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Florida Election Votes Certified
Ravn0s noted that CNN has reported that Florida has certified Bush as the winner, which of course means that he'll get the 25 electoral votes, and the presidency. We haven't had enough fun:
Gore still has the popular vote nationally, and there are zillions of Florida ballots in question (felons who voted, multi-punched ballots, dangling chads and the list goes on). I wish I could
say it's over ... closure with a President with the qualifications of a head of lettuce is still closure, but I suspect the mainstream media
will continue to harp on this for awhile. But hopefully this is the end of the issue on Slashdot.
To: The citizens of the United States of America: In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium" Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed." 2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through. 6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. Merde is French for "shit". 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day. 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. Thank you for your cooperation.
Any discussion of the popular vote is meaningless. You see, there were some men ages ago (late 18th century) that could forsee candidates only campaigning in densely populated areas. Thus, if you take the big cities and states, you would win the popular vote and the less populated areas would basically be meaningless.
:)
USA Today had a map of the United States of America by county, and it was colored by county for either Gore or Bush. It clearly showed this was Gore's strategy. He owned Chicago, for instance, by pretty much the rest of the state of Illinois was all for Bush. Even in California, Gore only won the coastal counties, Bush taking the majority of land mass. These were enough to put him over the top in those states. If popular vote mattered, you can guarantee these would be the only areas that got any attention, Nebraska, the Dakotas, etc would be completely meaningless because they do not have enough popular votes to contribute to an election. So, to make sure EACH STATE matters a bit, the founders put in this thing called the electoral college.
Popular vote counts matter as much as total yardage in a football game. Even if one side has 300 net yards vs 200, the one with the more actual points wins. It is interesting that in the other close elections (1876 or so, 1960), the losers bowed out (without taking it to courts) and won a term or two later. The question in this election is, will this hurt AlGore's chances at an election in the future? Nobody likes a cry baby.
- 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?"
The S&L scandal had nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism: it had to do with bad management.
In case anyone isn't old enough to remember what happened, in the early 80s S&Ls were deregulated to the point where they could actually loan themselves money: federally insured money. This opened the door for crooks like Keating (and GWB's brother Neil) to make high-risk investments *with federally insured money*. When they went belly up, the federal goverment had to bail them out, because the federal government had insured the money.
The fault lay not only with the crooks like Keating, but with the idiots under Reagan who let them do anything they want with federally insured money. That's bad management!
The only thing liberal or conservative about the whole mess was that a lot of the crooks were big-ticket Republican donors.
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...it's an inconsistency.
The original claim is still valid. The "winner" of this election had a winning margin that's less than the error margin. In other words, he didn't win anything.
And for what it's worth, if you assume precision in the counting process, your recursion argument doesn't apply here. In this case, a margin of victory greater than the margin of error -- even by one vote -- is still a significant result.
What this says to me is that we should adopt some real voting methods, rather than the "punch and pray" approach we use now. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves about the validity of our participatory democracy...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
The one thing this election teaches us is that no, your one vote really *doesn't* matter, because any time the margin is that close, the count will be ruined by our country's piss-poor data collection machinery used in voting.
These problems have always existed, but it was only just now that it was so close that it mattered.
The one thing this election will teach us is that it's high time we had election reform - no not the abolishing of the electoral college, not the reform of money-gathering techniques, but the very simple, technical reform of getting a better voting machine in place, and using it universally.
Here in Wisconsin, the repubs briefly considered doing a recount because of the close margin here, but they gave up since we don't use obsolete chad-punchcards or butterfly ballots. We use a simple visual scanner that looks for a line you draw on the paper, and if the machine detects double-votes it spits the ballot back at you right there, so you know about it and can do it again. This system is good enough that a manual recount wouldn't really change much. Something similarly accurate needs to be nationalized.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Jikes! Imagine if we DID have a real democracy! 60% of the population wouldn't bother to vote on major issues. 85% probably wouldn't vote on routine issues. "Oooh.. you see now Grandma... you voted to eliminate social security there on this butterfly ballot. What you really wanted to choose was this third hole down here.. "increase social security by $1000 billion." :-)
So, theoretically, your margin of error would have made Gore win the first manual recount. He didn't. Bush has been ahead in every recount, even after recounts were done in only 3 heavily democratic counties. I am sorely waiting for the US Supreme Court to hand the Florida State Supreme Court an ass whoopin for violating the United States Constitution and the 14th ammendment.
Yeah, that's about what I expect from slashdot.
Want to reply to me next time, you coward?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Christopher Browne
(Who Slashdot cut off at the "E")
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Bzzzzzt. Not quite. Electors are allocated based on the number of senators (always 2) + representatives (number based on population). That fixed 2 becomes important for small states.
You see there's a minimum of 3 electors per state (one for each senator and rep, the minimum being 2+1=3, e.g. Wyoming), This gives Wyoming much more say so in the presidential race on a people's-votes-per-elector ratio. In CA, the ratio is far lower. So this inequity compels presidential hopefule, not to IGNORE rural America.
Al campaigned in NYC/LA/CHI/etc. and neglected rural regions. Now he's paying the price. He cheesed off the fewer (rural) people who collectively wield more electoral votes than those representing the urban population.
The constitution emphasizes CHECKS AND BALANCES above all else. The Electoral College is no exception.
things. take. time.
I voted for NEITHER Bush, or Gore
I wish I could say the same. I didn't like Gore's woodeness and Bush's record. Frankly I didn't want to continue the Clinton presidency.
I dunno about CmdrTaco calling Bush something like a "head of lettuce" as I don't see Taco having much real to say about politics. I really see little differentiation policy-wise. If Gore had done something notable for the environment in the last 8 years can someone point it out, please? That to me would be a good differentiation, as it seems his position on the environment got pushed to obscurity compared to other things.
Honestly, IMO neither man deserves the job. Both are presently in figurehead positions, neither position truly prepares a person for the job, but can anyone tell me what job prepares a person for the Presidency? Even very militarily successful high-ranking generals have had very mixed results, some good, some bad.
The margin of error is not in the election itself, but rather in the counting methods used. According to the numbers I've heard, punch card ballots have an error rate as high as 4 or 5 percent (this is considered acceptable (by the people who made the decisions, not by me) since the errors are random and thus do not affect the results except in exceedingly close elections). Other common methods, such as pulling levers or optical scanners, have error rates ranging from 0.25% to 1%. The national popular vote has a margin of approximately 200,000 out of 100,000,000, or 0.2%, which puts it within the margin of error cited above. I'll leave it to the statisticians to determine if that means it's fair to call that a tie.
for Texans.
He won't be our governor for much longer.
http://www.kgreen.org/images/cnnmath.gif
Looks like some more of that "fuzzy math."
No, if you look at the bottom of the chart, the total population for the counties that Bush won is greater than the population of the counties that Gore won and that population base is growing faster. It is significant in that it shows that Gore's support is primarily in metro areas or areas dominated by unions & minorities.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
When Johnson ended a draft deferment program, anyone who flunked out of undergraduate school was automatically eligilble for the draft. As a result many professors that were opposed to the war inflated grades to make sure people wouldn't flunk out (ie. if you just showed up you would get a C or better). It was probably similar to what's currently being done to keep athletes in college. It was explained in in the second link (which you probably didn't notice because Slashdot screwed up the first one, which worked just fine in preview mode).
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It was the sister/tobacco comination that I was referring to, not the Peace Corps. Gore has always sucked up to the tobacco industry and still does even after his sister's death. He should have gotten an Oscar for his 1996 speech. I used to work for the Federal Govt and it was stressed that it was against the law to use any Govt equipment or facilities for political purposes. There would be a difference if it was a cell phone bought with personal funds and not the taxpayer furnished. Check out this WND story about Gore's TN pollution. But I suppose since it goes against your views about Gore, you won't put much weight in them either.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
A good map of the US by who won the electorial college votes by state is at http://www.usatoday.com/news/ vot e2000/electfront.htm. An even better map is the one that shows who won each county. This map is at http://www.usatoday.com/news/vot e20 00/cbc/map.htm There are several states where Gore only won a handful of counties and three where he didn't win any.
