Florida Election Votes Certified 891
Ravn0s noted that CNN has reported that Florida has certified Bush as the winner, which of course means that he'll get the 25 electoral votes, and the presidency. We haven't had enough fun:
Gore still has the popular vote nationally, and there are zillions of Florida ballots in question (felons who voted, multi-punched ballots, dangling chads and the list goes on). I wish I could
say it's over ... closure with a President with the qualifications of a head of lettuce is still closure, but I suspect the mainstream media
will continue to harp on this for awhile. But hopefully this is the end of the issue on Slashdot.
To: The citizens of the United States of America: (Score:2)
Re:Finally. (Score:2)
USA Today had a map of the United States of America by county, and it was colored by county for either Gore or Bush. It clearly showed this was Gore's strategy. He owned Chicago, for instance, by pretty much the rest of the state of Illinois was all for Bush. Even in California, Gore only won the coastal counties, Bush taking the majority of land mass. These were enough to put him over the top in those states. If popular vote mattered, you can guarantee these would be the only areas that got any attention, Nebraska, the Dakotas, etc would be completely meaningless because they do not have enough popular votes to contribute to an election. So, to make sure EACH STATE matters a bit, the founders put in this thing called the electoral college.
Popular vote counts matter as much as total yardage in a football game. Even if one side has 300 net yards vs 200, the one with the more actual points wins. It is interesting that in the other close elections (1876 or so, 1960), the losers bowed out (without taking it to courts) and won a term or two later. The question in this election is, will this hurt AlGore's chances at an election in the future? Nobody likes a cry baby.
as long as... (Score:2)
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
Missing the point about S&L scandal (Score:2)
In case anyone isn't old enough to remember what happened, in the early 80s S&Ls were deregulated to the point where they could actually loan themselves money: federally insured money. This opened the door for crooks like Keating (and GWB's brother Neil) to make high-risk investments *with federally insured money*. When they went belly up, the federal goverment had to bail them out, because the federal government had insured the money.
The fault lay not only with the crooks like Keating, but with the idiots under Reagan who let them do anything they want with federally insured money. That's bad management!
The only thing liberal or conservative about the whole mess was that a lot of the crooks were big-ticket Republican donors.
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It's not a fallacy... (Score:2)
The original claim is still valid. The "winner" of this election had a winning margin that's less than the error margin. In other words, he didn't win anything.
And for what it's worth, if you assume precision in the counting process, your recursion argument doesn't apply here. In this case, a margin of victory greater than the margin of error -- even by one vote -- is still a significant result.
What this says to me is that we should adopt some real voting methods, rather than the "punch and pray" approach we use now. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves about the validity of our participatory democracy...
Bush's lead is smaller than the margin of error. (Score:2)
The one thing this election teaches us is that no, your one vote really *doesn't* matter, because any time the margin is that close, the count will be ruined by our country's piss-poor data collection machinery used in voting.
These problems have always existed, but it was only just now that it was so close that it mattered.
The one thing this election will teach us is that it's high time we had election reform - no not the abolishing of the electoral college, not the reform of money-gathering techniques, but the very simple, technical reform of getting a better voting machine in place, and using it universally.
Here in Wisconsin, the repubs briefly considered doing a recount because of the close margin here, but they gave up since we don't use obsolete chad-punchcards or butterfly ballots. We use a simple visual scanner that looks for a line you draw on the paper, and if the machine detects double-votes it spits the ballot back at you right there, so you know about it and can do it again. This system is good enough that a manual recount wouldn't really change much. Something similarly accurate needs to be nationalized.
Re:Poster is confused... (Or was that a troll post (Score:2)
Re:Tempory President Elect (Score:2)
-1, Groupthink. (Score:2)
Want to reply to me next time, you coward?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
We Brownes Thank You (Score:2)
Christopher Browne
(Who Slashdot cut off at the "E")
Im Sorry. Your clue cannot be completed as dialed. (Score:2)
Bzzzzzt. Not quite. Electors are allocated based on the number of senators (always 2) + representatives (number based on population). That fixed 2 becomes important for small states.
You see there's a minimum of 3 electors per state (one for each senator and rep, the minimum being 2+1=3, e.g. Wyoming), This gives Wyoming much more say so in the presidential race on a people's-votes-per-elector ratio. In CA, the ratio is far lower. So this inequity compels presidential hopefule, not to IGNORE rural America.
Al campaigned in NYC/LA/CHI/etc. and neglected rural regions. Now he's paying the price. He cheesed off the fewer (rural) people who collectively wield more electoral votes than those representing the urban population.
The constitution emphasizes CHECKS AND BALANCES above all else. The Electoral College is no exception.
Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:2)
I wish I could say the same. I didn't like Gore's woodeness and Bush's record. Frankly I didn't want to continue the Clinton presidency.
I dunno about CmdrTaco calling Bush something like a "head of lettuce" as I don't see Taco having much real to say about politics. I really see little differentiation policy-wise. If Gore had done something notable for the environment in the last 8 years can someone point it out, please? That to me would be a good differentiation, as it seems his position on the environment got pushed to obscurity compared to other things.
Honestly, IMO neither man deserves the job. Both are presently in figurehead positions, neither position truly prepares a person for the job, but can anyone tell me what job prepares a person for the Presidency? Even very militarily successful high-ranking generals have had very mixed results, some good, some bad.
Re:Margin Of Error? (Score:2)
I consider this a victory ... (Score:2)
He won't be our governor for much longer.
Re:Finally. (Score:2)
http://www.kgreen.org/images/cnnmath.gif [kgreen.org]
Looks like some more of that "fuzzy math."
Re:on the other hand (Score:2)
No, if you look at the bottom of the chart, the total population for the counties that Bush won is greater than the population of the counties that Gore won and that population base is growing faster. It is significant in that it shows that Gore's support is primarily in metro areas or areas dominated by unions & minorities.
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
When Johnson ended a draft deferment program, anyone who flunked out of undergraduate school was automatically eligilble for the draft. As a result many professors that were opposed to the war inflated grades to make sure people wouldn't flunk out (ie. if you just showed up you would get a C or better). It was probably similar to what's currently being done to keep athletes in college. It was explained in in the second link (which you probably didn't notice because Slashdot screwed up the first one, which worked just fine in preview mode).
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
It was the sister/tobacco comination that I was referring to, not the Peace Corps. Gore has always sucked up to the tobacco industry and still does even after his sister's death. He should have gotten an Oscar for his 1996 speech. I used to work for the Federal Govt and it was stressed that it was against the law to use any Govt equipment or facilities for political purposes. There would be a difference if it was a cell phone bought with personal funds and not the taxpayer furnished. Check out this [worldnetdaily.com] WND story about Gore's TN pollution. But I suppose since it goes against your views about Gore, you won't put much weight in them either.
Re:on the other hand (Score:2)
A good map of the US by who won the electorial college votes by state is at http://www.usatoday.com/news/ vot e2000/electfront.htm [usatoday.com]. An even better map is the one that shows who won each county. This map is at http://www.usatoday.com/news/vot e20 00/cbc/map.htm [usatoday.com] There are several states where Gore only won a handful of counties and three where he didn't win any.
