Slashdot Mirror
And The Winner Is... Nobody!
Allright, while Gore has 260 electoral votes, and Bush has 246, it all comes down to florida. Its amazingly close: Gore actually has won the popular vote. He appears to actually have about a 200,000 vote lead over Bush across the US, but as anyone who's taken any civics class knows, the people don't elect the president in the US. One thing is for sure: this election isn't over. Florida is split even, with bush ahead by about 2,000 votes (Out of nearly 6 million voters!), but Florida law requires a recount when the election is this close.
Some interesting side notes in florida:
- Apparently font and layout issues on ballots caused about 2000 seniors in Palm Beach with less then 20/20 vision to vote for Buchanen instead of Gore. They showed the ballots, and it is definitely confusing.
- Absentee ballots are going to be counted. There were 2700 in 96 although I don't know how many there are this year. Absentee votes are largely military, which tend to be republican.
- The recount could be done by the end of the day.
If you're looking to laugh (and I know I am) I suggest reading the Onion's election story, which is even funnier considering just how close the election is.
As I understand, and i'm not an expert, but I heard this on the radio this morning, this can only occur in states that have "faithless electors". I'm not sure if florida is one of them...if it is there is a chance on december 18 that they cast thier vote in favor of who won the popular election.
It's more complicated than that.
Many states have provisions forbidding so-called "faithless electors"--i.e. electors who vote different from the popular vote in the state. However, these provisions are all on the state level, not the federal level, and thus are (arguably) Constitutionally irrelevent to the actual Electoral College vote on Dec. 18.
I believe it is generally accepted that if an elector were to change his or her vote in a state with a provision against faithless electors, then the changed vote would stand but the elector would have some shit to pay with their home state. On the other hand, this would certainly go to the Supreme Court if it occured, and given the current anti-Federalist leanings of conservative judges, that result may be too close to call as well.
Even if Gore picked up a few thousand in a recount, the military vote still has to come in, and that is generally Republican. I highly doubt Gore will win.
Have you read my journal today?
To everyone who said that your vote doesn't count... HA! I thank each and every one of you for making my vote count even more. :)
No if I can just get eveyone to not vote... I can vote myself in as dictator...
provolt
I'm a Wisconsin native, and cast my ballot for Bush - and let me tell you, I sure felt good when I saw the results, even though Gore won the state. With a difference of only 6000 votes, it wasn't quite as close as Florida, but it was obvious that my vote definitely made a difference. I encourage everyone to think back to this election in four years, regardless of how it comes out, and consider that when it's time to vote again.
This is a win-win situation at this point. If Bush takes it, the Democrats will have some serious thinking to do on their platform or risk more losses stemming from third party candidates. And the American people will have some serious thinking to do on the electoral college system, as Gore actually won the popular vote.
If Bush loses, we continue with the current stalemate between republican controlled congress and the president. Anything that makes laws more difficult to pass is fine with me.
Of course, the biggest players in the game, the corporations, have more power than the president does and there's no balance to keep them in check, so apart from Nader potentially getting his 5% (Looks like he got about 2%) the whole thing was pretty much an exercise in futility. Which didn't mean I didn't get out there and vote. I had local issues I wanted to weigh in on (My state passed a law allowing for the medical use of Marijuana, by an overwhelming margin. Anything that pokes the DEA in the eye is also OK with me.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Refusal 2000
Americans Prefer Their Candidates Dead
As Dan Rather said during the presidential election coverage, the race was "so close you couldn't put cigarette paper between them", which provides some insight into where Rather's mind was. Synchronistically, Comedy Central's prime time movie last night was _Half Baked_, the charming story of New York city stoners and their wacky, toked-up antics.
As of this writing, the new President of these United States isn't known. The initial results of Florida's general election gave Bush the state by only 2000 votes. Because this slim lead easily falls within the margin of error, the home state of Mikey Mouse and German tourist murderers is recounting the ballets -- or blown out candles or colored marbles depending on the county. Whoever is declared the winner there will surely go on to claim "a clear mandate from the people". Considering the source, that mandate will likely include Geritol and cheap stool softners for all.