I also wonder how many people in the Western states didn't vote because the networks called Florida prematurely and started predicting that Gore had it wrapped up. I've heard of several reports that when people at the polls in Western Florida heard that FL had been called for Gore, they just turned around and left. You also have to wonder how many Gore votes are due to the fiasco in St. Louis.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It needs to get wrapped up pretty quickly at least so the president-elect can assemble a cabinet, WH staff, etc. All these people have to go through FBI background checks and get started with the process of transition. Gore could have an easier time doing this by just keeping the bulk of Clinton's staff.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The FL Supreme Court set the deadline of 17:00 11/26/2K or if the office wasn't open 09:00 the next morning. IMHO, Gore only offered the hand recount for every county only because he wanted to continue the trolling for votes in the large counties that he won by quite large margins. Bush is forcing the counties to count the overseas absentee ballots that were excluded using the formula that the FL Attorney General (a Demo) initially sent out to each election commission. He later recanted these instructions because of the flack he received for excluding a significant number of military absentee ballots. The lawsuit is to make sure the counties abide by the revised rules. Also, if the US Senate decides which elector slate is valid, it is the current one, which isn't 50-50.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
And how many people do you know that use proper English in normal conversations? Bush is also apparently fluent in Spanish. The citizens of Texas apparently like the job he did as governor for that state. He won healthy percentages of every demographic segment of the population. There were even Democrats from the TX state legislature campaigning for Bush in other states because they thought he did a great job in that state and could do the same for the country. I don't recall any Republicans campaigning for Gore.
Also check out this Washington Post story& lt;/a> . Although Gore's SAT scores were better than Bush's (1355 vs 1206), he did worse in college. He got a D in Earth Science (poor in Science overall) and a C- in economics. Most of his improvements in his junior & senior years have been attributed to grade inflation by anti Vietnam war professors. Bush also got an MBA from Harvard while Gore got five Fs before dropping out of Vanderbilt Divinity School. Also given his big lies about his sister, tobacco, Love Canal, campagin fund raising, the polution generated by his properties in TN, etc., I'd hardly consider Gore a model of character and integrity.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
As I had thought I pointed out earlier, the "right to elect a president directly" does not exist. Nowhere in the Constitution does it ever state that popular votes for a President even have to be held. According the the Constitution, each state's legislature decides how its electors are picked; by tradition they have all chosen to do this with a popular vote but this is not actually necessary (the only law regarding this is that the rules must be set before the election, and once set they cannot be changed once the election starts, at least not in such a way that the election in progress would be affected by said changes). "The Presidential election" as we know it is actually 51 statewide elections (plus a citywide one in DC); the winner traditionally gets all the electoral votes from that state, except in Maine and Nebraska.
Lastly, every other race in america is won or lost by the popular vote. So why not the president as well?
I'm not certain I understand this one. As far as I can tell, you mean one of two things: either that the popular vote has always agreed with the electoral vote, or that all other elected officials are done by popular vote.
If you mean that all other presidential elections have had the popular and electoral tallies in agreement, you're wrong. This is not the first, or even the second, time that this has happened; it's the fourth. Granted, it's the first time in over a hundred years, but that means little. And in none of those cases was there ever such a controversy as this.
If you're saying that other officials are elected by popular vote, that's not important. There are many ways to hold elections, and in the end no one way that is truly right and fair all of the time, not even popular vote (which is particularly unfair in the case of a nation where voters are heavily concentrated in certain small areas, such as ours). Besides which, the President was never intended to be elected by the people. In fact, the President and Vice President aren't even intended to run together; they're chosen separately, though again tradition holds that they run together.
There are some very interesting quirks in this. All of the following, though extremely unlikely, are all mathematically possible outcomes for this election:
No, the system's not perfect. But I maintain my assertion that it's the fairest one out there that I've seen.
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While you are correct, consider: a candidate who can concentrate on campaigning heavily in fifteen cities will do so, because the likelihood of garnering votes will be greater.
Remember, it only took four cities to turn the popular vote from Bush to Gore (all of them in California, and these four carried so much power they turned the whole state, which had actually voted mostly Republican otherwise). With fifteen, all but the closest elections -even closer than this one was- would be completely wrapped up with even a fairly small percentage majority (also note that the urban areas did tend to go heavily towards one candidate or the other, usually Gore, this time around).
This is the beauty of the Electoral College. It is true that many comparatively small groups of people can turn an election under the current system. This is good, because it ensures that you have to please them all to have any mathematically reasonable chance of winning, rather than just concentrating on fifteen small areas.
I live near an urban area. Either way; candidates will listen to what I have to say. But I would far prefer that candidates had to listen to everyone, and not just me. That is why the Electoral College works.
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Pardon? I think the electoral college is crap because it explicitly works against the principle of "one man, one vote"
Actually, I don't think it does.
Consider: if you take a direct-popular vote, then realistically speaking, no more than fifteen US cities will decide every single election from now on.
A candidate could well say "I support bulldozing the entire nation except for <insert major urban areas here> to create parking lots for <insert aforementioned urban areas>." Even if every single person not in those areas votes against this, if the people of those cities vote for it (a likely situation, given the terrible parking in most major urban areas), then the votes of those in rural areas were for nothing.
Now, there's one other thing: the President was never meant to be chosen by the people. Nor, actually, was the Senate. The people get their fair representation in the House (where things are not quite proportional, since all the states have at least one representative, but no one disuputes this). The states (because keep in mind that each state is also its own entity) get their fair representation in the Senate (one state, two senators who oversee matters of the state as a whole). The office of the Presidency was created such that it would be chosen by the states; it's a rather interesting constitutional fluke but it's actually quite constitutional for a state to not hold popular elections for the President at all; only tradition dictates that they do). This is how each state is assured its voice in choosing the symbolic head. Also note that this is important in the case of the Vice President, who has voting power in the Senate just as a Senator does (but in the case of the VP, that power exists only in the case of a tie). This is why it's important for the states to choose: this is the arbiter for ties in the body which represents them.
Note that the Constitution was later amended to support the direct election of Senators (they were originally appointed by state legislatures).
The people get their representation. That's what the House is for: a body where everything is based on population (though note that in small states where there is only one representative, the people who voted against him/her get no voice at all: is this fair?) The states get their representation: this is the Senate and the Presidency. And the federal government itself gets its representation: this is the Supreme Court (or would you rather that the Supreme Court justices be forced to descend into politics, rather than being able to focus on upholding the Constitution and justice overall?)
That's what checks and balances are for. The people are not the be-all and end-all of power, nor should they be: 99.95% of the people, very nearly all Slashdotters, and probably 99.99% of people who haven't studied law -noting that I haven't either-)don't have the knowledge or training it takes to run a country in any kind of effective manner. That is why we have elections. But sometimes mistakes are made here: that is why proportional representation is checked by nonproportional means as well (such as the Presidency itself; is it fair that we have only one President?); neither is powerful enough to overpower the other, so all must agree before a law is passed. It's not perfect, but it's more effective and, in the end, fairer, than any other system I've seen.
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Pardon? I think the electoral college is crap because it explicitly works against the principle of "one man, one vote", instead allocating undue influence to sparsely populated states. I voted in California in this election (for neither Bush nor Gore, FWIW) - California has one electoral vote for (roughly) every 540,000 people. Iowa (to take a battleground state in this election) has roughly one for every 280,000. I don't call that a fair system.
I'd go so far as to say the system works as designed - it gives that extra little nudge in a tight presidential contest to rural landowners, keeping the urban poor in check. If the broken system hadn't been enshrined in the body of the constitution itself (by our clearly infallible *ahem* founding fathers), but merely in statute, it would have been trashed decades ago as contrary to the fourteenth amendment.
(Disclosute: I think both Republicrat-party candidates sucked most heartily this year, and would never have voted for either of those to jokers, even if I still lived in Florida. I would be grousing as loudly if Gush's and Bore's fortunes were reversed.
Most civilized countries have proportional representation. Damn near all have provisions for runoff elections in a race where multiple candidates leave the race too close to call (some states and counties do this, too). A one-night-only, winner-take-all electoral system produces erratic results and generates no end of controversy when the results are within the margin of error. Add in the skew towards less populous states, and you have a process of questionable legitimacy.
