A couple good (and pretty non-partisan) editorials this morning that I would direct your attention to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57302-2000Nov9.html
And, another one that points out just how incredibly bizarre and ironic this whole situation is:
victory and defeat can be declared after the tally of the electorial college on jan. 6th. until then all bets are off.
according to the national archives and record admin. " there is no constitutional provision of federal law that requires electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states." also: " no elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged."
I think that after all the absentee ballots are tallied (and if Gore is still behind), he should concede. He would be doing himself no good wading into the Palm Beach dispute. Even if a lawsuit succeeds and forces a new vote there, the resulting increase in partisan tensions would make it almost impossible for him to get anything done as President. Every appointment, every policy initiative would be blocked in Congress by bitter Republicans.
On the other hand, if Gore concedes, he takes on an air of statesmenship which will help him win back the White House in '04.
Furthermore, I think the harm that Bush can do while in office has been limited by the results of the election. He obviously has no “mandate,” having received fewer popular votes than Gore. The Republican majority in Congress has been narrowed to a hair’s breadth, which will make Republican members of Congress gun shy about trying anything too radical (lest they be swept out of power on '02).
Finally, and most importantly, by conceding, Gore spares the country the trauma of a Constitutional crisis. No good can come from a knock-down-drag-out legal war.
I should point out that being able to select out certain districts for a hand-count gives an unfair advantage to Gore.
Hand counts will always differ from machine counts. If a candidate is allowed to pick on the districts in which he LOSES and force them to a hand-count, it biases the election.
For example, let’s say each state flipped a coin 1 million times. And let’s say that there’s a 1% chance that the coin is biased in one way or another. This is going to create a normal distribution in each state, within 1% of neutral.
If the candidate is allowed have the coin examined and re-tossed if it’s biased, but ONLY where he loses, then he gives himself a better than 50% chance of winning.
The only defense Bush would have would be to demand re-counts in the areas where HE lost. Anything else biases the election.
And that’s why you really don’t want to go down the path of legal challeges, special counts, etc. It forces an escalation to maintain parity.
jshore-
The last line in that USA Today article was especially thought-provoking. Can you imagine being the judge who handles the Palm Beach dispute?
One person deciding (in effect) who our next President will be.
You could be one of thousands of people talking about Clinton during the impeachment issue. He didn’t resign, the process went forward, and the Republic is still standing. This statement makes no sense.
stoid
How 'bout they both concede since we don’t want either of them. We call it a draw or de-evolve into a re-enactment of the Al Hamilton and Burr 20 paces and fire duel. Bush kills Gore then goes back to Texas and sits on Death Row until one of his daughters is Gov. Being a true Bush and Texas Gov. she has nothing to do but wait for death warrants to sign. That gives us 4 more of Bill and keeps Limbaugh and Imus happy.
Actually, I believe the counties in which Gore wants hand counts are ones where he actually did very well. So that sort of blows your theory.
Since I am an honest Gore supporter though, I will point out another reason that he may want hand counts:Hhe may believe that the machines reject ballots as unreadable (or record them incorrectly) at a greater rate than a hand count will and so if fewer ballots are rejected or recorded incorrectly in heavily-Gore counties then it will help him.
I admit that this is a bit problematic…If hand counts in these counties change the entire election result, they may have to hand count the entire state. (I imagine the Bush camp would demand it…and I would probably have to agree with them.)
> Makes about as much sense as a president(whichever one it is) being elected with less than 50%.
You mean one like Clinton? You do realize he never got 50% of the vote, & that both Bush & Gore got more votes this year than Clinton did either time, I hope.
> Are you saying Gore would count on trying to get some number of electors to defect?
I wouldn’t put it past him to try anything.
So, any bets on who’ll be in Bush’s cabinet, besides Colin Powell? Maybe Ken Starr for Attorney General?
> I’m guessing that half the county is going to think whoever is president it illegitimate
Yeah, the stupid half! Even if the election weren’t close, what % of the popular vote would you expect the winner to get? 55% would be considered a landslide. No matter who wins, no matter how close it is, there will always be many people whose candidate did not win.
Gore has asked for hand counts in counties which showed clear discrepancies between mmachine counts that should have been identical. Bush is certainly free to request any hand counts he wishes. IF Bush waits to do so until the presently requested handcounts are completed, then he is demonstrating a clear desire to “count until he wins”. If there are counties whose votes he believes are inaccurate, he should ask that they be counted now.
How can it possibly “bias” an election to have the results of that election accurately reported? A recount can only correct an inaccuracy in the initial count.
Thanks for pointing out that there is another explanation for which counties Gore wants to be recounted besides the more biased ones that Sam Stone and I came up with! I guess my response shows that I have become somewhat suspicious myself of intentions of everyone, Gore camp and Bush camp. I hope that your explanation is the correct one.
jshore:
At present, the Gore campaign has requested recounts in 4 counties: Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia. In two of those counties Gore carried strong majorities. In Dade and Volusia the split was 53-47 & 54-46 respectively (after machine recount).