The presidential race wasn't the only bit of madness happening last evening. The population of the great state of Missouri reelected the popular governor Robert Holden, a democrat from Jefferson City. His adversary was the sober Republican candidate Jim Talent (that's his real name, honest). The Show-Me state voters chose the candidate who would best address the state's flat economy, lackluster education and low prestige. As Newt Gingrich was fond of saying "history is the best indicator of future performance" (which is utterly false in the domain of probability), so Missouri went with the devil they knew. The biggest obstruction facing the new governor is keeping voters' hopes alive while he isn't. Bob Holden is dead. Very dead. Still, he seemed to campaign better than Talent, so he has that going for him.
As all loyal viewers of the space opera "Babylon 5" knew, actor Jerry Doyle (Mr. Garibaldi from the series) ran for Representative from California's district 24. As an actor with political ambitions, Doyle was in good company. Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee appeared in numerous bad network TV shows in the 80s. Senator Sonny Bono, dead, was very popular before his death was widely known. Although I'd rather, let's not forget the Great Communicator Ronald Reagan, or mayor Clint Eastwood. Americans love their actors, but not the ones that have done Sci-Fi. Doyle was soundly trounced by the incumbent Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks (really). I suppose the money and fame can't buy you an election after all.
Let's not forget our own state Massachusetts. Once again, the bloated and hoary friend to all DWI offenders, Ted Kennedy secured his senate seat for another six years. As long as there's booze in the state, Kennedy will continue to run and win elections. The more interesting story for the Mass elections was the ballot questions. In a state known for being pathologically democrat, it was fun to see how many republican initiatives were supported by the ballot questions. Tax cuts, toll rebates and no new health care policies all sound awfully much like what George W. was stammering about during his campaign. And what would warm old Dubba's heart more than to know that we as a state enjoy killing grayhounds? Sure, those dogs aren't convicted prisoners being executed, but we'll get to that.
In the end, this confused, befuddling, irritating election has served to renew my faith in our representative democracy. Voters caused this mess, not big businesses with political action committees. We citizens can send the jumbled message to Washington that something unclear is perhaps bothering us and we're not going to take it very much longer unless we have to. It is clear that neither major party candidate enjoys popular support. Most voters seemed to fear that the *other* candidate would be elected. Truly, election 2000 was a contest of Lessers. It seemed that those voting for Bush were trying to send a message about the Clinton years. I'm not referring to the eight years of morbidly obese economic growth, but the bald-faced manipulation that Clinton engaged in. Even supporters of Clinton have to admit that Slick Willy is a master confidence man. He lied on nationally televised video tape under oath and he escape any reprimand for it. That's slick. Gore doesn't have the charisma or the cajones of Clinton and that's why voters are venting their spleen on him.
Just to rub it in, Clinton reminds us that he "still has 10 more weeks to quack". Quack on, you licentious, profligate rogue. America can't get enough of you. ;-)
The panhandle is central time, but the polls close at the same time across the state, opening and closing an hour earlier in Pensacola, by the clock.
illegitimii non ingravare
To do that would require a constitutional amendment. To pass a constitutional amendment, it must be ratified by 3/4 of the states--38 states. If there are at least 13 states that won't ratify an amendment, it won't pass.
The electoral college gives more power to the voters of some states, at the expense of others. Voters in less populous states have more voting power than they would in a direct popular vote. This is because each state gets N+2 electoral votes, where N is more or less proportional to population. The "+2" increases the power of smaller states proportionately more than those of larger states.
Also, with an electoral college, voters in states which are often closely divided have more power than they would under a direct popular vote, at the expense of voters in states which always go strongly towards one party or the other.
Switching to a direct popular vote would take power away from those states where voters currently have above-average influence on the result of the election. Now, I haven't done a state-by-state analysis, but are there at least 13 such states which would lose voting power by switching to a popular vote? I certainly imagine so. Will those states ratify a constitutional amendment to use a popular vote to elect the president? Of course not!
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
print "CNN declares " . ("Bush", "Gore")[rand 2];
print " the winner of Florida\n";
--
Here are the facts:
A good picture (not just a diagram) can be found here.
things. take. time.