I'm with you on trashing punch-card ballots, but a adamantly against fully-electronic balloting. With physical ballots, the number of empties is known, and the completed ballots leave a physical record. Tweaking an electronic vote tally leaves no physical trace, unlike "losing" a stack of marked ballots (the lost number being reflected in the difference between the total count of ballots before and after the election). In other words, an election could be stolen *without incurring suspicion* simply because there would be no irregularities noted - the electronic count would be the sole, indisputable count. Ugh. Ugly to contemplate.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Just wanted to jump in here and remind you that the court system is in fact the branch of government charged with evaluating petitions for redress and then ruling as to the soundness of the claim and the appropriate remedy, if any.
That is to say, a legal process. A protesting mob is not a petition for redress. It is an exercise in free assembly, though, which I wholeheartedly support.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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The problem is, there wasn't an equal vote in this state.
Bush won.
They recounted.
Bush still won.
They recounted again.
Bush STILL won.
How many times does reality have to slap Gore in the face before he wakes up? That idiot Bill Daley keeps yammering about "the will of the people". Yet the Gore camp disqualifies absentee ballots from military members. And STILL he yammers about "the will of the people".
Well guess what Billy-boy. The will of the people HAS been followed. And despite your best efforts to derail it, you've lost.
Does it suck? Sure. But that's the way the system was designed. He agreed to be bound by the rules of the system. Just because it didn't give him the results HE would have liked, doesn't mean that he shouldn't be bound by the decision after the fact.
And before you start telling me that I'm a hypocrite and wouldn't say the same thing if it was Bush losing. Let me inform you. I voted for NEITHER Bush, or Gore.
And if Bush had resorted to the same tactics (i.e. anything till "we" like the result) as the Gore camp has, they'd be seeing JUST as much derision from me as the Gore camp is getting now.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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...gets an masters...
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"An masters"?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Wow! What an articulate citizen you are. I am a 'freshly converted' Republican after going through three presidential elections registered as a Democrat. I see from your web site that you are a college student with "...little over 1 year of work experience...". If you are much like the people I went to school with, then you really only have time between work and classes to skim the news about the elections and candidates. If so, then you are mostly parroting the views of the people you grew up around and respect for various reasons. My views certainly matured greatly after taking the helm of a small business.
In ten years you may want to look back at your post above and see how your perspectives have matured or changed.
I don't own any stock at all, supported the M$ anti-trust case and voted for Bush in this election. My votes are not cast by party, but are based upon the information that I have about each candidate. It seems that I came to the same conclusion about Al Gore that the majority of Tennessee ( and Arkansas while I'm mentioning it) voters did.
In closing, I don't hope you burn in hell. I do hope that you learn to be a bit more level headed before you venture into the job markets that don't rely on state funding.
Take care Mr. Jackson.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
What exactly, is a Joint Class? I think I had a few of those back in "High" School. :)
Bush(tm) (marca registrada) The President? Nah. Well maybe in the same way small children think Mickey Mouse is the King of Disneyworld. The President of the US o' A is James A. Baker III. He ran shit when Reagan was the Leader of the MoFo Free World and he will do it again with Reagan Jr.-Lite (tm). I'm sure Frat Boy will try to inject himself into the process but they'll talk over his head and use big words until he falls asleep or has a tantrum and leaves the room.
BTW, expect that after Cheney keels over that Cardinal Baker appoints SchwartzPowell to the office.
The US election is a perfect example of what you get when you have two fundamentally bland candidates who totally fail to motivate people. Send people to the polls to choose between two indistinguishable candidates, and guess what? They'll come out 50/50.
There's a good article on feed that points out:
It's impossible to find out what "the will of the people" is under these circumstances. No matter how you count, the margin for error will remain higher than the margin of victory. Thus, tossing a coin, asking a lawyer, or taking your life-line and calling a friend are equally valid ways of deciding who gets to be US president.
Of course, the logical thing is to just hold the election over and over again until you poor Americans get it right.
Charles Miller
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The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
>Do you understand the need for a manual recount now?
The problem is that with every additional recount you do (manually OR by machine), you introduce further error into the count. This is because with a punchcard system such as they're using in Florida, moving the punchcards around may break off chads - which may or may not have been actually punched through by the voter (they may have only been indented, or "dimpled"). It may have been that they were about to vote for the candidate, dimpling the chad, and then didn't vote for anyone. Now during the recount, the chad falls out and it's counted as a vote the voter didn't intend. Or they may have been about to vote for a candidate, and then voted for another - in which case if in the next recount the dimpled/pregnant/whatever chad for the almost-voted-for candidiate falls off, as commonly happens with these punchcards, then that vote will be invalidated because it now looks like they voted for two presidential candidates.
And there's no way for us to know which of these situations may or may not have occurred with each ballot.
This is why there were different results in each of the recounts by machine, because sending them through the machine causes more chads to fall off (sending them through the hands of human counters would have much the same effect, as they get flexed and moved around, etc). Which is also why a manual recount isn't going to improve your accuracy, because the process of recounting itself is changing what the ballots are showing. Even if you ignore the potential for bias among human counters, the ballots they're trying to count are no longer going to show the same thing as they did on election night due to the physical limitations of the cards.
I personally would like to see more counties moving towards electronic systems such as the touchscreen-based ones used in several counties nationally. They look much like an ATM, and people have found them very easy to use. This eliminates this ridiculous situation of having to look at chads, and somehow try to divine the intent of the voter from how much a chad is hanging off, or how much it's dimpled, etc.
Hell with flipping a coin. Demand a pistol duel!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I'm glad it works in Ireland, but the point remains that the combination of constitutional arrangements and political character has led to problems in some countries.
Overall, I was just trying to point out the somewhat glassy nature of the houses people were throwing stones from, and I think the point is still valid.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Even if the CIA did precipitate the events of 1975 (which I find *very* difficult to believe for a variety of reasons which I can't be bothered going in to here), the fact remains that the hole in the constitution which left John Kerr and Gough Whitlam in the farcical situation of being able to sack the other at a moment's notice, and the fact that without the double dissolution triggers the whole Senate would not have faced the people, shows the constitution was and is seriously flawed.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yes, it's nice to have a chuckle at the expense of arrogant Yanks, but get some perspective. Just because they don't understand the world beyond their own borders doesn't mean we should be the same :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Not really. Each senate seat is popularly elect4ed, there's a big difference between that and having a populkar election for the entire senate. Ditto with the house of representatives -- just because you can get 99% of the vote in seat A does not mean that you can forward 48% of the vote to another party member running in seat B.
As for the "circus in florida", the problem has arisen because the election is too close (the voters may as well have voted randomly), not because the "system" is bad.
You're kidding yourself if you believe that the problem was somehow "caused" by the electoral college. If the vote in Florida was split like that, and the votees in the other states were also split in such a manner, the two parties would be quarreling over one or two deciding electoral votes, you'd still have the same situation with both sides trying to gerrymander it their way. Even with a popular vote, the popular vote is close enough that it's be tied up in litigation (and the recounts would be somewhat more difficult !)
This is completely wrong. The margins of victory would increase, but so would the number of votes, so the difference between the margin of victory and the margin of error would not change that much. If a popular vote was used, you'd have Florida on a national level right now.
The American philosophy is one of less centralisation, there are substantial cultural and economic differences between the different reasons which is why in the context of the USA, decentralisation tends to make more sense.
This lecture describes not only how you can cheat these systems, but how and why it's so hard to get an accurate count (not to mention why it's nearly impossible to count the same number of votes twice , mechanically OR manually).
The lecture is in .ASF and powerpoint format... sorry. Click http://wean1.ulib.org/cgi-bin/metawin-lectures.pl? target=Lectures/Distinguished%20Lectures /2000 and select the bottom row (Michael Shamos's "What's happening in Florida")! For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL, so there are some spaces on it when you click there... just remove them in your netscape window.
Yes, some of the predictions that he made are somewhat dated (as the lecture happened on the 15th), but it is a very interesting overview of what can and *does* happen to your votes that you may not have thought about. It's a little long, but worth the time!
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Well, he certainly hasn't done a good job in Texas and no matter what happens: He didn't win the election - the people didn't want him.
Then why do 60% of them want Gore to concede defeat and stop the lawsuits?
a well-educated, intelligent, proven person who's been part of the most successful administration for decades
That's a good description of Bush, considering his 95th-percentile SAT, multiple college degrees, and proven excellent environmental record in Texas.
and a not very bright, but "likable", person with a very bad track record
And that's a good description of Gore, considering his zinc mine's multiple fines for environmental violations.
