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Statistics, Elections, Frustration
The word is that the Florida recount will be completed later today (before 5 EST). In the meantime, a couple of interesting bits
related to math (which seems much more appropriate to Slashdot ;) The big one is of course the 'Voting Irregularity' in Palm Beach where supposedly thousands of seniors voted for Buchanan due to a badly designed ballot. this report (unfortunately, its a PDF) breaks down the returns on various counties and pretty much proves that something was wrong. Any math folks out there interested in doing their own take on the numbers?
bwoodard sent in
a mathematical argument for the electoral college written by
MIT Prof, Alan Natapof. Hopefully we'll have more word later today. Update: 11/09 01:55 PM EDT by C :For those of you interested in seeing why there is such controversy over the Palm Beach County ballot, you can take a look at the ballot to see for yourself if it might be a bit unintuitive. If you'd like more food for thought, you can check out this article which talks a bit about the usability issues behind the ballot's design.
read here in the Miami Herald
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I'm not a US citizen, so I could be wrong on this, but didn't Buchanan have something like 30% support across the Republican party nationally? What did that get him in this election?
If you want people to believe your claim that Palm Beach might be genuinely different, what were Buchanan's primary votes like in neighbouring areas in 1996? In order for your position to be defensible, they must be significantly lower.
I would like to remind everyone that the electoral college works. Just because New York and California really really want Gore to win doesn't mean that the rest of the country wants what Gore represents. Imagine if the EU existed during Hitler's rise to power, and Nazi Germany dominated the popular vote for the elections to president of the EU. This is all hypothetical, but I'm simply afraid that a lot of people don't understand the power balancing that the electoral college brings.
I suggest you read a little more about Hitler's rise to power before you make claims like this. Hitler never won a popular vote in the Weimar Republic. The closest he got was about 44%, and that was in an election where he had massive media backing and substantial support from Germany's industrialists.
Rhetoric aside, your argument is that some people's votes should inherently be worth more than others, because of where they live. That is bad enough, but it also seems that your claims are motivated solely by your desired outcome, rather than on any coherent set of electoral principles.
(sorry for sounding harsh :)
Fixing copyright
The grounds for contesting an election under this section are:
(a) Misconduct, fraud, or corruption on the part of any election official or any member of the canvassing board sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.
(b) Ineligibility of the successful candidate for the nomination or office in dispute.
(c) Receipt of a number of illegal votes or rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.
Found at The Florida Election Commission. (sorry, a direct link is impossible)
The fundamental legal question is "was the will of the people thwarted?" And there is little doubt that it was in this case.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Honestly, I think Gore is handling this perfectly. I hope if the results change that Bush is as gracious and concedes to Gore. Even though I voted for Bush I think the most important thing now is that this be over we move on. Turning it into a lawyer infested slugfest is not going to help anyone.
Finkployd
I added more weight to this when I heard two of the voters talk. One voted, and then realized she had voted for Buchanon. The person in charge refused to give her another ballot so she could vote correctly - even though it clearly says on the ballot to get another one if you make a mistake. The other person I heard interviewed actually asked one of the workers there which hole was for Gore...the worker couldn't figure it out either. If the person that works there can't figure it out, how are the voters going to figure it out?
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Two peanuts crossed the street. One was assaulted.
First off you fucks - I'm lefthanded and even I see that covering up half of the choices obscures things. Next - even the fucking SAT has instructions on how to fill out the form. Is not even that important.
So what do you want next - literacy, English language or intelligence tests to qualify for voting. Almost all of you smug bastards are decendants of people who came here from someotherfuckingplace. I propose that we retroactively void the voting of everyone who was in a hurry, had poor language skills, did not attend Geek U, was baffled perhaps as a first time voter or for any other reason. Every other aspect of our relationship to the government has SOME level of standardization to it.Why the fuck not this? Uh lemme guess - the same blockheads who are screaming that PEOPLE OF THEIR CHOSING should not be allowed to vote fall into two categories:
Vote straight party line w/o really thinking about it or even knowing who all the candidates in their own party are or what the offices represent.
Wrap themselves in the flag and the Constitution and bleat about how everyone should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want as long as Boortz and Limbaugh tell them to.
--
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Are you sure? I believe that different states have different laws about this. I think that for some states you are only allowed to change your affiliation on a second round of votes (if nobody gets a majority on the first round).
Of course, they could probably decide to do this, go ahead and do it, and take whatever the consequences would be. (Do you think they might get a pardon from the president?)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Name me someone else who I could use in my analogy. Heck, I can't even use Gorby anymore, after the fall of the soviet union, he simmered down even _more_. His daughter even lives in the US as a Christian (and yes, he's perfectly fine with that).
Those people, btw, did die in order to show as many people as possible what happens when you combine hate with power. Unfortunately, many tweleve year olds have never even heard of Hitler(nor MC Hammer or other recent figures, as I found out during a 'quiz' I gave them...). I'm waiting to watch a "Jaywalk" to see how many colege students and people on the street can't identify a picture of the Nazi leader to Leno. (A recent one had people who couldn't even figure out who Bush Jr. is...)
WEST'S FLORIDA STATUTES ANNOTATED TITLE IX. ELECTORS AND ELECTIONS CHAPTER 101. VOTING METHODS AND PROCEDURE Copr. © West Group 2000. All rights reserved. Current through End of 2000 2nd Reg. Sess.
101.011. Voting by paper ballot
(1) In counties where paper ballots are used, each elector shall be given a ballot by the inspector. Before delivering the ballot to the elector, one of the inspectors shall write his or her initials or name on the stub attached to the ballot; then the elector shall, without leaving the polling place, retire alone to a booth or compartment provided, and place an "X" mark after the name of the candidate of his or her choice for each office to be filled, and likewise mark an "X" after the answer he or she desires in case of a constitutional amendment or other question submitted to a vote.
(2) No paper ballot shall be voided or declared invalid in any election within the state by reason of the fact that the ballot is marked other than with an "X," so long as there is a clear indication thereon to the election officials that the person marking such ballot has made a definite choice, and provided further, that the mark placed on the ballot with respect to any candidate by any such voter shall be located in the blank space on the ballot opposite such candidate's name.
(3) After preparing his or her paper ballot, the elector shall fold the ballot so as to conceal the face of the ballot and show the stub attached with the name or initials of the inspector and hand it to the receiving inspector, who shall detach the stub and return the ballot to the elector to deposit in the ballot box in the presence of the inspectors. The detached stubs shall be numbered consecutively and filed by the inspectors.
(4) If the elector marks more names than there are persons to be elected to an office, or if it is impossible to determine the elector's choice, his or her ballot shall not be counted for the office; but this shall not vitiate the ballot as to those names which are properly marked, and nothing in this code shall be construed to prevent any elector, at any general election, from voting for any qualified candidate other than one whose name is printed on the ballot.
(5) Any elector who shall, by mistake, spoil a ballot so he or she cannot vote the ballot may return it to the inspectors, who shall immediately detach the stub, destroy the ballot without examination, and give the elector another ballot. In no case shall an elector be furnished with more than three ballots or carry a ballot outside the polling room. The clerk shall keep a record of all ballots destroyed.
(6) At a general election an elector may vote for a write-in candidate by writing in the name of such person in the blank space provided.
CREDIT(S) 2000 Electronic Pocket Part Update Amended by Laws 1982, c. 82-143, 3, eff. April 7, 1982; Laws 1995, c. 95- 147, 550, eff. July 10, 1995.
The problem being Florida was called while the polls in florida were still opened. That definitely is a problem.
That may ensure that the LETTER of the law is respected, but it also prescribes who the new president will be. If the stories of confusing ballots, people not being able to get new ballots after realising they were confused, ballots going missing, etc., are even partly true then having the republicans vote in their man clearly flies in the face of the "will" of the public.
First of all, I'm not sure which way the House would go since the Constitution proscribes that each state get one vote -- even Texas would go to Gore since 18 of the 30 districts are democrats. If people don't understand their ballot, they need to ask for help. If people are refused a ballot, they need to call in a sheriff to settle the matter( at worst they'll end up with an absentee ballot which can be counted later after their status is verified ). Finally, is is better to have judges rewrite an election by modifying it's votes or would it be better to go by the method proscribed in our founding document? On one had, you end up with a judge legislating( flying in the face of the Constitution ) and on the other you have the rule of law, something TOTALLY indesputable, standing.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
threatening language in your signature is annoying.
Sorry you feel that way. I'm simply mirroring a common pro-choice arguement and inserting my closely held beliefs of my constitutional right. I don't mean to annoy you and I certainly am not threating anyone any more than the pro-choice movement is when they say the same thing.
Finkployd
Does anyone else find it incredibly ironic that
the brothers Daley would be on national media crying about election irregularities? Just for the record, their father stole the 1960 presidential election for Kennedy away from Nixon.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
According to Democratic sources, at least 10,000 people have called in to report that they voted for Buchannan by mistake.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
That's just my personal testimony to add to the pot.
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The US system basically does boil down to a two-candidate election because you don't have instant runoffs. Third party candidates are basically a spanner in the works of the US electoral system.
as well as thinking that any grouping by ethnicity, locale, etc would vote in a similar fashion.
The point is not that they would, but that they might, and the system should be robust enough to withstand this.
The woman who was standing in line in front of me at my polling place managed to vote yes and no on three city propositions. I don't think she was very bright, but at least she got a second shot at it.
1.
What if it wasn't obvious that they needed help? There was no indication that they had done anything wrong when they filled out the ballots, and the error was not caught until later. Where I voted (Fitchburg, WI), they have you stick your ballot card into the scanner right away on your way out of the room. That way it is counted right away, and you are the only one that touches your ballot, so someone can't alter it after you leave. This system makes for much faster counting (But it isn't used everywhere in Wisconsin, which is why it was one of the 'undecided' states for so long). Anyway, presumably if the card contained invalid input (like two choices for president), an error indication could have been given right then and there, before I left. (Although I don't know if this is really what would happen if I'd filled out the card wrong.) Presumably in Florida this isn't what they did, so those who voted erroneously didn't have any feedback that their ballot was going to be thrown out for errors. This should be importat to people who have been talking about this as a user interface issue. Sure, they showed the ballots to people ahead of time and got no complaints, but the real UI mistake here wasn't in the ballot itself, it was in the lack of error feedback when using it. (Something you can't test for by just showing people what the ballot is going to look like).
2.
Asking for help destroys your right to a secret ballot. (Sometimes it's inevitable, as in the case of the blind, but if you think you can avoid it, you generally don't want to tell people at the booth whom you are voting for.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Unfair in the sense that 4 populous states (CA, FL, NY, and TX) can't impose their will on the rest of the country, yes. You have to have AT LEAST a dozen states to win under an electoral system, but under a popular system you can basically promise every federal dollar to those four states and the rest fo the country can go to hell...
You're assuming that those four states population would vote 100% for a candidate. That's not a valid assumption. The vote would most likely be split. Look at the "strong" states that Gore or Bush carried to see the percentages. Also look at the vote counts for the 4 states you mention.
Using your argument above, don't you think that ALL the candidates would be promising those 4 states every federal dollar? So they would split the votes in those states and it would come down to the other states. It would definitely take more than 4 states to win the election.
Using a popular vote would also help the other parties. People would worry less about "wasting" their vote because their state is a close race.
Now that's getting interesting.
I stand by my original position that a validly-marked ballot ought never to be second-guessed, and that it's the voter's responsibility to make sure the ballot was properly marked before putting it in the box.
That said, this is the first non-partisan evidence that the ergonomics of the Palm Beach ballot may have skewed the election, and I thank you very much for pointing it out.
> having said that, I'm not sure if there's any obvious legal remedy for this at all.
Same here. Even though Buchanan has conceded those votes to Gore (source: www.orvetti.com), the question becomes "who really meant to vote for him, and who really meant to vote for Gore?"
With a secret ballot, there's no way to tell. That's the point of a secret ballot, and the best argument, IMHO, why the votes still shouldn't be transferred.
(Thankfully, the argument "Well, Buchanan deserves so few votes that his voters don't matter" falls flat. The election of 2000 has taught us all that every vote counts. Though I admit it would be a supreme irony if all the Republicans crowing about how "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" lost the Presidency because "a vote for Buchanan was a vote for Gore")
This is why math professors should stick to math. (Note that I'm a math major, so perhaps I should as well. ;)
Not that the longwinded article linked here actually got around to talking about Natapof's "proof" in any detail, but from what I could piece together, all he proved is that under an electoral college system, each voter has a greater chance of deciding the election with his or her vote than under a direct election.
Well no shit, Sherlock. That's why we're sitting here watching a recount come in dozens of votes at a time, arguing about a couple hundred blind old ladies, and fretting about whether more Floridians overseas are serving in the military or dual citizens of Israel. OF COURSE a smaller number of voters has a larger chance of deciding an election under the electoral college system.
In other words, the e.c. is considerably more unstable and capricious than a direct election. There is a much greater chance that the true will of the people will not be reflected in the final result. Why we need a mathematical proof to investigate this is not totally beyond me, because it's an interesting combinatorial result (I'd assume). Why this Natapof guy actually thinks this is a good thing, though, is utterly ridiculous.
His best argument (according to the article) is that we don't complain that the World Series is determined by who wins the most games, not who scores the most runs. Putting aside the fact that the two situations are *not* analogous (for one thing, the fact that there is a different starting pitcher for any given 4-5 games in a row is the most important argument for why we need a best-of-7 Series), the point here is that the World Series is put on for the purposes of *entertainment*, not of deciding who rules the free world. Not that I'm not having a lot of fun with these election results (side note--I helped elect a corpse! Whaddya think of that!), but there's an argument to be made that instability and lack-of-representation in results, while good for sporting events, are actually *bad* for presidential elections.
Furthermore, he shows absolutely no understanding of the greater "rules" of the electoral college "game". For example, the electoral college has, throughout the course of US history, served to prolong and promote slavery and remove incentives for granting female sufferage or encouraging higher voter turnouts. For some excellent explanation why, why don't we read a *relevant* article by someone who's actually qualified to talk about the electoral college, Akhil Reed Amar (Yale professor and one of the foremost academic experts on Constitutional law).
This turns out not to be the case. I used to live in Texas, and they used the same exact system that Palm Beach does (I recognized the format immediately).
There is NO "play" in the book. The actual ballot slips over two pins; if it's not on the pins, it's not in correctly (and this is made quite clear in the instructions all over the polling place). If it's not on the pins, the odds that you could have it misaligned by exactly one row (so that the hole you punch is actually one above/below what you intend) are approximately zero. Far more likely is that you'd be punching a non-perforated portion of the ballot, and this would affect the entire ballot.
The booklet itself is mounted to the frame into which the ballot is inserted. There is NO "free play" in them at all. Believe me, I've checked. Why did I check? Because I wanted to make absolutely certain that my ballot was correctly marked.
There's no getting around it. These people are whining, pure and simple.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
REUTERS: BUSH FLORIDA LEAD DROPS TO 500 VOTES
Gore gains a net of 843 votes in recounts in 32 of Florida's 67 counties. Bush's statewide lead is now 941. Bush 2,909,481, Gore 2,908,540.
Where's the "500 votes" figure from?
[
One simple way to "prove" your vote e.g. is to receive a filled out ballot and to be ordered to return a blank ballot. This method has been used among the Yugoslav military to manipulate the elections in Serbia in favor of Milosevic.
Part of any free and secret voting system is denyability and any means to prove your vote is contradictory to that.
The partisanship of the responses here really surprises me.
I admit having a slight bias towards Gore, though I would never have voted for him. (I voted for Harry Browne). But, this whole thing is ridiculous. If you're not careful you'll rip the country apart over a really stupid issue. And while I think this country is going to ultimately degenerate into a tyranny that will require a bloody revolution to overthrow, it hasn't quite yet, and I maintain hope. :-)
The ballots _are_ confusing. Look at them. I bet the election commisioner signed off on them because they looked vaguely acceptable without realizing what an important factor it might become. Negligence and incompetence to be sure, but understandable.
OTOH, taking all the Buchanon votes and calling them Gore votes is utterly ridiculous. The spike could easily be explained via regional variation of opinion or some other anomoly.
I actually think that the Gore people should've taken note of the problem, and raised it after the presidency had been decided. I think it was horribly irresponsible for them to cause this kind of controversy at this stage of the game. It's a very dangerous thing to do.
I wish I knew what the answer was. I wish people would stop trying to take sides here and honestly look at the problem and attempt to determine a solution. Bickering based on your choice of candidate is incredibly irresponsible. Think about what the stakes are here.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Hey, it's /., one-sidedness is what it's all about, and the good thing about it is that when I screw up here, people call me on it.
> perhaps some people thought it so obvious [reading left/right, top/bottom] that they didn't read into it further, as you have done into their mistakes.
That's their problem. I'm not gonna give an inch on the voter's responsibility to read and understand the ballot before voting.
> Some asked for help and got the reply that the volunteers "just didn't know". Others realized their mistakes in the booths and asked for new ballots and were DENIED.
Agreed - those are major problems. It's the responsibility of the volunteer to know (and I have a harder time believing the volunteers didn't know than I do believing the voters didn't know!), and if Florida law says (as I believe it does) that "I screwed up, shred this ballot and gimme a new one" is a legitimate request, then the denial of those requests is unacceptable.
> [My arguments that both sides may perjure themselves]
I think we actually agree more than we disagree here. Looking at that ballot, it's clear to me, but I can see how either a Gore or Bush voter might screw it up.
Ultimately, this point wasn't meant to stand on its own so much as it was intended to supplant my argument "you can't take ballots out of a ballot box and change them afterwards."
> Would you feel differently if you were on the other side? What if the ballots were from dead people? Are you suggesting that under no circumstances the ballots should be questioned?
On the other side: No. As I said in another post - IMHO this is no longer about who wins, it's about how.
If from dead people: Yes. That's unequivocal evidence of fraud. I'd stand by the court's judgement on that.
> [Are the wronged citizens' suits] the best thing for the country? Probably not. Is it the right thing? Well, that's subjective.
Agreed. I don't think we'll ever really know who "won" this election at the vote level, or the court level. It really is up to the Electoral College to decide.
Which is why I said "close to a coup", but not "a coup". Even if Gore's (or Bush's) lawyers manage to invalidate ballots, counties, or even the entire friggin' state, the electors still get to vote on December 18th, and their result is the only one that's binding.
Even in the worst case (widespread voter fraud, which does not appear to be the case here), the rules as set down by the Constitution are not in jeopardy - indeed, it was written to handle precisely this sort of situation. The electors stand between a suspect vote count (on either side) and the Presidency. That's what they're there for.
> Or, perhaps, we should let the electors vote as they see fit?
Good call. I spoke far too hastily - I posted a clarification pointing out that urging them "to consider voting" was NOT urging them "to vote". My original phrasing was far too strong.
(Unlike the ballot box, when I make a mistake, I can at least try to undo it ;-)
I'm damn glad I'm not a FL elector right now.
> One more point. How come in the recount, the counts are both going higher? Where were those votes the first time? How come no one is losing any votes?
I dunno. My hunch would be chad - the little bits of confetti from punch-cards - may have mistakenly made sensors in the vote-counting machines register punched ballots as unpunched, but if the recount is being done manually, the chad will have either been removed as a result of its passage through the voting machine, or by hand.
That explains why the "vote count" is going up for both candidates.
As for why Gore's going up faster than Bush, I'd have to look at each county that's been recounted, but it could be as simple a matter as "the votes thus far recounted are in heavily-Democratic counties"
Interesting speculation -- suppose "chad" nukes 0.01% of the votes. Because the highly-populated counties in Florida tend to vote Democratic, this election could be decided, not by voter error, but by mechanical error.
Probably the best argument I've seen for all-electronic voting (or all-manual vote-counting!) yet.
(To Black Parrot of post #515: Hopefully most of these answers will apply to your post too - you raised similar points, and raised them just as well, as Trinition did.)
The odd thing is that many republicans were complaining then, and even went so far as to say that Clinton did not have the right to govern the country (in an ethical sense, not a legal sense) since the majority of the American people voted against him. I wonder if they're going to say the same thing about Bush if he wins, or if they'll cook up some hypocrisy instead?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I had heard it on the radio yesterday and TV late tuesday night... I'll investigate into it more.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
It's possible that there was an abuse of statistics (though I doubt it) but since the data is available, the republicans are (and indeed should be) free to try to reproduce similar or different numbers from the available data.
Dude - thanks for saying it better than I did in any of my posts.
The fundamental question is - to what extent is a judge's decision to throw out votes, or to order a re-vote - also part of the rule of law, and that's one for which I have no good answer.
Wait! It gets even better!
h p3?a_id=1389
The specifc form of vote fraud used by Xavier Suarez involved "tampering with 5,000 absentee ballots".
And he is quoted as saying that he "helped fill out absentee ballot forms and enlist Republican absentee voters in Miami-Dade County." And "Dade County Republicans have a very specific expertise in getting out absentee ballots," he said. "I obviously have specific experience in this myself."
From Feed:
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.p
- bridgette
Not much to be said for stories a friend told you. Substantiated stories only please - let's have a link to a website with images from that camera footage at least.
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According to Florida's own documents (PDF, sorry) there were only 337 voters registered in Palm Beach County as Reform Party members, as of October 10 of this year.
3400 votes for Buchanan is directly in line with every other Florida county that has a similar number of registered Reform Party members.
What other Florida county? No other Florida county had even 1/3 as many votes for Buchanan.
The real voting irregularity here is the moderators who voted for these lies as "informative".
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Yes, the butterfly *design* has been used.
The practice of putting the text on *both* sides of the page has not.
People were confused by the *text*, not the physical design.
Regards,
Regards,
-scott
Check out the returns from Volusia after the recount, and compare them to the initial Volusia returns
In the recount:
Harris went from 9,888 votes to 8 votes.
Philips went from 2,927 votes to 20 votes.
Browne went from 3,211 votes to 442 votes.
Nader went from 2,436 votes to 2,903 votes.
Buchanan went from 396 votes to 496 votes.
Hagelin went from 33 votes to 36 votes.
McReynolds went from 3 votes to 5 votes.
Moorehead went from 59 votes to 69 votes.
George W. Bush and Al Gore had returns that were completely unchanged.
That's right. The recount from Volusia claims in effect, "We screwed up the vote on every other candidate, reported 16,000 erroneous votes in total... and yet managed to get the count for the major candidates exactly right!"
I hope someone's keeping track of pre-recount and post-recount totals by county in Florida. CNN.com has only pre-recount data up by county, and doesn't list Harris in it's table. FOX has both pre and post recount data by county, but only for Gore and Bush. That Daytona Beach news website basically overwrote their prerecount returns page with the postrecount returns. As soon as CBS news updates it's page, I'll be out of links to records of the initial 10,000 Harris votes.
And, Texas Oil played a factor in JFK's assassination, so it goes both ways.
The more I look at the results, the more I think you're right. Bush for Prez. Lieberman for Veep, and (depending on how the Maria Cantwell race turned out?) the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
With a 50/50 split in so many races, and by most ways of measuring it, I'd even go so far as to say the public would accept it.
And all it would take is a few electors from any state to abstain from the December vote.
We've all seen so many things that can "never happen" this week - I don't know about you, but I've lost the ability to be surprised by anything.
I haven't eaten my recommended daily allowance of crow yet, so here goes. I predict that:
- We will see Electoral College that gives up and hands it off to the House and Senate.
- We will see this because the Florida vote will be a dead tie between Bush and Gore. That's right, you heard it here first. A tie.
And I called the tie vote at 5:58 PM EST on Thursday, for anyone crazy enough to claim they called it firstThey are bitching because they want democracy instead of a republic.
Then you also have to disolve the Senate. Two votes per state regardless of population is unfair.
Republics are not about communication failings, they are about preventing 'mob rule'. All one would have to do to get elected in a democracy is promise tax cuts and more federal spending for TX, CA, NY, and FL and to hell with the rest of the country. That would win you the election.
Finkployd
Check the other "no, there are 337" article I posted.
Wow, this myth's going to be as popular as the one that says Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet!
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It's rarely "your next-door neighbor who happens to be involved with your local branch of the [Republican|Democratic] party." More often, it's the governor, members of the state legislature, campaign managers, state party chairs, etc.
No elector has ever voted against the candidate he was "supposed" to vote for when it would have made a difference in the outcome of the election.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
You're absolutely right, and I['ve] apologize[d elsewhere].
Re: Bush's planned challenge to a popular vote win and an electoral vote loss:
You'll have to take my word for it that I'd be just as opposed to that. Until there's a constitutional amendment, the winner of the College deserves to win the Presidency. Popular vote doesn't enter into it.