I also wonder how many people in the Western states didn't vote because the networks called Florida prematurely and started predicting that Gore had it wrapped up. I've heard of several reports that when people at the polls in Western Florida heard that FL had been called for Gore, they just turned around and left. You also have to wonder how many Gore votes are due to the fiasco in St. Louis.
Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
It needs to get wrapped up pretty quickly at least so the president-elect can assemble a cabinet, WH staff, etc. All these people have to go through FBI background checks and get started with the process of transition. Gore could have an easier time doing this by just keeping the bulk of Clinton's staff.
Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
The FL Supreme Court set the deadline of 17:00 11/26/2K or if the office wasn't open 09:00 the next morning. IMHO, Gore only offered the hand recount for every county only because he wanted to continue the trolling for votes in the large counties that he won by quite large margins. Bush is forcing the counties to count the overseas absentee ballots that were excluded using the formula that the FL Attorney General (a Demo) initially sent out to each election commission. He later recanted these instructions because of the flack he received for excluding a significant number of military absentee ballots. The lawsuit is to make sure the counties abide by the revised rules. Also, if the US Senate decides which elector slate is valid, it is the current one, which isn't 50-50.
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
And how many people do you know that use proper English in normal conversations? Bush is also apparently fluent in Spanish. The citizens of Texas apparently like the job he did as governor for that state. He won healthy percentages of every demographic segment of the population. There were even Democrats from the TX state legislature campaigning for Bush in other states because they thought he did a great job in that state and could do the same for the country. I don't recall any Republicans campaigning for Gore.
Also check out this Washington Post story& lt;/a> . Although Gore's SAT scores were better than Bush's (1355 vs 1206), he did worse in college. He got a D in Earth Science (poor in Science overall) and a C- in economics. Most of his improvements in his junior & senior years have been attributed to grade inflation by anti Vietnam war [washingtonpost.com]professors [freerepublic.com]. Bush also got an MBA from Harvard while Gore got five Fs before dropping out of Vanderbilt Divinity School. Also given his big lies about his sister, tobacco, Love Canal, campagin fund raising, the polution generated by his properties in TN, etc., I'd hardly consider Gore a model of character and integrity.
Re:Pardon? (Score:2)
As I had thought I pointed out earlier, the "right to elect a president directly" does not exist. Nowhere in the Constitution does it ever state that popular votes for a President even have to be held. According the the Constitution, each state's legislature decides how its electors are picked; by tradition they have all chosen to do this with a popular vote but this is not actually necessary (the only law regarding this is that the rules must be set before the election, and once set they cannot be changed once the election starts, at least not in such a way that the election in progress would be affected by said changes). "The Presidential election" as we know it is actually 51 statewide elections (plus a citywide one in DC); the winner traditionally gets all the electoral votes from that state, except in Maine and Nebraska.
Lastly, every other race in america is won or lost by the popular vote. So why not the president as well?
I'm not certain I understand this one. As far as I can tell, you mean one of two things: either that the popular vote has always agreed with the electoral vote, or that all other elected officials are done by popular vote.
If you mean that all other presidential elections have had the popular and electoral tallies in agreement, you're wrong. This is not the first, or even the second, time that this has happened; it's the fourth. Granted, it's the first time in over a hundred years, but that means little. And in none of those cases was there ever such a controversy as this.
If you're saying that other officials are elected by popular vote, that's not important. There are many ways to hold elections, and in the end no one way that is truly right and fair all of the time, not even popular vote (which is particularly unfair in the case of a nation where voters are heavily concentrated in certain small areas, such as ours). Besides which, the President was never intended to be elected by the people. In fact, the President and Vice President aren't even intended to run together; they're chosen separately, though again tradition holds that they run together.
There are some very interesting quirks in this. All of the following, though extremely unlikely, are all mathematically possible outcomes for this election:
No, the system's not perfect. But I maintain my assertion that it's the fairest one out there that I've seen.
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Re:Pardon? (Score:2)
Remember, it only took four cities to turn the popular vote from Bush to Gore (all of them in California, and these four carried so much power they turned the whole state, which had actually voted mostly Republican otherwise). With fifteen, all but the closest elections -even closer than this one was- would be completely wrapped up with even a fairly small percentage majority (also note that the urban areas did tend to go heavily towards one candidate or the other, usually Gore, this time around).
This is the beauty of the Electoral College. It is true that many comparatively small groups of people can turn an election under the current system. This is good, because it ensures that you have to please them all to have any mathematically reasonable chance of winning, rather than just concentrating on fifteen small areas.
I live near an urban area. Either way; candidates will listen to what I have to say. But I would far prefer that candidates had to listen to everyone, and not just me. That is why the Electoral College works.
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Re:Pardon? (Score:2)
Actually, I don't think it does.
Consider: if you take a direct-popular vote, then realistically speaking, no more than fifteen US cities will decide every single election from now on.
A candidate could well say "I support bulldozing the entire nation except for <insert major urban areas here> to create parking lots for <insert aforementioned urban areas>." Even if every single person not in those areas votes against this, if the people of those cities vote for it (a likely situation, given the terrible parking in most major urban areas), then the votes of those in rural areas were for nothing.
Now, there's one other thing: the President was never meant to be chosen by the people. Nor, actually, was the Senate. The people get their fair representation in the House (where things are not quite proportional, since all the states have at least one representative, but no one disuputes this). The states (because keep in mind that each state is also its own entity) get their fair representation in the Senate (one state, two senators who oversee matters of the state as a whole). The office of the Presidency was created such that it would be chosen by the states; it's a rather interesting constitutional fluke but it's actually quite constitutional for a state to not hold popular elections for the President at all; only tradition dictates that they do). This is how each state is assured its voice in choosing the symbolic head. Also note that this is important in the case of the Vice President, who has voting power in the Senate just as a Senator does (but in the case of the VP, that power exists only in the case of a tie). This is why it's important for the states to choose: this is the arbiter for ties in the body which represents them.
Note that the Constitution was later amended to support the direct election of Senators (they were originally appointed by state legislatures).
The people get their representation. That's what the House is for: a body where everything is based on population (though note that in small states where there is only one representative, the people who voted against him/her get no voice at all: is this fair?) The states get their representation: this is the Senate and the Presidency. And the federal government itself gets its representation: this is the Supreme Court (or would you rather that the Supreme Court justices be forced to descend into politics, rather than being able to focus on upholding the Constitution and justice overall?)
That's what checks and balances are for. The people are not the be-all and end-all of power, nor should they be: 99.95% of the people, very nearly all Slashdotters, and probably 99.99% of people who haven't studied law -noting that I haven't either-)don't have the knowledge or training it takes to run a country in any kind of effective manner. That is why we have elections. But sometimes mistakes are made here: that is why proportional representation is checked by nonproportional means as well (such as the Presidency itself; is it fair that we have only one President?); neither is powerful enough to overpower the other, so all must agree before a law is passed. It's not perfect, but it's more effective and, in the end, fairer, than any other system I've seen.