Yes, but see-sawing back and forth was good for viewing figures and advertising dollars, which is obviously more important.
WRONG!!! Bob Butterworth, the Attorney General is Gore's campaign chief in Florida. He has absolutely nothing to do with the vote counting. I have seen so much misinformation in this thread that my head is spinning.
Woogie
I think it's much more likely that the problem stems from incompetance on the part pf the election judges at the polling places. My girlfriend is a law student in Maryand- she became an election judge to gain insight into the the process for a paper she is writing in her election law class. She was quite astounded at the disregard for the law exhibited by her fellow judges. They ended up with more votes than voters... I imagine similar forces are at play in Fla.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
It seems that the one thing it does is keep the states with lower populations from becoming completely insignificant, amplifying their votes a bit. This was one of the concerns back in the 1770's when there were only 13 states, that the little states would be reduced to insignificance, and is also why we have a bicameral (house+senate) system that is set up the way it is. After all, who would campaign in Rhode Island otherwise?
Still, I'd kind of like to see the "winner takes all" thing done away with. In a state with a near 50/50 split, and there were quite a few of them, it seems kind of silly to count it the same as a 100/0 victory. Plus, this would give third party candidates a chance. Nader's 4% in California would have been enough to give him at least one electoral vote. Then we'd also have to start thinking about coalition voting, with third part Electoral College delegates voting for the best coalition, to avoid it going to Congress.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
>p.s. Wow, I hope Slashdot gives the Canadian elections this much coverage in three weeks' time...
y'mean they didn't vote yesterday like the rest of the country?
(duck!)
--
___
Cognitive Overflow
more than yo
This year, Discover magazine published an article the month before the election about the problems of electing candidates based on simple majority, which begins to fail when more than two candidates have a strong following. With the fuss about Nader voters "taking away" votes from Gore, this is very relevant in this election.
Four years ago, they did a similar article on the electoral college, and how it actually gives more power to the average voter when a very large pool of voters exists.
Both articles should be required reading for all scientifically-minded would-be voting reformers.
Some people's votes literally do not matter. Clearly that's not the case in states like Wisconsin and Florida, but in my mostly Democrat home state of Massachusetts Gore had almost twice as many votes as Bush did. I still went out and voted, because of the other questions on the ballot, but regardless of how I voted, Gore was going to get our Electoral.
In America, free speech is valued above almost everything.
That and freedom of religion are THE two key pieces of nationalistic propaganda that are rammed down our throats here at a very early age.
Most of us don't learn the truth (that we have neither) until High School civics class, and by then, we're in our rebellious teenage years, so it doesn't matter.
With Gore taking this election, and a republican congress, you can be sure that the rest of the world will be laughing their asses off in the next 4 years as "free" America amends it's constitution to prohibit the burning of the American flag.
Personally, I think flag-burning should be a sacred ritual at every family's 4th of July celebration (to celebrate that we have the right to do so - any Christian, and there are many in America I'm told, ought to understand instinctively that for an ideal to live for ever, the symbol that represents it must be destroyed).
But I digress, we're talking about the media here, and that's what freedom of speech is really about - and the media will manipulate the elections with biased coverage and reporting to make sure the most profitable (for them) man wins. Which candidate is most profitable? The most controverisal! The one that's easiest to spoof, tease, and lampoon. The one that's going to make those ratings jump as he does one lameass thing after another.
I'm guessing this is why Slashdot has "elected" Jon Katz to write editorials here. Same reason ZDNet uses Dvorak and Bearst.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I wasn't stunned about that. I was stunned that they gave it to Gore in the first place. When about 10% of the precincts were in, and Bush was leading 50/48, I wondered where the hell they pulled a solid Gore win for the state from, and guessed it was based entirely on exit polls of 1770 some odd people, which in a close race is about as reliable as pulling it out of your ass.
Finally CNN pulled Florida, then Fox News, then the two networks I was also switching to.
Now the really tricky part about this was that the polls were apparently still open in the Florida panhandle (which I guess is in a different time zone) when the networks gave the state to Gore.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
There's nothing about Palm Beach county to suggest that the extraordinary high Buchanan turnout matches local opinion compared to the rest of the State, IMO.