I heard on the radio this morning that Buchanan said those were most likely Gore votes.
Now, I personally think Buchanan is a Nazi, but AFAIK, he always says what he thinks, not what is expedient.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Of course *all* the fucking bureaucrats who looked at the design thought it was OK: christ! they're the fucking bureaucrats and they know exactly what the ballot was all about and who all the candidtates were and blahblahblah...
This does not mean that *every* member of the public is going to understand *exactly* what the hell they're looking at, as clearly as the bureaucrat who designed it or approved the design, feeling no stress upon them because of how long they've waited, how many people in line behind them are waiting for *them*, the importance of the election, etc etc etc
The fucking bureaucrats have been looking at the ballot design all day every day for months.
Of course they don't see any problems with it: they created it, they know it intimately.
The voter gets to look at the damn thing for a minute every few years.
t_t_b
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I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I've put together a page illustrating three alternate ways a person could cognitively process the Palm Beach ballot, all of which would give erroneous Gore votes to Buchanan.
It's just a first pass, but it should make my visual perception and cognitive neuroscience teachers happy.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
There is, in fact, Florida Statute 101.151 which states "(3)(a) Beneath the caption and preceding the names of candidates shall be the following words: "To vote for a candidate whose name is printed on the ballot, place a cross (X) mark in the blank space at the right of the name of the candidate for whom you desire to vote.".
There is also Statute 102.166 which specifies
It seems to me that we could be in for an interesting couple of weeks." 7) Procedures for a manual recount are as follows:
(a) The county canvassing board shall appoint as many counting teams of at least two electors as is necessary to manually recount the ballots. A counting team must have, when possible, members of at least two political parties. A candidate involved in the race shall not be a member of the counting team.
(b) If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent."
-- "I will never let my schooling get in the way of my education." --Mark Twain
Isn't it interesting that Gore's Campaign Chairman and KEY TALKING HEAD, Mr. Daly's home county (Cooke County Chicago) uses the same "Butterfly" ballot that is so confusing to those in Palm Beach County?
Isn't it also interesting that in this election, 19,000 voters voted for two presidents hence having their ballots deemed invalid (having the Dems cry foul) yet in 1996, 16,000 people from the SAME COUNTY did the exact same thing?
I see a pattern here folks, and unfortunately it points to the folks in Palm Beach county not knowing what the hell they are doing which was the case in 1996 as well.
It's a shame that such a large number of ignorant people are allowed to vote, but that is our system folks, right or wrong, good or bad, Bush or Gore, we should accept it. It's an even BIGGER shame that those who want to RUN this country will use this ignorance as a reason to drag our election system through the mud.
Whomever the recount shows the loser in Florida to be, they should concede defeat IMMEDIATELY so the business of the country can go forward.
Well, that's something that they "use every day." I only use a ballot once in a while, so it's not a big deal to take the time to look at it carefully. I would be less tolerant of a difficult-to-read interface if I had to use it all the time (like in a PDA or cell phone or godawful voice mail system).
You make a good point that a lot of folks at the ballot got just one chance (and were refused new ballots if they made a mistake). But, when there's something I can do only once, like punching a ballot or signing loan documents, I do it carefully. Maybe I shouldn't have to, but that's another argument.
User interface designers have a lot of battles to fight. Let's start with the ones that will do some good--let's make great interfaces to the things people need all the time. Then we'll worry about stuff people use once in four years.
Another point--the people who designed the ballot say they were thinking carefully about its ease of use for senior citizens. In fact, the two-page layout was chosen so that they could use a larger, easier-to-read font.
On an amusing note, our ballot-makers in Dallas weren't thinking too clearly, either--the damned things were supposed to be filled in by permanent markers that bled through the page, obscuring text on the other side.
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
can't recall the name of the company though
Voter News Service. I couldn't find a website for them through either Altavista or Google.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I thought the auther made a clear distinction between equal representation and equal power, (e.g., under a dictatorship everybody had equal representation and zero power).
Mob rule isn't due to equal representation, but by equal power. That is why I mentioned that the way to avoid mob rule is to use the EC, *but* have the EC be representative. So, for instance, a large state would get slightly less vote in proportion to its size - yet these votes should equally represent the population of that state! The mob rule of the state would be curtailed because its power has been limited, but not the representation of the population within it. Currently, even if the former is true, the latter isn't, so the mob rules anyway. And a whole bunch of these tiny mobs take scads of states and electoral votes.
So the approach should be twofold: limit the majority, "mob" rule, power of states like CA, FL, NY, and TX, by curving their number of electoral votes with respect to their population, yet maintain "fairness" within the state by having said electoral votes represent accurately the population of that state. So at the national level, such states have their impact dampened, yet, their impact is still fair. Right now, even if their impact is dampened any, the impact is not fair at all because the winner takes the whole damn state. I think that defeats the purpose.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Basically I think the Gore challenge wouldn't have a leg to stand on, if it weren't for the fact that these ballots are against Florida law, which requires that candidates' names be to the left of where the mark is made.
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I don't think it's a question of "not obvious until it's in the machine". More likely, it's a question of "professionals looking at a ballot are unlikely to realize it could confuse laymen".
However, there's no way to call a do-over on an election in a context like this; if Palm Beach gets a do-over, everyone else has to get one too, because otherwise, the people in Palm Beach get to place votes with extra information about the race, and that's unfair to everyone else.
Meanwhile, I want to see recounts in a couple of other states with margins of a couple to a few thousand people, and we should see if there were any *other* irregularities; if there were, in other states, then we have even *more* reason to do the whole thing over - or just accept that we fucked up, pick the winner according to the rules we have, and *move on*. We don't need any more divisiveness than we have already.
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Wait, are you saying Britney Spears endorsed one of the candidate? Shit, now it's too late, I may not have voted right...
Especially interesting when you know that there is a fairly large libertarian group here in Palm Beach. (They meet at the Picadilly Cafeteria on Military Trail, north of Forest Hill Blvd.).
But the question is: should they allow a revote? I almost consider it like telling the rest of the country: "Fuck you... the President of the United States will be picked by us down here in Palm Beach County". And looking around, that's scary. At the very least, the Democrats can expect to pick up some of the Nader votes that were cast - the voters cast their protest vote, and can now pick between Bush or Gore, knowing that their vote counts as one among only a few thousand for the president. It seriously changes the dynamics of the vote.
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Evan "Livin' in the middle of PBC"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
If not, then presumably, with the recounted popular vote difference only ~300 votes out of 6 million, the electors will use some other method to decide how to cast their electoral votes.
I can see the fnords!
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Well, it's not meant to be exciting; it's meant to be accurate, and the possibility that the wrong person wins increases voter power, but only when the race is very close and then it increases the wrong voter's power, ie the one's who vote for fringe no-hoper parties, causing the general public's more popular candidate to lose.
The guy actually describes the fact that the person with the smaller number of votes gets elected as a "minor vice" and defends it on the grounds that it's temporary. So, might as well just toss the coin then, since the result only stands for four years and you might pick the right candidate. Save everyone all that time and money too.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Absolutely. Which is, IMNSHO, the best thing about the EC. This isn't gonna be decided by a team of lawyers or politicians or campaign strategists, it's gonna be decided by 25 ordinary schmoes.
> [marking on the right of the ballot] Fla.Rev.Stat. 101.191(1).
Yeah, it's a technicality, but if a judge declares the ballots illegal and either throws out (or demands a revote) where those ballots were cast, I'll stand by that judgement.
> I find it incredibly diffcult to believe that if the shoe were on the other foot ...
Absofraggin'lutely. I make no claims that Bush's team would be doing anything different were the roles reversed.
As a practical matter - as you've pointed out - whoever wins this is going to preside over a divided America, and is going to have to work across party lines to get anything done. I don't believe the more extreme elements either Gore's or Bush's policies will see the light of day in the next 4 years. That's probably a Good Thing.
> I suggest you all remember that this is about *the will of the people*, and whether that will was thwarted. [ ... ] This situation, while fascinating, is not good for the country. I suggest all of you who make partisan
arguments would do well to remember *that* is what we're supposed to be deciding.
Seconded. Whatever I've said about Gore's policies over the past few days, I have tremendous respect for his statement regarding the rule of law yesterday.
This gets decided (possibly with the guidance of the courts) in the Electoral College on December 18th. Nowhere else.
Thank you. I did not realize they did all their balloting by mail. Doesn't Oregon also allow for Internet voting, or am I on drugs? I believe Arizona did in the Democratic primaries, IIRC. I know Oregon tends to be on the leading edge of these sort of things.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
If -- and this is a huge-to-the-point-of-being-ridiculous-IF -- the difference ended up being perfectly split -- 2,908,977 for Bush, 2,908,977 for Gore ...what would happen?
I'm not asking about the statistical improbability of this -- I'm well aware of it. I'm also aware that they'd probably call a recount and the recount, due to natural & unbiased errors, would probably go a different way.
But say it didn't. Say the vote really was a perfectly divided split down the middle -- what then? Are the electors then free to choose as they see fit? Do all 25 votes have to go the same way, even in such a situation?
I know this would never happen, but it's as close as we'll ever get to being reality as we're gonna experience (I hope!), so I'm interested in hearing the speculation of others on this...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
the polls in western florida closed one hour later than the rest of FL. They are on central time....
Actually, both parties signed off on the preview design, which didn't show where the holes were going to be placed.
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Oper on the Nightstar
I hit send too early ;) ...
I'm not sure about other florida areas. But I must say that many in the republican party did not like Pat at all. 30% seems high for some areas, especially in Florida, I will admit that. If I had the percentage of Pat's vote, I'd love to share it. But to go from 3,000 in a primary to 1,000 in a election four years later does seem odd. I would expect a mimimum of half the votes being for him intentionally if this ballot thing become anything but hogwash. (They were marked with arrows and assistance with the ballots is rather plentiful! They even published and distributed the sample ballots!) But, there is no evidence that he actually didn't get his votes, because there are many retired, church-going senior citizens that like Al (let's tax social security in '93!)Gore's handouts, but are much more concerned about morality in America after they are gone. For them, there is no other choice, making Pat's votes seem reasonable.
Damn, competeting identical twins AND a dead gubernatorial candidate. I'm voting in Missouri next in 2004!
> Any exit polls for that?
FWIW, exit polls are exactly why I think there really is something wrong in Florida.
Ignore the news reports and anecdotes; these could easily be shrugged off as reporters grasping for a scoop and the whingeing of sore losers.
But exit polls. The Voters News Service originally gave the state to AG on the basis of exit polls. They retracted after complaints from the Bush HQ, but that was well after the polls had closed, and the exit polls weren't changing anymore. Now the actual results do not reflect the exit polls that the original prediction was based on.
Think about it. Voter enters booth. Voter mistakenly votes for Buchanan. [Optional step: Voter recognizes mistake and re-punches for Gore.] Voter exits booth. Voter tells VNS surveyer that s/he voted for Gore. VNS tallies samples and predicts a win for Gore. Election workers tally votes, find a surprisingly high total for Buchanan and a startlingly high number of double-punched ballots in Palm Beach, and do not find a win for Gore.
The hypothesis leads to results that fit the observations exactly.
You still need to test the hypothesis, though. Have the 19,000 double-punched ballots been destroyed? If not, how many of them show a Gore-Buchanan combination? Any other suggestions for testing the hypothesis?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If that's the case, then I retract my "ordinary schmoe" comment. I agree that high-level party flacks are just as likely to be fanatics as anyone.
Happily, Ruth Dwyer, the Nazi/Republican candidate for governor of Vermont, was religated to the dustbin of history on election day. She was forced to admit, in her concession speach, that Vermonters don't appear to agree with her on the issues. She actually got a smaller percentage of the vote this year then she did two years ago, when she did not have the whole civil union issue to harp on.
Oh my god! So glad there is another slashdotter that agrees with me on how insane Ruth Dwyer is! I was getting so sick of all of the "Take Back Vermont" bullshit going on in VT, this certainly is way far from the Vermont I grew up in and love.
I live in Boston now, but am in Vermont regularily. Today in the Boston Phoenix, Ruth Dwyer and the Take Back Vermont crap was on the front page, titled "Gay Bashing: Vermont Style". Inside there is a picture of Ruth and her supporters waving, but it looks damn near close to them giving the Sieg Hiel salute, scary!!!!
BTW, my sister goes to UVM...
Melissa
Yes, gerrymandering is a problem, but I don't think it is as big as Natapoff thinks. In theory a party can try to draw the districts to lock down as many seats as posisble, but it turns out that congressional seats do change hands fairly often, and in any case people commonly split their vote in many districts between congressional and presidential party choices. A single visit by a candidate could well swing a district designed to support the opposing party's congressional seat in his favor.
States in any case are far too large to provide a voting incentive -- we can easily see that by looking at the number of people who vote in most presidential elections. It's a rare, rare thing that people have the kind of significance that Florida voters are enjoying.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The way I see it, the EC system is great for one thing that outweights everything else: to make sure minorities are not excluded. Imagine a system of direct election, candidates would just address the issues of the mayority country wide and forget about minorities. But currently minorities have an impact in several important state presidential elections and can help win that states EC.
read the article linked to this story with the mathematical explanation. it's pretty good.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
So, you know my true motives, eh? I was determined to stop these threads before the total number of messages hit 6,666, but it's already too late. I guess it's time to raise up my army of demons and order them to destroy you and slashdot. Doubt me? Fine, go ahead, I'll just invoke Darwin's Law.
So the question boils down to Do we elect a president based upon a few nitpickings over the meaning of the law?
personally, I think that whoever gets elected will already have half the country pissed at them. The only way to fully restore national confidence would be an entire national revote. I don't know how possible or costly or likely that could be, but to preserve sanity and not turn this into a partisan war, it seems like perhaps the only way to go.
make world, not war
Hmmm. that sounds familiar... Haven't the Republicans been spending the last four years telling anyone and everyone that more people voted against Clinton than for him? At least he had a plurality of the popular vote. Dubya won't even have that.
We live in interesting times...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What would happen in a state where both candidates got exactly the same number of votes? Statiscally speaking, at least right now, that's what's happened in Florida. Instead of winner-takes-all, shouldn't both be declared winners and the electoral college vote for that state split? Of course that means Gore wins...
Energy: time to change the picture.
Finally, I think the Electoral College needs a second look. Majority rules, and the popular vote should be the determining factor.
There's a load of bull. Majority rules, but "minority rights." The popular vote be the determining factor? I think you really need to know...if it was, there would be a demand for a recount from the Bush campain in the entire United States, because a difference of less than 200,000 votes is less than 1/10 of one percent! That's a pretty slim margin for any national election.
Course, another pathetic argument is that "each vote would then count more." ERRRRHHHH! Wrong again. If the popular vote would be used in this election, Palm Beach county wouldn't even exist in the news media, and neither would Florida. One reason why there's so many people protesting is because they love it that everyone's eyes are on them!
The electoral college may appear to be archaic, but it's amazing, and it forces canidates to listen to EVERYBODY, not just "the majority."
EXACTLY:
It is the job of the ballot designer to make sure that information is properly conveyed to the voter, and that the voter's response to that information is correctly recorded.
PERIOD.
It happens in computer UI design ALL THE TIME. I work for a software company, and I see this happen all the time. Some designer gets a great idea, or reads a new textbook on the subject, and synthesizes a great idea out of there, and presents it to the manager at the design meetings, and they agree, "aw cool, spiffy" (actually, at Apple, it would be different, Steve Jobs would fire the guy and then tell the team how the interface will look if they value their jobs). Then they write the prototype, and the other developers, and QA see it, then it goes into the alpha, and marketing sees it, and goes "aw cool, spiffy", now, what normally happens with QA is, they often "get used" to the interface, because at that point it's usually not fully functional, and they're used to having to work around crap, it's hard to tell when there's a fundamental flaw. Until beta. Then you send the software out to the beta testers, and only if there's an unholy bitching and moaning will the most serious flaws be fixed, because at that point, it's almost like starting over from scratch in many cases, and if beta is already late, you can bet there's already pressure on the engineering team to deliver a product on time. Here's the place where most companies that ship crap products make the wrong decision. Here's where the ballot likely went wrong, they didn't beta test the ballot. Or if they did, they didn't test it well enough, because IN THE FIELD, where it counts, it did not perform it's job. Period. The committee that reviewed it didn't forsee it. The designer didn't forsee it. Not really their fault, and I don't think the fact that it didn't get any testing was anybody's fault either. To suggest it was deliberately confusing is ludicrous -
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
For me, I want a president who will transcend individual interests to act in the nation's best interest. (I have senators to represent my state's interest, and a representative to defend my community's interest.) To get such a person, the nation as a whole must vote in a common, popular vote. (On another note, this will be the third election in which a winner did not attract a majority. Perhaps we would be better served by a popular vote, followed by a run-off between the top two, if no one won a majority. That would assure a president with majority support, and give everyone a 'second chance' in a badly fragmented electorate like this.)
As for the GOP contention that thousands of ballots are thrown out in every election, so why sweat this one -- well, this election demonstrates that not even voting is immune from measurement error. (Of course, any ninth grade chem student coulda told you that, but we are dealing with politicians here... a level of evolutionary development several steps below that of a ninth grade chem student.)
In an election where the margin of victory lies within the tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, a measurement error of thousands of votes may be acceptible. In an election where the margin of victory is only a couple hundred votes, a measurement error of several thousand is clearly unacceptible. Thus the dispute.
The brightest aspect of this controversy may be the new national attention to usability issues. It seems absurd to me that in this technologically advanced nation, we are using paper punch cards to elect a president.
Surely, we should implement some sort of touch screen voting, with adjustible font sizes and confirmation boxes, that would eliminate the confusion that even bright, clear-thinking people sometimes feel when trying to vote.
I've often said that if we had more developers and fewer lawyers involved in politics, we'd be a better nation. This sorry episode's just proving that point.
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Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
*ROFLMAO*
Y'know, despite my preference for Bush during the election, I'd be happy with a Gore win (in the recount, that is!) for precisely that same reason.
The political reality is that neither candidate has a mandate to carry out his campaign agenda, so it doesn't matter who wins in terms of future legislation... and the entertainment value of the backpedalling would be enormous!
The interesting thing - with one county and ~200 votes spread, and many counties having spreads over 200 votes - we may not just see your "dearest hope" happen once (tomorrow, for Gore, I'd say with a probability of 20%), but twice (after Gore, the rest of the absentee ballots swing it back to Bush by November 17th.)
(That said, once - in either direction - would be enough "fun" for me.)
Tackhead, signing off 'till the next /. post on the subject.
First of all, the electoral votes are allocated to states based on population, so, the electoral college system actually makes this sort of domination EASIER - after all, now you only need 51% in the most populous few states (I don't know how many you need, but not many)
You need at least the 14(15?) most populous states to win an alectoral contest. That's more (three times more) than you need in a popular vote.
Most of your arguments point out the flaw in winner-takes-all allocation of electors (you only need 51% of the vote) but the fundamental idea of balancing state powers remains. So complain to your state legislators to change your allocation method to proportional rather than winner-takes-all. This is a matter decided by each state, not the constitution or the federal government.
I think the flaw is winner-takes all, which distorts the popular vote in each state and keeps third parties from ever achieving electors. But the college itself (or any other mechanism like the congress is based on) is a fundamentally sound idea, that you must have a geographically broad appeal throughout the 50 states in order to be a capable and responsive president.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I think I heard somewhere that there have been seven times so far the Florida's deligates have not all voted as they should have. These delegates are usually chosen for their loyalty, and going against your parties wishes would probably kill any political carier (within that party at least), however in none of those cases has this decided an election, so people haven't really heard about it as much.
Now, I'm not sure what states have what laws about when the delegates can 'vote their concience', but there has been precident that these votes count as they were actually voted.
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The legal question is "do the alleged mistakes constitue grounds for a challenge under Florida law?" And none of the three conditions you listed appear to be satisfied. There are no allegations of official misconduct, all candidates were eligible to hold office, and even if some voters made a mistake on their ballots I don't believe that renders them "illegal".
The ballot design was public far in advance of the election. There was plenty of time to challenge it beforehand.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I am amazed, however, at the fact that people seem to be unable to follow a simple arrow.
If you look closely at the ballots you can clearly seem them marked with numbers AND arrows pointing directly to the hole associated with the candidates.
Also, I must ask, WHY would you punch TWO holes? You know that you've gone in there to vote for one candidate -- yet you vote for two? That's not very intelligent.
I agree with someone who posted earlier, if you mess up, don't turn in the ballot. Simply ask for a different one. It's over, it's done with, stop your complaining. If the situation were reversed and it were Gore winning and Bush's followers whining then I would be equally pissed. We're not children, guys. You screwed up. Accept it. Try again next time.
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Rob Flynn
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Rob Flynn
Pidgin
Tackhead, apologies from here too. I've seen your other responses and they revealed a much more reasonable person than the first post would have indicated.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
*NT*
I didn't argue that following directions is too difficult for the average person. I argued that being able to follow directions isn't a sign of intelligence. I made this argument because various people have been saying things like "if someone is too stupid to understand the ballot, then they shouldn't be allowed to vote."
I also realize now that I was putting words into Signal 11's mouth, er, keyboard. He simply expressed skepticism that people were having a hard time understanding the ballot in question. In fact, I had no problem understanding the ballot when I saw it, but then again that ballot reminds me of ballots I saw as a kid in my home town.
Which brings up the point that the instructions for the ballots do change, from place to place and year to year. I don't know where my wife read this, but the person who designed the Palm Beech ballot made special changes just for the elderly (which ironically just confused more voters).
I agree that creativity is no excuse for not following directions. However, some voting booths have lousy directions that are difficult to find.
I would also like to make a distinction between traffic signs and voting directions. We should be able to mostly get along w/out traffic signs, if we could count on people to be courteous--traffic flow doesn't really change that much from place to place, just try to avoid endangering yourself and others. The same can't be said of voting booths. The whole idea of voting is rather abstract, now that I think about it.
-Paul Komarek
However, since you posted this,
the gap continues to narrow according
to CNN. Gore has been "finding"
votes even in heavily republican counties.
Now you can argue that it's just that
democrats are stuffing the ballots faster
than republicans... Which frankly
is what I think is going on. Personally
given all the accusations on both sides each
state that was with 10,000 votes should
re-cast their ballots. It would probably
cost Gore the election, but I think it's only
fair.
You can view the by county results at
foxnews.com
that bastion of the liberal press.
A Gore Voter in NC,
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RobK
Myddrin
So stupid people shouldn't be allowed to vote? Just how stupid? I mean, just how hard should we make this stupidity test?
What the rest of us are saying is that we don't necessarily think that stupid people should be banned from voting, or randomly denied their vote. At the very least this stupidity test is not acceptable.
Not only that, but human beings make simple mistakes, and complexity increases the rate at which that occurs. It's a simple fact. And we're saying that the error rate here is simply too high for average human beings, whom we believe should have a right to have their vote heard.
The electors of Florida haven't been selected yet. It's not like they're 25 state employees.
The Republicans have chosen their 25 electors, and the Democrats have chosen 25 electors of their own. Whichever candidate is determined to have won in Florida, that party's electors will get to vote in the electoral vote.
These electors are chosen from each party's most faithful members. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that they'll vote against their candidate. (Yes, it has happened occasionally in the past that an elector didn't vote for the candidate he was "supposed" to, but in all cases the elector knew it wouldn't make a difference in the result of the election. And an elector never votes for the major party opponent of their candidate.)
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
As much as I disagree with everything Buchanan stands for, he IS a man of honor and ethics. (and wit - I say again, he may not be fit for president, but I have many fond memories of watching him make Michael Kinsey cry on Crossfire back in the early 90's). If only HIS ethics included people of other races and creeds.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fairly well? You want a system that works fairly well? Electronic systems would allow for a quicker and more accurate vote tally. Of course, measures would need to be put in place to prevent fraud, errors, system crashes, etc.
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Now, that being said -- I've seen another image of the ballots in question aside from the first one I saw on CNN. The example by CNN looked like both pages were viewable at one time with arrows obviously pointing to the correct hole -- no excuse for choosing the wrong one. But in this other photo I've seen, there is a list of candidates on the left side, then some arrows, then a blank page on the right, then you flip the page and the next right-sided page has more candidates -- so you cannot see ALL candidates at the same moment, which could explain why the holes would appear confusing. Of course, the arrow still points directly to the holes -- but with two holes close together and no OTHER arrow pointing to the second hole, it's feasible that a small percentage of people could punch the wrong one -- particularly if they are voting in person at the booth under the stress and excitement of a building full of voters running around.
