Who wone Florida?

[gnome]

It's not nonsense. There is evidence for it. There is evidence against it. Who actually had more legal votes is questionable. The real truth is that the vote was within the margin of error. The Supreme Court took unprecedented legal action to declare Bush the winner. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the nation. Bush is our legal president. Though I don't like Bush, I am not whining. Neither is Al Gore.

Still, we should try to take steps to prevent such "questionable" things from happening again, wouldn't you say?

Thank you! This is where I'm going with it. And unfortunately I don't see much positive action about it. You will see more lawsuits, as the state of florida is possibly in violation of settlements made in lawsuits arising from the 2000 election.

 

[Theodore Kurita]

The conspiracy doesn't have to be that complicated. In fact, I have perused a lot of the sites discussing the purge list issue... and have not seen this specific allegation.

The strongest allegations that I see (and this is not a very complicated conspiracy) is that state election officials, right up to their boss Kathryn Harris, were informed of the problems with the list and did little to clarify the matter, knowing it would lead to many voters being turned away incorrectly.

The only "conspiracy" action required to deliver the close vote to Bush would be to sit on her hands, instead of taking appropriate action on the warning.

Now that I think about it...

I remember reading somewhere about the fact that the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida over this.

Not only that, but there is plenty anecdotal evidence that there were actions taken against minorities who wanted to vote. Most of the people stopping minorities from voting were people in charge of polling places, and off duty cops.


Anywho, I think the biggest reason we are all still talking about the Florida Elections is simple. Jim Crow is still being applied to minorities through more subversive tactics.

 

[Grammatron]

Now that I think about it...

I remember reading somewhere about the fact that the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida over this.

Not only that, but there is plenty anecdotal evidence that there were actions taken against minorities who wanted to vote. Most of the people stopping minorities from voting were people in charge of polling places, and off duty cops.


Anywho, I think the biggest reason we are all still talking about the Florida Elections is simple. Jim Crow is still being applied to minorities through more subversive tactics.

I would LOVE to see evidence for this.

 

[Cain]

Originally posted by Skeptic America is a union of many states. The point of giving the smaller states more power in elections is to make sure that they will not be swamped by the larger states. Same thing with Congress: the Senate gives every state two votes, while the House is elected by population.

If the president was directly elected, then the smaller states would become insignificant, to the detriment of the union. As it is, the president and the challanger cannot afford to simply ignore the smaller states and concentrate on New York, California, and Texas... thank God.

Hasn't this obvious and well-worn counter-argument already been pre-empted (and by two different people!)? The current system violates the democratic principle of one person, one vote. Besides, who today thinks of their state as being part of "the union?"

Trust me on this one: thank your lucky stars every day that third parties ARE marginalized. History shows very well that once you have many parties, splintering and factioning often makes government impossible.

It is no coincidence that the most stable and prosperous democracies in the world have (in effect) two-party systems.

I have no desire to comment on this as of right now.

In fact, it was. It was a rule whose purpose, contrary to appearances, was to limit the power of the slave state who had a large black population. In effect it said, "you don't want to let blacks have rights? Fine... but in that case, you can't cheat and claim them as citizens for the purposes of deciding how many representatives you have in Congress."

It had nothing to do with evaluating what someone is "worth". The slave-holding states would have loved to have every black person count as much as a white person (or as 20 white people, for that matter) for the purposes of the number of representatives they get in the house; that would have greatly increased their power. That hardly means they thought black people were equal to whites.

You completely misunderstood, and, characteristically, constructed a scare quote along with a straw man. Do I need to reproduce the original sentences? The 3/5 rule was a compromise between the north and south. Compromise is the key word, the key theme. It most definitely was not an immutable moral principle from the Almighty.

And though the Founders were slightly misguided when it came to counting Africans as 3/5 of a person -- that rule, too, was probably based on high-minded, philosophical principle.

Hell, why are we even allowed to directly vote for our Senators?

Because the constitution was amended to allow that.

Hmph. Yes, but the constitution was amended because progressives made democratic arguments that challenged the beliefs of the founders. Today the conservative counter-argument, rather than directly addressing specific claims, rests on misguided and inappropriate appeals to authority (long dead white guys).

When I observe that the House of Representatives lacks competitive elections, and this is contrary to the intentions of the founding fathers, that's not in itself a very persuasive argument. A prior question must be asked: why were the founders even interested in competitive elections?

 

[Nasarius]

The point of giving the smaller states more power in elections is to make sure that they will not be swamped by the larger states.

A "state" is a rather arbitrary political construct. Is there really any compelling reason why one person's vote should count more just because they live in a smaller state?
It's like the ridiculous mess of gerrymandering we have with congressional districts. Why not just use a parliamentary system? It's simpler, and at least as fair.

You haven't given any argument as to WHY small states matter. It's not like the people of New York, California, and Texas have similar political views by virtue of living in a highly populated area.

 

[Nova Land]

Re: Re: Re: Who wone Florida?

Ok...how about this November article from LA times entitled "Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds."
http://www.latimes.com/la-111201recount.story

To repeat myself: "It's a good reminder of the importance of reading the details, not just the headlines and summaries."