A collegue/friend of mine lives around there and voted and said she nearly made the same mistake. Her mother did make the same mistake, but noticed before posting her ballot and asked for another paper. It seems reasonable to conclude that it is likely that others made the same mistake and didn't notice until after their ballot was out of their hands.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Gah. Posting this twice because I'm seeing a lot of disinformation. The Electoral College protects us from mob rule. The individual voter has MORE power with an electoral college system. Going to strict "one person one vote" will enable the candidates to complete ignore minorities in favor of large voting blocs. Read this: Math Against Tyranny The only reform that should be made is using Maine and Nebraska's system of splitting the electoral votes by district.
Regards,
Regards,
-scott
Yeah, Bush had his girlfriend have an abortion. It was covered up. The hypocrite theme resurfaces -- since he is against abortions (in words, not actions; for us, not him). The story of the abortion and its cover up was also covered up by our own national media.
= programsummaries
How CNN censored the Crossfire episode:
http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=73474&PT
San Francisco Examiner article about the cover up:
http://www.examiner.com/001030/1030sorensen.html
Here's Larry Flint on the topic:
Well, we've been doing an investigation for a little over eight months to the effect that an abortion took place in 1970 in Houston, Texas. He was working for his father's campaign when he was running for the senate against Lloyd Bentsen, and a fellow by the name of Robert Chandler was the campaign manager. He got a girl pregnant during this period of time, and she had an abortion. We've been able to locate the doctor who preformed the procedure at a hospital in Houston. Not only that but we have the affidavits from four of her friends stating that they knew about the affair, the pregnancy and the subsequent abortion. The only thing we could not have which we needed to break the story was the girl to come out, and she would not come out. Whether she was afraid or whether she was paid off, I don't really want to speculate, because I don't know what the actual reason was. But when I started taking this to the mainstream media, I said you don't have to break the story, just ask the question, you know. You asked the cocaine question, so just ask if he's ever facilitated an abortion or paid for an abortion or if he was the father of a child. Just give him the chance to admit or deny it. No one would touch it.
Sure... your vote didn't count unless you live in Florida....
/EL ECTION/2000/results/index.president.html)
;)
or in Iowa with 6,000 votes keeping Bush from beating Gore
or in New Hampshire with 7,000 votes keeping Gore from beating Bush (Nader took 22,000 BTW)
or in Wisconsin with 6,000 votes keeping Bush from beating Gore
(this being just a listing of those states with less then 10,000 votes separating the two candidates acording to http://www.cnn.com
In most of those places (and lots others) 3rd party candidates such as Nader played a key roll in depriving one party or the other of beating their opponent.
Interesting election, personally I hate sweeps week stunts where they have cliff-hangers, and 'tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion' but I'll make an exception this time
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
My precinct (in Cambridge, MA) had close to 100% voter turn out. I went in at 7:45pm (polls closed at 8:00pm) and almost every name was checked off.
Knowing that my neighborhood is strongly leftish ("People's Republic of Cambridge"), I have a different idea of of what was happening.
(I don't know how to make this tastefully non-partisan, so I won't. Sorry.) From what I've seen here, heard talking to real live Republicans, what I understand to be the case is this:
The Republicans were largely voting for whom they thought would make a better president. They were trying to vote out of optimism. But as conservative presidents go, it's really hard to get enthused about Dubya. He's the only Republican choice, but he's kinda disappointing as Republicans go.
The Democrats, on the other hand (of which I and most of my neighbors are some), were voting for whom they thought would make the less bad president. They were voting not out of a sense of optimism, but of pure, unbridled terror. They weren't asking of their candidate that he demonstrate great talent, character, or policy; they were just looking for someone who seemed to have at least vague concept of civil liberties, and at least a decent sense of shame about abusing them.
For all the conservatives have been whining about "liberal media bias", I think that the media have been astonishingly quiet about what liberals were really thinking and feeling. Bush terrifies them. The media played along with the Republicans in pretending that everything was playing out on the rarified intellectualized plain of abstracted issues. While it was "issues" oriented, it wasn't the abstraction of issues which was the crux.