It should be noted, though, that BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats verified and authorized the ballots in Florida before the election took place. If there was any reasonable expectation for confusion, one of them would have raised their concern. Obviously, they did not and there was not such a concern.
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seumas.com
If we weren't still using punched cards to do our voting, we could prevent "voting irregularities" like voting for more than one candidate, and we wouldn't have 19,120 ballots being discarded in Palm Beach.
If Al Gore wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Gore, and Gore should become President.
If George Bush wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Bush, and Bush should become President.
What I'm seeing today - a bunch of Gore's lawyers looking to replace a bunch of unspoiled ballots validly marked for Buchanan because they believe those votes "should have been Gore's" - is terrifyingly close to a coup d'etat.
The Constitution does not give any party a "do over" because they don't like the results of an election.
I urge the electors of Florida to consider casting their votes according to the results of the mandatory recount, and to ignore the implications of any legal decision to throw out validly-marked ballots for any candidate.
(Note that spoiled ballots, such as those with two holes punched in them - are another matter entirely. I agree with the judge's decision to throw them out.)
Lots of people mentioned that, but it isn't true. Several people have posted sample ballots. They look the same to me. Could you identify *exactly* what differences you think there were between the sample and the actual? "There are holes to punch in the actual ballot" isn't a reasonable answer.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Or is it a subliminable message from Bush?
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
The article about the Natapoff argument on the desirability of the electoral college system was interesting. It was a little light on details, but he seems to argue from the point of view that the only desideratum in designing an election system is maximizing individual power in voting. This seems like an assumption, not a research conclusion, and I wonder how widely it's shared. In light of the fact that Natapoff's quoted comments are, to say the least, deeply condescending to basically everyone, this seems like an important point. If he's going to claim to have proved the electoral college system is better than going by popular vote, at a minimum it seems like he ought to have a definition of "better" that is universally acceptable. Is the complete work available online anywhere?
Incidentally, it seems a little suspect to argue that democracy hinges on this system, when in the majority of elections it makes no difference whatsoever in the outcome. Correctly or not, people seem to feel they would have more voting power if votes for the second or third place candidate in your state could actually make a difference.
Legally wrong? This is the way the constitution was written - nowhere does it say that they cannot elect who they want to. This is the reality of the electoral college.
Morally wrong? Well, if you ask me, morality is a relative thing.
Here's the thing: they can tally those ballots in palm beach for Buchanan, but you know and I know that those people intended to vote for Gore. Well guess what - the electors from florida will know that too. The moral thing to do, then, is what the people in your state want. This is generally measured by counting their votes, but in this case we have a situation where we know there was an error. We know that Florida meant to vote for Gore (not taking into consideration, of course, the absentee ballots which slant republican, and haven't yet come in).
So why is it that Florida's electors would be legally or morally obligated to vote Bush? This kind of last-minute human disgression in the hands of a few elite, which you call "arrogant", is exactly what the framers of the constitution had in mind. It's the electoral college, and it's the reason Gore hasn't won already.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Wow. First off, who are you to say that my right of freedom is speech is dependent on my responsibility to vote?
Interesting logical jump.Nobody said it would be illegal for you complain. Complain all you want, if you didn't vote then I personally don't give a rat's ass about your complaints. As far as I'm concerned you have to right to complain, but feel free under the first amendment to complain all you want.
Finkployd
Remember, the human brain is (loosely, oh so loosely) a parallel machine that can only in limited constrained situations emulate a serial one. It is not a Turing machine!
Oh, sorry, I thought you said Patty Patty Duke Duke.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Nice try, but no.
The *final* ballot was printed in the newspaper, and approved by both someone in the Democratic party and someone in the Republican party.
There were no complaints whatsoever before the results were discovered to be so close, including in the several weeks leading up to the election.
Further, the same county had around 10,000 votes for Buchanan last election, and around 20,000 spoiled ballots then, too.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I often try to not reply to obvious trolling, but I think it is important to say that not EVERYONE over 18 is qualified to vote. For example, if you are incarcerated on a felony charge, you are not allowed to vote. There may be others, but the point is, not everyone is allowed to vote.
What a load of crap! Everyone over the age of 18 (and in my opinion, even younger) is qualified to vote, regardless of whether or not *you* approve, asshole.
What a strong, factually incorrect opinion you have. Convicted felons are not qualified to vote. I know this isn't what you are talking about, but at least get it right.
Finkployd
Then Dershowitz is a moron (as if we didn't know that). The weight of large versus small states is handled by the House of Representatives versus Senate split. That's why we have a bicameral Congress, for Pete's sake! The House is what balances the Senate, not the EC.
The House is apportioned by relative population - hence California has 52 House seats and Vermont 1. It's supposed to be a direct reflection of the "will of the people", and has shorter terms (2 year) accordingly. The Senate is designed to be a more deliberative body, with 2 Senators per state (regardless of size) and longer 6-year terms. That is how small states and large states keep one another in check.
The Electoral College exists because the average person in the late 18th century was a illiterate nincompoop, and the Framers felt they couldn't be trusted to directly vote for a President (or a Senator, for that matter). So under the original design of the Constitution, the Congressmen were directly elected by the people, and the Senators, President, and Vice-President were appointed by state legislatures and the Electoral College, respectively. Eventually direct election of the Senate was provided for in a constitutional amendment (I forget which one), and only the Electoral College remains.
The Electoral College numbers are determined by the total number of congressional districts plus the two Senate seats. It's that simple. I suspect nobody anticipated the sheer size this country would grow to in designing the system, else they might have set it up differently. Remember, when the Constitution was written there were only a handful of states, and all were pretty much just hugging the East Coast. The rest of the states didn't exist yet.
And this potential dichotomy between the popular and electoral votes hasn't happened in over 100 years (though small shifts in a couple of elections, notably 1960, would have caused this to happen). The remarkable thing is that, unlike virtually every other nation in the recorded history of the nation-state, this election fiasco has not resulted in men with guns running around on the streets rioting for their candidates. Yesterday morning millions of Americans woke up and went to work - just like any other day. And any questions will be resolved through the legal system, rather than on the streets. More than anything else, that makes me proud to be a citizen of this country.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Doesn't it make more sense to use the Total:Buchanan or Gore:Buchanan ratio. I mean, more Buchanan supporters mean that an area is more "conservative", which would take a much bigger peice of the pie from Nader and Gore, and it would also deposit more votes in the "not _that_ conservative (the Boy Scouts are a hate group, but Gore is gonna take my guns away!)" Bush corner.
In Natapof's article about the advantages of the electoral college, he sites an interesting example about baseball games. He says that the Pirates won the world series over the Yankees 4-3, but that the Yankees had more home runs that year - and nobody complained that the Yankees should have won. This example is supposed to represent that the electoral college, but it is a very weak argument
People are not like home runs. Home runs are just one aspect of the game, and some home runs are worth more than others. A home run against a weaker team means nothing when it comes down to the world series. Is Mr Natapof trying to tell me that my Maryland vote is worth less than a Florida vote?
He also sites that the electoral system manages to increase voting power by applying a larger value to a winning vote in a close state. If my state wins 51% for candidate X, and 49% for candidate Y, then X gets all the electoral votes. This makes votes more powerful. But he neglects to mention that it makes candidate X votes stronger at the expense of votes for Y.
A better analogy is a more scientific one. Imagine a student measures 2.25ml of fluid in one experiment, and 1.1ml in another. If they round up the total is 3ml + 2ml = 5ml. Do we say this is a more accurate measure than proper rounding of 2ml+1ml = 3ml? Votes are more like fluid, rounded for convenience -- but we cannot lose accuracy. This is a scientific process!
My proposal is that the electoral college stay, but that the votes be given out proportionally. If Florida gets a 51-49 with 21 electoral votes, then the electoral should be given out 11-10. This would decrease the likelihood of electoral votes not matching popular vote, while mantaining the mathematical and political conveniences of the current system. (which I won't delve into now...)
I believe there is a legitimate concern with the controversy concerning the ballot in Palm Beach County. The ballots there were printed such that out of the three ballot punchholes next to the Democratic ticket section, the topmost represented a vote for Buchanan, and the second represented Gore. In spite of the arrow pointing to the correct hole for Gore, this confused many voters who asked poll workers which hole was the right one. The poll workers could not give a definite answer either way, and did not have any other authority to check with.
As a result, Buchanan had more votes in PBC (3407) than in any other county in Florida. This is strange because Gore carried Palm Beach county easily, 64%-36%. The next highest votes for Buchanan by county is Pinellas (1100), which also had the highest turnout for Nader, and was won by Gore, 52%-48%.
Just wait, I'll start heading toward my point now. Pinellas and Palm Beach represent the highest combined turnout of Nader/Buchanan voters by number, followed by Hillsborough (which neighbors Pinellas), Broward, Dade, Brevard, and Sarasota. These represent the highest population counties in Florida. Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Hillsborough had the top 5 voter turnout, respectively. In four of these counties, Buchanan voters represent .1-.25% of total votes, and ~10% of combined Nader/Buchanan voters. However, in PBC Buchanan gets .8% of the total vote, and raked in 38% of the combined, alternative vote.
This sticks out like a sore thumb, and I'm sure someone with a degree in statistics could prove my point. Why would PBC have SO MANY Buchanan voters if it is decidedly liberal? Why would it buck the trend set by counties of similar makeup and population? If one adjusts the Buchanan vote in PBC to correlate with the statewide average and the averages in other counties, One could assume that the total number of Gore votes miscast for Buchanan is ~2500.
I'm not saying that this is enough to win FL decisively for Gore, but if the final count and recount gives Bush the state with less than this margin, it will be a hotly contested point for years to come.
Addendum: I heard some republican flak on Crossfire claiming that Buchanan got 3000 votes in PBC in 1996 as well. If this were true, I would concede that the ballot confusion might not be the cause of these results. However, Buchanan wasn't ON the ballot in 1996. According to the FEC, Buchanan was not on the ballot in Florida, and must have got less overall than James Edward Harris's(?) 13 votes for president. According to this calendar from the 1996 election, he never specifically visited Palm Beach county in 1996. (He visited Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, and Orlando in one trip.)
I've been googling steadily while writing this, and I can't find any further evidence of strong Pat Buchanan support in PBC, in 1996 or 2000. I am continuing statistical analysis on the county data as I type this. I want to look at the dramatic difference between PBC's Buchanan support and the rest of Florida, and see if any other states have counties which have this much of a flip flop.
The problem of applying mathematics to real world situations is how you define things. In particular, Natapof's seemingly counterintuitive assertion that the electoral college raises everyone's political power (in what otherwise would be a zero sum game) hinges on his peculiar definition of political power:
What is the probability that one person's vote will be able to turn a national election? The higher the probability, the more power each voter commands. To figure out these probabilities, Natapoff devised his own model of a national electorate--a more realistic model, he thought, than the ones the quoted experts were always using. Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I voted in Alachua County, Florida. Here they used bubble sheets, where you had to fill in bubles, and the voter placed his or her own ballot in the scanner. If the ballot was invalid, the voter had the ability to correct it on the spot. If this system had been used in Palm Beach County, Al Gore would be the President-elect. This is very serious, and needs to be challenged in court.
Most of the Slashdot posters can't bother to RTFM when it comes to their own government.
.sig :)
That would make a great
Finkployd
Well, as far as I'm concerned, whether or not people should have been able to "figure that out" isn't the real issue...especially since some reports now indicate that the ballot may actually have been illegal according to Florida state election law.
Check this link
Apparently, according to FL law, ballots are to be designed so that the X is made to the right of the candidate's name. Buchanan's hole should never have been located to the left of his name. This, to me, is the strongest case against the ballot.
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
if GWB upholds his principles, he looses the election, and thus deserves to win.
if GWB betrays his pricinples, he wins the election, and thus deserves to loose.
[as seen on a bulletin board in Fermi Lab]
"Never apply a Star Trek Solution to a Babylon 5 problem"
Looks like a Babylon 5 problem to me ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Shows a scatter graph of Buchanan votes vs. Bush votes, by county. Assuming that Buchanan should get a fairly consistent percentage of the Bush votes by county (and this graph does seem to bear out that assumption), the Palm Beach results stick out like a sore thumb.
It has also been reported that 19,000 ballots from palm beach were invalidated because 2 holes had been punched for the presidential candidate. I wonder which two they were...?
It's important to emphasize that this does NOT mean that there was any sort of fraud going on. It was most likely an honest mistake, the official who designed the ballot said she was trying to find a way to use large fonts to help the elderly voters.
If it's clear that they were confused, though, it seems that the only fair thing to do is have a re-vote in Palm Beach, open only to those who voted the first time. (They all signed their names, right?)
---
Basically, the main arguments are:
1. The EC was designed to help one group- white southern males.
2. Southern states gained disproportionately more power than northern states. Slaves in the south were allowed to be counted as three fifths of a man in order to award Southern states more electoral college votes.
3. Direct elections make states encourage its more of its citizens to vote because the more who vote in that state, the bigger voice that state has whereas in the EC system, no matter how many people vote, there are the same number of EC votes awarded for that state.
4. There is a fallacy that the EC system encourage candidates to care more about local state issues than in a direct system but candidates would still have concern for regional issues of the northwest, south, midwest, etc. to get their votes.
Read it and decide for yourself. It's an interesting piece.
According to Orvetti, Buchanan(-hole) has just conceded that the 3400 votes are "properly Gore's".
OK. I still have a problem with it (in the Constitutional sense), but if Buchanan's willing to relinquish his claim on those votes, now I can see at least some argument that might persuade a judge to grant a revote.
In any case, the recount results are skewing heavily to Gore, so my whole point may be moot. Let's hope so.
What I think happened is the Democrats brought in busloads of senior citizens and told them "Now remember, punch the second hole or you lose your Social Security!" Since this was the only district in the state with this wierd ballot, anyone from out of the district busing in old folks wouldn't have known that it was really the third hole. Maybe one or two of them had enough clue to tell their shepherds when they got back on the bus something like "Duhh, I punched the second hole, but it sure looked like that was the vote for Buchannan."
Any way you look at it, it is clear where PHBs and other lusers go when they retire: Palm Beach.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Your statement makes no sense: First of all, the electoral votes are allocated to states based on population, so, the electoral college system actually makes this sort of domination EASIER - after all, now you only need 51% in the most populous few states (I don't know how many you need, but not many).
Another problem with this system is the fact that it empowers the individual voter far too much. This means that situations like these, in which a ridiculously small portion of the country (palm beach county) decide for the entire country happen far too often. For example look at holland... it has a far greater variety of parties too - meaning that the power is distributed in a much better fashion.
The electoral college argument is that it means the winners need to appeal to several groups. Well, the electoral college is also responsible for the lack of choice. You see, the people voting for Ralph Nader in retrospect should have voted for Gore - after all, Nader did not win anything, so they effectively harmed Gore's chances thus supporting Bush. In a system which simply counts individual votes, such as in many other places in the world, parties are forced to form coalitions to be able to nominate a president, making the representation much better than the electoral college system.
Furthermore, People sometimes think that the electoral college system prevents the majority from simply stamping the rest - after all, politicians must also appeal to minorities to win certain counties. However, if the people in the majority actually would be swayed by actions which disrespect others, A politician selling to them would be guaranteed to win at least 50% of the votes (it's pretty simple) That obviously doesn't work - so politicians need to seek support from various groups. In a non-electoral college system that is equally so - otherwise they will need to form a coalition which also solves the problem just fine.
Finally, the districts are not spread onto a randomized population! This can cause serious distortion:
Let's take a simple example, three regions a,b,c, and three voting groups, X-49,Y-30,Z-20, thus a total of 99 "people units".
each region is equally large (for simplicity).
a: Y-17,X-14,Z-2
b: Y-13,X-11,Z-9
c: Y-0,X-24,Z-9
Y wins all out and gets to dominate. And it isn't even 50% large, and furthermore, actually smaller than X!
So, depending on how your voters happen to be distributed, the electoral college favours you or not. This is unfair.
I am American. America is arguably the earliest democracy. But lets face it - America's voting system is an early beta version of the Good Thing (tm) (don't even get me started on campaign financing - that's much worse than EC stuff...).
buchanan quote:
``I don't want any votes that I did not receive and I don't want to win any votes by mistake,'' Buchanan told NBC's ``Today'' show. ``It seems to me that these 3,000 votes people are talking about -- most of those are probably not my vote and that may be enough to give the margin to Mr. Gore,'' he said.
19,000 votes from a heavily democratic county would be interesting to know who those people actually wanted to vote for, i would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way.
However, there is no way to know this now. Remember, ballots are cast secretly. This is a very important feature of elections, as it preserves the right to vote without being harassed.
However, since we don't know exactly who cast those ballots, we have no way of asking them. Trying to figure it out using some arcane mathematical formula is equally wrong; statistics break down when your subjects are sentient. So, as there's no way to find out in any fair way who these people were trying to vote for, there's nothing we can do but disregard them completely. It's nothing more than the fault of the people who cast the ballots without reading the directions; stupidity is no excuse.
By the way, who defines "the wrong way" for electors to cast their ballots? I hope you weren't going to say you, since you're only one voice among millions, with only your own beliefs backing you and not any hard data. I also hope you weren't going to say the people who cast those 19,000 ballots, since we will never know who they were and thus cannot fairly state who they would have picked.
----------
Great tension
National focus
Reno offering to help if need be
One side cautionsly claiming victory
One side saying we must respect the law
Time dragging out and even Thursday's count may not be the final word, as abesentee ballots may play a factor
A possible court battle
People are already getting sick of it
When it's all over they'll probably mistakenly send a boy to Cuba.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most of the Democrats who were in favor of the electoral system last week are still in favor of it (for example, this guy named Gore who you may have heard of -- still in favor of the electoral college, as well as all his publicly speaking advisors).
I wasn't making a quantification of Democrats as a whole, just the "talking heads" that were complaining about it on TV (msnbc, cnn, etc). It's also only fair to note that the repubs on TV made the opposite switch when circumstances changed.
Finkployd
How does she know it was wrong? Like mmany Slashdot commenters today, she had the benefit of the media, other people and hindsight to formulate her opinion that she had voted wrong.
The complain to the democrat who approved them
As for the "democrat" approving it, what does that matter? First of all, the ballot is illegal according to Florida state law (the marks MUST go to the right of candidate names). So, even though she approved it, it is still not a legal ballot.
Secondly just because a woman in charge of the elections in that county happened to be a democrat doesn't mean that the Democratic party accepted it. What if she had been a Republican? Would that then point to a conspiracy? Only as much as you credit her for representing the whole party.
Yes, the democratic campaign did get a sample ballot, as did the voters of the county. However, the sample they were given was a paper booklet that did not demostrate where the holes will be, or the fact that the book would have some play in it allowing for the holes to misalign.
So anyway, it was confusing, now what?
I don't think we can revote. Nader voters who voted purposely might switch their vote to Gore out of fearof electing Bush.
We can't assume every Buchanan vote was intended for Gore. We can't even look at the restof each ballot's party trend to assume they would also have voted for Gore. It's just not full-proof.
Could we just throw out the county's whole vote? That too would cause an uproar.
Do we throw out the whole indecisive state of Florida? Then neither candidate would be able to reach 270. You could leave at that in which case Congress would pick the winner. Or, you could recalculate the winner based on a (538-25=513) electoral votes total. Would that be fair? Then we'd piss off all of Florida.
Let's remember that irregularities happend in other counties and undoubtedly, other states. It's just that the people in Florida, the deciding state because of the way the cookie crumbled, realize that the irregularities NOW MATTER. In other states, states with landslides, another 1,000 votes for Gore wouldn't topple Dubya's 50,000 vote lead. But in Florida, it can, so people are taking action.
How would you feel if your miscounted vote got the guy you DIDN'T want into office?
And in 2004 we will have several counties complaining because all of the votes were wiped out in a BSOD at 8:45 pm.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
*shrug*
Out of the 6 times I've voted so far, 5 of them were electronically. For the local gvt, national govt. (Netherlands) and for the European parliament.
Guess the "most technologically advanced" country in the world has more faith in punch cards than computers.
<grub> Reading
Revote those countys. having the whole state of Florida revote is expensive for the voters. If Only 18K or so votes are in question lets eliminate uncertainty. Revote those countys! Isn't this the most fair?
Revoting just the county is very unfair. It gives them an extra chance to show up once they know the outcome elsewhere. The only fair thing to do is to revote the entire state. That brings up the question, is it fair for the rest of the country?
The whole idea of a revote is very very dangerous in this case. It is not a local election for you county commisioner. It is for the "leader of the free world."
Cost is not an objective in this. It really should not be revoted at all. A revote would be a hellish nasty process that would only serve to divide the country evn more than it already is.
This issue should be dropped for the good of the country. Just as Nixon did with Kennedy.
This is disingenous. In 1996, the Reform party wasn't running Pat Buchanan, and the proportion of Reform vote to Republican vote (*do* look at the URL mentioned in the article header) wasn't anything like this.
Furthermore, your hypothesis doesn't explain why over 19,000 ballots were ruled invalid for the selection of two presidential candidates, which is five times the mis-voting rate of the senate race in that county.
And the final, crushing blow to your argument is that this same confusion happened up and down the ballot. So, Socialist Party candidate McReynolds gets 302 votes in Palm Beach, almost half of his vote in the entire state, while Harry Browne, whose actual dot was in the same relative position as the Gore dot turned in a suprisingly poor showing in Palm Beach, as near as I can tell. (And, of course, the McReynolds dot is also one away from Gore's as well.)
And then there's the Constitution Party's extremely high showing in Palm Beach, when their dot is...yup, one up from Ralph Nader's.
The ballot was clearly an ergonomic nightmare that caused a significant number of votes to be spoiled or misrecorded. But, having said that, I'm not sure if there's any obvious legal remedy for this at all.
Babar
A few tidbits I picked up this morning:
Palm Beach has 15,000 registered Reform Party members and Broward County has less than 200 registered Reform Party members.
3400 votes for Buchanan is directly in line with every other Florida county that has a similar number of registered Reform Party members.
Buchanan has a residence in Palm Beach as does a close relative. He received 8000 votes in he Republican primary in Florida.
There are more Reform Party registered voters in Palm Beach county measured as a percentage of total registrations than in any other county in Florida.
If the final outcome is that Bush retains the electoral college votes and Gore the popular, whoever ultimately takes the White House is going to have a rough time. The opposition is going to carp endlessly that he doesn't have a 'mandate' and that he's in office illegitimately. With the narrowest of margins in the congress, I see this as a recipe for gridock. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. For us.
Can you imagine the campaigning in any state that gets a chance to vote again?
[Comic Store Owner]: Worst ballot ever !
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
Originally, of course, the main purpose of the college was to overcome the communications problems of the 18th and 19th centuries. It just took too long to tabulate ballots and get all the results to the federal government. Instead, each state, based upon its representation in Congress, sent electors to vote on their behalf. And that brings up the second purpose of the electoral college.
It serves to provide a voice for states with smaller populations. You see, with simply a popular vote election, the candidates could just move up and down the east and west coast and completely ignore the central United States. The founding fathers were very concerned that each state in the Union have a voice in the election and the electoral college serves that purpose.
What's been lost, primarily since the early 1900's is that our government was designed to give as much power to the states as possible, limiting the power of the federal government. The electoral college is an example of the states' power.
As for the Palm Beach "fraud", I've seen the ballots. Bear in mind that they were published both in newspapers and in direct mailings to the residents, weeks before the election. They were designed and approved by the local officials, who happen to be Democrats. They are very clearly labeled as to where to punch the right spot. I mean VERY clearly labeled.
Quite frankly, if you aren't capable of reading simple instructions and following an arrow to the right hole, and if you won't ask for help if you're confused, then you deserver what you get.
It wasn't fraud that was committed in Palm Beach...it was stupidity.
-h-
As far as I'm concerned, Palm Beach likes the Reform Party - if you let one town revote, I really don't see how you can restrict others who felt similarly defrauded around the country from revoting - you essentially have to write off the election entirely.
Or the discovery of an unopened ballot box in an African-American church, also in Miami
It was reported that this item turned out to be a box of voting supplies. Not missing ballots.
"Florida? But that's America's wang. . ."
-Homer Simpson
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_commen t110900c.shtml
In 1996, after the Republican nomination was all-but sewn up for Bob Dole, Buchanan supporters in this area registered almost 9,000 votes for Pat. It was the primary, not the November election.