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Your Republicanism is showing through. Among people who are not Devout Republicans, RR is generally considered to be a clueless luser almost in the same category as GuuB.
Then how come so many Democrats voted for him? How come he won so many majority-Democrat states, including Oklahoma, which was something like 70-75% Democrat at the time?
How come he won as governor of California, arguably the most heavily Democrat-dominated state in the union?
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The elderly tended to, overwhelmingly, vote for Gore, so the majority of the votes so recovered will favor Gore.
Not in Florida.
You're talking about a county that is a Pat Buchanan stronghold (in fact, he lives there), and that voted majority Republican in the 1994 elections.
And, yes, those over 65 voted majority Republican in many races in that election. Look it up.
Palm Beach County voted for Connie Mack in 1994, by nearly 60%. There has been a widespread feeling among seniors in that county that Clinton betrayed them by concentrating on things like gays in the military instead of the things he promised them. They do not all believe Gore's attempts to get back in their good graces, and they remember seeing "that nice young man" his brother on TV a lot.
A lot of old folks in Palm Beach county voted for Clinton because he reminded them of JFK. Nobody's making that comparison to Gore.
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There is ample legal precedent for counting dimpled ballots. Counting the voters' intent is even the law in backwards places like Texas now, thanks to a law supported and signed by none other than GuuB himself.
And what if the ballot is dimpled because the voter started to vote for Gore, then had an attack of conscience and voted "none of the above" by not continuing the motion?
A lot of those ballots have clear votes on every single race except President. Almost none of the "dimpled chad" votes are going to Bush.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
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A lot of those ballots have clear votes on every single race except President. Almost none of the "dimpled chad" votes are going to Bush.
According to the inventor of the punch card voting system used, there is a mechanical flaw which can and does lead to the first column of punches being incompletely punched while all of the other rows are punched cleanly. This is particularly the case in old, worn out machinery like much of that used in the election.
There is ample reason to count dimpled ballots, even when the only punch dimpled is in the first column which just so happens to be the presidential votes in question.
That being said, a hand recount of the entire state is what is required and what should happen, to be as sure as possible that the result is as accurate as possible. Unfortunately the Republicans chose to denigrate the entire recount process -- something that is standard procedure in any close election -- rather than request recounts in Republican leaning counties, as was their responsiblity.
The Democrats correctly requested recounts where they thought it would help them.
Clearly, the entire procedure needs to be revisited -- in an election this close, a hand count of the entire state is what should have happened. It wasn't up to the Democrats to request it, but it shouldn't have depended on the Republicans requesting it either. It should simply have been standard operating procedure, begun immediately, with no certification until completed.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
Bush has received some dimpled ballots. However, the dimpled ballot issue is a systemic phenomenon which targets the elderly and weak, who did not use enough force to puncture the first row of chads and thus have their vote counted. The elderly tended to, overwhelmingly, vote for Gore, so the majority of the votes so recovered will favor Gore.
As it is, by refusing to count those votes were are excluding a particular group of people, namely those too elderly or too weak to fully displace the chads in the first column of votes. Since this excludes a demographic group which favors Gore, it is understandable that the co-chair of Guub's election campaign would be so unwilling to include them. What is not tolerable is that this stand: any and all discernable votes must be counted (and should be, statewide).
That this isn't happening denigrates the entire process, and I blame both the Dems for not insisting more vocally on a statewide recount and denigrating the process when the other side obtains legal victories, as well as the Repubs for not doing their job in requesting recounts, gathering a mob to terrorize one canvassing board (Dade) into stopping their recount, and denigrating the process when the Dems have legal victories.
A pox on both of their houses -- we should exile them from both from politics forever and start from scratch.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Well your facts are a bit distorted. Sure if you ROUND the numbers Bush got 48 and Gore 49 percent. However, rounding makes it seem much further apart than it really is. Gore got something like 48.6 and bush got something like 48.3. In other words, the most you could say, based on the facts, is that just .3% (350k) of voters prefer Gore to Bush. To put that in perspective, using your kind of logic, if Buchanan had dropped out his 499k votes would have gone to Bush, and Bush would've won the so-called popular vote. Or in yet a different light, more voters wanted Bush in this election than wanted Clinton in his first election. All that is irrelevant though, we have laws. We're not going to start inventing new ways of massaging the data to get the results we want, it's too dangerous.
.1% of the country thinks. I think the greater moral violence is that against law. In addition, if you believe in the "people" and polling/statistics, they show how the people really feel now (~60% favor Bush stance in many different areas, such as legitimacy, who "won" florida, who "deserves" to win, etc, etc)
As for Nader, he's totally irrelevant. You don't know that Nader voters would have even voted. (I suspect a great many of them wouldn't have). Also, as I have previously indicated, I know at least a couple Nader voters that would otherwise vote Republican. It could also be argued that Nader changed the very dynamics of the election. For instance, Nader might have pushed Gore more towards the extreme ends of the democratic party, causing him to take risks that he would have otherwise never taken. What if, what if, what if. We simply can't know.
I strenuously object to the assertion by the liberal media and Gore that these minor facts somehow give Gore a "moral" victory, as if somehow a Bush victory is amoral. We are a nation of law and at the end of the day that is our chief moral not the merely what
Speak for yourself. The margin of error is not something that has been drummed into my head by pollsters. I say there is a margin of error because there IS one in every election, despite the assertions of some. The degree may vary. Some may choose to call it by another name, but it exists nonetheless. It does not mean that anyone is being "disenfranchised". You can say it's unacceptable and unfair till you turn blue in the face, but that does not change the fact that it exists.
Are there better alternatives? Sure there are. But don't trivialize the problem and act as if getting rid of any and all error is a small task. There are serious issues at work here. Your solution may sound foolproof to you, but don't be so sure of yourself. So long as we're in the physical realm, we're going to have some error. If the error is sufficiently small so that an inaccurate election result is extremely rare, I'd rather have that than, say, a novel digital election with unknown risks (i.e., the potential for massive and untraceable fraud) but 0 or negligible error....
Then, by that same reasoning, it's also fair to say that more people in Florida want Bush. Also, Bill Clinton should have never been elected, because if you added Ross Perot's votes (far more than Nader et. al) to Bush Sr., Bush would've clinched it.
.3% of the vote? No, I didn't think so.
It's not "definetly" fair to say that "most" people did not want Bush. On the basis of the results alone, it's almost exactly 50/50. If Gore so much as farted, that margin could have gone the other way. On the basis of the intent of the country, you simply can't know that. As I've already mentioned, the electoral college changes the way people vote (and also the way the candidates campaign). For instance, I know many people in California and New York that, believe it or not, voted for Nader (because they believe the environment needs more attention) but who would have otherwise voted for Bush (as strange as that may seem). The point is that you can't presume to know the will of the people until you've actually counted their explicit vote. A vote in the electoral college system simply cannot be summed up and called a popular vote, especially when it's this close. Can you really tell me that people making those kinds of decisions are not more than
I'm not your typical slashdotter. Unlike the rest of slashdot, I generally consistently support IP.
The bottom line is that I do deny that Gore "certainly" got more votes in Florida, and to the extent that you can argue that Gore won Florida, I can argue that Bush won the so-called "popular vote". What we can agree on are the facts, that Bush won the official votes in Florida and Gore won more official votes nationwide. It'd be a mistake to abandon law in favor of this highly subjective reasoning of yours. Just who would you appoint to be chief reasoner? How is that protected from fraud, manipulation, and abuse? I'd rather have a concrete vote, no matter which way it turns, than the alternative subjective means.
No, you'd have each person having an equal say... Right now, where according to your theory, our votes are weighted by what the population density is. The higher the density the less each vote counts, basically. It's not like a candidate could go from LA to Houston to Miami to Altanta to DC to Boston to New York to Chicago and wrap the election like that, unless maybe they got 100% of the votes in each of those cities and the rest of the coutry forgot to turn out.
Every other vote in this country is based on popular vote - senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, etc... And didn't we just sit back in glee when Milosivech (i know, i can't spell his name) lost the popular vote, called himself the victor and then watch on tv as the entire country revolted against him.