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Pardon? (Score:2)
Pardon? I think the electoral college is crap because it explicitly works against the principle of "one man, one vote", instead allocating undue influence to sparsely populated states. I voted in California in this election (for neither Bush nor Gore, FWIW) - California has one electoral vote for (roughly) every 540,000 people. Iowa (to take a battleground state in this election) has roughly one for every 280,000. I don't call that a fair system.
I'd go so far as to say the system works as designed - it gives that extra little nudge in a tight presidential contest to rural landowners, keeping the urban poor in check. If the broken system hadn't been enshrined in the body of the constitution itself (by our clearly infallible *ahem* founding fathers), but merely in statute, it would have been trashed decades ago as contrary to the fourteenth amendment.
(Disclosute: I think both Republicrat-party candidates sucked most heartily this year, and would never have voted for either of those to jokers, even if I still lived in Florida. I would be grousing as loudly if Gush's and Bore's fortunes were reversed.
Most civilized countries have proportional representation. Damn near all have provisions for runoff elections in a race where multiple candidates leave the race too close to call (some states and counties do this, too). A one-night-only, winner-take-all electoral system produces erratic results and generates no end of controversy when the results are within the margin of error. Add in the skew towards less populous states, and you have a process of questionable legitimacy.
I'm with you on trashing punch-card ballots, but a adamantly against fully-electronic balloting. With physical ballots, the number of empties is known, and the completed ballots leave a physical record. Tweaking an electronic vote tally leaves no physical trace, unlike "losing" a stack of marked ballots (the lost number being reflected in the difference between the total count of ballots before and after the election). In other words, an election could be stolen *without incurring suspicion* simply because there would be no irregularities noted - the electronic count would be the sole, indisputable count. Ugh. Ugly to contemplate.
-Isaac
Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
Just wanted to jump in here and remind you that the court system is in fact the branch of government charged with evaluating petitions for redress and then ruling as to the soundness of the claim and the appropriate remedy, if any.
That is to say, a legal process. A protesting mob is not a petition for redress. It is an exercise in free assembly, though, which I wholeheartedly support.
-Isaac
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
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Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
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Re:Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:2)
The problem is, there wasn't an equal vote in this state.
Bush won.
They recounted.
Bush still won.
They recounted again.
Bush STILL won.
How many times does reality have to slap Gore in the face before he wakes up? That idiot Bill Daley keeps yammering about "the will of the people". Yet the Gore camp disqualifies absentee ballots from military members. And STILL he yammers about "the will of the people".
Well guess what Billy-boy. The will of the people HAS been followed. And despite your best efforts to derail it, you've lost.
Does it suck? Sure. But that's the way the system was designed. He agreed to be bound by the rules of the system. Just because it didn't give him the results HE would have liked, doesn't mean that he shouldn't be bound by the decision after the fact.
And before you start telling me that I'm a hypocrite and wouldn't say the same thing if it was Bush losing. Let me inform you. I voted for NEITHER Bush, or Gore.
And if Bush had resorted to the same tactics (i.e. anything till "we" like the result) as the Gore camp has, they'd be seeing JUST as much derision from me as the Gore camp is getting now.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:2)
...gets an masters...
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"An masters"?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:His name is 'Boies', moron Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
In ten years you may want to look back at your post above and see how your perspectives have matured or changed.
I don't own any stock at all, supported the M$ anti-trust case and voted for Bush in this election. My votes are not cast by party, but are based upon the information that I have about each candidate. It seems that I came to the same conclusion about Al Gore that the majority of Tennessee ( and Arkansas while I'm mentioning it) voters did.
In closing, I don't hope you burn in hell. I do hope that you learn to be a bit more level headed before you venture into the job markets that don't rely on state funding.
Take care Mr. Jackson.
Joint Class? (Score:2)
GWBush? Who the fuck is he? (Score:2)
BTW, expect that after Cheney keels over that Cardinal Baker appoints SchwartzPowell to the office.
Whatever the result, it is totally arbitrary... (Score:2)
The US election is a perfect example of what you get when you have two fundamentally bland candidates who totally fail to motivate people. Send people to the polls to choose between two indistinguishable candidates, and guess what? They'll come out 50/50.
There's a good article on feed [feedmag.com] that points out: [feedmag.com]
It's impossible to find out what "the will of the people" is under these circumstances. No matter how you count, the margin for error will remain higher than the margin of victory. Thus, tossing a coin, asking a lawyer, or taking your life-line and calling a friend are equally valid ways of deciding who gets to be US president.
Of course, the logical thing is to just hold the election over and over again until you poor Americans get it right.
Charles Miller
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Re:Tempory President Elect (Score:2)
The problem is that with every additional recount you do (manually OR by machine), you introduce further error into the count. This is because with a punchcard system such as they're using in Florida, moving the punchcards around may break off chads - which may or may not have been actually punched through by the voter (they may have only been indented, or "dimpled"). It may have been that they were about to vote for the candidate, dimpling the chad, and then didn't vote for anyone. Now during the recount, the chad falls out and it's counted as a vote the voter didn't intend. Or they may have been about to vote for a candidate, and then voted for another - in which case if in the next recount the dimpled/pregnant/whatever chad for the almost-voted-for candidiate falls off, as commonly happens with these punchcards, then that vote will be invalidated because it now looks like they voted for two presidential candidates.
And there's no way for us to know which of these situations may or may not have occurred with each ballot.
This is why there were different results in each of the recounts by machine, because sending them through the machine causes more chads to fall off (sending them through the hands of human counters would have much the same effect, as they get flexed and moved around, etc). Which is also why a manual recount isn't going to improve your accuracy, because the process of recounting itself is changing what the ballots are showing. Even if you ignore the potential for bias among human counters, the ballots they're trying to count are no longer going to show the same thing as they did on election night due to the physical limitations of the cards.
I personally would like to see more counties moving towards electronic systems such as the touchscreen-based ones used in several counties nationally. They look much like an ATM, and people have found them very easy to use. This eliminates this ridiculous situation of having to look at chads, and somehow try to divine the intent of the voter from how much a chad is hanging off, or how much it's dimpled, etc.
Re:Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:2)
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Re:Official Observers (Score:2)
I'm glad it works in Ireland, but the point remains that the combination of constitutional arrangements and political character has led to problems in some countries.
Overall, I was just trying to point out the somewhat glassy nature of the houses people were throwing stones from, and I think the point is still valid.
Re:Official Observers (Score:2)
Re:Official Observers (Score:2)
Yes, it's nice to have a chuckle at the expense of arrogant Yanks, but get some perspective. Just because they don't understand the world beyond their own borders doesn't mean we should be the same :)
Re:Why popular vote should not decide presidency. (Score:2)
Not really. Each senate seat is popularly elect4ed, there's a big difference between that and having a populkar election for the entire senate. Ditto with the house of representatives -- just because you can get 99% of the vote in seat A does not mean that you can forward 48% of the vote to another party member running in seat B.