Remember also that any place that is split 64-36 in favor of Gore in Florida is likely heavy in the elderly population, making them highly unlikely to vote for Nader. Nader supports, by and large, are young. Buchanan supporters are people who still curse the day horseless carriages came to pass. It wouldn't be surprising to see a large group of GoPatGo'ers in certain pockets in Florida.
Also, can you post the URL for the third-party vote (pre-recount) in PBC? I'd like to see if Harry Browne's data is extraordinarily low compared to the rest of the state -- perhaps Browne supporters were confused and accidentally voted Gore. I doubt it, but I also doubt 3,000 Gore supporters voted Buchanan.
. . . and Microsoft.
you can freakin take them.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think the only fair thing to do is for all of Florida to re-vote. Although I'm sure Bush won't like that because some of those 90,000 Nader voters are bound to switch to Gore in light of recent events.
-
(If the preceding link doesn't work, try www.cnn.com , as they have the picture up on their web site for the news story.)
Then the local democratic elections administrator shouldn't have signed off on approving the ballot, which she did - thus officially endorsing the design on behalf of the Democrat party.
Come on...look at the ballot. It isn't confusing at all. Not at all. The only people who are responsible for the problem are the people who couldn't follow simple instructions and take the time to look at what they were doing.
> Unfair in the sense that 4 populous states (CA, FL, NY, and TX) can't impose their will on the rest of the country,
> yes. You have to have AT LEAST a dozen states to win under an electoral system, but under a popular system you can basically promise every federal dollar to those four states and the rest fo the country can go to hell...
This is quite like the situation in Canada. Ontario, the most populous province by far, essentially elects the prime minister. It's an ongoing sore point with the western provinces, particularly Alberta and British Columbia, and is one of the reasons why many in the west support the idea of a senate system as practised in the States.
And anybody who pays attention would never have a bug like:
if (foo = bar)
or
while(foo(&baz, bar)
or
setproctitle(baz)
Yet I'd bet that you've at some point compiled, or attempted to compile code with the above stupidities in them. Everything is obvious in retrospect.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
That's right, it's not democratic. It's not supposed to be. We are not a democracy, we are a "republic".
Several times before the election I posted electoral collige links and facts, but it does not do any good for the vast majority of people. It is like trying to explain to them that "personal property" != "private property".
So many of these folks seem to be just simpletons following the words of the TV person with the "best" hair and the slickest teleprompter delivery.
Now, for the rest of us who know what the Electoral College is, I suggest that we get our States to adopt the Maine/Nebraska Electoral system and also to end the practice of "faithless electors" (as 25 or so States have done already).
If this system is adopted we still get to tell our State how to vote while having some diversity between congressional district (those of us with more than one house member at least). It even opens the possibility of other parties to gain electoral votes in the final tally and perhaps a little more national exposure.
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Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I'm having difficulty agreeing to the premise that congressional seats change hands between parties fairly often. [snip] we now have a system where seats are occupied by the same individual for decades at a time.
I don't think these two premises are inconsistent. That seats change hands is clear by the great shift from total Democratic dominance to total Republican dominance in the mid nineties, and the gradual erosion of Republican power in every election since supports the partial, if not total fluidity of party power in congressional districts. On the other hand, there are always individuals like my congressman (Ed Markey [D-Mass]) who have been in their seat for as long as I can remember. Much of his district, however, elects Republican local and state officials. Massachusetts Republicans are pretty toothless in a statewide race, but they could stand a much better chance even in this largely Democratic district of carrying a presidential race. That would be something -- the first vote from Massachusetts in living memory to a Republican presidential candidate. As a lifelong Democrat who believes in democracy small d, I'd cheer.
Counties are problematic because their populations vary so widely. Variation in population is somewhat more controlled in congressional districts.
I think breaking people into any kind of set of roughly equal blocks would work just as well. You could take the hash of the person's name modulo 400. Personally, I've always felt the need to make congressional districts contiguous geographically was anachronistic -- why not combine two small industrial districts on opposite ends of the state into a single industrial voter district?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oh boy....
... Now count down to the third Hole. It points to Al Gore! It looks as though Al Gore may have stolen votes from Harry Browne! This is so confusing!!!
This is really gonna throw a wrench in the election.
check out the Ballot and count down to the third Canidate (Harry Browne)
It seems obvious to me that Harry Browne should win the state of Florida.
It's also important to note that many voters who made a mistake were forced to submit their ballot once punched. The poll workers did not allow them to destroy their ballot and get a new one.
That's not cool.. When I was an election clerk here in texas we were allowed to void ballots if a person made a mistake, and give them a new one. We were also able to give assistance, and believe me, even with our IMO non-confusing tarrant county ballots there were still a lot of people that didn't understand them.
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This is the fault of the Democrats! They've controlled Congress so long that they've had access to the schools--and now our kids can't read!
Oh, wait, it was the old folks that couldn't read. So it's the Republicans' fault, because they've kept down Medicare benefits for so long!
[I'll politely note that you can have a rant tag in XML, which makes me really want to convert all my sites to XML for that purpose--have a random-effects generator that changes what happens to stuff in rant tags, etc. Heh.]
Seriously, it wasn't highly wonderful of a ballot, but the ballot I voted on wasn't exactly clear from the first glance, either. Yet I took the bloody time to sit down and figure out the ballot, so I voted for the people and issues I wanted to see approved.
If nothing else, this is an indictment of our careless society.
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-- Geof F. Morris
Check out the CBS page for presidential election results in Florida, by county.
Now take a look at the votes for the Socialist Workers Candidate, Harris. Scroll down the page.
6 votes..
5 votes..
0 votes.. (what a loser)
88 votes.. (ok, I take that back)
0 votes..
36 votes..
Volusia County: 9,888 votes!!! That's 5% of the county residents, and 95% of Harris' total vote.
Same thing with Philips, the Constitution guy, who got 2,927 votes in Volusia, almost 3/4 of his total count for Florida. Hell, Browne, who only got 1% in other counties by generosity of rounding, beat out Nader in Volusia to get 3,211 votes. Is there some ultraeffective "pro third party, anti Green" ad campaign that decided to spam just one city in Florida?
Perhaps, but that's not enough for those wacky Volusers; apparantly they've been having some computer trouble, too. According to a section of this ABC News article, the vote count for Gore in Volusia may have decreased by about 10,000 votes while they were sending in returns Wednesday morning. WTF?
Yeah. So, I guess my point is that Florida sucks. I guess they weren't expecting to be swarmed over by national news coverage, though; this kind of stuff probably happens everywhere, but never takes on this kind of importance.
In some cases people did ask for new ballots, but were denied new ones.
Free Hans!
The entire election-throwing machine of both parties would descend on a few more than a hundred thousand people. And the parties would KNOW that a fix here fixed the election. If there's a re-vote, I predict a huge turnout from dead people, pets, non-citizens, and inanimate objects. And I predict riots. Martial law is no way to hold an election.
People thought they knew how to use them. They assumed that the form would be arranged in the way they expected.
It was in the papers for weeks before the elections. Directions were posted everywhere. There were people on hand to help if needed. What more do you want. Yes it was a bad design, but if you are confused after ignoring the directions, ask for help.
Should you really go into an election expecting an elaborate fraud?
Fraud from a democrat no less. Look into who is in charge of the voting in that county and approved the design.
Finkployd
these individuals who requested new ballots, and were denied, -not the democratic party or the naacp - may have one hell of a demonstratable case to press a suit of denial of the right to exercise the franchise.....and if there are enough of them, it could get very very ugly.
I truely hope for the USA that 1) they will drop the electoral voting system and 2) THIS election the electoral voted persons will choose Gore as the next president, just because he has the MAJORITY of votes.
Read that again, supporters of a democratic US: MAJORITY of votes. Now... when should a person be elected as the president of a country: a) when he/she has the MINORITY of the votes or b) the MAJORITY of the votes? (no punchhole problems there ;))
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
don_carnage wrote:
Um...here's a good question: why the hell are we using punch cards still for something as important as an election?
Because they are (usually) easy to use, reliable, and can be quickly tallied with inexpensive equipment, saving on both volunteer time and equipment purchases. Granted, in Palm Beach they were used badly, but that isn't grounds to condemn the system as a whole.
Shouldn't we be using technology that isn't 50 years old?
Punched cards are much more than fifty years old. They were used in Jaquard looms since around 1810, I don't know if there are earlier uses recorded or not, but that makes them almost 200 year old technology right there. They were also heavily used in the 1890 census (and most censuses since).
Also, what's wrong with using old technology for something important? Old technology permits you to pick techniques that are proven and reliable. That is far more important than being "high-tech" for a presidential race. Don't you occasionally find yourself using a pen or pencil? Writing in that fashion is an even older technology than punched cards, and I don't see people throwing out their pens anytime soon.
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Open mind, insert foot.
How can anyone with half
a brain think their vote will be valid by voting for two people for the same office?
In the case of MY county, there were some spots for city council where you were supposed to vote for TWO candidates. Instructions were pretty clearly marked tho.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
> Nixon, being the leader that he was, got up and said that he wouldn't challenge the vote because it was in the best interest of the office of the presidency to let it stand.
...
I'm not so sure Nixon did the right thing. Was the election his to give away?
I suppose there's something to be said for losing with dignity, but in elections the only reasonable thing to do is insist on the correct result.
> Kinda funny that the man later nearly brought down with an impeachment cares more about the rule of law
FWIW, at least one pundit (may they all rot in Hell) has claimed a cause and effect relationship between his concession in 1960 and Watergate. According to that theory, it was his decade-long rage at having been "robbed" of the presidency that led to his sub-legal methods of making sure he didn't get "robbed" again.
> throw out the ENTIRE 25 electoral votes in Florida as if they had gone to a different candidate
And this is justice for the voters how?
> the Constitution says it is up to the newly elected House of Representatives to select the President. It seems the only way to ensure the rule of law is obeyed.
How convenient. Why doesn't the "rule of law" insist on determining the correct vote? That would let us leave the SC out of it altogether.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
. . . and they double-team the intern?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
I don't give a rats ass about your opinion and I'm lucky enough to live outside of the O.K.U.S.A.
How does that sit with you?
Just fine, you expect me to be pissed that you don't care about my opinion and don't live where I do?
Finkployd
All this means is that it wasn't fraud. It doesn't mean that the votes were cast as intended, which (AFAIK) is a perfectly valid reason to challenge for a new election.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I'm not saying that this is the cause for the confusion, but I am saying that people are being irresponsible by blaming voter confusion on stupidity.
I have a visual condition known as "Central Serous Choroidopathy". I'm 31, in otherwise good health, and considered extremely intelligent by the going standards.
However, when I look at writing, arrows, holes, etc., I see a double image superimposed slightly above the actual location of the true image. I have to be extremely careful when lining things up horizontally.
The ballot in Palm Beach would have given me fits for this reason.
Now, how does this apply to the people of Palm Beach? Well, a good number of elderly people are afflicted with a condition called "macular degeneration", which can exhibit many of the same symptoms as my own condition. In fact, the vast majority of patients in the retinal specialist's office are elderly. Given the demographics of the Palm Beach area, confusion based on this condition is not unlikely.
The moral? People aren't stupid just because they aren't confused by the same things that confuse you.
Regards,
Regards,
-scott
My credentials: MS in math, 4 years experience as a quality control statistician.
Here are some "flaws" in the analysis at http://web.mit.edu/norstadt/Public/election.pdf
1. The data at best supports the proposition that the Bush/Buchanan voting ratio for Palm Beach is significantly different than other Florida counties (but maybe not, see 5 below), but not that it is different from the "desired voting" ratio for Palm Beach.
2. Using Bush/Buchanan ratio is very weird - should use Buchanan/All ratio. Trying to introduce outside knowledge inherent in focusing on how "conservative" voters split introduces preconceptions that are non-statistical in nature. Why not Buchanan/Nader?
3. Normalization set chosen to be Florida. Why? Why not all US? Why not all of the South?
4. Expected distribution of Buchanan support rates by county is not known and cannot be determined by choosing a model. You must provide a non-statistical argument for why you believe the model holds.
5. In particular, even if the counties are normally distributed (doubtful), the maximum value should be chosen from an extreme value distribution, not a normal distribution. Extreme value distributions have very heavy tails. The fact that the choice of Palm Beach was made post hoc changes how the analysis should be done.
6. The basic premise is flawed because the vote rate might actually be from a different distribution than other counties. For example consider the distribution of voters born in Palm Beach. You cannot look at a model to infer that the emperical distribution is "wrong". In other words, maybe Palm Beach really does have more Buchanan supporters.
7. If the hypothesis is "the butterfly ballot causes confusion between candidate 2 and candidate 3", then it would be proper to test that hypothesis on ALL races using that ballot. In particular the Senate race on the same ballot did not display any anomoly despite having 3 candidates and comparable total votes.
I am not saying that the result is not anamolous, just that it is very easy to conclude that it is for the wrong reasons.
given the split in the popular vote, house and senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the VOTERS had in mind.
Watching any of the financial news channels, most commentators are rather OPEN about saying that they prefer gridlock, a system where government can't get anything done. This is because it is assumed that anything government gets done will be destructive in nature. gridlock is good for business.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The polls in western FL would have closed at the same time the polls in the rest of FL did, and I was watching the news that day; it wasn't until at least 9pm EST (2 hrs after FL polls closed) that the TV stations first gave FL to Gore. There's no way the media influenced that sort of voting pattern in FL.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
In this case, Voter News Service's EXIT POLLS showed Gore leading substantially. The news channel decision desks then decided to announce Gore was winning about 15 minutes before the polls closed in the eastern time zone part of florida and 75 minutes before the polls closed in the western timezone. No actual numbers were released but the news channels seem to do a pretty good job of making it seem like their numbers are the actual numbers.
As to challenges to the ballot needing to be made before the election, if true, this will indeed be the most powerful republican argument.
All of the parties had to approve the ballot before the election and the supervisor of elections in Dade county, the person who made them -- with the intent of helping seniors by using larger fonts, is a democrat. ANYONE could have contested the ballot to get it changed before the elections if they thought it wouldn't be clear.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Florida still has 3000+ absentee ballots expected, from overseas.
FLORIDA RECOUNT 32 of 67 counties reporting
PRESIDENT Loss/Gain New Total
Bush +346 2,909,481
Gore +1,189 2,908,540
I doubt, from the recount's results so far, that Gore and Bush will be more than 3000 votes apart after the recount.
This means the absentee ballots must be counted. They're due within 10 days, if postmarked from anywhere in the world by Nov 7.
We won't know our next president until Nov 17.
[
Gore could beat up Cheney and Bush together, by himself, though Cheyey might put up a fight.
But Bush's piddly arms and legs would snap like twigs - you know he was a cheerleader? Liberman's probably a pacifist, so he'd stay out of it.
Of course, Ventura would twist the four of them together into a pretzel...
I can just picture it now - wonder if celebrity death match has done (or will do) this fight?
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
I was initialy skeptical myself, but further analysis has convinced me that all is not well in Palm Beach. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties. The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all, as shown in the graph at the bottom of my analysis page
Is that why Buchanan is even saying that a lot of those votes were probably not intended for him?
I really don't know. Pat may have his own reason to sell himself short if he wants Gore to get elected instead of Bush.
Finkployd
Remember that states don't actually vote in blocks. Let's say that Wyoming went to Ford (purely hypothetical; I know not what states went where). Three Republican electors would be appointed, each one charged with voting for Ford. That's right: three electoral votes means three electors.
In 1976, one of them (again, not from Wyoming. I'm sure someone could look this up though, but I'm at work and I don't care) voted for then CA Gov. Reagan.
I agree with you that exit polls are often used unproductively, but I would like to point out that in this particular case, the exit-polling data might actually re-inforce the notion that something went wrong in the actual vote tabulation.
In particular, we now know that 19,000+ ballots (out of about 450,000) were invalidated due to double voting in Palm Beach county. The strong presumption is that the huge number of invalid ballots was caused by the ergonomic problems the ballot used presented to voters in practice. If you're trying to project who will win Florida, your mathematical model for a Democratic victory almost certainly includes knowing how many votes are coming out of a Democratic stronghold like Palm Beach, and what the ratio was like. If over 20,000 ballots are misvoted or invalid in the county, your numbers are going to be screwed up, and your early projection will be wrong. Now, 20K ballots is only .3% of the state total, and can't explain the rush to call the state all by itself, but it's clear that if there were an error of this magnitude, you would have expected a much rosier outlook for the Gore vote in Florida than what got counted.
Babar
The third rule broken, that may tie this all together is that according to my paper, the ballots are supposed to be one printed page, facing one blank page. This and all the talk about the ballots being "approved" makes me wonder at what point said approval took place. I wouldn't be suprized if the approval being touted was of the proof sheets (approving order, spelling, inclusion, etc) and then at some point in the printing process some genius decided to save space (or was confused by their instructions to have the first page be the presidential candidates) by throwing the two pages of the same section facing each other.
This makes a lot more sense, IMHO than the idea that there was an unquestioned acceptance of the final form of a ballot that broke counry election law and was at least partially confusing on its face (insert standard rant about /.ers who assume that their particular skill set is intelligence and for something to be confusing to someone else but not to them is a sign that the other person is stupid) and definitly confusing to someone who was used to the correct format of that ballot. (people have asked how someone could vote president, then everything else, then only realize they had made a mistake after handing in their ballot. It makes perfect sense to me if you consider these people as expereinced voters in this county. You get your ballot, you vote for president, just as you would normally. You barely even think about the facing page info. you flip through and do the rest of the ballot, then hand it in. as it is being fed through the reader, you see the facing page info again and realize for the first time that those ballot options (which you didn't look at carefully because you had already found your candidate) don't have their circles to the right, but on the left, intermingled with the ones you had been paying attention to. By this time your ballot is gone and you can only look at other blank ballots and try to figure out if this bizzare (and as it turns out illegal) irregularity in your normal ballot has caused you to misvote.)
If someone snuck into your office and replaced your qwerty keyboard with a dvorak (?) one during the night, and you came in and semi touched typed your password, are you a moron because the new keyboard has the correct key/letter combinations clearly labled, or did you make a reasonable mistake based on an unexpected, and somewhat confusing change in format? If you don't totally realize this until after you've hit enter, is that your stupid mistake, and you'll just have to be blocked out of your machine and deal with it, or is it something that needs to be reset and re-entered, now that you understand the changes made?
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Not really. You said that they shouldn't be allowed to make predictions. I said that they should be allowed to predict anything they want, but that the information they would most like to base their projections on should be kept secret until after all of the polls close.
In other words, keep preliminary vote counts secret and prevent exit polling. If they can predict outcomes without that data, then let 'em. They should be free to announce their guesses, but shouldn't be given the information to influence those outcomes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In VA, we got ONE sheet of paper, divided with thick black lines. Pres. candidates on the left, other issues on the right. You got a felt pen, colored in a circle next to the names, and fed it into a machine that read the dots. I have never seen one of these weird-ass pin-books, and am having a difficult time figuring out why they're so popular when all they seem to do is make it difficult for everyone...?
/."
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
The claim that voters voted for Buchanan out of confusion, meaning to vote for Gore, is all but cast iron proven by the statistics, particularly the massive outlier on the Bush/Buchanan popularity graph. Even Buchanan thinks it's true. It's more than just an eyewitness account.
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Xenu loves you!
These people didn't wait until the last minute. Some were waiting in line since 5:30!!!
...
Sheesh...the polls were supposed to be open to anyone who arrived before 7. Why the hell should I interpret that as "the polls are open till 7, but get there 4 hours ahead of time just in case"
Got to the polling places at 6:00pm. I left work at 4:30. It sounds alot easier than it is.
What if we tattoo barcodes on the back of the necks of each candidate and let the voters scan them with a Cue:Cat. Haha! Bet you didn't think you would see Cue:Cat mentioned during this discussion.
I thought I had an appetite for destruction, but all I really wanted was a club sandwich. --Homer J.
Even if that's correct, you have to apply it to all counties, not just Palm Beach County. Given that a number of counties have thousands of voters listed as "Independent Party" members, you can hardly say that in Palm Beach County, the "Independent Party" is really the Reform Party, but in all other counties, the Independent Party is some other party, and what is listed as the "Reform Party" is that same entity we know as the Reform Party.
So, for the sake of argument, let's say that what is listed as the "Independent Party" in this document is what we commonly call the Reform Party. Even then, your statement that Palm Beach County has more Reform Party members than the rest of the state combined is still incorrect. And Palm Beach County's 3407 votes for Buchanan is still suspiciously high, based on the results of the rest of the state.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
From National Review:
On March 12, 1996, Pat Buchanan won 8,788 votes in the Republican primary from the four congressional districts that share Palm Beach County. In Rep. Wexler's 19th congressional district, Buchanan won his largest vote of the four -- 2,961.
Buchanan's top strategist in the 1996 nomination race, Human Events editor Terry Jeffrey, explains that by the time of the 1996 Florida primary, the fight was essentially over. Buchanan had lost South Carolina on March 2, and five other primaries, including Georgia's on March 5. Still, with the nomination lost, and Buchanan not campaigning in Palm Beach (he made only a brief appearance in Miami on March 6), over 8,000 diehard Buchanan Brigaders voted in support of his message.
Jeffrey says that it is "completely believable to me" that there were 3,000 Buchanan supporters again voting for their man in the Palm Beach area this Tuesday. "Over 8,000 people cast a symbolic vote for Pat and his message after he was eliminated from competition in 1996."
We've been subjected to that type of ballot out here on the Left coast for as long as I can remember. We have at least two precincts just in one city alone that are comprised of well over 70% senior citizens. Yet amazingly, the people in those precincts seem to be able to vote for who they want and not blame their palsy on a badly-designed ballot. I officially raise the BS flag on those so-called "irregularities." Sounds like political obfuscation rather than a poorly-designed ballot.
So you say. Expert testimony says otherwise. Jakob Nielsen:
Nielsen doesn't go so far as to say that this is specifcally what cost Gore the election, but with 19K incorrectly filled out ballots in two counties, I'd say it's a pretty fair guess.
Additionally, from Dan Bricklin:
Nineteen thousand. People with poor vision, people who received incorrect sample ballots. It's obvious that the statistical anomoly is there, especially when graphed. So rather than grousing about how dumb people are, why not design a ballot that doesn't skew the result?As you say, lack of EC gives unfair power to urbanized areas at the expense of the needs or rural ones, but I'm saying the that EC in place has the opposite effect, giving people in rural areas more than their fair say. (I theorize that this is one of the reasons religion plays a big part in politics - religion is more popular in the rural areas where people's individual opinions have more political sway.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The problem was that there were people IN LINE WAITING TO VOTE before 7pm. They were all told to go home.
I suppose it should be ok to have one booth for every district in the state and have every person in the district use that booth -- and if they can't get in there in time, tough shit. It isn't right. The districts that had the massive lines WERE NOT PROPERLY PREPARED for the number of people that showed up to vote.
The reason why this wasn't FAIR is because people who showed up before 7 in other places across the state were actually ABLE TO VOTE.
Funny, then, that it's not believable to Buchanan himself.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
No, the only people who were able to fit inside of the building at 7 were allowed to vote. Everyone outside was told to go home.
> The ballot was approved by a democratic official
/.ers in this thread are displaying.
That's irrelevant. The official in question might have the same cavalier attitude toward user interfaces that so many
At any rate, is the party system so entrenched that a party official speaks for the voters in his/her jurisdiction? This is not, IMO, a party issue at all. It's a matter of getting the correct numbers for the will of the people.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You got me sorry, I was pulling that one from memory.
Who have I been getting on for lack of facts?
Finkployd
If every state divided their electoral votes the way Maine does (by district) you could still have a disparity between popular and electoral votes. the only way to elect a president by popular vote is to abolish the electoral college. Anything else is mathmatically impossible.
by "the wrong way" i most certainly do not mean me, i am not even a citizen of florida. what i meant was the electoral votes should reflect the expressed wishes of the people of florida . personally i think that since the people are obviously divided, so should the electoral votes (13-12) but like i said, i am not a floridian and it is not up to me.
But it will be this way, regardless. The people of Florida voted, and while it was a close decision they said they wanted to send someone to the White House (just who is arguable at the moment, though it does seem that Bush is likely to win this).
That's the thing people don't realize about "the election." It is not a nationwide election, but rather it's 50 statewide elections. This is done in such a way as to balance out the effects of varying population density in the states so that small states still get a significant voice in the election.
neither deserves them all.
Frankly, neither deserves the Presidency. But barring some truly extraordinary events that's unescapable at this point. Given that, we may as well let the system run its course. Don't forget, either one can still win.
