2000 Florida Presidential Results - Rigged?

[LSSBB]

Read this in a movie review by Michael Phillips in yesterday's Chicago Tribune:

Before 2008 Jackie's second husband, David, ruled as the king of time-shares. With its fancy new headquarters on the Vegas strip, Westgate Resorts, he says in an early interview, is the "largest privately owned time-share company in the world." On camera he claims he was instrumental in getting his preferred 2000 presidential candidate,George W. Bush, elected in Florida. How so? He'd rather not go into it, he says, because "it may not have been legal." If those Siegel palace walls could only talk.

Is there any factual basis for Mr. Siegal's boast?

 

[Bob001]

Read this in a movie review by Michael Phillips in yesterday's Chicago Tribune:

Is there any factual basis for Mr. Siegal's boast?

It sounds like he encouraged his 8,000 employees to support Bush, and used his corporate call center to make robo-calls on Bush's behalf. But in an election that came down to less than 700 votes, you could point to almost anything: the confusing ballot design; the thousands of votes cast for Ralph Nader; Republican officials disqualifying voters improperly; closing or moving polling places at the last minute; police checkpoints outside polling places; etc., etc. I don't think there's much doubt that a clean election would have put Gore into the White House.
http://www.businessweek.com/article...are-king-david-siegel-thinks-he-got-w-elected
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/usability/use-ballot.htm
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/ch2.htm (from U.S. Commission on Civil Rights)

 

[LSSBB]

It sounds like he encouraged his 8,000 employees to support Bush, and used his corporate call center to make robo-calls on Bush's behalf. But in an election that came down to less than 700 votes, you could point to almost anything: the confusing ballot design; the thousands of votes cast for Ralph Nader; Republican officials disqualifying voters improperly; closing or moving polling places at the last minute; police checkpoints outside polling places; etc., etc. I don't think there's much doubt that a clean election would have put Gore into the White House.
http://www.businessweek.com/article...are-king-david-siegel-thinks-he-got-w-elected
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/usability/use-ballot.htm
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/ch2.htm

Thanks. I also was just listening to Clinton's autobiography where Slick Willy blamed the Supreme Court, which is what it ultimately came down to.

 

[Her Grey Eminence]

I am not well versed in American history but my understanding is that voter fraud is as American as apple-pie. Dead people voted for Kennedy in Chicago to Democratic vote fixing in the South in the good old days.
In Australia electoral corruption tends to happen at the pre-selection level of candidate level rather than in the actual vote counting, which to the best of my knowledge is fairly clean. In Australia as I presume in America the best way to fix an election is via media coverage and manipulating narratives (eg the gaffe-prone Romney).

What makes 2000 interesting is what would have happened after 9/11 with a Gore victory. Gore presumably would have had a similar response as Bush in regards Afghanistan, but it is very difficult to see him having a path to invade Iraq. But Republican circles were very keen on Iraq before 2000 and according to Woodward one of the first reactions of some in Bush's cabinet directly after 9/11 was to go straight after Iraq (no matter how much of a non-sequitur that was). Lets just say, then, for the national security-industry complex a Bush victory was very much to be hoped for.

I would not rule out a fix on the night. Early projections called it for Gore - and I assume those predictions model were sophisticated enough by 2000 to understand about the republican nature of the western part of the state. How a fix on the night could be delivered might vary. But would most likely have targeted heavily Democratic counties like Palm Beach and Broward or heavily democratic precincts in urban counties like Miami Dade and simply lose votes or perhaps double punch them as this guy suggests in Palm Beach:
republicanadvantage.blogspot.com.au/2008/09/how-one-mistake-by-david-boies-gave.html

You would only have to eliminate 10 000 votes to be fairly confident of swinging the election and that would be impossible to pick up with certitude statistically. If it was very important for Bush to win election, then regardless of what the final outcome was, those preliminary reports of a Gore victory would have been enough to spark a Plan B.

You would not expect much evidence to appear in the public sphere either.

However, the national security-industry complex is not necessarily pro-Republican, rather like Rupert Murdoch it prefers to have both parties bidding for their support. In 2012 Obama, despite the gaffe-prone Romney's best efforts, will probably either be supported or at least not interfered with in any way.

He has done a lot in regards Syria and Libya. Perhaps the biggest indication that he is viewed favorably is that he was permitted to be credited with eliminating Osama bin Laden - and by the method which he had caused a mini-pseudo-controversy during 2008 - by violating Pakistani sovereignty. Of course, if unemployment keeps increasing then it may be out of everyone's hands. I mean you couldn't swing an election to McGovern no matter how you tried.