As for the "circus in florida", the problem has arisen because the election is too close (the voters may as well have voted randomly), not because the "system" is bad.
Re:Why popular vote should not decide presidency. (Score:2)
You're kidding yourself if you believe that the problem was somehow "caused" by the electoral college. If the vote in Florida was split like that, and the votees in the other states were also split in such a manner, the two parties would be quarreling over one or two deciding electoral votes, you'd still have the same situation with both sides trying to gerrymander it their way. Even with a popular vote, the popular vote is close enough that it's be tied up in litigation (and the recounts would be somewhat more difficult !)
Re:it's about time (Score:2)
This is completely wrong. The margins of victory would increase, but so would the number of votes, so the difference between the margin of victory and the margin of error would not change that much. If a popular vote was used, you'd have Florida on a national level right now.
Re:In Brazil it's all standardized (Score:2)
Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:2)
This lecture describes not only how you can cheat these systems, but how and why it's so hard to get an accurate count (not to mention why it's nearly impossible to count the same number of votes twice , mechanically OR manually).
The lecture is in .ASF and powerpoint format... sorry. Click http://wean1.ulib.org/cgi-bin/metawin-lectures.pl? target=Lectures/Distinguished%20Lectures /2000 [ulib.org] and select the bottom row (Michael Shamos's "What's happening in Florida")! For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL, so there are some spaces on it when you click there... just remove them in your netscape window.
Yes, some of the predictions that he made are somewhat dated (as the lecture happened on the 15th), but it is a very interesting overview of what can and *does* happen to your votes that you may not have thought about. It's a little long, but worth the time!
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
Then why do 60% of them want Gore to concede defeat and stop the lawsuits?
a well-educated, intelligent, proven person who's been part of the most successful administration for decades
That's a good description of Bush, considering his 95th-percentile SAT, multiple college degrees, and proven excellent environmental record in Texas.
and a not very bright, but "likable", person with a very bad track record
And that's a good description of Gore, considering his zinc mine's multiple fines for environmental violations.
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Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
Then how come so many Democrats voted for him? How come he won so many majority-Democrat states, including Oklahoma, which was something like 70-75% Democrat at the time?
How come he won as governor of California, arguably the most heavily Democrat-dominated state in the union?
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Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:2)
Not in Florida.
You're talking about a county that is a Pat Buchanan stronghold (in fact, he lives there), and that voted majority Republican in the 1994 elections.
And, yes, those over 65 voted majority Republican in many races in that election. Look it up.
Palm Beach County voted for Connie Mack in 1994, by nearly 60%. There has been a widespread feeling among seniors in that county that Clinton betrayed them by concentrating on things like gays in the military instead of the things he promised them. They do not all believe Gore's attempts to get back in their good graces, and they remember seeing "that nice young man" his brother on TV a lot.
A lot of old folks in Palm Beach county voted for Clinton because he reminded them of JFK. Nobody's making that comparison to Gore.
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Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:2)
And what if the ballot is dimpled because the voter started to vote for Gore, then had an attack of conscience and voted "none of the above" by not continuing the motion?
A lot of those ballots have clear votes on every single race except President. Almost none of the "dimpled chad" votes are going to Bush.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
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Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:2)
According to the inventor of the punch card voting system used, there is a mechanical flaw which can and does lead to the first column of punches being incompletely punched while all of the other rows are punched cleanly. This is particularly the case in old, worn out machinery like much of that used in the election.
There is ample reason to count dimpled ballots, even when the only punch dimpled is in the first column which just so happens to be the presidential votes in question.
That being said, a hand recount of the entire state is what is required and what should happen, to be as sure as possible that the result is as accurate as possible. Unfortunately the Republicans chose to denigrate the entire recount process -- something that is standard procedure in any close election -- rather than request recounts in Republican leaning counties, as was their responsiblity.
The Democrats correctly requested recounts where they thought it would help them.
Clearly, the entire procedure needs to be revisited -- in an election this close, a hand count of the entire state is what should have happened. It wasn't up to the Democrats to request it, but it shouldn't have depended on the Republicans requesting it either. It should simply have been standard operating procedure, begun immediately, with no certification until completed.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
Bush has received some dimpled ballots. However, the dimpled ballot issue is a systemic phenomenon which targets the elderly and weak, who did not use enough force to puncture the first row of chads and thus have their vote counted. The elderly tended to, overwhelmingly, vote for Gore, so the majority of the votes so recovered will favor Gore.
As it is, by refusing to count those votes were are excluding a particular group of people, namely those too elderly or too weak to fully displace the chads in the first column of votes. Since this excludes a demographic group which favors Gore, it is understandable that the co-chair of Guub's election campaign would be so unwilling to include them. What is not tolerable is that this stand: any and all discernable votes must be counted (and should be, statewide).
That this isn't happening denigrates the entire process, and I blame both the Dems for not insisting more vocally on a statewide recount and denigrating the process when the other side obtains legal victories, as well as the Repubs for not doing their job in requesting recounts, gathering a mob to terrorize one canvassing board (Dade) into stopping their recount, and denigrating the process when the Dems have legal victories.
A pox on both of their houses -- we should exile them from both from politics forever and start from scratch.
Re:Rubbish (Score:2)
As for Nader, he's totally irrelevant. You don't know that Nader voters would have even voted. (I suspect a great many of them wouldn't have). Also, as I have previously indicated, I know at least a couple Nader voters that would otherwise vote Republican. It could also be argued that Nader changed the very dynamics of the election. For instance, Nader might have pushed Gore more towards the extreme ends of the democratic party, causing him to take risks that he would have otherwise never taken. What if, what if, what if. We simply can't know.
I strenuously object to the assertion by the liberal media and Gore that these minor facts somehow give Gore a "moral" victory, as if somehow a Bush victory is amoral. We are a nation of law and at the end of the day that is our chief moral not the merely what
Whether or not there is "supposed" to be, there is (Score:2)
Are there better alternatives? Sure there are. But don't trivialize the problem and act as if getting rid of any and all error is a small task. There are serious issues at work here. Your solution may sound foolproof to you, but don't be so sure of yourself. So long as we're in the physical realm, we're going to have some error. If the error is sufficiently small so that an inaccurate election result is extremely rare, I'd rather have that than, say, a novel digital election with unknown risks (i.e., the potential for massive and untraceable fraud) but 0 or negligible error....
Re:Rubbish (Score:2)
It's not "definetly" fair to say that "most" people did not want Bush. On the basis of the results alone, it's almost exactly 50/50. If Gore so much as farted, that margin could have gone the other way. On the basis of the intent of the country, you simply can't know that. As I've already mentioned, the electoral college changes the way people vote (and also the way the candidates campaign). For instance, I know many people in California and New York that, believe it or not, voted for Nader (because they believe the environment needs more attention) but who would have otherwise voted for Bush (as strange as that may seem). The point is that you can't presume to know the will of the people until you've actually counted their explicit vote. A vote in the electoral college system simply cannot be summed up and called a popular vote, especially when it's this close. Can you really tell me that people making those kinds of decisions are not more than
Re:Rubbish (Score:2)
Re:Rubbish (Score:2)
The bottom line is that I do deny that Gore "certainly" got more votes in Florida, and to the extent that you can argue that Gore won Florida, I can argue that Bush won the so-called "popular vote". What we can agree on are the facts, that Bush won the official votes in Florida and Gore won more official votes nationwide. It'd be a mistake to abandon law in favor of this highly subjective reasoning of yours. Just who would you appoint to be chief reasoner? How is that protected from fraud, manipulation, and abuse? I'd rather have a concrete vote, no matter which way it turns, than the alternative subjective means.