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Under the electorial system (which I agree is not perfect, but I don't know a perfect system), one must gain wide support from across the country. Without it, all you have to do is campaign in TX, FL, NY, and CA. The rest of the states are too small to care about. The EC system strikes a balance.
Finkployd
See this Slashdot article, with links to Florida's own documents, refuting this suddenly-popular myth.
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Xenu loves you!
Borrowing from the poster in one of yesterday's articles who posted a shell script to parse cnn.com and tell how many more votes Bush had than Gore in Florida:
./bush references the script posted yesterday.
I present to you the web based Bush-o-meter!! It can be found at http://www.cs.luther.edu/~bumpusad/bush/
For those who are interested here's the source:
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
echo "<html><head><meta HTTP-EQUIV=\"REFRESH\" content=\"60\"><title>The Bush-O-Meter</title></head>" > index.html
echo "<body bgcolor=\"#000000\" text=\"#FFFF00\">" >> index.html
echo "<center><h1>The Bush-O-Meter</h1><br><br>">>index.html
echo "<b>">>index.html
./bush >> index.html
./bush
echo "</html>" >> index.html
sleep 60
done
</tt><P>In here
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I'd think this was obvious, but why has nobody pointed it out yet?
If they let the Palm Beach county results stand, then GW Bush will have been elected by 2000 confused idiots.
If they let those votes be counted for Gore instead, then Gore will have been elected by 2000 people who had to backpedal on their inaccurate statements.
Either way, it sounds like a fair election...
This article puts the total number of Reform registrants at 304.
There are clearly some Buchanan voters in the county, but the notion that it goes into four digits is absurd and contrary to the available evidence.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
So a blind person or
a person with no arms
or a person with spastic
twitches shouldn't
be allowed to vote?
I've covered this several times. You ask for help if you are unable to vote properly on your own (as I said in the post you replied to)
Finkployd
The principle of a democracy is that the majority opinion is the one that is enacted. If you think this is mob rule, what's the alternative?
A republic, like we have.
Finkployd
The idea that the electoral college is there to make up for a lack of technology is a myth. If they had wanted the election to be by popular vote, they could have had the electors carry the tally and add it up in Washington just as easily.
The electoral college prevents small yet populous areas of the country from taking control. Look at the map right now. Al Gore has the popular vote, but has very little area on the map. Bush is a clear winner because just about everywhere, you only have to travel a little bit to be in solid Bush territory. With Gore, there would be many places where for hundreds of miles around he lost. That would result in broad swaths of disatisfaction.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In regards to the Palm Beach county ballot.
1. It was approved IN ADVANCE by an election official that just happened to be a democrat. You would think if the ballot was unfavorable to Gore, this person would have noticed it.
2. This ballot was available for PUBLIC INSPECTION many weeks before the actual vote was taken.
3. All voters have 3 chances to vote correctly. If at first, you punch the wrong holes, you SHOULD NOT submit your ballot, instead you go to the marshal at the polling place, explain the problem, and request another vote. Any voter can request a new ballot up to two times.
4. If the ballot was confusing, there were poll workings READY AND WILLING to answer any and all questions about the ballot itself.
Now, with all that said, I think it's a shame that people may have inadvertently voted for the wrong person (or voted twice which should be a no-no for anyone with an IQ over 10) but the sad fact is that they did so due to their own ignorance or unwillingness to ask for help.
19,000 people in Palm Beach County voted for TWO PEOPLE for President. TWO PEOPLE!?! How can anyone with half a brain think their vote will be valid by voting for two people for the same office? If these 19,000 people had asked for help, a new ballot, or simply taken their time to READ the ballot, this certainly would not have happened.
While I agree that the ballot could have been constructed better, its design is certainly not overly confusing for anyone willing to take the time to read and understand it. That is called BEING INFORMED people. Those who decide to be ignorant do not deserve the right to complain after the fact.
This is just one more example of how this country is turning into a society of victims. Nothing is ever the fault of the individual, it's always some larger social problem and we are all helpless. God forbid that voters actually READ the ballot, bother to ask questions, or UNDERSTAND the process they are participating in.
It's not reasonable. Period. Unless they show that there was willful misconduct and election fraud (which I've seen no evidence of there being), I can't see how they can allow them to vote again.
Imagine all of the Nader supporters going back to the polls... but THIS time, they know just how incredibly important their vote is for getting a liberal into the White House. I could all but guarantee you that the Nader vote shrinks to close to zero and those votes go to Gore. This would be true at the county level, state level, or national level.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I would like to know, however, what the problem might be with doing a re-vote, especially from the Bush camp?
There seem to be 4 likely reasons for the high Buchanan count:
1) Lots of people like Buchanan in Palm Beach
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
4) Bush AND Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan.
Looking at these 4:
1) The Buchanan numbers are legit. A re-vote would likely NOT hurt Bush, could even help him, if Buchanan voters changed to Bush to get the "next best thing. No reason for the Bush camp to complain.
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Bush. Again, no reason for the Bush camp to complain.
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a revote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Gore. If the Bush camp complains, they don't look like they're interested in a fair vote (fair == peoples votes count as they wish)
4) Both camps accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would, again, allow people to properly express their desires.
How could the Bush camp legitimately complain about any of these?
A switch from Nader might possibly help Gore unfairly - surely something could be devised to rule this out, as well as a similar case for Buchanan.
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In any case, the recount results are skewing heavily to Gore, so my whole point may be moot. Let's hope so.
That's because the big counties -- which went heavily to Gore -- have already reported. For the most part, the counties remaining are smaller, rural counties which were won handily by Bush. See for yourself.
I think it's clear that Bush would lose a revote. Or at least highly likely. But a revote should be 100% out of the question right now. People will vote differently knowing that the outcome of one county's vote will decide the election. The rest of the country would be in an outrage (except for the Gore supports who want to see him elected, fairness be damned).
The problems should be addressed. I've seen many accusations of African Americans being turned away. I've heard a lot about people being denied a new ballot after incorrectly marking their original one. But these accusations are so far not confirmed as having happened. The main issue here is if the ballot was unfair and misleading.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I've been thinking about this. What you're asking, if interpreted literally, would probably be unconstitutional. As much as I disagree with the whole mess, the news organisations are perfectly within their rights to make any predictions they want, and to broadcast those predictions as they see fit.
However, it should be possible to keep the information used to make the predictions secret until after all ballots are closed. It shouldn't matter if NBC is incorrectly putting a state in a candidate's column if they're doing it after all votes have been collected. At that point, it can no longer influence the election.
How would I do this? Make it illegally, nationally, to release prelimary ballot counts until after every polling place in the US has closed. Furthermore, make all polling places and their parking lots campaign-free and media-free zones. No exit polls. No pestering the voters. No prediction data until after everyone has voted. This would give the people the right to cast their votes without undue pressure from the media, but it would not deprive anyone of their first amendment rights to discuss the election.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The photo doesn't show much. The pages are metal-framed, so they coudl've been sexured quite well as opposed to as if they were just cardboard. But, that doesn't mean they were. I'm only suggesting it as a devil's advocate and no one has refuted or confirmed it yet.
In my own experience where I voted, our books are mounted such that the pages leave a gap between them such that a different column of holes is exposed for eahc page turn. The whole book was quite loose in addition to the actual pages.
What are you missing? Well, one thing were missing is a better photo of the real setup to show if play in the book was possible.
Regarding what we're missing regarding other mistaken votes is this. We know that Gore and Bush both have extremely high precentages in ANY county ANYWHERE. Let's say 48% each to give room for third parties. With that large portion of Gore voters compared to a smaller population of [whatever-third-party-candidate-was-below-Buchanan ], and the same liklihood to "screw up", more Gore voters, as a number, would screw up than Buchanan voters. If we say there are 1,000,000 voters in the county, 480,000 would've wanted to vote for Gore, and say, 4,800 for [other candidate]. Assuming a 10% screw-up rate, that 48,000 Gore votes that wentto Buchanan and 480 that went to [other candidate].
So, yes, voters for [other candidate] could've screwed up too, but a much smaller number than for Gore.
In the Republican primary in that exact same area, thanks to support from a relative, Buchanan got up to 8,000 votes in 1996. In a primary, where a very small number of republicans actually turn out compared to election days.
You're not considering several very important factors...
First, that was the Republican Primary, meaning only Republicans voted for Buchanan. If your argument is to hold, the numbers for Bush should have been lower (because of Republicans jumping ship), not Gore.
Second, this was a few years before Buchanan's infamous Hitler quote. (Something to the effect of "He was a great stratigest.") That district is very heavily Jewish, and I think it is safe to say that quite a lot of the support Buchanan held in '96 has since evaporated.
Third, there are the actual voters, who went to the polls, and told about the confusion. They were there, you weren't.
Besides the fact that your argument is obviously partisan (wishing to send the vote to the Republican-controlled House), it's also wrong.
Bush didn't win the Popular Vote, and he will never be My president.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Hey! That's my Slashcode site!
I have arrived; I've been quoted on Slashdot.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If there was one ballot paper for the whole country, or even one per state, then the Democrats' approval would be fatal to this argument. They would have hired a banel of experts to review them, and paid people from all over the country/state to come in and try voting for different candidates under realistic circumstances.
But when every tiny little county can design its own ballot system, you can't do this. The most you can do is get some party enthusiast at the bottom of the food chain to give them the once-over and make sure your candidate's name is spelled correctly.
So citing the Democrats' ratification of the ballot as if Al Gore himself signed off on it is misleading, to say the least. The voters certainly didn't like it: they were complaining as soon as they got into the ballot booth.
--
Xenu loves you!
Here's the problem:
Any system that allows a voter to submit an invalidly filled out form without feedback to allow him or her to fix it seriously flawed. In Virginia, we use with the machines with push buttons or a form with circles to fill out which is fed into a machine. In the former, invalid choices cannot happen in the first place. In the latter, invalid choices would presumably be immediately rejected by the machine. The fact that Palm Beach let 19,000 people submit broken ballots and walk off in happy ignorance says more about the election officials than the voters.
Statistical abberations aside, the system they used is still seriously broken. I wonder how many other communities have the same problem?
Does anyone know why Oregon still isn't decided?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
And this is justice for the voters how?
Given the margin of difference and the likely claims of fraud possible from BOTH sides, it's probable for it to take months or years to figure out what happened in this vote and then there's no way to know for sure( 3000 votes for Buchannan may have been 3000 votes for Buchannan and there's no way to tell because we have a secret ballot ). The loser is either going to have to accept Florida's recount as it is, not challenging it in court, or else Florida's electoral votes must be thrown out to prevent a Constitutional crisis. If they're thrown out, that means that it becomes a matter of nobody garnering at least half of the electoral votes and thus is up to the House. If it doesn't get thrown out, Bush wins(as it appears he will (up by 920 as of right now)) and goes to court for a lengthy period of time, Clinton and Gore get kicked out of office on schedule and due to lack of a President, the Speaker of the House, likely Denny Hastert again, will become president until the courts finish. In effect, denying Bush his rightful win and shortening his deserved term.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Sure. But look at it this way -- the position of the folks out in Pittsburgh is the same as if they were in the great national pot -- at least from the point of view of the power of the One Voter. Natapoff's position is that if you want to create a situation where some individual voter is pivotal then the electoral college is better than direct elections. Actually, I think that if you accept Natapoff's definition, then you have to ask : why break it down by state? What is the optimal size of a geographic block of voters?
I don't buy Natapoff's definition of political power, and thus I don't buy his entire argument that the electoral college is somehow more democratic. However, getting people feeling that their individual vote makes a difference is a very good thing for the health of our political system. It may be that in the most democratic of systems -- direct popular election, that we don't have the optimal system from the point of incentive to participate.
If we keep the electoral college, I'd like to see electoral votes tied to individual congressional districts. This would produce many more instances of individual voters holding the key to a candidate's success. It will also equalize the importance of people living in less populous states.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Here's a twist:
Let's say florida goes to bush, and the west palm beach thing is ignored. What if ten of florida's 25 electoral voters think to themselves, "Well, that palm beach thing should matter. Besides, Gore won the national popular vote. I think he should be president."
Guess what - they can do this. The presidental election is decided on this vote, and not before. Whatever happens in florida, these elected electors can vote ANY WAY THEY WANT.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
I heard a woman describe her experience in her own words on NPR. She showed her ballot to a poll supervisor and asked who she had voted for. When told, "Buchanan", she asked for a new ballot. The supervisor told her it was too late, took the ballot from her hand and deposited it in the ballot box.
Granted, this could be faked, but I wouldn't call it hearsay.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
First off, the registered voters all saw the ballot in advance, and none of them complained *then*.
I thought someone mentioned this already but...the ballot changed between the one that the voters saw beforehand and the one on the day of the election.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
No. I was channel surfing between CNN, CBS, and various others before, during, and after the bad call. Every single channel said "the polls in Florida will close at X o'clock, and we'll have announcements then". Then some commercials. Then "the polls in Florida are now closed, and our exit polls indicate..."
If you're going to throw out an accusation like that, you better back it up with solid URLs from reputable news sources.
I think you're missing the point. People aren't bitching about whether the system is a good implementation of what we're "supposed to be" or not. They are bitching because they want democracy instead of a republic. Communications are faster than they were in 1790. Republics are obsolete.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't believe that further recounts or reballoting will reduce the error below this level, so let's just accept that there will always be the chance that the "wrong" candidate won by statistical fluctuation.
Any election will have problems and redoing the vote will only introduce a new set of problems. Can you imagine that a new ballot in W. Palm Beach, with the entire presidency resting upon its outcome, would be free of irregularities? We have to do the best we can and them move forward.
If Gore takes this to court, then whoever prevails will have no legitimacy in the U.S. If Gore prevails on a re-election, then Bush partisans will believe with reason that they were robbbed, while if Bush wins in court and a re-election does not take place in W. Palm Beach, Gore partisans will believe with reason that they were robbed. The country could never come together behind the new president whoever he would be.
As much as it rankles (I strongly supported Gore) I would call upon Gore not to challenge the Florida balloting in court. This would just do far more damage to our nation than a Bush presidency. He must call on his supporters to support whoever wins today's recount and look to the future.
Nixon refused to contest the voter fraud in 1960 because he was concerned that tying up the succession of the presidency for six months or so would do more harm to the nation than Kennedy would. (He discusses this in his memoirs)
Nixon also realized that such a challenge would permanently label him as a sore loser and kill his political future. Gore can reinvent himself as well as Nixon could and I would not be surprised to see "the new Gore" emerge in eight years to win the presidency, just as the new Nixon did in 1968.
The extremely low probability quoted on the PDF bage about the vote is only a probability statement assuming a certain probability distribution for all Bush and Buchanan voters in the state. That model says that all individual likely to vote for Bush have the same, small probability of voting for Buchanan. Under that assumption, the chances of getting the Palm Beach result are as low as they quote. The real question is the appropriateness of that assumption.
In the hands of people who only took two semesters of statistics, this type of analysis is easily misused.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I'm curious about that too, but my response would be to ask another person at the polling station for help. If nobody there knew how it worked, then what does that say for Palm Beach?
Finkployd
Or you can look at this chart , with total number of Buchanan votes per Florida county. Granted, it's in terms of actual number of votes, instead of overall percentages. Anyone know of a similar-style chart in terms of percentage of vote instead?
make world, not war
Palm Beach =? Palm Pilot
By that time Nixon had already established a firm reputation as a person whose words could not be believed. He couldn't even be trusted to lie. (See Helen Gehagen Douglas [I hope I got that name right], and many others). I don't think that we can take his statements of why he did or didn't do something as evidence for anything.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Hell, no. It's why "many" in Alberta and BC support the idea of freaking seperating from the rest of you losers!
Alaska, BC, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon all the way! Why we'd have it *ALL*! Oil, pot, potatoes, cattle, high-tech, salmon, lumber, moose and more!
I think we'd call our new country "Utopia."
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Nonsense. A popular vote doesn't really address the problem, because votes for Nader would still be "votes for Bush".
A sensible way to address the problem would be to introduce instant runoffs, or some other means of redistributing votes from defeated third party candidates.
2->Bush,
3->Gore
4->Nader
The (1) votes are counted. At this stage someone (suppose Buchanan) is coming dead last. So Buchanan's votes redistributed based on who the Buchanan voters placed at (2). Whoever is winning on the two-(leading)-party-preferred test wins. IMO this is a fairer way to do things, and you avouid having the voters jump through hoops to circumvent a flawed system (for example, "vote swapping")
I had a similar punch system in Colorado, and I didn't have any trouble at all figuring out what I was supposed to punch.
Given the layout of the form, I can't see how it would be possible to pick the second hole and think you were voting for Gore. It's right in between Gore and Bush - did they think it meant they would vote for both of them at once?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it fiscally responsible to disenfranchise over nineteen thousand of your county's voters? When the reprecussions will involve court challenges, possible revotes, etc?
Many people have commented here that even idiots have the right to vote. I fully support that. But if you're going to allow idiots to vote, your voting method must be idiot-proof.
Where I voted, they used a push-button electronic system which would not allow you to cast more than one vote for each office (except for one local board where you were supposed to vote for three candidates, and there it did not let you vote for more than three). With this punch-card system, people can punch out more than one circle for a given office, and there's no error checking, nothing to tell them right then and there that they did not cast a valid vote. This is an unacceptable voting method.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
If there *was* a usability issue - that had its time and place to be discussed and fixed.
If it wasn't at the right point, then it can't be now. Shouldn't be. The second-guessing of the system never ends. Do we need to check all the other close states? Perhaps people didn't MEAN to vote for Gore. Maybe people who MEANT to vote for Buchanan voted for Gore!
We don't know. There was a review period.
http://www.newsma x.c om/archives/articles/2000/11/8/161334.shtml
Nielsen doesn't go so far as to say that this is specifcally what cost Gore the election, but with 19K incorrectly filled out ballots in two counties, I'd say it's a pretty fair guess.
Nielsen's a smart guy. And he knows that you can't tell, with the info we have.
http://www.newsm ax. com/archives/articles/2000/11/8/161334.shtml
Seems that there are lot of independant voters - who might well be legitimate Buchanan supporters.
The fact that 19k versus 3k punched 2 boxes on the Senate also isn't statically proven - the Presidental vote historically gets a lot more, people abstain on other races that they don't know/care about. So that, in and of by itself doesn't mean that there WAS an error. Further, I don't know if it checked WHICH two where punched. I don't think it does.
So rather than grousing about how dumb people are, why not design a ballot that doesn't skew the result?
Because its after the fact.
And because everybody had a chance to object before the election. If nobody did... Well, we've got checks and balances, and if they're unused....
Then you can't complain that they didn't catch problems.
Addison
You mean a high density of elderly people, many with limited vision? They should have just as much of a say as anyone else.
Also, don't you think it's somewhat ridiculous to elect a president based upon such a narrow margin of uncertainty? I think perhaps a national revote would be more in order.
Let's face it, the point of elections is to find out what candidate the people want to elect. If the elections are misleading, then the valid opinion of the people isn't fully expressed. I don't think a revote is unconstitutional at all, as long as it's done fairly.
I do think it's unfair that the media projected states to one or another candidate before the polls were fully closed. Very interesting is that Florida was projected to Gore after only a small percentage of votes, yet Bush was actually leading in the percentage of votes thus far. Hmm, was the media trying to sway the voters in some way? Anyone know of pyschology of voting? are people more likely to vote for their candidate if (s)he is winning or losing? And by alot or a little?
make world, not war
Many people have pointed out that challenges to the ballot should have been made before the election. But the potential confusion between the Gore dot and the Buchanan dot were only the lesser part of the problem. The issue is that the ballot didn't match up with the sample ballot that was given out before the election and posted at the polling place. People who looked at that ballot to figure out how to vote (I know I did) might well have gone by position, especially if the name-hole correspondence was the least bit unclear. That's the basis on which to challenge this ballot.
Also worth noting is that Buchanan himself has stated that he doesn't think he deserves most of those votes, and he'd like us to find out who they were meant for. You have to admire that, considering that the man can't be a Gore fan...
- Michael
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Yes, it is. With punch cards, you can punch out the circles for more than one candidate for an office, and there is nothing to indicate to you that you have not cast a valid vote. If a punch-card system were modified to have some immediate, error-checking feedback, that would let a voter know right away if he had not cast a valid vote when he might have thought that he had, that would be OK.
Idiots have and should have the right to vote. But if you're going to allow idiots to vote, your voting system must be idiot-proof.
Also, what's wrong with using old technology for something important? Old technology permits you to pick techniques that are proven and reliable.
The punch-card system is not proven and reliable. There have always been problems with it (as there always have with any voting system, but some more than others)--it's just that most of the time, the irregularities don't make a difference in the election, so they are not reported in the national press. Here they do.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
I agree, and part of me thinks that if it were reversed, the Bush followers wouldn't be crying and screaming like the Gore followers are. Would the republicans have someone like Jessee Jackson down there trying to rile up the masses? Unfortunatly, I think what were seeing here is liberalism in motion...
No personal responsibility. Government will take care of me. I can be an idiot with no consequences.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
With an electoral college, you can get elected (in a 2-way race; the ratios are probably the same for more) with ~31% of the vote while the other guy gets 69% of the vote. Without the electoral college you need over 50%.
Don't forget that another purpose of the electoral college is to trim the number of candidates who ultimately get voted on in the electoral contest. We do require a mojority of the votes to be elected by the college, but rarely are presidents elected with a majority of the popular vote.
So no, you wouldn't have to get 50%+ to win under a popular vote -- you would need still only 30% or so, because the third parties and such chip away pretty significantly, especially in a situation where you're not "wasting" your vote by voting for a third party (in other words, the electoral college winner-takes-all discourages voting for a third party).
if it were purely popular we would have a LOT more third-party candidates, and you'd probably wind up with presidents being elected by 25% of the population, all grouped geographically. You'd get the whole Northeast together to elect a Boston guy who everyone else in the country hates, but their vote would be fractured among multiple parties, and with no electoral system to "recombine" their votes, they would essentially eat their own.
As bad as it is that we discourage third parties with the electoral college, the other side of "pure" democracy is a place like Italy, where you have 30+ political parties, and no one even remotely has a consensus. Pure popular vote isn't all fun and games like most portray it -- I can't think of a single successful government on Earth that uses popular vote that hasn't fragmented badly into numerous factions.
Most places have parliamentary systems where your representatives elect the president. Surprise -- that's a lot like the electoral system, except the electoral system is actually more democratic because we specifically vote the electors for that purpose, as opposed to having it be merely one job of the legislature. We are still, by far, more democratic that any other long-standing government, and we've accomplished that by carefully using the pragmatic aspects of a republic when necessary...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
On election night, Brokaw talked with a Florida Election Commision official who said that the 10-day rule applied to overseas absentees (i.e. postmark by 7th, receive by 17th).
Sounds pretty official to me.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
OK, I'm a little more clear on what you mean. I agree that fair representation within the state is ideal, but it's up to the state. Meaning if you want to change that, change it at the state level. It is also interesting to note that Main does this, and 2 of it's 3 EC votes are going to Gore while 1 is going to Bush.
Finkployd
When he had his press conference. Anyone who believes he intends to allow a recount favor Bush is just ignorant.
KEY WORDS IN SPEECH.
"Even though we won the popular vote" - misquoted I am sure, but why if he is so damn concerned with the EC would he make a POINT to mention this? He seems to be dwelling on it lately!
"Leiberman and I will not contest the results of the recount" paraphrased... I don't have the words... he continued on explaining why the EC must be followed.
Sorry folks, he was playing a political game.
OF COURSE HE ISN'T GOING TO BE THE BAD GUY AND CONTEST THE RECOUNT!
NO SHIT SHERLOCK!
He has the DNC and NAACP to do it for him. Hence his hands are clean. Get the blacks to do his dirty work... it always works.... if you can't win then scream racism
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Buchanan was running nearly 4 times his statewide percentage in a liberal district. That alone should raise some significant eyebrows.
Some points of interest that have already been brought up here:
Palm Beach has 15,000 registered Reform Party members and Broward County has less than 200 registered Reform Party members.
3400 votes for Buchanan is directly in line with every other Florida county that has a similar number of registered Reform Party members.
Buchanan has a residence in Palm Beach as does a close relative. He received 8000 votes in he Republican primary in Florida.
There are more Reform Party registered voters in Palm Beach county measured as a percentage of total registrations than in any other county
in Florida.
Finkployd
- the existence of more than 2 candidates.