So if you are a Democrat supporter, its swings and roundabouts, the fact that 2000 was stolen shouldn't be a big concern. If you are just a democracy supporter - well, I am afraid there is not much you can do about it.

 

[vtbub]

Is there actaully any prove the election was stolen or was Gore such a bad candidate that he just could not win the handful of states not named Florida he lost by razor-thin margins.

 

[CORed]

Is there actaully any prove the election was stolen or was Gore such a bad candidate that he just could not win the handful of states not named Florida he lost by razor-thin margins.

My favorite quote about the 2000 election is from Bill Maher: "Bush didn't steal the election but it did fall off the back of the truck."

 

[Dcdrac]

Gore certainly was not a great candidate, the election was close, I do not think on the availaable evidence that it was rigged, there was certainly some sharp practices but not rigged.

 

[kookbreaker]

Might have hlped if Gore won his home state. Even Mondale managed that.

 

[vtbub]

It seems that here in Vermont that most certainly will tell you the election was stolen, but offer no proof.

 

[StankApe]

Didn't every independent count done after the election was decided go to Bush? (seems like I read that every group that did a recount ended up with Bush winning)

The GOP complained about the networks calling Florida before the CST areas polls had closed as that's a more conservative part of the state.

But let's be honest, Florida seems to have issues with their election system.

 

[BazBear]

It seems that here in Vermont that most certainly will tell you the election was stolen, but offer no proof.

Yes, I hear a lot of that from people around this part of the state (Lamoille County). I don't agree with them though. Florida was a fiasco for many reasons, but I don't think there was any large scale organized fraud or tampering.

 

[Bobby]

Didn't every independent count done after the election was decided go to Bush? (seems like I read that every group that did a recount ended up with Bush winning)

Sort of.

 

[vtbub]

Pretty much proves the point that Florida was within the human MOE and not vast overblown conspiracy to steal the election.

 

[KDLarsen]

Personally, I found it (and still find it) inexplicable that Katherine Harris was allowed to maintain such a conflict of interest.

Was it a conspiracy to steal the election? No. But it could, and should, have been handled so much better. And still needs to be. Ken Bennett managed the same stunt this year, being both the Arizona Sec of State AND co-chair of the Romney campaign in Arizona - and you may remember, how he somehow felt the need to ensure that President Obama was indeed born in Hawaii

 

[EventHorizon]

Is there actaully any prove the election was stolen or was Gore such a bad candidate that he just could not win the handful of states not named Florida he lost by razor-thin margins.

I agree with that. I tend to see similarities between politics and team sports (that's just how my brain works) and the analogy I've always used for the 2000 election is this: your team should never put itself in a position where a bad call by an official will cost you the game. Great teams will overcome bad calls.

 

[MarkLindeman]

Didn't every independent count done after the election was decided go to Bush? (seems like I read that every group that did a recount ended up with Bush winning)

No. Basically, the Florida Ballots Project found that Bush would have won if only undervotes ("hanging chads" etc.) were considered, but that Gore would have won if overvotes also were considered. They found that thousands of people who voted on optical-scan ballots voted for candidates twice -- one in the regular place, once as a write-in. (Obviously they did not understand how "write in" was supposed to work.) Enough more of those votes would have gone to Gore to reverse the outcome. So, the bottom line depends on one's assumptions about the scope of any recount.

The GOP complained about the networks calling Florida before the CST areas polls had closed as that's a more conservative part of the state.

Yes, that early call was just a bad call -- not so much because there was still voting in the panhandle, but because in retrospect, there wasn't enough information to make the call.

But let's be honest, Florida seems to have issues with their election system.

Yes, it does. Not all the same problems now as in 2000, but plenty of them.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Personally, I think we may have been better off if Gore had won. But, I think Bush won Florida fair and square. It was not Bush's fault that so many Gore voters couldn't figure out how to properly mark a ballot. It was not Bush's fault that two Democratic-controlled counties changed the counting criteria in the middle of the recount, a clear abuse of process. It was not Bush's fault that Gore listened to his political advisers instead of his legal advisers. It was not Bush's fault that two of the recount counties were downright lazy in doing the recount. It was not Bush's fault that the all-Democrat FL supreme court was deeply divided over the legality of the recount.

And speaking of disqualifying valid votes in FL, Democrats did a fair amount of this too, not just Republicans.

The Florida Recounts Revisited
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/floridareview.htm