Maybe we don't need to abolish the electoral college completely, but what we need to do is separate the votes from the states. Have the candidates fight out over each and every vote... Like, right now, bush'd get 13 of florida's votes and gore'd get 12 and this'd been over weeks ago. Because i hardly see how "every vote counts" under a system where the loser wins... No one recounted Massachusetts looking for extra gore or bush or nader votes because 66% of the state went for gore, making the other 34% basically throwaway votes.
I go by history, and history shows he is much more qualified than you, I mean.. look at it this way Anonymous Coward is responsible for most of the trolls on /.! (that was a joke btw)
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
They're politicians, they are supposed to be dark, menacing and have ugly controversial histories or they aren't doing their job right.
I'm not a bush supporter either - my point is just be fair with evaluations and not these vague dissidents against him without any basis. Gore has as many (maybe more maybe less, I'm not God) strikes against him as Bush -- if you disagree you are naive and shouldn't be voting in my opinion.
My point is this: Bush has done things right, he has to in order to get where he is at today. If you think you can do better and want to - do it. If not, then you are that mother on the sidelines screaming for their fat little kid to play in the game.
But personally I would rather have someone in office that reflects the american majority (uses alcohol, drugs and is a real person) than someone who is robotic in everything they do (read Gore). The reason is simple, the president has no real unweilding holy power - they are merely a face to our nation. It's silly really.. all this talk about a man who doesn't do all that much in the major decisions of our country. They have advisors for the decisions people think the president made.
Now, when picking a president I myself would rather choose the one who has better advisors -- and in this case it is obviously clear who does, the dubya campaign won the presidency against odds and managed to put someone up there that has a shady history (even though everyone does) and win. Now that is some good thinking with some seriously smart people behind it -- now those are the people who are doing a lot of the real work. I think it's all in pretty damn good hands, because Bush's hands aren't touching it, just delivering it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Are you from Texas?
If yes, then wow you must have been living in a cave to not see the changes that Bush made for the better and also the democrats campaigning for him - obviously he did something right beyond toting his daddies name around.
And no, I didn't vote for Bush (or Gore) - but he is someone I would prefer to have in office over Gore, who is like watching a hooked on phonics commercial.
Bush has 2 things, a history that speaks kindly and the presidency. I'd say he earned that regardless who is daddy is, although it helped. Look at the facts before you spout off - Bush did very well in his life and he's gone a lot further than you have, so show him some respect.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Let's see, she came up with a national healthcare plan that would have put most of us in the poor-house and stole an African saying (It takes a village...) and pawned it off as her own...
Perfect Democratic candidate!
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The unsig!
Let's see if I can get this right, you're unhappy with America, so you're moving to Canada? I take it you feel so strongly about this that you'll be renouncing your US citizenship and applying to be naturalized as a Canadian citizen, right?
It will be interesting to see you come crawling back when you need to have surgery or get tired of paying out half or more of your income in taxes.
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The unsig!
Spoken like a true resident of California. Do you live in CA?? Think about it. If you get rid of the Electoral College, you place the country in the hands of California and New York. While New Yorkers typically claim nothing in common with CA, their political views both tend to be very liberal, thus the same. The Electoral College is the only thing keeping our governemt fair.
It's ironic. Democrats claim to favor the little guy, the guy who has to struggle to get to the top, yet are more interested in steam-rolling the country with left-wing liberal politics.
Do the math. Look at the concentration of people in LA county for example. It's more than several other states combined. Is it fair to let one group, even if more in number, from one small area determine what's best for everyone in the country, particularly for people thousands of miles away from them, who themselves have no say in their destiny, due to the system you want to see created? You may want to live in the United States of California, but the rest of us do NOT.
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The unsig!
So do I. CNN took the Palm Beach County ballot around New York City, and asked people to identify the hole to punch out to vote for Al Gore. They asked a wide range of people, young, middle-aged and seniors alike. Nobody got it wrong.
It's the sun down there, it's baked their brains and they're incapable of coherent thought, let alone being capable of following an arrow one-half of an inch toward the center of a piece of paper and then punching out the hole at the tip of the arrow.
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The unsig!
Actually, regardless of whether Gore thinks the electoral system is fair, he agrees that it's the law. In a speech a few days after the election he said that although he may have won the popular vote, it's the electoral college that counts; essentially, that he knew the way the game is played, and will win or lose by those rules.
The lawsuits and challenges you're seeing now, incidentally, are part of those rules. The law isn't a machine, and we can't expect a hotly contested matter to be resolved in one iteration. Lots of important things are decided just the way this is being decided, by citizens taking their disagreement to the judicial system. Blah blah checks and balances etc.
As an American, I'm not embarrassed by an election that takes a lot of time and a lot of lawsuits, as long as it's eventually resolved peacefully. Resolving our differences through appeal to law--byzantine and tedious though it may be--is a lot better than bloody revolution or assassination, two popular alternatives which don't look likely here (notwithstanding some rioting in Florida). Believe it or not, this is how it's supposed to work.
My bad, it was 999,000 -- I put an extra zero. but the recount caught it.
BTW, Florida has 6 mil votes, so a 99.9% accurate count has a margin of error of 6000. A 99.99% accurate count still gives a margin greater than Bush's current lead (but it's much closer, 600)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
What I meant by "the electoral vote is tallied" was to tally the national electoral vote (which could easily, under that system, happen several times). Yeah, it would require changing the constitution.
If Senator Bedfellow does well enough the first time around to win the majority electoral vote, that would end the process right there - there would be no runoff. You're right though - with a runoff and a proxy system, a person's total could change for the worse, state by state.
Dammit.
Well, this is why a person's vote should not count for more or less just because of where they happen to live.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
As far as recounts go, I'm imagining a time when we have computer voting booths everywhere (we've got them where I live already) and "recount" means, "do another query with these computers". There'd be some kind of secure protocol by which they could all put the results together a few minutes after the polls close.
I don't know how close we are to that right now.
I don't see why you can't do a runoff system with the states proportionally dividing their electoral votes. It would be like an optimized version of the following:
State X asks all its voters to vote for their honest top choice, assuring them that if that person does not win, and the election does not become a foregone conclusion, they will be able to change their vote.
The state's votes are distributed proportionally, rounding off where necessary.
The electoral vote is tallied. If one candidate has a majority, that's that - because no runoff would change anything.
If not, each state drops off the candidate that received the least votes in that state. The votes that went for that candidate spill over to the second choices marked on those ballots. The results are again tallied and the proportional votes from each state redecided. The electoral vote is again tallied.
Repeat until somebody has a majority of the electoral vote.
The electoral votes here act as nothing more than a proxy, and their function is to keep the balance we have now which weights each state's influence.
A more blatant way to do this would be to give each person a weight based on where they live. Those living in cities would have a smaller number and those on farms would have a larger number. This, of course, exposes plainly the injustice of the electoral college - your vote literally counts for less when you live in a populated area. It's the only reason Gore isn't the president now, and it's what makes liberals cringe. Conservatives justify it by pointing at the county-by-county results that show a country blanketed in red.
Personally, I'd go with a popular vote and ditch the electoral college. But then, I'm liberal. I know it's not gonna happen, so this is my best effort given the constraints.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
McCain should have beat Bush in the primary. I'd have voted for McCain.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
The twist here is that it's electoral _voters_, not electoral _votes_. These people have all the disgression in the world when they go up there and vote. They can elect CowboyNeal as president and it would stand.
The electoral margin is so slim that just a few of those voters could change thier mind (they've done it many times before, including ones from Florida, though it's never decided an election) and it could swing the other way.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
Ok, this is really stupid. I had bullets in this post, in the form of lowercase o's, but that triggered a "junk repetitive characters" lameness filter. Now I'm wondering if this will get accepted at all, or rejected for being a "repeat". People, these filters are worthless.
Here are some suggestions for federal legislation to avoid some of these things in the future:
Keep the electoral college, but with some changes.
Proponents of the electoral college system point out that it keeps less populated states' interests from being overrun by voting blocs in the heavily populated areas - each state gets proportional representation, plus two extra. Ok, fair enough. That can stay.
What should go is the part about the states electing voters. This is the part that smacks of elitism. We should not be electing "electors" that have discretion. It should be a completely automatic system. Just make that small change in the constitution. It's not like it would even really change things much, but it's the principle of the thing.
Pass a law requiring states to split their votes proportionally.