- variable voter turnout in different states
The EC diminishes the power of people voting for 3rd party candidates to effectively nil. Case in point: Nader (and no, I didn't vote for him). Nader captured somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5% of the popular vote, and a flat 0% of the EC vote. This means that if you voted for Nader ( or any other 3rd party candidate), your vote didn't even equate to a blip on the radar.Variable voter turnout can give voters in different states different amounts of voting power. Let's say that two states with the same number of EC votes have different levels of voter turnout. People who vote in states with lower levels of voter turnout then have more power than those in states with higher turnout. This translates into a more apathetic voter base that has more individual voting power. So much for all [wo]men created equal.
As for comments about "if you weren't smart enough to figure out how to use the ballot, you aren't smart enough to vote", just realize that this country used to have laws like that. Literacy tests to keep blacks from being able to vote in the south.
Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!
1) those numbers are damn small and the ballot books are fixed to the booth so it can be very difficilt to read and compare.
2) I asked for another ballot and was denied.
3) It can be done better and usually is. It is possible to have unused holes covered and leave spaces between separate issues. when presented with a group of 2 to 7 holes it is much easier to figure out which hole corresponds to which candidate.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Because George McGovern should not have been able to legitimately claim to be the Democratic party candidate after highjacking the primary (in 1972)?
Face it, he and his followers are nutjobs, and they only got the Democratic party nomination because they were fanatical enough to flood the primary. I don't think his nomination was representative of Democratic party feelings at large.
-- (signed) Richard J. Daley
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Maybe, maybe not. If it weren't for mathematicians, we wouldn't have Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. (Do a web search for it if you don't know what I mean.)
I'm willing to believe that Natapoff's argument is actually quite correct, for what it proves.
Here are some assumptions that his model included that I'd like to see removed for a true analysis:
The other assumption, of course, is that in real elections (except in places like Australia where voting is compulsory), not everyone turns up, and a significant proportion of those who do not turn up (possibly not
The two candidate assumption is not a bad one to start off the analysis, because it's a lot harder to analyse three-plus candidate elections. Preferences can be quite complex and "the will of the people" can be inconsistent.
The main problem, IMO, with the electoral college system is precisely this one: non-major parties are discriminated against. In this election, something like 3.6% of the population did not vote for a major candidate. I'm certain that a lot more wanted to but feared a split. Let's call it 5% since that's a not unreasonable round number. The highly dissenting opinions of one in every twenty people in the USA, not confined to a few areas (which is one of the issues raised in Natapoff's analysis, that of intense lobbying or "vote stacking" in some district tipping the election), but across the board, were effectively ignored by being completely unrepresented amongst the electors.
Natapoff's analysis, while valuable, should definitely not be taken as the last word on the subject.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Gore is ahead in the popular vote. He hasn't won shit. He lost over 100,000 votes in less than a day of counting, and has less than 100,000 to loose before Bush pulls ahead. Considering the humongous ammount of deployed members of the military, many of whom have a vendetta against Clinton, the democratic party is making a big mistake by staking a claim on a fleeting moment and is doing much more damage by challenging the rules set down by the constitution. The will of the people is not determined by the popular vote. It is determined by the electors that the choose in the electoral college.
California and New York voters have limited power as a resident of the state that they live in. That is my point. They can choose their elector. Their impact on the national vote count is not what matters, but who the people of that state chooses for an elector. Becuase each state has limited power, the politics of 2 big states can never gain exclusive control of federal politics, no matter how small the voting pool is in other states.
> or else Florida's electoral votes must be thrown out to prevent a Constitutional crisis.
I hardly see how you can avoid a constitutional crisis by throwing out a state's votes. There certainly isn't any constitutional basis for such a move.
> If they're thrown out, that means that it becomes a matter of nobody garnering at least half of the electoral votes and thus is up to the House.
Ah, but the XIIth amendment says The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed . If Florida appoints electors, they get to vote. If Florida does not appoint electors it does not go to the House after all; Al Gore wins on a simple majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.
I still reject the scam^w scheme, even though it now puts "my" man in office. IMO, the only correct solution is to get the correct number of votes from the good citizens of Florida.
> In effect, denying Bush his rightful win and shortening his deserved term.
GWB doesn't have a rightful win without an electoral win, he doesn't have an electoral win without Florida, and he doesn't have Florida unless Florida's laws and voters say he does.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I really went to simple on the analogy, but the reason I used hitler is not only because he was extremely popular in Germany, but that the followers he had were extremely devoted to him, to a point that is hard for us to see anywhere nowadays. Take a small mass of people, such as 11-year-old Backstreet Boys fans, and multiply their devotion by 20 times, and maybe we'll get close.
;)...
Most people outside Germany didn't treat Hitler so warmly, especially once he gained power.
The devoted supporters of Hitler in Germany would have bowled over an unsuspecting Europe if in fact they used a popular vote to determine who would become the leader of a group of nations, and essentially the will of one nation would have been imposed on the rest of the nations.
Back to the United States, I must admit that there has to be a reason why California and New England are so strongly behind Gore and the rest of the country, is not (to varying degrees). Essentially the pro-bush states seem to be saying "What works for you guys won't work for us". And, yes, the same argument could work for Gore. Kinda. Gore seems to be a bit (honestly, a lot. Makes Clinton looks like a catcher way out in right field.) further from the middle. If Bush were any closer to the middle, he would say that his position on abortion is "Kinda."
"Rhetoric aside, your argument is that some people's votes should inherently be worth more than others, because of where they live." Actually, because this pertains to a federal government, I believe that many laws and social programs that are fine for the Bronx won't work for Gopherville, USA. The electoral college puts polarizing issues that are viewed differently depending on where you live back where they belong, in state and local government. It also keeps extremism at a minimum, making both political parties as bubblegumish as they've become. Many of us think that's a good thing
AMEN! Gore is just grasping for straws. If by 5 pm we have the answer, both men should stick to that decision and who ever the loser is should concede. Also, this is a matter that should be resolved by the next election so a similar thing never happens again. How about DITCHING the ancient punch card technology and going for flat screen computers or all electronic? Personally, I think we should have an ATM style voting machine where you stick your smart card or driver's license in the machine and then you vote. At the end of your vote it should give you a couple are you sure y/n messages to really make sure. Also, the only way a vote could be frauded in this case is if someone stole your wallet and we know the thief would not do that because it would be a sure way of getting caught! Also, the votes should be tallied online so that as soon as the polls close, we have the answer and it's right.
Gorkman
A friend of mine lives in Palm Beach county, and he agreed that the ballot was confusing and difficult. He spent a good long time looking it over in the voting booth before he stabbed it with the little toothpick thingy that they used.
Is it reasonable to pick the most powerful job in the world because a minor clerk didn't understand good user interface design?
This could be stuck in the courts for months. If it takes until New Year's, I hope Gore will gracefully concede rather than force a national crisis. I'd rather have a calm nation grumbling about President Nitwit than risk rioting and martial law and whatever else could happen.
I've collated several links and images about this on my personal pages:
p.s. Having half the candidates in a second row may be a violation of Florida election laws. I've heard that mentioned several times on NPR but unfortunately don't have a link.
alright...someone has to call BULLSHIT! Not trolling here but: where did you get your "facts"?
With the exception of the "15,000 in 1996" stat, I got them all from the Florida Election Commission web page. I got the 15,000 from a conflicting report on CNN. It may very well be wrong.
Fact: the reform party in 96 was a FAR different animal that the reform party in 00 (source: simple analysis)
Fact: Over 8,000 people in that county voted for Buchanan in the 1996 Republican primary. (source: Florida Election Commission web page.)
Another fact: the person doing the complaining for the Gore camp, Mr. Daly, is from Cook County, Illinois, which also used a "butterfly ballot" this election, for their judges.
He's never complained about those ballots.
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You're assuming that election is a single round process, but nothing says it has to be. You can have a first round between every candidate, and then a second round allowing only the two candidates that got the most votes in the first round. This is how the president is elected in most countries where he is elected directly by popular vote. Thus, small parties can exist without spoiling the election, because on the second round they must instruct their legions to vote for one of the two popular candidates.
Moreover, I don't seem to see people including the fact that each party has to approve of the ballot, which means the ballot had Democratic approval before the election.
On another note, at what point can we simply say that if you can't follow instructions, or you're really that confused, maybe voting shouldn't be your major concern. You shouldn't have to pass an IQ test in order to vote, but you should at least understand what's going on.
I have also heard that the number of Buchanan votes, while high compared to neighboring counties, is consistent with the number of Buchanan votes in the 1996 election. Maybe the ballot was bad then, too, but I didn't hear people complaining.
I know this seems to lean as being Bush biased, but I did not vote for him and make no claim as to his ability to lead. I tried to keep this neuteral, but these are my thoughts on the matter. I think the whole election was great because of how exciting it became, and voter turnout was high (higher then what they claim, but that's another topic) but I think it's a shame that, regardless who wins, we will have a sore loser who is going to drag this into court and generally make the election feel "dirty."
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
Sounds like a good idea and Idon't hear anything about people picking two candidates for president and then claiming they were confused.
80% turnout is unheard of in most parts of the country.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Maybe next time we should have computer monitors with great big colored buttons and a windows-style "are you really sure yes/no" dialogue boxes for the voters in palm beach.
This is actually a very good idea. Really.
Large colored buttons on a monitor make it easier to map the candidate choice to the action of voting for that candidate. This is particularly useful for many elderly people who may have trouble reading the small print and arrows on a ballot. The confirmation step "You are voting for Jane X. Doe. Yes / No" will further minimize any possibility of mistaken voting.
An additional level of confirmation would be to print out the name of their choice on a slip of paper for the voter to deposit in a box after leaving the voting booth. This step also provides for a backup method of counting the votes in case of computer problems that might prevent an electronic tabulation.*
*Such as hardware problems or software crashes. You might also want to require that the software running the system be open source so that all interested parties can be sure that the code is honest.
By the way, what is with this method of voting by using metal stylus to poke a hole in a piece of paper? This is pretty ancient technology that was developed by the precursor to IBM to count the census in the late 1800's. Surely a world leader in technology such as the United States can come up with something a bit more modern?
Trickster Coyote
Reality is an option.
Ideology is for ideots.
In fact, it has the highest Independent registration in Florida.
Untrue. Other counties have even more members registered with the "Independent Party".
Buchanan received 1 percent of the vote in Palm Beach County. In all the counties in Florida where there is significant Independent Party membership, Buchanan got a similiar 1 percent.
Palm Beach County gave Buchanan no more support proportionally than any other county with high Independent Party registration
Again, demonstrably untrue. Other counties with greater "Independent Party" registrations had less than 1/3 the votes for Buchanan that Palm Beach County did.
I don't know much about NewsMax.com. Are they deliberately lying, or just stupid?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
It's absolutely amazing that a something like this could affect the election. I hope that someone investigates this.
I've seen the palm beach ballot (I assume most of us have by now) and it's not that confusing. Could it have been designed better? Sure, complain to County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, a Democrat. She basically said the ballot was drawn up that way because there were so many candidates and because she wanted the names to be large enough for older people to read. I don't think you can claim Vast Right-Wing Conspiricy(tm) on this one.
:)
We aren't talking about a processor schematic here, it was very simple to follow the bold arrows from the name to the punch hole next to the name. If you are too ----ing stupid to follow directions and do that, then how did you even find the voting place to begin with?
It's been said by others, but it bears repeting. Buchanan has relatives in Palm beach, and often gets pretty good turnout there.
Last, I keep hearing stories of 'thousands' calling up the Gore campaign in tears saying the voted for the wrong person because of the ballot. How on Earth did you realise that at home, hours later, and not WHEN YOU VOTED? The whole thing sounds pretty suspicious.
Finkployd
> Both parties approved them in advance.
Does a party official's approval outweigh my right to a clear ballot? This shouldn't have anything to do with partisan interests. (Though it obviously already has.)
> At that point, it's unfair to the *other* 100,000,000 voters that none of *US* are allowed to reconsider our votes based on what we know of nationwide turnout.
You mean, like everyone west of the Rockies does during every national election?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Buchanan is not conceding any votes. He admits that some people who may have meant to vote for Gore voted for him, but he said on MSNBC last night that the votes are still votes for him, even if cast by mistake.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
But according to yesterday's NY Times, some people messed up, realized it, asked for a new ballot, and were told 'nope, no new ballots'.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
I see your point (although it seems to me that your point proves that people SOULD ask for help when needed, just don't) however, I don't think there were 19,000 handicapped people in Palm Beach, not to mention the 10,000 that didn't have ANY hole punched for president.
I've seen the protestors out there. A few were elderly, a few were visably handicapped, but by and large, most appeared to be idiots. I saw signs spelled wrong, incorrect grammer, etc. I know that is a mean thing to say but I've seen the ballot and it is not confusing AT ALL. Poorly designed? Sure. But if you can't figure it out, and you are too ignorant to ask for help, then TOO BAD.
Finkployd
> That having been said if Gore doesn't win it after the recount he just take the high road and bow out. This will actually be pretty good for the Dems anyway. Whichever party gets the whitehouse is going to loose big time during the mid-term elections. Plus, I have a sneaking feeling that Dubya in office for 4 years (if he even makes it that long...) will probably hand the Dems a nice chunk of votes in 2004. He really is a flaming idiot.
I generally agree with your post... in fact, I have already told friends off-line that I don't expect Bush to last a full four years. If you look at his dubious brainpower, his oft-reported "part time" approach to governership, his longstanding pattern of avoiding responsibility for his personal and political actions, his, errrm, "colorful" past lifestyle (admittedly relevant only in The Land of Investigative Reporters), his clintonesque way of lying^w avoiding the truth when it makes him look bad, his childish tantrums when things don't go to suit him (e.g., his complaint to the FEC about the first parody website that slipped through his domain-squatting blockade, and his abrupt abandonment of family and friends during his election night dinner out, when word about Florida first came across, and his response to Al's second phone call)... when you consider all this, and add in the grude the nation's democrats have over seven years of scorched-earth anti-Clinton investigations, his success at playing president does not seem to be a foregone conclusion.
However, I would like to make one point about this part of your post:
> That having been said if Gore doesn't win it after the recount he just take the high road and bow out.
Lots of pundits (and Republicans) are saying that in the mainstream media. But why is it up to Al to take the high road? Shouldn't it be equally incumbent (no pun!) on George to admit that there really were flaws in the Florida elections?
I'm not really convinced that either candidate has a natural right to bow out, or even to concede on election night, since it's really up to the voters rather than the candidates. That said, I would probably (grudgingly) respect either guy who bowed out before things got too tangled up in the courts.
Unfortunately, a few spot checks of CNN during the day today indicates that this has already become thoroughly politicized, and the odds of either side bowing out are becoming quite slim now. I suspect that Florida will make an official announcement by the end of next week, but I think we'll have court cases and appeals going on well past January 20th.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm tired of this Bullshit! Everyone's votes counts, and everyone should be allowed to vote. Just because someone doesn't meet your standard of intelligence doesn't mean they're not worthy of voting for the candidate of their choice.
Ranessin
The linked-to article claims that there are 15,000; one below links to Florida State documents showing the correct number to be 337.
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Xenu loves you!
Source for the 15,000 number (it's not the number of voters registered to "Reform party", rather the number registered as the "Independent Party")
Here is the article, judge for yourself:
Article& lt;/B>
In Palm Beach County, the Reform Party's Buchanan received 3,407 votes - 1 percent of the vote - at the final tally.
In neighboring Broward County, which Democrats argue has similar demographics to Palm Beach County, Buchanan pulled just 789 votes - close to 0 percent of the vote.
But NewsMax.com reviewed Board of Elections records for both counties.
Records show that Palm Beach County is not similiar to Broward County in voter registration. There are far more members of the Independent Party in Palm Beach County than in Broward County.
According to the Florida supervisor of elections, Broward County has only 119 members of the Independent Party.
Palm Beach County, on the other hand, has a whopping 14,551 members of the Independent Party.
In fact, it has the highest Independent registration in Florida.
Buchanan received 1 percent of the vote in Palm Beach County. In all the counties in Florida where there is significant Independent Party membership, Buchanan got a similiar 1 percent.
Palm Beach County gave Buchanan no more support proportionally than any other county with high Independent Party registration
The beauty of this is that you never have to avoid supporting the candidate you really like in order to avoid helping the one you like the least. I.e., you could vote for Nader (or Buchanan) without having to worry about tipping a close election to Bush (or Gore). Of course, this is exactly why it will probably never happen here - neither of the two major parties wants to make it easier to support third parties.
As for the Electoral College needing to be changed -- that's bullshit. Everyone says "but it's such an unfair system!" -- untrue. The electoral system was intended to make things simpler and fairer in a multi-party system and was designed in a time when there were no political parties, but many were expected to exist.
The problem isn't to kill the electoral college process, but to bolster its importance by encouraging a greater choice in candidates and parties. Of course, it is in the best interest of the GOP and DNC to oppose that and, instead, agree with the downfall of an otherwise worthy electoral system.
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seumas.com
Buchanan got 8,000 votes in the republican primary...which indicates 8,000 people would have rather seen him than Bob Dole. There is a gap here that still isn't bridged (especially considering the statistics related to this. If you check the election results of 96 primary, the 8,000 people in Palm Beach doesn't stand out in relation to general voting...it is more than normal, but statistically unimpressive.
From this, I can only conclude that you HAVEN'T checked the stats.
In Miami-Dade county, he got 10% as many as Dole.
But in Palm Beach, he got 25% as many as Dole.
Palm Beach is a Buchanan stronghold. There are few places where he did as well as he did there in '96, if you just count large counties.
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Well, I trust that the fact that those people are out yelling and waving signs saying they want Gore means they meant to vote Gore. Have you seen a county by county breakdown of buchanan votes in florida? Take a look over here.
Anyone with any understanding of statistics will have to acknowledge that something is amiss. Now let me be clear - I don't think there should be a revote. That would set a horrible precedent. However, I do think the electors representing florida should be mad aware of this glaring statistical anomaly. Say just 10 of those electors decide to switch their vote because of it. Well, that would give Gore the magic 270.
If you think electors violating party lines is unheard of, you are wrong. It's ben done by electors from several states before, including Florida.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
All it shows is that something is different in that county. I heard a report on the radio yesteraday that Buchanan has a cousin that lives in the county and that that county cast a lot of votes for buchanan in some other election.
Ehm yes...thank you, that made it even more clear to me that the Electoral College system is totally unfair, I would even go as far as saying that it's NOT democratic at all. People should choose the president, not states.
:)
That's right, it's not democratic. It's not supposed to be. We are not a democracy, we are a "republic". The rational behind the EC was to have the states elect the president, with the states using the popular vote to decide how they voted. This also prevented the "mob rule" problems inherent in true democratic governments.
I find it humerous that the democrats that were on TV last week expousing the virtues of an electorial college system (when it was assumed that Gore would win the EC, but lose the popular vote) are now calling for it's removal and complaining how unfair it is
Finkployd
Numbers of registered voters is taken from this document. Number of votes cast for each candidate are here.
This table lists those Florida counties with 5000 or more registered Independent Party Members. /. doesn't allow <pre> :(
Spaces had to be replaced with periods since
County.....#.Ind....%.Ind.....#.Buch.....%.Buch.
---------..------...------....------.....------
Brevard......6815.....2.40......570........0.26
Duval.......10298.....2.43......650........0.25
Hillsborough10939.....2.19......845........0.23
Orange.......7751.....1.92......446........0.16
Palm.Beach..16336.....2.49.....3407........0.79
Pinellas....17614.....3.06.....1012........0.25
Volusia......5229.....2.01........0........0.00
# Ind. = Number of voters registered as Independent Party members
% Ind. = Percentage of registered voters who are registered as Independent Party members
# Buch. = Number of votes cast for Buchanan
% Buch. = Percentage of all votes cast for president which were cast for Buchanan
OK, Volusia county is itself suspicious because there were no votes counted there for anyone other than Bush or Gore. But that's a separate issue. (Strange that no one has brought that up yet. I would have thought conspiracy theorists would be jumping all over that one.)
As jbridges says, decide for yourself. I've linked the primary sources. Check those out yourself if you don't believe me, or the NewsMax.com article.
Don't get me wrong--I do not advocate a revote. I just find it very hard to believe, given these numbers, that everyone who voted for Buchanan in Palm Beach County meant to do so. So does Buchanan.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Rahga,
Calm down, boy.
First, as of this writing, the Gore lead has increased to over 218,000 votes. So your claim of Gore's popular vote victory being "a fleeting moment" doesn't look strong. There are aren't that many oversease ballots left, but as of this moring, most of the remaining uncounted absentee ballots where in Washington, Oregon, and California -- not exactly Bush strongholds.
As for "what the country wants," well, let's agree for the moment that the popular vote is a perfect tie between the Bush and Gore. You said "the country." What about the 3% of the country that didn't vote for either? These went overwhelmingly for Nader. So if we are going to gauge the _country's_ intent, it sure as hell ain't for a Bush presidency
the politics of 2 big states can never gain exclusive control of federal politics WRONG. Thanks to electoral college shennanigans, Virginia controlled the presidency for 32 of the first 36 years of the Republic.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
I would caution, however, that I've not run a T test or a chi-squared test or any other measure to see if this is really an outlier. It looks like one to me. However, with so few data points, it is hard, statistically speaking, to know for sure if it is an outlier, or just an unlikely, but statitically insignficant event. Mean and standard deviation do not tell the whole store.
I know I have a bias here. My personal solution to all the problems would be to apportion the invalid votes. If there's a vote for Bush and Buchanan, each gets 1/2 a vote. Add up the numbers, round down to the nearest whole vote and you are golden.
I've also seen references to Florida law that specifically states that ballots have an "X" on the right side of the name of candidates only. Don't know how true that is, but that would make these ballots illegal. If they are illegal, then the courts would have to deside what the most appropriate legal remedy would be. I don't envy them that task.
It would also would like to see a statistical analysis of the delta in the votes as a percentage of voters done. It seems on its surface that the 700-odd votes that were missing in the original count seems high for a county the size of Palm Beach. Almost all the other country results seem to be about what I'd expect. But all the counties aren't in yet, so it is hard to know for sure.
I'd also compare this year's results with prior years that Buchanan ran to see if there are any statistical differences between the two.
There are Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics :-)
I don't see a problem if there was 100% voter turnout. Isn't that what this country is about?
I also have a big problem with people dismissing the elderly or anybody else that got confused. They aren't so feeble minded to not know how they wanted to vote. In an ideal world they would vote in a way that made it clear that were little or no room for errors. Having helped the elderly on many occasions, I know they need special attentions that younger folks don't need. On the other hand, younger folks tend to need other things the elderly don't so the accomidations made to the elderly aren't that special all things considered.
Another mathematical fact. Right now the electoral college gives smaller states more power because they have proportionally more votes than their large bretheren. If we subtract out this bias by subtracting 2*states one from each candidates total, one see that Gore wins with 220 votes (219 needed in this hypothetical situation).
Finally, damn this is a barn burner.
Whoever loses in Florida, Bush or Gore, should either just request one more recount or let things stand. To fight over this idiocy in Palm Beach is lunacy! One, the ballot was that way because the old folks complained in the first place that they couldn't read the standard font. Two, voting correctly is a PERSONAL RESPONISIBILITY! Three, these same old people would have a fit if the county tried to raise their taxes to buy new voting equipment they could use. Finally four, they would still figure out a way to mess it up!
If you call a new election in Palm Beach, you have to do it for the entire state do to the way things happened. It would take at least a month of court wrangling and at least another month to get things together. Can you say Constitutional Crisis????? There is no way this could be settled intime for the inaguaration.
The loser has to do what Nixon did with Kennedy and accept defeat with grace. Nixon could have pushed the issue against Kennedy. However, he understood that for the good of the nation, the right thing to do was step aside.
I can not imagine the chaos if an new election is called. I have even heard scenarios that put Sen Strom Thurmond in as an interm President. Do we REALLY want to go through this becuase some old folks did not take the proper time and effort in the voting booth to verify their selection??
This is bigger than a "confusing ballot" Besides, I looked at the picture of the ballot in the voting machine on CNN. It is only confusing if you do not read it carefully.
For the good of the country and the world, DROP THE IDIOCY!
Yes, that definately would be discouraging. I know that in my town if you mess up and haven't yet turned in your ballot you can request another. They'll mark down the serial number of the ballot, mark it as void, and tear it up. They'll then give you a new one.
It makes me wonder why they did what they did in Florida. People baffle me sometimes.
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Rob Flynn
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Rob Flynn
Pidgin
This is no sillier than tha current system.
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Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
If the voters in Broward were confused, they would've been confused by the ballot we used up here in Duval as well (just look at the samples printed everywhere and remove the right hand page and it's exactly what we had in Duval).