While Republicans were talking about abstract ideas like "character" and "policy", Democrats were looking down the barrel of a gun. Make no mistake about it, when a presidential candidate presumes to pass judgement on what is or is not a religion and protected by the first amendment (see the case of the Wiccan soldiers), if you don't belong (or think you belong) to a privileged religion, you are looking down the barrel of a gun; you are standing on a slippery slope, the bottom of which rests in concentration camps.
Make no mistake: when a presidential candidate side steps the question "do you think that atheists aren't citizens?", if you are an atheist, or even sufficiently leftist, you are looking down the barrel of a gun. When a presidential candidate opposes abortion, if you are a woman, you are looking down the barrel of a gun.
I live in a state with a Republican govenor, which just defeated in referendum health care reform and just approved a massive income tax cut. I expect lots of people here would have be happy to have voted for someone of Bush's fiscal orientation -- if only he wasn't pointing a gun at them.
(Note to Libertarians: You guys could have all New England in your pockets, but you're basically coming across as extremist Republicans. Maybe you are. I didn't think that's what libertarianism was about. Until you learn to put civil liberties first and fiscal policy second, you will never get anywhere in N.E.)
Republicans worry that Gore will hurt their livelihoods. Democrats are terrified that Bush with destroy their lives. And that is the reason Democratic voters turned out, and the story no media will report.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
.. why don't they create a dual-presidency? (SP) Whom-ever ends up winning, they won't have won by much, thus throughally pissing off half of the country. So, my suggestion, being the ignorant Canadian that I am, is to allow BOTH candidates to hold office -- let them share responsibility, discuss issues, and help each other out.
------------
CitizenC
This'll probably drop off the face of /., given there are already some 700 posts, but here's my opinion anyway.
Gore should keep campaigning.
If Gore takes Oregon, and Bush takes Florida, they will have 267 and 271 votes respectively. I am willing to bet that given a month of strong campaigning (and an appropriate amount of subtle bribery), Gore can persuade 3 of those Republican electors to switch on the basis of his win in the popular vote.
This isn't over until after it's over.
--
--
E_NOSIG
The Libertarians can in fourth in essentially every state. Yet CNN consistently left them out of the reports. They reported on Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Reform and Natural Law. The Libertarians consistently finished ahead of both Reform and Natural Law, but got no mention from CNN. What the hell is that about? Does Ted Turner have it out for the Libertarians?
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
People who are blaming Nader for this don't seem to be able to see that it's a problem with the voting system. If they keep blaming Nader they're not helping to fix the system. Sure hope they sleep well.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
From CNN:
For all the "Bush sucks" and "Vote Nader" talk that went on here, these statistics seem rather surprising..
-the wunderhorn
-the wunderhorn
#define OH_YES_INDEED 1
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
This is why different counties use different ballots -- the actual counting apparatus is different. Thus Brevard used the one that looks like a Scan-Tron card, while the folks in Palm Beach got the ones that had holes in them.
Still, the Democratic machine is strong in Florida. Thus if the final vote is certified for Gore, I'll be just as suspicious as if it is certified for Bush. Either way, I don't think we'll ever know who really won. It's almost as bad as the election of 1876 (go read your history books, and tell me about the Hayes Compromise that got Rutherford B. Hayes elected president that year despite his not winning the popular vote... interestingly enough, Florida was a party to that one too!).
For more info:
- ABC News Story
-ESend mail here if you want to reach me.
A few notes on Nader and how he factored in. It does look like he could have been the difference because of Florida.
It's not his fault. It's Gore's and the Democratic party.
Clinton brought the democratic party to the center in 92, esentially abandoning those on the farther left, that Nader now roughly represents. Times were (and still are) good (or getting there in 92). The typical left wing agenda and programs were seemingly unpopular to the white middle class, and this is who the dems were trying to appeal to. If Gore wanted those votes, he had to prove he was worthy of them. He did not. They are not his be default, and the dem idea that he deserved them is arrogant beyond description.
Keep in mind Buchanan on the FAR right could have done the same thing to Bush. I'm fairly sure Buchanan had even more money than Nader because of Federal funds for Perot's old party. But Bush appealed to voters who might have otherwise went for a bigot like Buchanan. He succeded on this point where Gore failed.