The reason the states have a 'winner-take-all' system right now is to make themselves more attractive to candidates. If Joe Candidate can go to Iowa and get a thousand extra votes that would tip all of the state's electoral votes in his favor, you can bet he'll spend a lot of time in Iowa, which is great for Iowa - he'll pander to their specific concerns. Once one state does this, the others all have to do it too, to make themselves more attractive. Then we get what we have now - 48 states using winner-take-all, and candidates that pander only to the ones that are "In Play".
If they split their electoral votes, the small states would still get that extra little clout, but everything would be "in play" - you could go anywhere and pick up an extra electoral vote.
Finally, a runoff system. At the voting booth, a voter selects his/her first, second, third, and fourth choice. First, the first choices are tallied. If no candidate has a clear majority, the candidate farthest behind drops out and the votes that went for him spill over to the candidates those voters marked as their second choice. This would continue until a candidate has a majority of the vote. Needless to say, this requires a computer-based system.
This has many advantages - a voter can vote third-party and not worry about hurting the similiar-minded candidate that has a better chance of winning. Also, the winner would have at least the grudging support of a majority.
It wouldn't be difficult to mesh this runoff system with the electoral vote - just treat it as a two-tiered election that happens repeatedly until there is a winner. Each state has its runoff election, and divides its electoral vote according to the proportions of the first choices marked on the ballot. The electoral vote is tallied and if there is no winner by majority, the state votes are retallied, with a runoff from the candidates farthest behind to the second choices of their voters. Eventually, a candidate will win a majority of the electoral vote.
There. That's a voting system that should satisfy everyone. Now the question is whether the voters can handle the idea of ranking the candidates.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
After the Gore team took the initiative in circumventing Florida's election system ON ELECTION DAY when they hired that tele-marketing firm to call people and ask them to protest, Bush's team had no choice but to respond
Ah, the old "they MADE me do it" excuse.
Tell me, how is calling voters "circumventing" the election process? As I recall the GOP has no qualms about calling voters on election day -- I think its perfectly within everyones rights to do so.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As you "recall"? You must have access to news sources that I don't, since this hasn't even been whispered by Gore's supporters in all the news shows that I've been monitoring.
Okay, maybe I was being too "polite" -- Bush was calling people all damn day, the same way Gore was calling people, and any other high-ranking GOP or Democratic official was calling people. This is not something new, especially as a way to get people out in critical states, though I'm sure you'll come up with a way that Bill Clinton or a Democrat invented it so that the Republicans had to "lower themselves" to use the technique.
The Democrats hired a tele-marketing firm on the day of the election to create problems where there weren't any
There weren't any? As I recall (there's that phrase again!) people were calling their congressmen AND the board of election in palm Beach County as early as 9 am because they thought the ballot was confusing. Whether you think those people are idiots and should be ignored is no matter, the fact is that THEY started calling first thing in the morning to complain, and the democrats picked up that something was wrong and started calling others in the area to encourage that they complain (keeping in mind this is well before anyone had a clue what the final numbers of Florida would be).
It was due to this that an advisory was put out to try and clarify the ballots -- maybe it made a difference in the number of mistaken votes, or not, there's no real way to know. But I can hardly imagine how this is a nefarious scheme since I don't know of any other location where it took place, and NO ONE had a clue that Florida was going to be critical when this was happening.
in concert with the immediate decent of other Democratic heavyweights (Jesse Jackson, Wexler, etc.)
Ah, so the descent of republican heavyweights had nothing to do with it, I understand now. Everything done by democrats=bad/evil/extralegal, everything done by republicans=good/pure/constitutional. Thanks for clearing that one up for me.
Tell me again why no one in america seems willing to accept that maybe they don't have a monopoly on common sense or logic? Why is someone who disagrees with you automatically branded as breaking the law and trying to destroy the constitution?
I accept that republicans think everything is okay, lets just move on -- why do they assume anyone who disagrees is anti-american, that we have no capability for thought and are clearly puppets of some higher power? Why is it so unthinkable that the Florida Supreme Court actually did their job by ruling on the law? Is it impossible to conceive that an election whose totals are a thousand times smaller than the margin of error might actually HAVE AN ERROR? This seems like basic math to me, yet it seems to truly baffle anyone who voted for Bush.
I have no problem with Bush being elected (though people who HATE Bill Clinton seem to have a REAL problem with Gore being elected) but I have little faith that we've had an accurate assesment of WHO won yet.
(it should also be noted since you brought it up that the republican protestors are being funded by the GOP -- folks like Jesse Jackson were there on their own dime, and Gore was pretty blatantly being unsupportive of them. But hey, Bush has the moral high ground so anything goes).
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If Bush wins, then the Senate will indeed be split 50-50. The House has a Republican majority, but a slim one.
If I were a Democratic Congressman, I would be praying for a Bush victory and not making too much noise on Gore's behalf, since (a) I, unlike Gore, will need to cooperate with Republicans next year to get any useful work done, and (b) the President's party tends to lose Congressional seats in the miderm elections.
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The election system is based on electorial votes and not on who gets the most votes in the country. Because of this there are lots of people that live in non battleground states that simply don't go and vote because they think it doens't matter. The popular vote doesn't correctly express the opinion of the people because of this.
This doesn't mean that the electorial system used right now is a good one. I personally like the electorial votes because it gives the smaller states a little more weight in the election, but I don't like that a single party gets all the votes in a state. I think it would be much better if the votes where split according to how many percent each party got in that state.
The two-party duopoly will most likely continue as long as our plurality system of elections does. There are many better, fairer methods (do a search on "election methods" and don't be afraid to go a few levels deep). But I doubt you'll hear anything about them in the news, for whatever conspiracy-theory reason you care to subscribe to. My favorite is that they might put people into office who are superbly qualified -- rather than bland, safe, and easily bought.
NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCEOTICE
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern
yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your
independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other
territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister
(The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been
unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister
for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate
will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to
determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules
are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed
at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should
raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the
same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and
"you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look
up "interspersed".
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know
on your behalf.
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents.
It really isn't that hard.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as
the good guys.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The
Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to
get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind
of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
7. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your
borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You
will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper
football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a
difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play
rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve
stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour
like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens
side by 2005.
8. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons
if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there
is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians
have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit".
9. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new
national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".
10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for
your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
11. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Perhaps I betray my ignorance here, but:
:)
In Canada, given the Florida situation, we would have a by-election. I understand that there is no mandate for this in the US Constitution, but wouldn't that be the logical choice?
If Florida were given the chance to vote again, it is exceedingly unlikely that the results would be as close as last time. There has not been a clear winner, despite Bush's 500 vote lead. From 6 million votes cast, a margin of 500 says to me that they tied.
Of course, I also recognize that this by-election could never happen, even though it may be the fairest way to determine who won the presidency and even though it may be the best possible course for the country. The partisan rhetoric down there stuns me. In Canada, we have just finished a rather vitriolic (for us) election campaign, but in the US, the anger defies reason. Literally. Anything a Democrat says(and vice versa) is instantly irreconcilably biased and roughly equivalent to lies from Satan himself.
It seems to me that there is no real debate among the upper levels of US government anymore. Where has this come from? Was it always this mindless name-calling? Does this irrationality hurt the country, or does it benefit it? Does powerlessness at the top allows the country to function without impediments?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
And, for the record, I would have voted for Nader.
heinzkeinz
The Bush team apparently is still going after uncounted overseas votes.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote 200 0/legal3.htm
For a man who just announced he's president, I wonder why he's not confident?
My guess is he knows he's still standing on shaky ground, and hopes acting like he's won will make the challenges go away. I don't think that bodes well for his confidence in the process.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
> Well, at least bush will be the winner until the idiot lawyers get their hands on it tomarrow and steal the election from him.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that an election is something you "win" by beating the system, rather than by finding out how people actually voted.
> Quite frankly, I think that the hand counting is biased, because quite frankly humans are not impartial, we are going to see what we wish to see.
You seem to be unaware that the hand counting is being done by having a small team look at each ballot, with a Republican representative on each team.
You also seem to be unaware that hand counting is^w was universally recognized as being more accurate than machine counting, up until the day it turned out that this election will be decided by whether or not we get an accurate count. GuuB himself supported a law in Texas that favors hand recounts over machine recounts whenever a recount is requested.
> If the lawyers and judicial system decide this election any further...