In addition, I find it incredibly hard to believe that someone could go through that ballot, being confused and picking the wrong hole, then continuing on through the other 10 pages or so, and then, upon reaching the parking spot, having just voted for many candidates and issues, suddenly have the realization that they misunderstood the very first page and voted wrong. At least not in the numbers being anecdotally reported. While they may have voted wrong, I doubt they all realized it in the parking lot.
Point of fact - the alleged confusion is supposed to arise due to the placement of the Democrat and Reform party punches, not the Republican one (which was pretty clearly located first on the ballot). Since the ballots in question were used in the West Palm Beach area, it might be useful to check how the numbers broke down there. Acc ording to CNN:
Since the original margin between the Bush and Gore was only 1784 votes, I'd call that signifigant.
Additional evidence that the ballots may have caused widespread confusion, from the same article:
So, another comparison, this time of the two-selection error rate on two different parts of the ballot. More than 19,000 voters selected two presidential candidates, which is more than five times as many as made the same mistake for senators, and more than ten times as many as Bush's lead statewide.
Say what you want to about Daley, Jackson, Mfume, and whomever else you feel is a little too leftward leaning for your tastes. But the numbers do tell a story here.
Butterfly Ballot Not a Big Problem Everywhere
By Chris Slemp
CNS Correspondent
November 09, 2000
Charleston, WVa (CNSNews.com) - The "Butterfly" voting system, currently under intense national scrutiny in Florida, is similar to the voting system used in several counties in West Virginia and is nearly identical to the one used in Cook County, Illinois - home to Gore campaign chairman William Daley.
The Butterfly Ballot used in Cook County, which is dominated by Chicago Democrat Mayor Richard Daley, brother of William, has been used there for some time with success. The ballot is nearly identical to the one currently in dispute in Palm Beach County, Florida. The ballot was reportedly approved for use by Mayor Daley. Phone calls to the mayor's office for confirmation were not returned.
A similar Butterfly Ballot is also used in a dozen West Virginia counties without any incident. But the Butterfly Ballot in Florida is under intense fire after a narrow loss by Al Gore in the presidential election Tuesday, in which some voters complaining the ballot was confusing and they accidentally cast their votes for Pat Buchanan rather than Gore.
The 12 counties in West Virginia that rely on the Butterfly system, which uses a punch card method, have had no complaints. Deputy West Virginia Secretary of State Jan Casto says she doesn't fully understand the problem Florida voters had with it, as its use does not require a degree in rocket science.
"We have a very knowledgeable society. I mean, they use VCRs, computers, and recording equipment. We're talking about a very technologically sophisticated society," said Casto.
Much of the controversy in Palm Beach County, Florida centers around the claim that the ballot placed Pat Buchanan second on the ballot-but staggering his name between Bush atop the ticket and Gore directly under him, causing voters to mistakenly vote for Buchanan. Casto says she can understand how that happens, but at the same time if people would pay closer attention, according to Casto, there wouldn't be nearly as much trouble.
"I think they have to be sure they read the whole ballot so they'll know when they're finished and when or if they need to turn to the next page," added Casto.
West Virginia certainly saw its own share of close races, including the race for the Second District Congressional seat, which eventually went to Republican Shelley Moore Capito.
Capito won by 5300 votes and received 5100 in an area of the district comprising three counties. The largest of the three counties used the punch card system-but had three counting machines break down. The final tally wasn't known until 3am Wednesday.
Casto says counting machines break down, but she says it is important to understand that is a separate issue from a voting problem.
"Equipment breaks. It's just like you're car. It may be new and it may be old-but it could still break down at any moment, even if you just had it serviced the day before. Believe me, though, when your counting system breaks-it's an election official's nightmare. I know because I've been there."
Casto doesn't condemn the punch cards, but admits some voter education might be in order.
"I think we may have to look at some voter education before the next election, especially in light of the Florida situation. That may be through direct mail or television and radio time-but as technology evolves we have to evolve with it."
Legislation may also be a key to keeping down any potential confusion. West Virginia has a very detailed law when it comes to ballot position. Under the West Virginia statute the party that won the last election gets the first slot on the ballot. The number two vote getter has the second position. The rest of the ticket is determined in the order they applied for ballot access. Casto says it's a detailed system.
Asked how West Virginia would fare if the state were under the same microscope as Florida's election system, Casto is optimistic.
"I think we would fare extremely well. I think we have some really detailed laws about how ballots are counted and recount laws. We also have strict laws about the ballot position. So I think we would do very well-time consuming, but well."
That being the case though, Casto stresses she would just as soon do without the scrutiny that her counterparts in the state of Florida are presently enduring.
"I have a lot of empathy for them, that's for certain."
Seastead this.
No, that is incorrect, they can be recieved up to 10 days after the election, but must be post marked prior to the election day.
Finkployd
I thought this was the last of it? Oh wait you know this is also a great way to sensationalize the event, I almost thought CNN was dragging it out on purpose until I learned about florida
Conspiracy theories abound, I heard on the radio that some poll boxes were just plain missing... Who knows about that one.
I liked the Georgia polls, they had clear boxes sepearting everything, showed who was running with the posible presidents, you used a #2 pencil and filled in the one you wanted, it was real easy... that punch card business does seem a little annoying even if it is not misleading it seems a pain..
Jeremy
1) When trashing media, consider that NPR was far more responsible in assigning states to candidates. Just trash the commercial media.
2) Why prosecute people that had difficulty with the ballot? I had to transcribe about 50 answers on my SAT when I discovered I had accidently skipped a bubble. There's no eraser in a 'punch'-type voting booth. Look for numbers of how many Palm Beech or Florida ballots were punched twice, and hence discarded. I think the number is around 19,000. Of course, they should have just asked for new ballots, but humans are humans.
2.5) Especially, why prosecute elderly people who had problems with the ballots? These people have seen more wars, recessions, and changes in their lifetimes than anyone 'smart' enough to write "First Post" on slashdot. The ability to mindlessly follow arbitrary directions (for instance, working with computers...) is a learned skill, not a sign of intelligence. Saving enough money over your lifetime to retire to a warm climate, OTOH, is probably a better sign of intelligence.
3) Majority Rules? Our entire system of government is built around thwarting "Majority Rules". Go read the Federalist Papers and Constitution for more insight into the subtle problems of democracy and majority tyranny.
Most of the Slashdot posters can't bother to RTFM when it comes to their own government.
-Paul Komarek
So you can't read a ballot. I don't see that it's reasonable for one district to get to vote again (assuming that happens) and not let the whole state, or even the whole nation, vote again.
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
#1: The popular vote does keep changing, and it will have to be waited out. My comment about neither winning the election still stands.
#2: Virginia's vote may have been a deciding vote in many of the last few elections. My point was not that, but that if 500 times as many people voted in New York and Cali than all the other states, they still would have little (not controlling) efect outside of their chosen electoral college representatives.
I'm not sure that Jesse would go for that. He's always been in favor of converting Minnesota to a unicameral. I think that it mostly that he figures he'll be able to cram crazy-ass shit through faster without 2 houses. Anyhow, I think that you better just invite the Senate.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Ok, I can buy his argument that as the size of the group increases towards towards some asymptote we'll call "majority", the power of the individual vote should go down in some proportion so that the minority isn't swamped by the majority. The way this is done, I suppose, is to just give slightly proportionally less electoral votes to really really large states. But that's still at a macroscopic, very high-grain (or is it low-grain) level.
Even if he is theoretically correct, and that we could formulate the optimum "minority"/"majority" point (is it at 75%? 85%? 51%?), I think that in the current state of politics this wouldn't matter anyway. The whole presumption is that each voter is 1) trustworthy/caring, 2) informed. The percentage of people who actually fulfill both of these requirements may themselves a minority! The fact is, people aren't voting for politicians based on the facts, based on their records. Many people vote based on fuzzy things like "likability", and "appearance". They vote because the million dollar hype machines have stuck the right memes in their heads. They vote because Britney Spears told em to. And if you think this is a one-sided tirade against the "average American", I happen to believe that it is also largely the political parties' faults for playing right along - they're all too glad to lower the criteria for the election process to things they can win: convincing people win tons of commercials paid by PACs and soft money, going around repeating the same tired old scripts.
Now consider *that* case and the electoral college. The actual *merits* of the candidates matter much less than the money they can spend (funded by those interests who want to buy policy) to convince voters. So given an equal amount of vested interests (hey, many of these big corporations give money to *both* campaigns just to make sure that no matter who wins they get their agenda pushed), and consequently a pretty equal amount of hyping and advertising, you can imagine voter results to be much more uniform than you'd otherwise expect (*cough* win popular vote by a fraction of one percent *cough*).
So the choice is either 1) clean up the damn system so the above scenario doesn't happen, and the electoral college works correctly, or 2) reform or abolish electoral college. The ironic thing is, 1 cannot be accomplished *because* of the electoral college stemming any progressive change. So it may be that we have to reform or abolish the electoral college, so that we can actually have a chance to clean up politics, so that the system works as it was intended to in the first place!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
In other words, if Gore and his cronies can litigate this for a couple months by constantly raises issues county by county, precinct by precinct, he could litigate his way to the presidency even if he loses Florida (as it very much appears that he will if the remaining military ballot is mostly republican as usual and votes for Bush don't magically get lost in the hand count of the democrat run Palm Beach County)
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Voters were not intended to have a direct one-to-one impact on the election from day one.
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seumas.com
Look, the first problem is not with the pages alone. Its how the pages lined up with the holes. Check out the mock image I threw together. The black dots are where holes might have been if there was play in the ballot book. The light grey dots is where they should've been (and where the one news photo I've seen shows them).
The stories from people just don't match that perfectly aligned news photo. But if you consider that the holes could've been shifted (really, the book would've been what shifted, but for all intensive purposes...) you can see how it could be confusing. One lady said she saw a dot RIGHT NEXT to the word Democratic, not the separating line above -- that turned out to be the Buchanan hole.
But there is another problem people have cited. If you go in there thinking only of two candidates, Bush and Gore, you look only for those two. In English, we read left->right, top->bottom, left_page->right_page. You could easily say "First one is Bush, so that's teh first hole... Second one is Gore so that must be the second hole!". Why read further? Why examine the right page at all when your candidate isn't over there? Remember, your hindsight is 20/20, so don't be so quick to label these people as "stupid" or you might be so yourself!
The fact is, the ballot was redsigned on to two pages so they could use bigger fonts to make it easier to read. That was a nice idea. But, they never evaluated what the other ramifications were.
Furthermore, the sample ballots sent out to the voters, etc. were paper books! There were no holes in there, no gap, etc. It was not what the ballot actually was. No one could've guessed.
1) Print out the alleged bad ballot.
2) Now place it horizontally about chest to collarbone level and at half an arms length away.
The arrows seem a lot closer together!
If it is like my poll the holes are physically under the ballot book by nearly the distance the holes are separated from each other. This means that unless you can look at it from above, which is not possible if you are short and the ballot and book are in fixed positions, again like at my poll, then the arrow appears to point between two holes.
In other paper ballot elections I attended, the ballots and books were designed so that unneeded holes were covered and there was never any doubt which holes to punch.
The palm beach ballot design my seem ok at first glance, but in use it would be quite ambiguous. This also explains why it was initially approved by the dems.
My ballot had similar problems but only on pages that were for the reelection of judges. Some other issues had several places between them. I noticed when i got to the right half of the page and the punch was already punched. This is a bigger problem for me since i am short.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Finally, a reply.
I don't mean to sound like such a conspiracy theorist; I'm sure it was really just a computer glitch. But seriously, the fact that there were about 15,000 changing votes in a 300-vote difference race, and that the national media was almost completely ignoring this... well, it was quite disturbing. Add to this the fact that nobody on Slashdot seemed to care... and it was like dropping into the movie "Brazil..." Am I going nuts? Is everybody else already there?
Good to hear that the county's returns will be straightened out, and that the Democrats and Republicans are at least paying attention.
As was stated elsewhere in this story, and on MSNBC, of the 19,120 invalidated votes, only 3,783 were mistakes in the senate portions of the ballot. It implies that the other 15,337 were errors in the presidential portion (though they didn't report that). That says one of three things: there are 22,500 idiots in Palm beach county, There was a very confusing ballot in Palm Beach county, or there was voter fraud in Palm Beach county. I heard the fraud speculation by a newscaster last night that it was possible that someone took advantage of a confusing situation and double punched a huge number of ballots for gore. I don't believe that at all.
But there was a confusing ballot.
We have center punch in Michigan, and the candidates were all down the left side, not on both sides like the Palm Beach ballot. This particular ballot design (on both sides) was new to this election in Palm Beach.
Regards,
Regards,
-scott
I've put together a histogram of the proportion of votes that changed by county. In one county, Gore's alleged gain (past bush's) is nearly 1% of the total votes cast.
This county is 50 standard deviations out--far less likely than winning the lottery (the big tens of million ones) every week for three months straight . . .
hawk
it's at http://personal.ds.psu.edu/reh18
I personally feel that these people shouldn't even be voting. If you can't follow the arrow from the candidate's name to the corresponding hole/box/lever/split arrow, then you shouldn't be voting. I think that this anecdote only solidifies the senile stereotype of Floridians. However, Buchanan must be laughing in his chair right now, since he got thousands of votes due to morons who can't read.
This just goes to show that you should never forget the two axioms of voting: read the fine print, and don't assume anything.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
And also, the instructions on the ballot say very clearly "Vote for Group"... putting two holes in the ballot is idiocy.
" There was still almost an hour of voting left when Florida was called."
Nope, the panhandle elections start and end an hour early.
"This makes it so that there are no surprises when it's time to punch holes and you have a week to think your options over in case. you see more choices or issues than you were expecting to have to vote on.
Nope the "sample" ballet looks different than the "real" ballet. The center is differnt. The real ballet is confusing.
Thought I would clear that up.
I live in St. Lucie County (about 50 miles north of Palm Beach County) and I have seen both ballets up close. I think this is the most f*cked up eletion in history.
AdFuel
There's an interesting loophole in the electoral college and is perfectly legal and possible, though it has never happened.
All we're doing is choosing "electorates," people who will select the president for us. We assume that the electorates will vote for who we tell them to, but are not bound by law to do so. So theoretically some of, say, Bush's electorates could decide late in the game that Bush is a putz and cast votes for Gore or Nader.
that made it even more clear to me that the Electoral College system is totally unfair
Unfair in the sense that 4 populous states (CA, FL, NY, and TX) can't impose their will on the rest of the country, yes. You have to have AT LEAST a dozen states to win under an electoral system, but under a popular system you can basically promise every federal dollar to those four states and the rest fo the country can go to hell...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The winner (even tho these votes were among the first cast) will be decided by a margin not exceding 0.036%
Should Bush win, he will with a minority of votes.
Hundreds or thousands of elderly jews in West Palm Beach mistakenly cast votes for anathema. With all this in mind, I'd like to apply for a grant to supply an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters. Screw Shakespeare, they can bang out a copy of W's inaguration speech before he's written it.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The basic flaw in Natapoff's argument is that he considers a system of election good if it allows a minority to defeat a candidate that the majority wants. He tells us that this is good because it is bad for a majority to be able to elect whatever candidate they want, because then they will elect a candidate that does not have the best interests of the minority at heart. For some reason, he considers this threat greater than the threat that a minority would do exactly the same thing, given their increased power at the voting booth. But most importantly, he neglects the fact that he is defining a "majority" as "people who like a given candidate," not as "people who are in any way related by class." Yes, Germans occasionally oppress Jews. No, Gore supporters do not normally wantonly slay Bush supporters.
Also, his method for "giving more power" to the oppressed minorities is a bit dumb. But I'm tired of arguing that point.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Better than nothing?
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Gore gets to be president on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Bush gets to be President on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
On Saturday night, they engage in fisticuffs; the winner gets to be President on Sunday.
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
No, it is completely unfair. It allows voters in one county to act on information that is not available when they were supposed to ballot (i.e., the final results of the voting in the rest of the ocuntry) as well as considerable undue influence from the media regarding the interpretation of these ballots.
There are complaints about vote fraud in every election - and it certainly isn't limited to Palm Beach in this election. In New York state there have been significant complaints, affecting more individual votes than in Florida (althoug they aren't being contested as they would not change the final electoral vote in the state).
It is fundamentally unfair to the rest of Florida and the rest of the country to give any single county special rights to act upon complaints - I think the only fair thing to do would be to toss the entire election and start over, which isn't going to happen.
I'm tired of this Bullshit! Everyone's votes counts, and everyone should be allowed to vote. Just because someone doesn't meet your standard of intelligence doesn't mean they're not worthy of voting for the candidate of their choice.
True, but you must have the basic motor coordination and reasoning skills to physically cast your vote. If you cannot communicate your choice on a simple ballot that 99.999% of the population either understands, or has the forsight to ask for help before randomly punching holes, than that is YOUR problem.
Maybe next time we should have computer monitors with great big colored buttons and a windows-style "are you really sure yes/no" dialogue boxes for the voters in palm beach.
Finkployd
Well, I noticed things that I consider voting irregularities here in Massachusetts. Like I walked into the polling location, and up to a table where all the district voters names and addresses are taped out on the table. Then they asked me my name and address but asked for no proof of identification or anything. I could have claimed to be anybody just by looking down in front of me. Of course, it doesn't really matter here, since the vote in Massachusetts was so clearly decisive. It only becomes an issue when it's just too damned close to figure out what the will of the people really is.
Here's a plot of the distribution of votes in the relevant Florida precincts.
Could you cite a source for that?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Click Here
So what you're saying is that the media called "First post!" and then got moderated down?
If only we could moderate (most) of the media down to -1 so we wouldn't have to see the inanity they kept throwing at us.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
THIS ELECTION MUST BE RESOLVED WITH A TAG TEAM STEEL CAGE MATCHUP OF TITANIC PROPORTIONS!
Gore vs. Bush in a steel cage. Cheney and Lieberman waiting for the tag. Both houses of Congress on the sidelines threatening to turn the match into a full-on bicameral brawl!
There has never an opportunity like this before, and there probably won't be one again.
What are you waiting for?
Bruce
Bruce
You are the real Bruce Perens.
In 1824, Andrew Jackson beat his rival, John Quincy Adams, by more popular and then more electoral votes--99 versus 84--but still lost the election because he didn't win a majority of electoral votes (78 went to other candidates). When that happens, the House of Representatives picks the winner.
ahhh, back when there was more than a 2 party system.....
I just love how the people figure out they voted for the wrong person afterwards as though some great epiphany comes with lights from heaven and angels singing.
It was "figured out" by the rep for the district who said something along the lines of "There's no way that many people here voted for Buchanan, something must be wrong". Even though a similar amoung of votes for the Reform party came from there last election...
I HAVE seen the pictures of the Florida ballots. Come on, if someone can't figure that out, they really shouldn't be voting. In fact, they'd probably struggle with the games here: http://weazel.iwarp.com/games.html
In the Republican primary in that exact same area, thanks to support from a relative, Buchanan got up to 8,000 votes in 1996. In a primary, where a very small number of republicans actually turn out compared to election days. Of course, that was way before he left the party, but it is more than reasonable that he still has between 1/3rd of the supporters that he did back then. Saying "this is wrong because every other country voted differently." is complete bull. And, as most of us who's visited know, you never visit Palm Beach without seeing something odd. Anyway....
I would like to remind everyone that the electoral college works. Just because New York and California really really want Gore to win doesn't mean that the rest of the country wants what Gore represents. Imagine if the EU existed during Hitler's rise to power, and Nazi Germany dominated the popular vote for the elections to president of the EU. This is all hypothetical, but I'm simply afraid that a lot of people don't understand the power balancing that the electoral college brings.
The method by which the House would select the president is that each state would get a vote, not each representative. Take for example Texas... although heavily republican, 18 of the 30 districts in Texas elected a democrat -- meaning Texas would actually vote for Gore in the House. I don't have time to break down every state but I think it'd be a pretty close margin and not necessarily in favor of Bush.
but when you figure Gore has the majority vote and Bush has the electoral you have to wonder what this country is going
Actually, a large reason for the existance of the electoral college is to give smaller states a louder voice. The ~300,000 votes in North Dakota pale in comparison to the 6 million we're arguing about in Florida. If we go purely popular vote, the urban areas then dictate what happens to the rest of the country( we actually have this same problem here in NY with NYC dominating the entire rest of the state in state elections ).
Finally I think the press rigged this for the ratings.
We definitely agree there. The media stands to gain a lot of money in advertising revenue by making the election draw out as long as possible. The whole purpose of the Voters News Service, which is made up of the major news networks, is to help them "guide" their coverage. I don't see why we can't just wait 12 hours and wake up to see who won the election (of course, that means less ratings and thus less money for the tv news companies) rather than calling states before their polls close or influence the western states by calling the major eastern states early.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
-pf
PS -- Not to mention we have another month and change before the electoral college vote; if Bush ends up with 271 of the electorals, no telling what could happen there.
Make affiliate bucks
Second, every vote counts, every vote. Those who did not vote have no right to complain about the outcome
Third, how hard is it to vot? I am having a hard time buying the fact that people were confused by the ballot layout. I have taken a look and it seemed pretty easy to me. I also have a hard time believing that elderly voters, who presumably have been casting their vote for years, all of the sudden have become too feeble to understand how a simple voting machine works.
Finally, I think the Electoral College needs a second look. Majority rules, and the popular vote should be the determining factor.
Regardless of the outcome, I think the media needs to report the facts, and not speculate on possible outcomes.
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You are a fucking moron.
I didn't see an actual ballot, but rather saw an image of it on various news sites. While you (and many others in this and other election threads) make a case that paying attention should have been enough to figure out the election, I can see where someone might make a mistake. Put yourself in the place of, say, my grandmother, an 80-year old voter with glaucoma. She doesn't see especially well, and she had difficulty voting on election day even with a better designed ballot. (She voted in Iowa).
I've even seen threads to the effect of "If you can't figure out the ballot you have no business voting." Elitist piffle. Being able to figure out an arcane system with unfamiliar equipment no more disqualifies one from voting eligibility than inability to pass a polling examination or pay a poll tax. Perhaps these same people wish to claim that "The president is on TV much of the time. Only voters with perfect vision, who can reliably gauge the president's comeliness are qualified to vote." Perhaps you should make the ballots "red writing on a green background" since colorblind people obviously can't gauge a candidate's sense of style and color coordination. Perhaps we should phrase the directions in a convoluted way so that those who don't have formal training in logic are exempted. Or, possibly, use 11 different languages to express each ballot, so that only extreme polyglots, who are, on average, smarter than your regular Joe, can vote. Having an unobfuscated system that all can use is undoubtedly the most fair system.
Human beings are trained to read from top to bottom of a page. They are not trained to read from left page to right page and back to left. With the center piece which guides the hole-punching apparatus in place on the ballot even the most cynical Bush supporter has to admit that it is unnatural to associate the second hole with the top entry on the right instead of the second entry on the left. In addition, according to CNN last night, the directions given indicated that one is to punch the hole next to the candidate's name, no reference being made to the guiding arrows. No reference being made to there being only one hole for each candidate. (Many ballots were voided when voters thought that "Gore has two holes. I had better punch them both to make sure I vote for him.")
As an experiment, print out the ballot yourself onto cream or grey paper. Hold it away from you at arm's length, darken the room, and blur your vision somewhat. Now you see things like many of the elderly voters do, and you can maybe appreciate that what is obvious and effortless to you may not necessarily be so to others.
I think it is safe to say that ballot design will receive much more attention in future elections. Few things are less democratic than having page layout cause a voter to unintentionally void a ballot or vote for the wrong candidate.
Most of the Democrats who were in favor of the electoral system last week are still in favor of it (for example, this guy named Gore who you may have heard of -- still in favor of the electoral college, as well as all his publicly speaking advisors).
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Tackhead, you don't need to get so sanctimonious and theatrical. A coup d'etat?! Good grief. Untwist your panties a little bit, and go through the WayBack machine to the dark ages of last week, when Bush was plotting his own legal challenges to an electoral-college loss. In that benighted time, everyone was worried that Nim would win the popular vote and Rod would eke out a victory in the electoral college. It now appears the other way around, which is the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
According to sources within the Bush campaign, their battle against an electoral college loss would include media blitz, radio and tv ads, and a "popular uprising".
So far, the Democrats have expressed full faith in the laws of the United States, and made a few noises, not yet written in stone, about challenges within the legal system.
Now, which approach sounds more like a coup?