Yes, this headline spins the story to make it sound like Bush won. That happened repeatedly in coverage of this story, which is why many intelligent people (such as you and rikzilla) came away with the impression that Bush had won the recounts.

In listening to or reading the news, it's good to try to winnow out the editorializing, speculation, and spin, and see what relevant facts remain. I am often surprised that people I would expect to be most alert for media bias (conservatives who fear a liberal media bias) seem to be the ones most prone to fall for it. Case in point...

The LA Times headline claims Bush had the votes. But if you read the story, you will see this is classic bait and switch. The recount Bush might have won is not the one the media consortium conducted.

There are 2 separate questions here. One question is: what would the outcome have been, given real-world political maneuvering, if the recount had gone forward in November/December 2000? And that is the recount that the LA Times headline is speculating Bush probably would have won -- based on the assumptions that the recount would have been limited to the 4 counties Gore requested and that overvotes would not have been taken into consideration.

But the question which they should have been addressing -- because it was the news they were ostensibly reporting in this story -- is: what was the result of the media consortium recount of the vote?

In other words: if all the ballots had been recounted and if all ballots that were deemed valid tallied up, who would have won, Gore or Bush? That is the key question I thought the media recount was attempting to answer, but it is not the question addressed by the headline (or by much of the news story).

The LA Times manages to give Bush a win by assuming (a) a recount limited to 4 counties, not statewide, and (b) overvotes not taken into account. But the media consortium did a statewide recount, and overvotes were one of the things they were able to tabulate. That is what, on November 12, 2001, was new (as in news).

Why drag in all this other stuff? The apparent reason seems to be in order to provide "balance." Since the actual news was that Gore would have won a statewide recount, various papers (including the LA Times) chose to "balance" the story with ways that the votes could have been recounted under which Gore would not have won.

According to the LA Times story: "The significance of these ballots depends on what standards are used to weigh their validity. Under some recount rules, Bush wins. Under others, Gore wins."

No. That's yesterday's news. It relates to the counting of the undervotes, and the results for that part of the recount came out back in April. At that point, it was fair to say that Gore would have won by some standards and Bush by others (although the headlines back then also largely spun the story as Bush won, with the actual news that Gore won by strict standards of counting and Bush by loose standards buried many paragraphs in).

With undervotes, it seemed impossible to agree on a single standard so the media consortium counted the votes by several standards. Therefore in April 2001 it was fair to report that there were different ways to recount and that under some Gore won and under others Bush won.

But the November story has to do with the now-completed recounting of the overvotes. With overvotes, it's much easier to agree on what's a valid vote and what isn't. There was no need to use a multitude of different criteria. If someone marked their ballot for both Bush and Nader or both Gore and Buchanan, for example, the ballot was void. But if someone checked off Bush on page 1 and also wrote in Bush's name on the write-in line (as many voters -- taking the ballot instructions literally -- did in fact do) then by Florida law the ballot was a valid vote for Bush. There was no need to argue about dimples and chads when it came to the overvote situation.

What was news on November 12 was that the media consortium recount of valid overvotes added a net gain of close to 900 votes to Gore's total. That made Gore the winner of the recount, virtually regardless of how undervotes are counted.

That's the news story. The rest is obfuscation. (And note how neatly it's done: sandwiched in with 29 paragraphs above it and 26 below it. No wonder you and rikzilla missed it the first time around.)

Much of the time I feel charges of media bias are probably mistaken, and that what is seen as intentional spinning of the news is more likely carelessness and incompetence. But there have been cases where the media did deliberately suppress or distort the news -- coverage of FDR (to avoid showing the effects of his polio) and of JFK (to cover up his womanizing) come to mind. Several decades from now the media spin of the Florida recount will, I believe, be seen similarly as a textbook example of media suppressing a story in the name of what they believed to be the public good.

 

[Walter Wayne]

A simple fix is for all 50 to states to assign their electoral votes in proportion to the voting. Is see why states don't want to change the way it is, but why did 100% of the florida electoral votes go to Bush given a 50/50 split.

The chance of such a small deviation having such a large effect is reduce when the votes are awarded proportionately.

Walt

 

[Nova Land]

How about an estimated 5000 illegal votes (the majority of which went to Gore) that were cast but should not have been counted?

If Bush and Gore both lose those votes, then Gore's count goes down by 2000... and Bush wins.

Not quite.

You are correct that this amount of votes would overwhelm the margin of victory that the valid overvotes would provide. However, as bignickel pointed out, the votes you are talking about are an estimate based on statistical reasoning.

If you are going to allow votes to be allowed or disallowed based on statistics, there are thousands more Gore votes to be added to the total, such as the votes cast in heavily Jewish counties for Buchanan. Statistical arguments were made showing that many of these were almost certainly intended as votes for Gore, and there were even formulas derived from statistical analysis estimating how many of those votes "really" should have gone to Gore.

Even Pat Buchanan said these votes were almost certainly not truly intended for him. However, it has largely been agreed that, whoever the votes were actually intended for, there is no way of knowing for certain which are genuine Buchanan votes and which miscast Gore votes, and trying to allocate the votes based on statistics isn't practical. While more people may have intended to vote for Gore, and even thought they were voting for Gore, those votes are lost. Tough break, but that's life.