You are falling for Republican spin control on this one. Believe it or not, our state and Federal constitutions give the judicial system the last word in all matters of law and public procedings.
You will also be surprised to learn that the judicial system hasn't innovated anything this time around. In fact, there is ample precedent for decisions that would have favored Gore more, such as revotes, counting dimpled ballots, throwing out masses of absentee ballots, etc.
Don't let the Republican party do your thinking for you.
> because it will mean that all this country was founded on has been yet again trampled on...
Thing like letting the voters decide who gets the executive offices?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Republican Slade Gorton lost
"The senator from Microsoft", as The Register calls him.
> It will be over in four years.
People familiar with Bush's "part-time job" approach to the Texas governership have been expressing serious doubts about his ability to manage a job so demanding as the presidency. Add that to his louche lifestyle [always wanted to use that word!], and we're likely to have another presidency troubled by continual scandals, rumors of scandals, and hostile investigations.
I honestly don't expect him to finish a four year term.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> "A slew of lawsuits were filed by Republicans, and unsuccessful appeals to state election commissions routinely followed."
Also note that the courtroom battles dragged on for months after the election. The current challenges are still a short-term affair by comparison.
> I'm sure we'll continue to hear the story of the "stolen election" despite of any court findings.
Yeah, the whole thing is about spin control. And unlike the Nixon case, we now have the internet and multiple 7x24 broadcast news outlets looking at every detail of the story in hopes of dragging viewers back for a peek at more commercials, so this one is not going to be able to lie hidden like the Nixon story did.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Americans hate lawyers, as do I.
... didn't change the results.
I'm an American, and I don't.
Anywhere that you have a rule of law, you've got to have lawyers. Otherwise you get a dictatorship where the powers that be can do what they please without anyone to pull the plug on abuses.
Lawyers suffer from a PR problem. The ones you hear about are the ones that get notorious criminals off the hook or that win huge settlements for frivolous tort cases. You don't hear about the hundreds of cases every day where a lawyer convinces a judge or jury that the little guy is right.
Also, even in cases where you hear about "outrageous" tort settlements and "notorious" criminals getting off the hook, how often do you really know what the jury heard in the case? Businesses have the money and motivation to put a PR spin on lawsuits that they lose. Public prosecutors are usually either elected officials or else their appointees, and "tough on crime" plays better in election years than "defended innocent accusees", so there's money and motivation for PR spin there, too. And the media know that controversy brings viewers in to feed at the commercials trough, so they have every motivation to talk up "outrageous" court rulings, and little motivation to look at the underlying facts.
So give laywers a break. Your freedom might rely on one someday.
> Surprisingly, weeks of recounts
???. Bush was ahead by 1700 votes after the machine count, and won the biggest share of absentee ballots to boot, but now for some reason his "lead" is only about 700. The recounts are making a difference -- or at least they would be, without all the obstructionism.
> Gore going any further proves that Gore thinks more of himself than the country to continue to be the cause of damaging faith in the Constitution, law, and fairness. And he is the SOLE cause of all this.
I apologize in advance. I usually resist the temptation to flame here, but... get a fucking clue. Gore has been pursuing the mechanisms that Florida's law allows for. He has also challenged the arbitrary actions of Republican administrators. (I believe it was you who brought up the word "corrupt", yes?) The courts have ruled in his favor on about 19/20 of all the questions so far. The only thing that ought to be damaging the public's faith in anything is the fact that partisan public officials can do so much to prevent such a simple and important thing as a recount.
The Republicans are playing this exactly the way a k1dd1e plays a hacked version of Quake. Instead of trying to win on their merits, they are trying to win due to a bug in the system. I have no respect for gamers that try to "win" by beating the system rather than by beating their opponent, and I have no respect for politicians that try to "win" by beating the system either.
The Republicans think they have an "entitlement" win, because the first count went to them. But it could not be more obvious that the only way to win an election is to get more votes than the other guy. When the results are within the margin of error, the only solution is a careful recount. The votes are what matters -- not the lamer gamer's luck at "winning" on a system error.
But the Republicans have a problem. A fair and accurate recount will almost certainly cost them the presidency. Meanwhile, all the fat cats who donated the $100MM to the Bush campaign are clamoring for the promised ROI on their investment. The will of the voters in Florida are not on those fat cats' agenda.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> The GOP asks for a strict interpretation of the Constitution while the Democrats want it more fluid and changing to the "will of the people".
... In fact, if anything happens our stock market will get back on track and we'll all get a tax cut out of it.
Pure spin. The GOP is asking that an accurate count be avoided, because they expect to lose the election if it is. The Demos are asking for an accurate recount because they expect to win if they get one. IMO, the Demos have the morally superior position -- but only because of the two occurences of the word "accurate" in my description of the situation.
And no, the GOP's position has nothing to do with a "strict interpretation of the Constitution". Nothing the Demos have done or asked for is unconstitutional. What the GOP means when they say that is "strict interpretation of the results of the erroneous count". If they thought the voters of Florida actually favored them by even the tiniest margin, they would not be fighting tooth and nail to prevent an accurate recount.
> Come on guys, we had to live through 8 years of Clinton for christ sakes.
Yep, the man's a real worm. Did a better job of the presidency than most of his recent rivals though. (Not nearly good enough a job, but much better than, say, Regan or Johnson.)
> You can live through 4 years of W. Bush!
Ignoring for now the fact that I doubt your predictions... Are you suggesting that we should vote for whoever offers us the most money? Did panem et circenses improve the quality of elected officials in Republican Rome?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> For an example of a successful, popular administration with a real mandate, see the Reagan years which truly set the stage for the current robust economy that Clinton/Gore have taken credit for.
Your Republicanism is showing through. Among people who are not Devout Republicans, RR is generally considered to be a clueless luser almost in the same category as GuuB.
As for the economy, the Regan Era (including his "third term" under Daddy Bush) was an unmitigated economic disaster. The recovery started almost the day GBSr left office, and has continued unabated ever since.
Frankly, I don't think a president can do much about the economy directly, but what does matter IMO is the optimism of consumers, small businesses, etc., who were in constant fear of being crushed under Regan's "trickle down" philosophy, but who have actually stood a fighting chance in the post-Regan era.
The ultimate irony is going to be for all those muddle^w middle class and upper middle class voters who swung for GuuB under the delusion that they were rich enough to matter to the fat cats who pull his strings. After voting for a luser on the hope for "upperclass welfare", they will find themselves faring as poorly as they did in the Regan Era, wondering why middle and upper-middle class citizens have trouble making ends meet, and living under constant fear of losing their jobs or being subjected to more excesses of corporate feudalism.
> set the stage for the current robust economy that Clinton/Gore have taken credit for.
Is that like GuuB taking credit for laws enacted in Texas before he was governer, or in one case even taking credit for a law that he opposed while in office, and left unsigned when the state legislature passed it in spite of him?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hey, you're right. At least as far as explicit mention in the laws is concerned. Search for "dimpled" at the Jurist FAQ.
> The Illinois court case Boies cited had the court rejecting dimpled ballots, as the Chicago Tribune found.
The jury seems still to be out on that claim, as the same link shows. The actual ruling in that case is quoted as saying -The debate is over how that opinion was used by the canvassing boards, not over the very plain text of the judicial opinion.
Also, FWIW, at least one person has signed an affidavit stating that dimples were counted in that election after that ruling.
Also, the Massachusets decision (see same site) was very explicit about dimples -A bigger issue, IMO, is why counties are still using voting systems with known defects and long histories of litigation. Unfortunately, I don't expect any vigorous round of reform after this election, because any changes to the laws would be interpreted as an admission that the process was not fair after all.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If people subscribed to your arguments, they would have to conclude that the largest peacetime expansion of government spending in the history of our planet was actually good for our economy.
Why then is the Republican party harping so much on tax cuts and reduced size of the government? If "tax and spend" worked miracles under RR, shouldn't we all be pushing for a "tax and spend" platform now, too, so that our children can also enjoy an economic boom of historic proportions?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Indeed. But what does that have to do with Florida's electoral vote? Are we supposed to give the presidency to Bush as a way of punishing the Democrats for past wrongdoings?
> Hand counting cannot possibly be more accurate.
Do you have a source for this, other than Baker's deranged ravings?
> That is why he only asked for a recount in those counties.
