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.

Comments

Thank you!

[provolt]

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

Re:Thank you!

[bmongar]

This election makes it look like your vote counts less, winning the popular vote but loosing the electoral vote.

But seriously whoever wins will not have a mandate of the people, no one got the majority. I think this along with the closley split house and senate will lead to a weakened president. Which may not be a bad thing

Soooo close

[Corbets]

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.

I like this

[Greyfox]

Looks like the Onion scooped it. We'll see how close the actual event was to their coverage when the winner is announced. I bet they're dead on.

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.)

script to see who CNN thinks won the state

[CoughDropAddict]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "CNN declares " . ("Bush", "Gore")[rand 2];
print " the winner of Florida\n";

--

Re:Don't forget the military vote.

[a42]

It wouldn't surprise me if it were a common dirty trick of this and every incumbent administration to intercept these and other absentee ballots and hold them as an "ace in the hole" in case of a close election.

That's the most ridiulous thing I've heard yet today. Everybody knows that what they actually do is to use the orbital mind control lasers to activate the Bermuda Triangle. The aliens then abduct all the absentee voters and force them to eat pop rocks and drink Coke until they explode. Their ballots are then filed in a special section of Warehouse 23. Or not.

--john

Re:Could spell end for electoral college..

[Megane]

I know, I've been thinking the same thing. But now that it's an issue with enough people interested in it. I've been listening on TV and radio to arguments for it.

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.

Re:Florida

[wemmick]

>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!)

--

The mathematics of America's voting system

[mblase]

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.

Re:The media

[jafac]

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.

Your right... your vote doesn't count

[powerlord]

Sure... your vote didn't count unless you live in Florida....

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 /EL ECTION/2000/results/index.president.html)

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 ;)

Re:The real story

[goliard]

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.

CNN Reported on the 1,2,3,5 and 6th place parties

[1010011010]

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?

________________________________________

Re:The media

[Stephen]

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.

In Europe, it's regarded as a basic democratic principle that no exit polls or results are published until all the polls are closed. (And in the case of European parliamentary elections, this is several days after the first countries have voted!) From this side of the Atlantic, it looks as if freedom of speech is valued more highly than fair elections in the US.

Bleep: *WRONG*

[Eric Green]

The actual balloting apparatus in Florida is under the direct control of the county commissioner of elections. The Sec of State certifies the results, but the Sec of State's office has no direct control over the voting apparatus (they are kept in county warehouses between elections, *NOT* in state warehouses).

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

-E

Nader, etc

[MillMan]

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.

Re:Don't forget the military vote.

[lemox]

Actually, for all you know, Florida's Electoral could vote for whomever they damn well please. There is no law requiring them to go with the popular vote, it's just a matter of courtesy when they usually do.

Electorals can vote against public opinion in the case we plebes vote in someone that the current government thinks is a threat to the status-quo. How's that for democracy?

Military vote is NOT generally Republican

[GMontag]

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

The media

[Nidhogg]

I think the biggest story to come is what happened with the TV media and their handling of Florida. With it's 25 electoral votes it's a major prize.

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. =)

Gore still the same

[osgeek]

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?

Shell script to get latest Florida count from CNN

[divec]

#!/bin/sh

echo -n 'Bush winning by '

lynx -dump http://www.cnn.com/ | grep -2 PRESIDENT | perl -e '

while(<>){$n[$i++] = $1.$2.$3 if /\s(\d),(\d{3}),(\d{3})/}print $n[0]-$n[1];'

echo ' votes in Florida.'

Link to story on ballot problems ...

[Pfhreakaz0id]

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!
---

Voting FOR a candidate instead of AGAINST one

[d.valued]

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!"