Re:Why popular vote should not decide presidency. (Score:2)
Every other vote in this country is based on popular vote - senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, etc... And didn't we just sit back in glee when Milosivech (i know, i can't spell his name) lost the popular vote, called himself the victor and then watch on tv as the entire country revolted against him.
Maybe we don't need to abolish the electoral college completely, but what we need to do is separate the votes from the states. Have the candidates fight out over each and every vote... Like, right now, bush'd get 13 of florida's votes and gore'd get 12 and this'd been over weeks ago. Because i hardly see how "every vote counts" under a system where the loser wins... No one recounted Massachusetts looking for extra gore or bush or nader votes because 66% of the state went for gore, making the other 34% basically throwaway votes.
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
I go by history, and history shows he is much more qualified than you, I mean.. look at it this way Anonymous Coward is responsible for most of the trolls on /.! (that was a joke btw)
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
They're politicians, they are supposed to be dark, menacing and have ugly controversial histories or they aren't doing their job right.
I'm not a bush supporter either - my point is just be fair with evaluations and not these vague dissidents against him without any basis. Gore has as many (maybe more maybe less, I'm not God) strikes against him as Bush -- if you disagree you are naive and shouldn't be voting in my opinion.
My point is this: Bush has done things right, he has to in order to get where he is at today. If you think you can do better and want to - do it. If not, then you are that mother on the sidelines screaming for their fat little kid to play in the game.
But personally I would rather have someone in office that reflects the american majority (uses alcohol, drugs and is a real person) than someone who is robotic in everything they do (read Gore). The reason is simple, the president has no real unweilding holy power - they are merely a face to our nation. It's silly really.. all this talk about a man who doesn't do all that much in the major decisions of our country. They have advisors for the decisions people think the president made.
Now, when picking a president I myself would rather choose the one who has better advisors -- and in this case it is obviously clear who does, the dubya campaign won the presidency against odds and managed to put someone up there that has a shady history (even though everyone does) and win. Now that is some good thinking with some seriously smart people behind it -- now those are the people who are doing a lot of the real work. I think it's all in pretty damn good hands, because Bush's hands aren't touching it, just delivering it.
Re:Qualifications (Score:2)
Are you from Texas?
If yes, then wow you must have been living in a cave to not see the changes that Bush made for the better and also the democrats campaigning for him - obviously he did something right beyond toting his daddies name around.
And no, I didn't vote for Bush (or Gore) - but he is someone I would prefer to have in office over Gore, who is like watching a hooked on phonics commercial.
Bush has 2 things, a history that speaks kindly and the presidency. I'd say he earned that regardless who is daddy is, although it helped. Look at the facts before you spout off - Bush did very well in his life and he's gone a lot further than you have, so show him some respect.
Re:Lawyers (Score:2)
Let's see, she came up with a national healthcare plan that would have put most of us in the poor-house and stole an African saying (It takes a village...) and pawned it off as her own...
Perfect Democratic candidate!
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Re:Electoral College (Score:2)
Let's see if I can get this right, you're unhappy with America, so you're moving to Canada? I take it you feel so strongly about this that you'll be renouncing your US citizenship and applying to be naturalized as a Canadian citizen, right?
It will be interesting to see you come crawling back when you need to have surgery or get tired of paying out half or more of your income in taxes.
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Re:Electoral College (Score:2)
Spoken like a true resident of California. Do you live in CA?? Think about it. If you get rid of the Electoral College, you place the country in the hands of California and New York. While New Yorkers typically claim nothing in common with CA, their political views both tend to be very liberal, thus the same. The Electoral College is the only thing keeping our governemt fair.
It's ironic. Democrats claim to favor the little guy, the guy who has to struggle to get to the top, yet are more interested in steam-rolling the country with left-wing liberal politics.
Do the math. Look at the concentration of people in LA county for example. It's more than several other states combined. Is it fair to let one group, even if more in number, from one small area determine what's best for everyone in the country, particularly for people thousands of miles away from them, who themselves have no say in their destiny, due to the system you want to see created? You may want to live in the United States of California, but the rest of us do NOT.
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Re:Why bush won. (Score:2)
So do I. CNN took the Palm Beach County ballot around New York City, and asked people to identify the hole to punch out to vote for Al Gore. They asked a wide range of people, young, middle-aged and seniors alike. Nobody got it wrong.
It's the sun down there, it's baked their brains and they're incapable of coherent thought, let alone being capable of following an arrow one-half of an inch toward the center of a piece of paper and then punching out the hole at the tip of the arrow.
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Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:2)
The lawsuits and challenges you're seeing now, incidentally, are part of those rules. The law isn't a machine, and we can't expect a hotly contested matter to be resolved in one iteration. Lots of important things are decided just the way this is being decided, by citizens taking their disagreement to the judicial system. Blah blah checks and balances etc.
Re:About Time (Score:2)
Re:El Presidente, his fraudulency, Bush (Score:3)
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the ballot boxes that kept turning up that poll workers had just "forgot" to turn in. Woopsie. "Hey.. I realize this is like.. my ONLY obligation in this whole process.. to turn in this box.. but I just plum forgot. Hey look at that.. 95% of the votes happen to be for Al Gore. Isn't it a good thing I found this box of ballotsin my trunk?"
The Election: A sign of the way things are. (Score:3)
That is why the election was so close. Not only in Florida, but all over this country, people saw the candidates being presented to them and did not know what to do. What does one do with two mediocre choices,
when there is no other worthy option? Most chose to find things they believed to be the better of two evils, the candidate with the least amount of undesirable characteristics. Others, out of desparation from being faced with such inadequacy, did the only thing that would seem right and choose the impossible, and nearly as mediocre, third or fourth candidate. Whatever the choice, we all will end up with one who in all truthfulness, shouldn't be in the
Oval Office.
I believe the source of this difficulty is not the lack of good candidates, but something else. The early race for the election saw some good candidates, and some good potential. But they all faded away, dropped out, and disappeared. It begs the question, why?! Perhaps it has something to do with the wide held belief that we live in a Democracy; that it is the majority who rules, and the government that shall rule us. This is a complete fallacy. This country, as you would hear in any Elementary or High School History class, is Republic. It was designed to be run, for the people, by the people, with a small government serving them, not the other way around. That is why goverment-business and property is always called public, becuase it belongs to the people. We are living in an age where the original goals of this country have been lost. The people no longer hold any control in this country; it is the government, the political machine, the media, and the corporations are the ones who control this country. (More info on why we live in a Republic, here [wealth4freedom.com].)