The democrats have been losing their core constituency in recent years. In the limited number of states I saw info on, Gore was only winning about 60% of union households!! If he can't get numbers much, much higher than that, he is going to have a very tough time. So don't blame it all on Nader.
The left wing mags I read are terrified of a Bush presidency. They have also shamefully recommended voting for Gore over Nader (and here I'm talking about mags getting out to the "far left"), mainly because of the possibility of abortion rights being overturned.
But if Bush wins, he hardly has a mandate. In fact, neither candidate can get over 50%. These are not the numbers needed for a "conservative revolution" similar to what Ginerich tried several years ago. We don't need to fear much, the status quo will prevail. Although, the status quo frightens me a bit. If he succeeds in overturning roe vs wade with possible supreme court appointments (if he even wants to try), watch the 60's social movements come back with a vengance. The people won't let him get away with it.
It seems to me that the real story of this election is the turnout. I had to wait in line for nearly two hours to vote, and there are similar stories from around the country. In my state (Georgia), voter turnout is expected to approach the all time record.
For years now, we've been told that American voters are apathetic. Turnouts have been approaching record lows, and the pundits have chalked this up to our being disenchanted with the process.
How then to explain what happened yesterday? If we're so disenchanted, why did we turn out in droves?
One might be tempted to credit the alternative candidated, Nader, Browne, Buchanan et. al. But in reality, these candidates weren't really a factor in the popular vote. Even Nader, despite a strong showing in some locations will probably not crack the 5 percent he was looking for. (Note: I'm not saying Nader wasn't a factor in the election - he probably had a pretty real effect on the electorial college numbers.)
The answer seems evident to me. What turns people off is not the process, or even lackluster candidates (and I don't think anyone but the most partisan would argue that Gush and Bore are two of the most lackluster candidates in recent memory), but a race that seems like a foregone conclusion.
After all, who can get enthused about voting if they've been told for weeks who's going to win? What drove the turnout in this election was the uncertainty.
In light of this, I think it would be a good thing, from a civic point of view, if the media stopped reporting poll numbers. I don't think this is ever going to happen, and I would be horrified at the thought of outlawing it or something, but it's obvious that lopsided poll results dampen voter turnout.
Anyway, my $0.02.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
The military absentee vote usually splits close to even.
Granted, many of the folks in the military that talk about politics try to label themselves conservative and support, in spirit, Republican candidates, but the ones that actually vote outside of where they are stationed split about even.
Q. If someone advocated socializing the defense industry, would you consider them a conservative at all?
A. An Academy grad that I was in the Army Aviation Officer Advanced Course with advocated the above, along with many other extreme left economic views, but he was a hardcore Republican.
Not a stat, just an anecdote.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This may be the end of the electoral college once people realize that the Executive branch of government is not truly representative of the people's will..
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
I think it's sad that we'll probably never know who the people of Florida *REALLY* wanted for President :-(.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Personally I watched the results come in on CNN. I was stunned when after they had given Florida to Gore they took it back. And then they did the same thing with Bush.
You can't do that. The Western voters are influenced by what they see on the Eastern results. I don't care what you say they have to be. Gore having Florida (momentarily) was hugely influential especially considering that they were already projecting that he was going to get California's 54.
We're going to see some serious criticism and finger pointing over the use of exit polls and voting results models.
And I'm gonna enjoy every damned minute of it. =)
OK, I'm not a Gore supporter. Frankly, I voted Nader, but don't think that my vote for Nader translates to a vote for Gore by default. It doesn't.
That said, this looks really fishy. Gore easily won the exit polls in Florida, which is why the Major networks declared a Gore victory in Florida early on. Bush then gave a short press conference refusing to concede Florida and then the networks placed the state back in the unknown column.
I've never seen anything like it. Given Jebb Bush, George's brother, as governor in Florida and the disparity between exit polls and the ballot count I really do suspect electoral fraud. It's happened before... many suspect that Kennedy stole the election from Nixon in 1960 because of some strange returns in Chicago... so I'm not saying this to denounce Republicans (as Democrats have been accused of this as well in the past).
