-inclined, politically that is.
AFAIK, so far pretty much all of the re-counts have shown that Bush had a majority of the legally allowable votes. However none of those counts have been of all votes in all counties, something that I seem to remeber is the case with the NORC count.
I am fairly certain that, when the results of the other recount (done by the Miami Herald and USA Today) came out (about May 11) - I did see a story at the Washington Post web site indicating that the NORC recount was still under way, and results should be out “real soon now”. The Post only makes their archives available for a limited time - and I cannot find this one on their site any more.
In every one of these stories (either the Miami Herald describing their results, or the NY Times/Washington Post folks reporting on the Miami Herald results and promising their own results soon), I have had the impression that everyone has been surprised by how difficult and time consuming the recount efforts have been. I would not be surprised if the NORC count takes until the end of June or longer.
The Miami Herald/USA Today recount released stories along the way several times, and the complete story doesn’t communicate well in a sound bite. My summary of what they found. (The complete series of stories is still available on the Miami Herald web site at http://www.miami.com/herald/special/news/flacount/index.htm )
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If the recount had proceded under the plan the Gore lawyers argued for - Bush would have won. (This only counts undervotes from the biggest and most Democratic counties in Florida)
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If the recount had proceded under the plan proposed by the Florida Supreme Court - Bush would have won. (This counted undervotes throughout Florida) There is one, goofy exception here - if the Bush-supported standard of only counting clean punches were applied AND a VERY specific pattern of determining which existing counts were used, they did come up with one count where Gore led by 3 votes.
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If both undervotes and overvotes were examined throughout Florida - the results depend on what standard was applied to undervotes - if you only count clear punches, or chads with at least 2 detached corners, Bush wins, if you count dimples when there were other dimples on the ballot (the “Palm Beach” standard), or you count all dimples, Gore wins. These results only count overvotes when A) the voter voted for a candidate and cast a write-in vote, using the same candidate’s name; B) the voter punched or marked for both a candidate and a write-in vote, but did not write anything in the write-in space or C) the voter made multiple punches or marks - but “extra” punches or marks were further marked with an “X” over the candidate’s name, the words “No” or “Error” written by the marks, or other indications were given that the voter was trying to correct a mistake.
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Although they could not be legally counted - there is reason to believe that MANY voters probably supported Gore - but spoiled their ballots by casting votes for multiple candidates (trying to vote for both Pres. and V. Pres., confused by multiple ballot pages, trying to correct a Buchanan vote on the Palm Beach butterfly ballot, or voting “anyone but Bush” are some common descriptions of this, although no one will ever know.) Relatively few ballots were marked for Bush and someone else. There were over 80,000 overvotes that included a vote for Gore - and only about 35,000 overvotes that included a vote for Bush. While such ballots could never be legally credited to any candidate, they do muddy the picture of who Floridians intended to vote for.
In short, I think just about everyone already knows the results of these recount efforts (and probably could have guessed them in advance) - the winner of the Florida Presidential election is not neatly defined - it depends on what standards you use to count ballots.
Anyone ELSE think it might be easier if we just switched over to a monarchy, like we almost did in the 1700’s? 
dorkbro, thanks for the article. Your summary of it is also very good.
So basically the Miami Herald found that there were a huge number of overvotes that were probably meant for Gore, but were uncountable (somehwere in the category of 40,000+), while the countable number of votes for either candidate in the end could give victory to either guy – based upon how you count them.
Oh well so much for finality! Maybe the NORC re-count will be able to give more conclusive results for either guy, or confirm that it is an effective tie.
Boy, imagine if the Miami and NORC re-counts disagree!