Then we have the media. They were so swayed by those in charge of the parties, that we had no choice but see the people that they chose us to see. The politicians don't campaign to the people anymore, they only campaign to the media. I'm sorry, but the media isn't the one in the voting both, it is the people. Those politicians who don't pay up the dues or the news anchors choose not to pay attention to get no coverage. Then, the best eople, those who by all rights would be the best leaders for our country, choose not to even attempt to run, in fear of what the media machine would do to their lives. It seems there is something critically wrong here
So now what? Well, for now, I think all we can do is put up with the ludicracy in front of us. But meanwhile, we need to begin to take back what was ours. This country was designed for the people, and only the people are the ones who will be able to take it back. If we do nothing, and expect the next guy to do it, well then, we deserve to be sucked into the media corporate madness that has evolved around us.
-Julius X
Re:Lawyers (Score:3)
Of interest, AFAIK the only state in the Union that must consider dimpled ballots on manual recounts is (drumroll please) Texas! and Bush signed into law legislation (HB331 of the 75th congress of Tx HB331 [state.tx.us]) a bill that favors manual counting in a recount situation. I love irony.
Unless Gore goes way, way too far, he will not be damaging the constitution or any of that jazz--with the race this close, a very accurate count is important. I'm in favor of inclusion of the dimpled ballots, but that would get lot of foul-play cries (if the non-postmarked military ballots are excluded, so should the dimpled ones, and vice verse as well).
Re:Tempory President Elect (Score:3)
Have you done your math?
1000000 *
So, out of 1000000 (1 million) votes, 990000 are correct.
1000000 - 990000 = 1000
1000 > 2
in fact, 1000 is almost twice the margin of victory (537)
Do you understand the need for a manual recount now?
Re:Mandate: don't use punch cards next time (Score:3)
Basically, this whole situation reminds me of a football (either kind) game where the last play is disputed. The winning team will run into the locker room as quickly as possible. The hope is that the officials will decide that it's too much of a hassle to get the other team back on the field and just call the game.
-B
Re:it's about time (Score:3)
The people have spoken? The people are pretty evenly divided on this issue. And with all of the lawsuits and count-lawsuits, I don't think we will see the end of this until the Electoral College votes. And maybe not even then -- wouldn't it be a hoot if one of the electors change their vote from Bush or Gore to Nader, and we ended up without anyone having the 270 required to win?
The only ray of light in this entire process is perhaps the hope that some sort of standardization of voting proceedures and machinery will happen nationwide
This is sort like when you keep telling your boss that you need to invest in new technology because it is broken (underpowered, unreliable, etc.), and they keep saying "no", until the day that their business is seriously affected by the old systems in place (computer dies, the backup system doesn't work anymore, etc.).
Maybe it will finally become a priority to spend some money to upgrade to optical scan technology in those places that are still dealing with punched cards and hanging chads.
Unfortunately, I can also see local election boards saying "wow, we will never have an election that close again, so now we don't have to worry about it".
Re:Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:3)
The Electoral College does not work. (Score:3)
My personal opinion is that a successful candidate for president must receive more than half of the votes cast nationwide, and a majority of the votes cast in each of at least 26 states. Clearly there is no fair voting system that can guarantee this, so you would have to leave the current president in office, or leave the position empty, until a new election could be arranged.
A brief rant on the vice-presidency: I really think the idea of "presidential tickets" is counter to the spirit of checks and balances. Particularly in a close race like this one, a large number of people think that both candidates should be in the Whitehouse. Perhaps the prospect of your opponent being in your office every day for the next four years would make candidates more positive during campaigning.
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Challenge for you (Score:3)
Is that so?
Can you produce a single quote or statement since this election concluded where Gore has called for the abolition of the electoral college, advocated hearings to investigate it, or "whined" about the electoral college "not being fair?" Don't waste your time trying, because he hasn't. Plenty of people -- on both sides of the aisle, I might add -- have done exactly this, but Gore has not been among them. He has, in fact, done the opposite; he has defended the electoral college as the law of the land, which it obviously is.
(But far be it from me to rain on your fire and vitriol!)
This isn't some goofy high school election (Score:3)
How we got into this mess is beyond me.
I suggest... (Score:3)
There is then only one solution that makes sense: Put the two names in a hat and draw one. This is as scientific as the recount, but it saves lots of time and money. Of course, since I'm not american, I cannot vote for that law...
El Presidente, his fraudulency, Bush (Score:3)
Let me bounce these facts off you:
I wish this was over too, but it ain't. Gore gave them a chance to do it right -- hand recounts in ALL of Florida's counties. But Bush refused, because he knows he'll lose if votes are accurately counted. Whether or not he'll get away with this swindle remains to be seen, but I fully support the efforts of the Gore team to see justice done here.
Re:British Point Of View (Score:3)
Well, no, not really. :-) The balance of power between the States and the Federal government is a dynamic one, the result of ~200 years of subtle and non-subtle pushing by both sides. The Federal government can exert strong control over some things which it has been given direct control of (and this is a suprisingly small list of things to people living in other countries), every thing else it basicaly has to persuade the States into doing.
A prime example of this is the 55 MPH speed limit on the nations roads. For (what, 15? 20? 30? know it was in effect when I was a little kid 15+ years ago), this was pretty much universal across the country. The Federal government did not put this into place by fiat (even though they did build the interstate highway system), but rather by saying ``if you (a State) wish to gain the benefit of Federal highway and transportation funds, here is what you must do...", a list that included a raising of the drinking age from 18 to 21 and a lowering of the speed limit to 55 if applicable(which really, really sucked by the way in a state like Texas where I live, becuase the place is so goddamn big (bigger than France) that at 55 it takes quite a while to drive from one major city to any other).
It's not like the States are trying to make an issue out of this, it's something they genuinely have the right to determine at the state level (furthermore, the State can't say anything about how some things are done ``on the ground'' by the local election boards, or else you know that Ms. Harris would kick the Palm Beach board straight in the ass...). The only way the Feds could try to influence this would be to try something similar to the highway funds thing (i.e. indirectly through money, like by offering a carrot of grants to pay for the upgrade(s) or by offering a stick in terms of taking away funding if they are not done).
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Margin Of Error? (Score:3)
There's not supposed to be *any* margin of error in the actual vote. That "margin of error" phrase has been drummed into our heads by pollsters.
Regardless of who wins in the end, one of the first acts should be to pass legislation for a new, modern vote system verifyable by some kind of encryption key to preserve anonymity.
I've been thinking that each ballot should have a public key attached, and that each voter should get a card with a private key when they vote. If there was any disputed ballot, the public keys would be posted by precinct both on line and in major newspapers (think full page, fine print, and hopefully a low percentage of disputes).
It would be each voter's responsability to check and make sure that their key was not on the disputed list. In order for them to verify their votes, they would have to use their private key. The vote could be ammended anonymously online via SSL or in a private booth at the local courthouse. If the disputed ballot is not ammended within a certain time frame, it should be thrown out, case closed.