The really big irony here is that Gore has won the popular vote, so if Bush does win Florida we'll have an electoral/popular vote split just as the pundits predicated might happen. Though I know of no pundits that predicted a Gore popular win, Bush electoral win. Very weird.
Whew! At least he didn't cost Gore Thyme and Basil. That would really have screwed him over!!!
Eric
Late last night I watched the proceedings with much excitement. Finally, Gore called Bush to concede the election. A little while later, the Florida issue came to light and Gore called Bush back to recant the concession.
All I have to say is this:
Can't Gore ever keep his word?
Maybe just this once?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
#!/bin/sh
/\s(\d),(\d{3}),(\d{3})/}print $n[0]-$n[1];'
echo -n 'Bush winning by '
lynx -dump http://www.cnn.com/ | grep -2 PRESIDENT | perl -e '
while(<>){$n[$i++] = $1.$2.$3 if
echo ' votes in Florida.'
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
on ABCnews.com
This seems fairly serious. I think the Florida thing will end up in court on several things. Just too damn close to call. Regardless, whoever ultimately "wins" the presidency, they will have no mandate, face a highly split House and Senate (both still have Republican majorities, but closer than before), and, if it's Bush, can't even claim he got the most popular votes!---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I have been, and will continue to be, a vocal advocate of Ralph. So, if you want to give me a "Flamebait" point, at least read this first.
Ralph Nader, if anything, got more people interested in this election. The kinds of people who would vote for Ralph are people who found The Battle Of The Juniors (Bore Jr. and Gush Jr.) too comfy for those who gave them insane amounts of cash. (Enough to run NT well. That's scary.)
The people who voted for Ralph wanted their vote to count towards something. This time around, and with all probability next time as well, it was to get 5% of the popular vote and get federal funds in 2k4.
Too many of the people I talked to while I politicked (excuse the misspelling if any: I mean "the act of shamelessly promoting my candidate by passing out literature near a polling place") said the same lies that I had heard over and over again from people I knew, and who I converted to Nader from Gore.
x "Roe v. Wade": Bush Jr. and the Republicans ain't stupid. They may not like it, but women, a significant part of the voting population, do. They have said time and again that overthrowing Roe v. Wade would be tantamount to political suicide.
x "It's the Supreme Court, stupid.": A case of history for you. The postwar period had Republicans nominate a few judges for The Big Promotion to the Supreme Court. You might know them: Warren, Brennan, Stevens, Blackmun, and Souter. These guys were pretty damned liberal: they went for civil rights and against the conservative ebb of the Repos. Recently, the Democratic Senate in the early 90's allowed two drek judges, Scalia (who was put in 98-0 with Gore Jr. voting Aye) and Thomas (52-48, again a Gore Jr. Aye). Now, we have a nearly-even division of both houses, and that means (AFA the Senate) that the Dems can filibuster whatever, whenever. (You'll see a few newspapers under the arms of Dems to give time-killer filler.) So, assuming Bush Jr. wins, he's got to pick moderates with no paper (case history) on abortion.
x "A Vote For Nader is a Vote For Bush": The people who voted for Ralph ain't hardcore loyal Dems. They are technically classified as independant, but they lean towards the border between liberal and radical, in the fuzzy zone of progressive. They want change because there are ungodly numbers of poor and starving people in this country. They want change because the rich are building their fortunes, their mansions, their portfolios on the backs of people unable to get a simple checking account. They want change because no one else will talk about the dirty side of life in America where 1/4 of the families of Texas and California live in poverty, with another 1/4 damned near it.
Also, had Nader not ran, Gore wouldn't have switched tactics. He sounded like "Nader-lite" with his ripping on the rich. (They knew it was tactics: after all, they gave him his $125+M war chest.) He won people by sounding like a man for change, though we all know that at least the 107th Congress shalt do naught (good)
But the reason people turned out so much in this election was not so much to vote for a candidate. (Most of those people are either lifelong party members or Naderites.) They came out to vote AGAINST a candidate. They fell into the trap of two evils.
When you go for the lesser of two evils, you end up with.. two evils.
Here ends the lesson.
PS: I'm going to change the sig to "You voted Republocrat? Now we ALL suffer!"
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.