The media consortium limited itself to tabulating actual ballots, not hypothetical or statistical ones. The result of that recount was (a) if overvotes are excluded, then either Gore or Bush could have won, depending on the standard used to count the undervotes, and (b) if overvotes are included, then Gore won.

It is certainly possible to consider other questions, such as the question of illegal votes, and it is quite possible that you can find ways that would lead to Bush having a higher vote total than Gore. But that's beyond the scope of the consortium recount that Grammatron and rikzilla mentioned. My point was to correct the mistaken impression they had both gotten, that Gore lost all the recounts. In point of fact, even though the story of the consortium recount was spun as a Bush victory, the actual details of the story give Gore a higher total than Bush.

 

[Nova Land]

Just to show that I am capable of writing a short post, let me briefly summarize my point.

A number of people are under false the impression that Gore lost all the recounts. Rikzilla, for example, said:

I read somewhere that 4 news organizations sponsored a full after-the-fact recount in Florida using as many different counting criteria as they could. In ALL recounts, pregnant chad, insane scribblings, and all....Bush won every count.

This is clearly incorrect. While many headlines spun the story as Bush won, the actual stories show that Bush did not win every count. (The LA Times item, for example, says: "Under some recount rules, Bush wins. Under others, Gore wins."

And yet, rikzilla -- an intelligent and well-read person -- somehow picked up the strong impression that Gore had lost under every conceivable standard of counting. And he is not the only one.

The fact that so many intelligent people are under the false impression that Gore lost every recount disturbs me, the same way that the fact that so many people believe in the validity of astrology, dowsing, and communicating with the dead disturbs me. Those are complex beliefs and difficult to change. This one, on the other hand, seems fairly simple and straightforward.

 

[rikzilla]

Just to show that I am capable of writing a short post, let me briefly summarize my point.

A number of people are under false the impression that Gore lost all the recounts. Rikzilla, for example, said:This is clearly incorrect. While many headlines spun the story as Bush won, the actual stories show that Bush did not win every count. (The LA Times item, for example, says: "Under some recount rules, Bush wins. Under others, Gore wins."

And yet, rikzilla -- an intelligent and well-read person -- somehow picked up the strong impression that Gore had lost under every conceivable standard of counting. And he is not the only one.

The fact that so many intelligent people are under the false impression that Gore lost every recount disturbs me, the same way that the fact that so many people believe in the validity of astrology, dowsing, and communicating with the dead disturbs me. Those are complex beliefs and difficult to change. This one, on the other hand, seems fairly simple and straightforward.

Nova,

Thanks for the info. It's true, I did not know that there was more to the story. But here is the real rub....you said the final and most comprehensive results was that Gore had won Florida, BUT this reliable result came when? A: November of 2001!

SCOTUS acted on the best info available at the time. I think that's all we can ask of them. They don't have the ability to peer into the future or let the US government go leaderless for a whole year. (The year of 9/11 BTW) Can you imagine the chaos we'd have been thrown into if we were still fighting over the Oval office during 9/11?

Anyway, thank you for the kind words... and the good info. I'll not make that assertion again.

-z

 

[crimresearch]

"Not only that, but there is plenty anecdotal evidence that there were actions taken against minorities who wanted to vote. Most of the people stopping minorities from voting were people in charge of polling places, and off duty cops."

Oh, *anecdotal* evidence...the best kind, right?

Sort of like the mountain of anecdotal evidence for UFOs and homeopathy? Can't go wrong with good old fashioned anecdotal evidence, can we?
Particularly when 'supported' by media reports based on anecdotal evidence, and surveys of those who believe the anecdotal evidence, and comparisons to other anecdotal evidence...
Why it is almost exactly similar to proof positive, now that you mention it.

 

[Kerberos]

Nova,

Thanks for the info. It's true, I did not know that there was more to the story. But here is the real rub....you said the final and most comprehensive results was that Gore had won Florida, BUT this reliable result came when? A: November of 2001!

SCOTUS acted on the best info available at the time. I think that's all we can ask of them. They don't have the ability to peer into the future or let the US government go leaderless for a whole year. (The year of 9/11 BTW) Can you imagine the chaos we'd have been thrown into if we were still fighting over the Oval office during 9/11?

Wasn't the recount done by various private organisations? If SC had decided that a recount was warranted, then I imagine it could have been done much faster. In Denmark we do hand counts, and it takes about 24 hours to get definite results. Florida’s system isn’t geared for hand counts, so it would most likely take longer, but certainly not anything like a year.

 

[Aoidoi]

Apologies if someone mentioned it, but since several people are gung-ho on direct elections... what do you suggest happen if there is a close vote on the national scale? What if a national vote was a statistical tie? Recount the whole country? I think I'd take a nice long vacation while that went on... somewhere outside the US

A "run-off" election would be interesting, but at least with the electoral college Chicago can only have enough dead vote to swing Illinois's electoral votes, not to overshadow the less "creative" voting areas in other states.