Re:Ok, here. (Score:3)
It's not just ideology though. I didn't like his father that much, but I recognized that he was basically a competent president. I voted for Clinton, but I didn't worry about Dole; he seemed a decent man who would do a fine job if elected. The claims against Bush aren't unsupported or idiotic. He has made several factual errors in his speeches; he has misrepresented himself as a moderate when in fact he is to the right of most of the Republican party; and he has basically no real credentials to be President.
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About Time (Score:3)
------------
Don't blame me. I don't live in Florida.
1 Million uncounted absentee ballots... (Score:3)
Re:fraud was committed (Score:3)
LBJ was elected fraudulently in Texas. All the precincts (precinct, county, not sure) came in, except the one where his good buddy was sherriff. He was losing by 10000 votes. The returns from that precinct gave him a margin of +10500 in that area. Go figure.
Democrats are well known to give people cigarrettes to go vote. Of course, they are just giving out cigarrettes for voting - not necessarily voting Democrat. But, if you are dirt poor and don't care anyway, aren't you going to vote for the guy that just bought you a carton.
The police found a Democratic Florida State Senator driving around with a ballot machine in his car on election day. No clue what that was about.
Fraud was not necessarily committed. The counting machines are known to be inaccurate. There has never been an election in which the margin was smaller than the accuracy of the machine. Hand counting cannot possibly be more accurate.
The reason so many more Gore votes are turning up is because they are in highly Democratic areas. He had 70% of the vote down there. So, when they find a ballot that wasn't counted the first time, it has a 70% chance of being for him. That is why he only asked for a recount in those counties.
Despite what he says in public, he doesn't give a shit about the will of the voters. He only wants the will of the people that voted for him. He and Lieberman keep acting like they are doing the 'just' thing, but they are trying to skew the vote towards themselves.
They made all attempts to throw out the military vote because it is known to be traditionally Republican. What about the will of those voters? Ahh, screw em - they're only serving their country, what the hell would they know about who should be Commander in Chief?
I didn't vote for Gore because he is a major league asshole (to quote George Bush, who was talking about someone else). This whole election thing has made me think I was right in thinking that.
Don't try to justify what Gore is doing. You can't. I'm not saying Bush is acting 100% respectably, either. I'm just saying Gore is being a bigger ass.
Gore has officially contested (Score:3)
Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:3)
Does it really matter what practices are used elsewhere?
Changing the rules after the election is intrinsically unfair. Can any rational person deem it otherwise?
qualifications? bah (Score:4)
I voted for Browne, btw.
Head of lettuce? (Score:4)
Certainly 49,819,600 people can't be all that wrong now can they? This is more votes than CLINTON got so I guess that means good 'ol Billy Boy has the head of a rotten squash?
I've also yet to see a head of lettuce graduate from Harvard AND Yale. Didn't Gore drop out of college at one point? I think yes.
And with this I suggest a new filter option in my profile, as well as giving me the ability to filter out Jon Katz, I suggest we also now have the option to filter out bleeding heart liberal editorializing that only goes to show why almost 50,000,000 people in this country DO NOT agree with you and your views.
Qualifications (Score:4)
Of course that's not saying much, but most people do forget that Bush is a Harvard AND Yale graduate.
RevT
proud Florida Browne voter
Mandate: don't use punch cards next time (Score:4)
This is a mantra we hear frequently, but which misses the point entirely.
It may very well be that more votes were cast in favor of Bush than Gore. The fact remains, though, that at no time has the margin of victory been more than 1,725 votes, or about .02% of the Florida votes cast.
In a single county, Miami-Dade, there are more than 10,000 ballots that punchcard readers registered as having made no vote for president. We know that in many counties votes have been undercounted because these "hanging chads" sometimes get pushed back into the hole when they are fed into the machine.
The current margin of victory is 537 votes, or about 1/20th of the number of undervotes registered in Miami-Dade alone.
So it is ridiculous to be saying "we counted the votes, and Bush won, and then we counted them again, and Bush won!" In point of fact there are thousands of votes that haven't been counted at all.
We're not talking about dimpled chads or butterfly ballots. We're talking about holes clearly punched in ballots and not counted by machines which, while neither Republican or Democrat, are also old and poorly designed. Is anybody on Slashdot really prepared to take the position that mechanical devices -- particularly 40 year-old mechanical devices -- can do everything automatically and never need human intervention?
So we counted some of the votes, and we didn't know who won, and then we counted some of them again, and didn't know who won, and then in two counties we counted all of the votes.
And apart from those two counties, we still don't know who won. And we won't until we count all the votes.
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Patented al-gore-ithm (tm) (Score:5)
while (!president)
{
recount();
whine();
sue();
}
Not Bush Wins! (Score:5)
However, more people also voted for Not Gore than for Gor or Bush; therefore, Not Gore wins.
So, with Not Bush and Not Gore in office, I guess we're stuck with someone else. But who? Nader? BRAK? OOG? Slashdot Cruiser?
ANARCHY!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Ok, here. (Score:5)
Ok:
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Rubbish (Score:5)
Secondly, the margin for Gore's victory in the so-called popular vote is something like 0.3%, well within of the margin of error. So not only can we say that recounts (like those we've had in florida) could result in shifting of numbers, but we can also reasonably presume that the slightest change in behavior of either of the candidates could have overcome that margin (i.e., under a popular vote).
Thirdly, the electoral college is the law of the land. We simply cannot violate it based on whim.
Fourthly, there are good arguments for and against the electoral college. If you're going to argue against the status quo, you should at least make a strong case for it.
Fifthly, Gore was more than ready to win on an electoral vote (see his tapes on CNN and company) when that was what the media was predicting.
Re:What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:5)
You should have said, "I think. Not."
There is ample legal precedent for counting dimpled ballots. Counting the voters' intent is even the law in backwards places like Texas now, thanks to a law supported and signed by none other than GuuB himself.
Why so? Because the whole point of holding an election is to find out what the voters want.
> As far as the whole military absentee ballot thing goes...
Pure spin by the Republican attack dogs. See my post on the topic elsewhere under this article.
> On an added note, in Palm Beach County, FL a local news station took that "butterfly ballot"...
Another thing that the "liberal media" isn't bothering to tell everyone is that "butterfly" ballots caused so much confusion in the 1984 election that the US Congress ordered an investigation (General Accounting Office, IIRC), and the investigators reported back that such ballots were inherently unreliable, and recommended that they should not be used anywhere.
The shame is that state and local officials are not aware of these things. I wonder how many voting systems are just snake-oil solutions being peddled by someone out to make a profit? (I hear that the county commissioners in the county where the capital of Texas is are going to vote within a month about whether to upgrade to a slick new computer voting system. They probably don't have the first clue about the pitfalls with such systems, as recently discussed in comp.risks. Their decision will be based on the fact that they tried it in a single booth during this election, and "didn't have any problems with it". In the event, they are dragging their feet because of the price tag rather than because of concerns for system integrity, auditability, and the other issues recently identified by people researching computer voting.)
> They only recounted Democratic counties.