I've worked up close to political campaigns in local races, and I've been an election judge. The process of a recount or legal challenge to ballots involves discrediting certain votes, which are thrown out. The losing party in these cases always asks for a new election, but judges rarely grant them. The judge can rule on a process for disqualifying ballots, or she can just throw a number of them out, depending on the extent of the problem or the applicability of state election laws. The vote as determined by the judicial challenge becomes the official and legal vote.
Election laws exist for a reason. Every candidate is within his rights to pursue those laws to the very end. It's legal, and if it overturns the original result, that's legal too.
Stuff your coup talk up the hole it came from.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The 25 electors are not "25 ordinary schmoes". What's more, the 25 electors haven't even been chosen yet. Republicans have their set of 25 electors already chosen from the Florida Republican Party's most faithful members. The Florida Democratic Party has their own set of 25 electors chosen and ready to go. Which set of 25 electors gets to vote depends on the outcome of the election. And when they vote, they're not about to defect and vote for the other candidate.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ ele ctoral-college.htm
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Amen. Regardless of the shady goings-on I'm seeing in Palm Beach - the second-guessing of the voters by Gore's lawyers - I see the Electoral College as serving a very useful purpose.
The electors of Florida are not bound by any law, and can cast their votes any way they please.
- If they decide to abide by the results of the recount, the winner of the recount wins the Presidency.
- If they decide to abide by the decision of a judge who awards 3400 valid Buchanan votes to Gore , Gore wins the Presidency.
- If they decide to say "a pox on both your houses, we don't know who won, and we", we get a President selected by the House (Bush) and a Veep selected by the Senate (Lieberman). Given the split in popular vote, House, and Senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the Framers had in mind
;-)
While I'm scared by the attempt to second-guess the voters of Palm Beach, I have faith that however Florida's electors carry out their duties, whatever happens will still be within the bounds of the Constitution.Which is a long way to say "whoever wins the Electoral College" is the guy who deserves the Presidency.
But one thing that's been absent in news of this is an analysis of how many papers spoilt in a similar way Palm Beach County would normally expect, given the demographics.
Does anyone know what the deal is there?
For more news on this, check out The Palm Beach Post.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
..blabber blabber..
Is it really "made up for" by the house? You would probably agree that each person's vote should carry roughly equal weight, as it does (roughly) in the house. If you consider the house to be apportioned fairly, then the senate actually skews the balance in favor of the smaller states.
The ballot in Palm Beach was reviewed and approved by both the Democratic and Republican parties well in advance of the election. Barring out and out fraud, should we redo the whole county/state because of a particularly high density of stupid people?
Reagan never ran versus Dukakis. Reagan received electoral votes in three elections: 1976 (1 vote, major candidates were Ford and Carter), 1980 (>270, ran vs. Carter), 1984 (>270, ran vs. Walter "Fritz" Mondale).
George HW Bush ran v. Dukakis in 1988. One elector, perhaps accidentally (I am unsure of the folklore) gave Dukakis an electoral vote for VP and gave that presidential vote for Dukakis's running-mate, Lloyd Bentsen.
The most cheesiest lesson learned in this election is that "Every Vote counts." Wrong. The only locality where one vote makes a difference is in Florida. Even there, its not clear that the votes in Palm Beach will count...
I live in Virginia. As I read the returns, I was struck by the notion that if only 210,000 votes had been for Gore rather than for Bush, Gore could have carried the election without Florida. Wow. To think that my vote really made a difference... The feeling of personal power is just intoxicating.
Whether Gore wil win this election will be decided by handful of voters in Florida. It will be decided through legal wrangling, through disqualifications, and the end result will most probably smell.
Every presidential election year, Discover magazine puts out an article about election math. This years was really good - it discussed the different types of election systems that could be used instead of a popular vote.
Unfortunately, I don't have the issue handy, but I think it is still on the newsstands. It's worth a read for anyone interested in other possible voting methods.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
See the ballot for yourself here.
Radio commentators are claiming that the number of Buchannan votes in the county in question are in the same proportion to the number of registered Reform Party members in the county as in other large Florida counties with significant amounts of Reform Party membership. A neighborhood full of Buchannan voters in a retirement community would hardly be surprising.
Norstadt's graph doesn't show the proportion of Reform Party registrants. So it is useless in distinguishing between the hypotheses (Democrat confusion vs. a concentration of either Reform Party voters or Buchannan supporters.)
More interesting might be a scatter-plot of Buchannan votes/Reform registration vs Gore votes/Democrat registration in counties with non-trivial Buchannan vote counts.
Such a graph would be so much MORE informative than Buchannan/Bush ratio that it raises the question of whether Norstadt chose that ratio because makes a good-looking graph for the Gore camp's "confused seniors" argument.
(Note, if you try to check this stat, that the Reform Party is called the "Independent Party" in Florida.)
(And no, I haven't researched this myself.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And according to ABCNews and various other news sources: "Democratic Party officials said sample ballots handed to Florida voters by volunteers as they entered the polling places in precincts in Palm Beach listed the candidates in a different order than what voters saw in the voting booths. The result, they said, was voters who referenced the sample ballots to cast their votes may have voted for Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Gore."
I have to say, the "maths" on that Palm Beach story are pretty shonky. "The probability that Buchanan would get so many votes in Palm Beach by chance is less than 1 in 3,000,000,000,000,000" ?! Come on.. votes aren't evenly distributed, there are such things as demographics.
That graph makes it look some huge landslide to Buchanan in Palm Beach, but according to CNN, he got 3407 votes in that county. According to the mean, you'd only have expected 800-900. You know, there are a lot of reasons why he could have pulled an extra 2500 votes in that county beyond mass voter confusion.
What was his campaign like there? Are there a few big churches that were leaning on their worshippers to get out there and vote for him? Did he have 4x as many supporters out canvassing for him as in other counties? (come on, you know that could mean 4 people compared to only 1 elsewhere). Has anyone even asked the Buchanan campaign for an opinion?
Anyway.. I'm just a UK-resident Australian, it's nothing to do with me.. but that bullshit graph made it look like every voter was a dice that got tossed and was 100x more likely to come up "Bush" or "Gore" than "Buchanan", rather than an actual thinking human being 1.
1 - OK, I don't think anyone who voted Buchanan was really doing much "thinking". ;-)
Yes, something seems fishy in Palm Beach, but without actually holding another election I don't see how we could possibly sort out what the people in that county intended.
I saw the ballot in question, it did not seem all that confusing to me, but what do I know. A big arrow next to the ballot bunch seems unambigous to me.
What is fascinating is that if this ends up in a protracted legal battle it might bring about the demise of the electoral college system. The foreign press is already wondering why we are still arguing when Gore won the popular vote (albeit by a slim margin).
Another way to reform the presidential election process which is much simpler than scraping the electoral college is to change the state laws that govern how the electors in the electoral college vote. Most people don't know this, but each state determines how their electors vote - most states implement winner take all (New Hampshire is an exception I believe). The states have the power to change it so that the candidates divvy up the electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote in that state or in any other way they wish.
-josh
Think of it as a UI design problem.
I had a similar problem with a UI a did for a Palm Pilot application that had to do with spacing of labels in closely spaced checkboxes (you don't have lots of room on a pilot). The users complained that it caused lots of problems, even though if you looked carefully at it, it was clear which checkbox belonged to each label and the users worked with the application every single day.
Naturally, I had to change it and split the form across multiple pages.
It's also important to note that many voters who made a mistake were forced to submit their ballot once punched. The poll workers did not allow them to destroy their ballot and get a new one.
So, you have a bad user interface that gives you one chance to get it right.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What's slightly more disturbing is that the article goes on to say:
Is it just me, or does anybody else see this as a significant problem? Especially with the outcome of this election hinging on Florida's vote.Anyways... The ballots in Miami-Dade county should stand by law because all challenges to the ballot format must be made before the first vote is cast and ALL voters and campaigns in that county received an instructional copy of the ballot weeks before the election. That leaves outright fraud( forged absentee ballots, dead people voting, etc ) and the suppression of republican voters in the west(due to the early miscall of Florida going to Gore) as the most likely challenges.
I think a court ABSOLUTELY must not allow a revote. It would be unfair for one county or one state to have the power to elect the president knowing the status of the rest of the vote before walking into the booth. It also wouldn't be fair for a court to statistically modify the vote of Miami-Dade county based on demographic or other information as the votes were cast and if people were truly unsure of their vote, they could have asked for help from the officials at the polling center.
If there isn't a decisive winner, I think the ONLY fair thing to do, and this may rise to the level of a decision by the Supreme Court, would be to throw out the ENTIRE 25 electoral votes in Florida as if they had gone to a different candidate. Because neither man received a majority of the electoral votes(270), the Constitution says it is up to the newly elected House of Representatives to select the President. It seems the only way to ensure the rule of law is obeyed.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Sean
Even if you have different candidates on it for senate/house/initiatives/whatever else, it should not be that difficult to define a certain format. I think it has a significant impact for a example in which order the candidates are presented, how easy it is to tell where to make your cross/punch a hole even if you are old and far-sighted.
What I'm trying to say, have the same layout everywhere, the same mechanism for voting, and no-one is going to complain afterwards because 100s of lawyers would look at it before. As I understand it at the moment every county has its own ballot paper (is that right?). Is there any good reason for that???
That's "to consider casting", not "to cast".
An elector should vote according to the law of your state (if one exists), or to your interpretation of the will of those who elected you.
My "to consider" request was merely to "question whose will was being expressed" in any legal wranglings over the next few days.
And all that aside, I hope to God the results of the Florida recount are unambiguous - either way - so none of the legal wrangling and vote-reassigning concerns matter.
What matters most in this election is no longer who wins the Presidency, but how.
Maybe you need to re-evaluate the whole voting system. Times change, and what the founders thought appropriate then may be less so now. Certainly the low voter turn-out indicates apathy, and a certain feeling that your vote doesn't count.
New Zealand changed their voting method, due to wide spread dissatisfaction with the old (UK style) system, and went with a proportional voting system similar to that used in Germany. It's still not perfect, but at least the members of parliament more accurately reflect the makeup of the population (hell, there's even a transvestite MP, and one with dreads!!0.), and it's a lot harder for big business to influence things (they tried leading up to the referendum, which caused quite a few to vote opposite to what the BB's wanted!!).
Maybe the President should be elected via a Preferential Voting system, so that all votes count. Other votes can use other system, as they do in Oz for example.
Dual presidency! Gore and Bush have to share the desk, the house, and the paycheck. To make a decision, they play rock paper scissors.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I'm sure that it depressed republican turnout out west, which would have affected the popular figures but probably not the electoral figures. However, what I was referring to by west, admittedly it was vague, was western florida which is a republican stronghold. When it was announced that FL, MI and PA all went to Gore, there were reports of republicans simply leaving polls figuring that the election was over. That would have had a HUGE impact in florida if it's the case. The question is why weren't Ohio and other Bush leaning large states called as early as florida? Is it possible that VNS could have had biased exit polling and that discouraged republicans from voting? You've gotta admit it's pretty irresponsible at best. Part of being a journalist is responsibility and if that means having to wait another hour or two to get your facts right on a story,that's what you need to do. Being first means nothing if it's wrong.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
1. disproportionately high number of buchanan votes from a heavily democratic area. much higher numerically and percentage wise than other comparable counties. 3500 compared to less than 900 in other democratic counties. Even in a heavily republican county, buchanan only got around 500 votes. So, possibly 3000 mispunched votes. Those votes would decisively swing the florida contest to gore. of course, there's no way of knowing if they intended to vote for buchanan but they can compare it with the rest of each voter's choices. it would be unlikely if the person chose democratic candidates for the house, senate, etc but selected buchanan for president.
2. unusually large number of disqualified ballots. over 19000 ballots had 2 holes punched for the presidential candidate. compare to only ~3500 double punched senate votes. This would go along with the theory that people were confused, made a mistake, voted for buchanan, realized they made a mistake and punched a second hole for gore. of course, we will need more details to see whether or not this is the case, that 2 holes were punched for gore and buchanan and not other combinations. these 19000 ballots would clearly put gore over the top.
3. the problem was noticed on election day, by as early as 11 am by some accounts. people were confused, complained to the election organizers and the democrats printed up fliers informing people to be careful. so, this isn't some excuse being manufactured after the fact. they had informed the people in charge about the problem while the election was still in progress and there were many reports of people being confused early on.
4. a legal technicality. apparently, the rules say the holes shall be on the right of the names. on the ballot in question, half the names are on other side, so the holes are on the left, in violation of what the law mandates. therefore, the ballots could be illegal.
5. the problem with the ballots is a usability problem. it's not some sort of conspiracy to defraud the democrats, just an honest mistake in design. i can easily see why it might be confusing, especially if the holes don't line up precisely, the person hasn't seen it before and there's a time pressure to vote quickly.
all in all, very interesting stuff. if they do a revote, it should only be people who actually voted the first time.
With lunatic Rep. Wexler claiming he "personally saw 3000 people vote" incorrectly for Buchanan when neighboring counties only gave him a few hundred votes, it's important to note that that while the neighboring counties have a hundred or two registered Reformers (Broward with 189), Palm Beach County has 14,551! The real question is why did Pat only get 3400 votes there?
Oh, for fuck's sake, no! Not the liberals!
</sarcasm>
I agree that the lack of accountability on the part of the electorate is scary, but I'm not ready to scrap the entire system. The recent article referenced by Slashdot (no link handy, sorry) mentioned some fairly compelling reasons to keep it around.
People have said that the actual ballots and the sample ones were "different", but I've seen pictures of both, and I don't see the difference. Maybe one of the pictures was faked up?
:)
A friend of mine has a sample ballot that was faked to him, and he has a "real" ballot. The only difference is that the sample ballot does not have the holes in it; the placement of names and arrows is the same.
He tried his kids (8, 10) on the sample ballot. He gave them 20 seconds to indicate "how do you vote for Gore". Then he asked them "how do you vote for Buchannan", and at this point, the 8-year-old had to ask how you spell Buchannan. Both were able to pick the right dot.
If that's "too confusing", we have more serious problems than who gets elected.
Or maybe they were just the same, and people are scrabbling to find explanations.
Mistakes were made. Both parties approved them in advance. We don't overturn elections over stupid mistakes, *even* if we think they might have changed the outcome. We certainly can't give one county the option of *CHANGING* their votes based on new information - but there's no way to prevent a do-over from being a *change* in the vote. At that point, it's unfair to the *other* 100,000,000 voters that none of *US* are allowed to reconsider our votes based on what we know of nationwide turnout.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Not only did both parties approve the ballot, but it was a Democrat who designed the thing. It's therefore ludicrous in the extreme for Gore babblers to even suggest that there was evildoing afoot with that ballot.
Not only this, but the ballot was sent out in advance to all registered voters. No one complained. No one.
I'm sorry, but Gore's people had three chances to correct what is really a perfectly clear ballot: at design time, at party approval time, and at voter approval time. No one complained. So now that they've possibly lost, they're sobbing about the ballot? This is ridiculous!
Last but not least: I agree with the other posters who have called for comparing the number of spoiled ballots in Palm Beach with the number of spoiled ballots from previous elections and from other areas around the country with similarly high concentrations of elderly voters. And I'd like to know how the Reform party did in Palm Beach in 1996 and 1992 before buying the assertion of the whiners that Buchanan could not have gotten all those votes legitimately (but even if it was due to voter incompetence, this is no reason for the Gore-ites to be screaming).
Oh -- and no, I didn't vote for Bush.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
CmdrTaco, on behalf of all writers, English teachers, linguists, crossword puzzle solvers and spelling bee champions, I would just like to say: "We love you!"
Got Rhinos?
let's assume that only two candidates are running, A versus B, and each vote is like a random coin toss, with a 50 percent chance of going either way. In your let's assume that only two candidates are running, A versus B, and each vote is like a random coin toss, with a 50 percent chance of going either way. In your nation of three, there's a 50 percent chance that the other two voters will split, one for A and the other for B, and thus a 50 percent chance that our single vote will determine the election. There's also, of course, a 25 percent chance both will vote for A and a 25 percent chance both will vote for B, making your vote unimportant
The probability that the other two will agree with each other is 50% not 25%, I wonder about the rest of the article and 2 decades worth of research.
See the bold part above, the one where he states that there is a 50% chance that the first two votes will split? That's mathematically equivalent to saying there's a 50% chance the first two votes will match, as well. The only place 25% is brought up is when he says that there is a 25% chance the first two votes go to candidate A and a 25% chance the first two votes go to B.
It's like this:
1=A, 2=A
1=A, 2=B
1=B, 2=A
1=B, 2=B
That's 25% chance both vote for A, making your vote unimportant; 25% chance both vote for B, making your vote unimportant; and 50% chance the votes will split, making your vote the decisive one.
That being said, I don't wonder at all... when's the last time YOU testified before Congress?
Eric
3 in 10 quadrillion chance. Statistics don't lie. You can't argue this one.
------
First off, the registered voters all saw the ballot in advance, and none of them complained *then*.
Secondly, I think we should consider the implications of allowing a re-vote in this one county. These people would be voting, not based on what option they chose on election day, but based on the knowledge that the entire election outcome depends on them. I bet you'd get a lot more republicans coming out to vote. Some Nader supporters might switch.
However, this *isn't fair*. You aren't allowed to wait until you know what other people in your area do, *then* vote. If they get to re-do this, the only fair thing is for *everyone* to re-do this. In which case, several *other* states will probably flip-flop, one way or another, as apathetic voters who thought the state was a wrap-up for their side run out and make sure it is this time.
Yes, it sucks if people were confused. The time to bring that up was when people in *BOTH* major parties *REVIEWED* these ballots, quite some time ago.
In the mean time, whatever the recount says, it's better if we accept it and move on, than if we spend the next four years throwing accusations around.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Two facts should be noted: first, that the sample ballot was released without indicating the actual punch-holes, so the ambiguity wasn't clear for review, and second, that the ballot design itself is against Florida law regarding ballots: ballots in Florida are required to list the candidates in an agreed upon order (which, for this election, was Bush first and then Gore, but the punch holes for Gore were actually 3rd on the line: it was Bush, Buchanan, and Gore) and that all marks or punches occur directly to the right of the listed candidate.
This is an argument between those who favor strict process and legal rule making versus those who believe that the constitution protects all citizen's voting rights.
A good example of this was St. Louis Missouri, where long lines of voters were turned away at the voting booths after the polls closed. This was after a local judge had ruled that the polls should remain open until after voters had their chance to cast their ballot. However, attorneys for the Bush/Cheney team appealed this decision in Federal court and got the polls closed while voters waited in line.
So, here we are. Choosing between strict rules, such as parsing what the meaning of "is", is versus trying to do the right thing, which I define as giving EVERY registered voter their opportunity to vote.
Bush/Cheney should welcome voters, even those who may vote against them. Why? Because their status as elected officials are now on the line. If they win this election after having turned away voters and misrepresented ballots with a confusing selection process, our very voting process is in jeopardy. And that is a real constitutional crisis.
I wish I could mod you up to +5 Informative. It's amazing how few people know this, or bother paying attention when it is CONSTANTLY mentioned in the press as another example of the media goof-ups!
Eric
A few FACTS (given that the news source is correct - link below) that paint a completely different picture.
1 /8/161334.shtml
"Buchanan received 1 percent of the vote in Palm Beach County."
"In all the counties in Florida where there is significant Independent Party membership, Buchanan got a similiar 1 percent."
"Palm Beach County, on the other hand, has a whopping 14,551 members of the Independent Party.
In fact, it has the highest Independent registration in Florida."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/1
and... regarding the statistics used. it is looking at the ratio of bush/buchanan. since there is a relationship between candidates ( a vote for buch is not a vote for bush or gore ) the ratio will show an exaggerated spike in counties where bush does not do well ( because the ratio of bush/buch relationship is being measured ). this is obviously one of the better statistical 'tricks' that could be used to make this datapoint stand out.
the real tragedy... is that the technology is here. each branch of government needs their own slashdot site. Let 'we the people' do the moderating and issue posting. they can then put *our* words into law, listen to *our* needs, but most importantly *we* get role in government that extends beyond picking one of the two electable losers every 4 years.
j. herber
Legislation is never any good if it tends to go against the grain of what people want. If you ask ppl now, they might _say_ they want this information supressed by legislation, but in reality, ppl want to know the results as early as possible as soon as they are available.
If you stop the media doing this, not only are you restricting the freedom of the press, it won't help because the information will find another way to spread. Probably somewhere on the net.
I know from what I have written it sounds like information has a mind of its own, and although we all know that isn't true, it does behave that way. Just like water "tries" to reach the lowest point.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Overrated=1, Total=4.
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
the ballot was that way because the old folks complained in the first place that they couldn't read the standard font
;)
It makes sense, but do you have proof on that statement?
I do not have actual proof I can refer to. I have heard it mentioned in various news reports and it does make sense for the area. I belive it was initially mentioned that it was this way by the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections.
The loser has to do what Nixon did with Kennedy
You mean Kill the winner?
Do you have proof?
As for the rest of your statements:
I regret you have to stoop to the Nazi card when I was clearly being a bit sarcastic. I was never commenting on them being stupid or not voting. They have every right to vote. Simple act is, there will still be people who screw up the ballot. If you think there was some big conspiracy on behalf of Bush's younger brother to screw this vote, I feel sorry for your poor deluded soul. These problems happen with every election in every place in this country. I have nothing against the folks who had their votes messed up. Do I think they should have done a better job of checking, yes. Do I think that folks need to be more responsible for themselves when they vote, yes. Should the poll workers have been better educated, yes. There are a lot of shoulda coulda wouldas.
To redo the election over a case of voter error, not fraud, is a major mistake. If they push for a new election in Florida, the other side will push for new elections in other states. Soon we will have to do the entire election again. The new president will not be in place for months. the legal wrangling will go on forever. It is just not a good idea for the country to push this issue and cause upheaval. Fix the problems. Don't let them happen again. The world is not going to end if Bush is president, nor will it end if Gore is president. Either way, there will be an air of illegitmacy. Plus, I dare say that such a redo of an election would be the most bitter, distasteful and disruptive event in the history of politics for years to come. Rifts will occur in the American people that may take generations to heal. It is not worth the risk over what is really simple voter error. Costly voter error but still just voter error.
Think about what I am saying. This is out of no bitterness to anyone; just simple instincts. A revote in Florida and/or anywhere else in this country, on this election, would be the most devisive event in American politcs since the Civil War. I plead to the loser that he just request another recount if he wishes; but accept that as final for the good of this country. Try again in four years.
I was reloading the CNN page about once every 10 minutes, because I'm psychotic.
And I saw a thing, above the angry guy, that said, "Breaking News: A federal judge has called an emergency hearing to review voting irregularities in Palm Beach this afternoon. Updates soon." The next time I refreshed, that was gone, and no update.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
That's the thing, we're all (Americans) stuck on this idea of "democracy" and it's not really our fault. It's "their" fault. They. Them. The ones who taught us in kindergarten how great America is because we're free, and a democracy. The ones who go to the UN and get permission to bomb someplace because they're "not a democracy" those poor Americans, living under the opressive tyranny of a republic. Let's send in a few hundred tomahawks, bomb some democracy into em. Yeah! Let's arrest and try the electoral college on crimes against humanity! yeah!
To be fair; Gore showed his moral fiber, and his worth, this morning by standing up on national TV and announcing that even though he won the popular vote, he may have lost the electoral vote, and if that's the case, he respects that, and that it should not be challenged because it's constitutional, and it's the foundation of everything that we believe in as a nation. Well, that's not quite true (the electoral college was a concession to get smaller states to join the union, a political compromise - in geek terms, a kludge). But anyway, it sure eased my mind a bit about the questions I had about the man's sense of honor.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A democrat was the one that designed the ballot, and they had a chance to be vehement about rejecting it before the election. I guess it could be a simple oversight, but they still had long enough to look at it. I think this is a silly stab at the fact that they are losing, even by such a small margin. Christ, I'm out of coffee!@#
"If it's got Gates, or got Windows, it's not Open."
First, it is true that several voters asked to recast their votes once they had realized that they had voted for the wrong person.
If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
It was "figured out" by the rep for the district who said something along the lines of "There's no way that many people here voted for Buchanan, something must be wrong". even though a similar amoung of votes for the Reform party came from there last election...
I might have something wrong here, BUT in the 1996 election Perrot scored an impressive 9% overall, and, as you claim, about 3500 votes in that county.
Now fast forward to 2000. Buchanan had what? A tenth of that? So he should have had by your logic, 350 votes!
--
If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
If there's going to be a revote, then the whole state -- or perhaps the whole nation -- should be involved. Not just a few people who claim they were shafted.
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.