As I understand it, the reasons for the requested recount in Broward and Volusia had to do with procedural issues predating the machine recount. The issue(s) in Palm Beach County have been discussed in great detail. In addition to questions of disallowed ballots (more than twice the number disallowed in 1996), the machine recount registered 859 more votes than the initial count. Less than half of this number is accounted for by the “empty precinct”. Frankly, I have not heard the reasons behind the request for a recount in Dade, but of the four counties it had the slimmest majority for Gore through both recounts. There was a discrepancy of 98 votes between machine counts, but this is smaller in magnitude than the discrepancies for Duval, Pinellas, Polk or Seminole counties.
My initial statement was biased toward the PBC situation, since as a resident I have been bombarded with information about the local race for the last 72 hours.
I think (along with many other dopers) that they should wait for the absentee votes to come in, and then whoever is ahead, is ahead. End of story.
I am a semi-enthusiastic Bush supporter (more like an Anti-Clinton/Gore person) so I hope Bush will win. But not that much - not if he’s going to look like he “stole” the White House. When I first heard the premature report that Gore had taken Florida, (and therefore had probably won the race) I was OK with it. Not happy, but OK with it.
But now that all this BS has gone down, I am a little more annoyed. This is what really did it (quote from from USA today?)
I know, I know, Bush is acting pretty ballsy by acting as if he already IS President. So both sides are really pushing it. But this attitude from the Gore camp pisses me off, Big Time. (I guess it has ruffled a lot of other feathers as well.) So I hope all the hysterics and threats of litigation are for naught.
Whatever happens, I just want this to be over SOON.
Nixon did the right thing in '60, why can’t Gore do it now? And the situation back then was very different, regarding massive vote fraud in Illinois and Texas. This whole skirmish seems to be about some silly old people in Florida who can’t follow an ARROW to punch the right hole. Well, that, and Algore’s ego, which is bigger than Clinton’s, if that’s possible.
And what’s up with Jesse Jackson going down there to stir up trouble? Wexler’s antics have been bad enough, but at least he represents Palm Beach County. Contrary to their beliefs, no one has been disenfranchized, there was a free and fair election, using a ballot that was approved by a Democratic official, made widely available before the election, and is/has been used elsewhere, including Chicago, without incident. The vote has been counted, twice. Bush won Florida. Calling for a “re-vote”, especially by people like Jackson, is ridiculous. Jesse should stick to selling Budweiser.
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Yosemite Babe, I agree with you and USA Today on their opinions on that statement by Daley. But, indeed, statements of this sort are also eminating from the Bush camp. That’s why it is encumbent on all of us to try to be more careful and thoughtful than them.
Speaking of thoughtful and careful,Spiritus, thanks for the explanation on the hand re-count issue. You should be knighted for your attempts to keep us all well-informed on this stuff. Having said that, though, I could still understand if the Bush camp felt that hand re-counts in areas that did go either strongly or weakly for Gore necessitates such re-counts in areas that went for Bush too. I don’t think I can understand the position of trying to block these hand re-counts entirely though.
I will C&P my post from another thread in this forum on the subject.
From the commentary piece “It’s a Myth That Nixon Acquiesced in 1960”, by David Greenberg, Los Angeles Times, Friday 10 November 2000 (I won’t provide a link since LA Times links disappear after a few days), I learned the following:
After the extremely close 1960 election, on 11 November, three days after the election, Thruston B. Morton, Kentucky senator and Replublican Party national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas (where there had been allegations of state ballot fixing) but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall (close friends of Richard Nixon) sent agents to conduct “field checks” in eight of those 11 battleground states.
In some states (such as New Jersey or Illinois) the GOP obtained recounts without changing the final vote, in other states (Texas) the bid for recounts was rejected by a judge.
(The author of the article goes on to conclude that in his opinion Richard Nixon was behind these efforts but did not advocate them openly).
Arnold,
Thanks for the info. Do we know how many days after the election that Nixon did concede?
Don’t know for sure milroyj. I did read this on a web page but since it’s a personal web page I can’t vouch for the accuracy:
Of course the situations are not exactly similar:
In 1960 there were allegations of illegal “vote-fixing”, and I haven’t heard any such official allegations this time around.
In 1960, by the next day JFK had enough electoral votes reported to guarantee the victory. As recently as today in the paper I still see Al Gore ahead in the official count (since Florida is still undecided). It seems a little closer this time.
Check this op-ed piece out for a “take” on the Kennedy/Nixon thing in 1960: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/11/opinion/11LEWI.html
Here’s the substance of it:
Another big difference then: The Cold War. With tensions high between the U.S. and Soviet Union, it was very important to settle the leadership question immediately. I’m sure many Americans felt that leaving their country in chaos was opening the door to Soviet Agression.