Agreed. IMO any election in any jurisdiction with less than a 2% difference between the top candidates should trigger an automatic hand recount throughout the jurisdiction. (And here the "jurisdiction" would be Florida, since that is the source of the block of electoral votes.) Notice that under my rule, a couple of other states would have needed statewide recounts as well.
> And, as far as I'm concerned, the changes in counts are more due to human error now than machine error then.
There is absolutely no basis of this claim, other than by invoking the Republican SpD's as authorities. Before this election, everyone agreed that hand counts were more accurate in a tight situation, and machine counts were just useful because of their superior speed and cost effectiveness whenever an election was not too terribly close.
> By the way, this isn't even the worst election in US history. Take John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
Also, a very complex situation with Rutherford B Hayes, ultimately resulting of a postponement of the inauguration until March of 1877 (IIRC). And some decisions by the US Congress that sound distinctly unconstitutional to me.
Perhaps there is a mandate... (Score:5)
Really, how would that be any worse than what we have right now? Whoever becomes President will lack any kind of mandate, that much is clear. What is more important, though, is that no one really wants either of them. Like in the 1800s with Hayes and Tilden, the election was so close there that they finally came to an agreement: Hayes will be Pres. (Republican), but would not seek a second term, and he would not change any policy substantially. This should be what happens here -- preserve the status quo, get rid of the two of 'em as soon as possible, and start fresh in four years.
Yeah US History!
Re:Lawyers (Score:5)
The judges said the law was inconsistent. Therefore it needed interpretation. The interpretation was that the counties could recount if they so chose, and the certification deadline needed to be moved to accomodate. That is hardly changing the rules. So the counties that had large problems with ballots recounted manually. Or, rather, one of them did. Another was harassed by people flown in courtesy of the Republican party to harass vote recounters in Democratic counties. Another couldn't finish in time. None of the Republican counties chose to recount manually.
Those were choices made on a county by county basis. Really the secretary of state should've
1) set standards for manual recounting
2) had the entire state manually recount
No matter what happened in that case, I think it would have achieved maximal trust in the process in Florida and the US. Arguing that a piece of crap election process should be allowed to stand as is forms arguments of patent lunacy.
Let's not forget the accuracy of the count in Florida is at least 10 times worse than the vote tally difference. The entire Florida election is one big ugly mess. The voting and counting process is horribly inaccurate. In the case of a nearly tied vote, the only appropriate thing to do is to work as hard as possible given time constraints to improve the accuracy. Unfortunately Bush's Florida campaign manager is in charge of the process, the Florida legislature is Republican, and the State Supreme Court is stacked Democrat. Any moves made by either side would immediately be interpreted as partisan and destructive - yet improved voting accuracy is essential to our trust of the election process. Gore is fighting mainly for his votes, and Bush is fighting to force acceptance of the piece of crap. I'd rather see efforts made to achieve maximal accuracy in the entire state.
Americans hate lawyers, as do I. In my view, the person who, after multiple counts and recounts is resorting to using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to appoint him President.
For all the blame throwing, Bush has contested the vote in more counties than Gore. But ask yourself one question before assessing Gore's actions. Suppose on election night Gore has won by 1900 votes, not Bush. Do you really think that Bush would not have gained the lead by now ?? Do you think he would have used any less tools to challenge the election than Gore ? I suspect he would have gained far more votes than Gore has (were the tabled turned), and it would have been done much more smoothly.
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet. This shakes my faith in the Reno case against them, IMO, he has damaged his credibility severely by arguing specious cases on Gore's behalf.
Gore's lawyer is David Boies, not Boyd. He was IBM's lead attorney when they had their antitrust case dropped. His strategy then was to stall and delay - a very successful strategy. He was the Attorney General's offices lead attorney against Microsoft. By most accounts he was stellar against Microsoft. He also represented Napster against the record companies. This is clearly a very efficient lawyer who enjoys taking on cases of national importance that work at the edges of the interpretation of the law. Don't forget, the value of a lawyer is based on how he does with what he's got. So far Boies has beaten Microsoft for the government, beaten the government for IBM, and negotiated a settlement for Napster. I don't think he is worried about the phone ringing for more cases.
Let's all hope that the case in Florida moves in ways that allow us to maximally trust the accuracy of the process. I doubt that will happen - I don't think either candidate really wants it.
Re:Patented al-gore-ithm (tm) (Score:5)
Segmentation fault: Gore dumped
British Point Of View (Score:5)
1. Americans don't know how to make ballot sheets.
Surely every state should have the same design for ballot sheets, and they should be boring and completely free from any attempts at design. A simple table which contains a cell for the candidates name, and a cell next to it for the vote is all that is needed, nothing more, nothing less.
2. Americans don't know how to count votes.
In Britain you have to put an X inside the box next to the the candidates name. If the X even touches the box, then that vote is declared spoiled, and the ballot slip is thrown away. If something other than an X is used, then the ballot is spoiled and the ballot slip is thrown away. That may seem harsh, but the rules are clearly laid out for everyone to see, and they are uniform across the whole country. The reasoning behind it is that if you are too stupid to follow the instructions, then you are too stupid to have your vote count. The idea of a judge being allowed to change a vote because the voter intended to vote for someone else is ludicrous. If there is more than one vote on the ballot slip, then it is spolied, end of story, and one stupid voter has lost the chance to have their say.
That's all that was needed to make this whole election an open and shut case; simple ballot papers, and simple rules.
What does the popular vote really mean? (Score:5)
Next point it why Gore won the electoral vote. He won by a margin of somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 votes. He won by a greater margin than this in New York City alone. What this means is that, outside of NYC, Bush had the greater popular vote. So, is it really that unfair, Al? This is one reason for having the electoral college - so one city can't choose the president.
On to the subject of the dimpled chad and all that. There were ballots that were clearly punched through for all other offices but "dimpled" for president. Was this voter incapable of punching the holes? I think not.
As far as the whole military absentee ballot thing goes, Gore just managed to upset the people who risk their lives for this nation. Probably not a very good plan...
On an added note, in Palm Beach County, FL a local news station took that "butterfly ballot" and replaced the candidates with cartoon characters. They then asked small children which circle to mark to vote for a particular character. Guess what? They figured it out... (and, keep in mind, that ballot was approved by the Democrats, published in the newspaper, and sent to the home of every registered voter prior to the election.)
Even if Gore had won the Florida recount, what would it mean? They only recounted Democratic counties. And, as far as I'm concerned, the changes in counts are more due to human error now than machine error then.
Of course, it's not over yet- but it should be. I think everyone is entirely sick of this. Time to move on.
By the way, this isn't even the worst election in US history. Take John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Jackson won both the popular and electoral votes. BUT he didn't have a majority. Henry Clay had managed to take enough electoral votes away that no one had a majority. So, the two candidates with the most electoral votes go to the House. Clay threw his support to Adams, who won the election despite an obvious loss to Jackson. Interesting stuff....
The above is my opinion on a few of these matters. You're entitled to your's too. Don't troll me. Don't flame me. Let me be.