And the reason Bush didn't ask for a recount in all the other counties is because he thought he would benefit more by holding the "no recounts" line.
> They made all attempts to throw out the military vote because it is known to be traditionally Republican. What about the will of those voters? Ahh, screw em - they're only serving their country, what the hell would they know about who should be Commander in Chief?
You are uncritically buying into the Republican spin on this one.
What actually needs to be known is:
> I didn't vote for Gore because he is a major league asshole
Agreed. Along with essentially all the other politicians in this country.
But Bush has other attributes on top of his ass-holiness, such as cluelessness, moronicity, and gross hypocrisy.
I don't want Gore for my president, but if he would serve to keep Bush out, then that's a bargain by me.
> Don't try to justify what Gore is doing.
And just what is he doing? Subtract out the Republican misinformation and spin, and he is only pursuing the recount-rights universally assumed to be available to any political candidate.
> I'm just saying Gore is being a bigger ass.
Not everyone agrees. You should dig around and find out more about the stories on Bush that the national media are ignoring.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Others have said this, too, but I'm afraid that I don't know what they're talking about. If you would like to see some careful work on margins of victory (especially in Florida, surf on over to Professor Rusin's paper on this matter. After reading this, you should be clear on the concept that a margin of 200,000 votes out of 100,000,000 cast is highly unlikely to be reversed on any kind of more careful recount unless the original count suffered from some systematic bias affecting one candidate or another. You will then also find out how likely it is that, e.g., the Florida election outcome would be reversed by recounting ballots in counties where you know there to be systematic effects. Basically, Florida would still be close to a statistical dead heat in the situation where we have the totals we have now and the knowledge that there are thousands of untabulated ballots in counties known to prefer one candidate or another.
The questions here are political rather than mathematical, which is why the situation is so awkward for both sides. So not only can we say that recounts (like those we've had in florida) could result in shifting of numbers, but we can also reasonably presume that the slightest change in behavior of either of the candidates could have overcome that margin (i.e., under a popular vote).
Babar
And if it were counted 10,000x removing all anomolies, would you then accept the result?
Lowmag.net
Gore offered recounts in all counties.
No he didn't. He only asked for recounts in heavily democratic counties: West Palm Beach, Broward, and Volusia.
Ah, the old "redirection" trick. Gore asked for recounts in heavily democratic counties, as was his legal right. Bush could have asked for recounts but didn't, because he thought his margin was large enough that he didn't need them.
The original assertion, however, was that Gore offered recounts and, indeed, last Wednesday he said he'd go along with hand recounts for the entire state if Bush wanted them. Of course by that time the Bush "recounts BAD" campaign had so villified hand recounts that there was no chance of Bush accepting Gore's offer.
Prepare for the onslought ... of punk bands, all named "The Dangling Chads"!!!
Just a note- this has to be one of the most hypocritical stances of the Bush camp. Bush not only signed a Texas bill into declaring that hand recounts were superior to machine counts, but in the face of the very fact the hand recounts have shown such huge discrepancies even WITHOUT counting the "chad" controversy- it is simply disgraceful that his campaign would attempt to discredit the recounts when the election is this close.
CNN is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to televise the Bush case on Friday. So there's at least one technological twist in the neverending story this week.
Your right. [sic] We should just let murderers go, lamenting the fact these people really are just misunderstood.
Setting aside all debate over the appropriateness of the death penalty, I'd like to note that I find it curiously inconsistent for GWB to call the shots (bad pun) on capital punishment using the argument "people have to learn that actions have consequences," yet he asks us to forget and forgive any transgressions he himself had prior to turning 40, a magical age before which one cannot be held accountable for one's actions. Am I to believe that no executions of prisoners under age 40 were held in Texas, or do we have a double standard here?
Some of us not born with a wealthy, well-connected pedigree have difficulty accepting his DWI, his long-time abuse of alcohol and drugs, his pathetic excuse for service in the Air Guard during Vietnam, and (if the Larry Flint comments on CNN are to be believed) the abortion he helped arrange for his girlfriend in pre-Roe v. Wade 1970 as mere "excesses of youth" that must be overlooked. For a party who seem to have cornered the market on morality (recall the indignant outrage during the impeachment proceedings not long ago) to rally behind such a candidate is, in my mind, the big joke of this election.
The democrats say. I wonder, if the democrats are so ideological in this argument, then why don't they demand that every county in florida be recounted?
I'm a Democrat and I'm for every vote in FL to be hand counted according to strict and uniform guidelines as to what consists of a vote cast. Especially including non-postmarked military votes, provided that they come from duly registered voters who properly applied for an absentee ballot -- Democrats denying duly cast votes because of postmarks on one hand, and Republicans trying to get votes counted from voters who were not registered or who did not request a absentee ballot has been a disgusting exhibition all around. I'm for going the extra mile to get the most accurate possible accounting of the will of the voters; under this regime Gore would tend to pick up votes in Democratic counties and Bush would tend to pick up votes in Republican counties.
Both sides are losing sight of the goal, which is gaining the power to implement the policies you favor. It's only about personal ambition and status for two men, and perhaps a few hangers on. Speaking as a Democrat, I believe that a hand recount only in Democratic counties is patently unfair to Republican voters, and ensures that should Gore win, he will do so under circumstances that bring his legitimacy into question. I'd rather Bush get the presidency than Gore to win and have half the country convinced he is not the rightful president. Bush supporters should feel the same way.
We gave a situation that is a statistical tie to within the precision of the vote tallying system. Everyone should be concerned to get the most accurate and precise achievable tally in this circumstance. The legitimacy of the winner is of paramount interest to the country and to both sides.
Poisoning the atmosphere is a minus sum game. The more both sides play this game, the more crippled their candidate will be should he ultimately win.
Unfortunately, we've gone so far down this road, I believe that the next president will be crippled by questions of legitimacy. This is bad for the country in the short run, but perhaps not so bad in the long run if we reexamine winner take all plurality voting, as well as extreme and unthinking partisanship.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Wasn't "strategery" a word invented by Saturday Night Live for the purpose of mocking Bush in the first debate sketch? If I'm wrong, please point it out. I'd love an actual reference to the real (not fake) George Bush using this word (as well as dignitude and unificator).
Interesting. He dislikes Bush, so he must be a liberal.
If memory serves, many of Taco's political ramblings are pro-Gore/Democratic party. To me, that makes him a liberal just as being a Bush supporter or Republican makes most people a conservative comparitively speaking.
All this time I thought I was a moderate, but according to you I must be a liberal.
You are nothing according to me since I was not addressing comments (current and past) made by you. If you wish to classify yourself one way or another, that is your choice, not mine.
Moderation Totals:Troll=3, Insightful=3, Interesting=2, Informative=1, Overrated=2, Total=11.
And people wonder why this place has become a wasteland of useless commentary and one sided, opinionated articles.
Stick a fork in me, I'm done with this place.
In the past everyone in the european world knew, not believed, knew that the world was flat. Were they wrong? Yes, but they believed themselves to be right. If they had stated that the world was round then they would have been "wrong" according to their time and the beliefs of everyone around them.
.. but I think comparing scientific facts questioned by those in the 1300th century to the correctness of political idealism is a bit of a stretch, even for slashdot. Apples and oranges sir.
/.'ers loved the crack. That's fine, for an editorial/opinion piece, not tucked away nicely in a news article.
/. for anything resembling legitimate reporting, but one can hope can't they?
Cute
I'm not saying that the fifty million people that voted for Bush are wrong. He might in fact be a great president. I'm just saying that it is possible that even fifty million people can be wrong.
Well if that is the case, regardless of who wins, ~50,000,000 people ARE wrong since the popular vote split down the middle.
My point was that certainly 50,000,000 would NOT vote for a person with the intellect of a head of lettuce, and to say so is a very lame attempt to cast dispersions on a candidate that you (Taco) do not like. The same could be said about Al Gore and his resemblance to a tree. I would not support such a statement either since he OBVIOUSLY is a very intelligent man and has the support of just as many, if not more people in this country as Bush does.
On the dropping out of college thing. College doesn't stand for as much as it used to.
I could not agree more, I did not go to college myself but do very well for myself in the IT industry.
But if you consider the time these guys DID go to college, it does stand for a bit more than it does now and it's utterly silly to question the intellect of a Harvard/Yale graduate in comparison to someone who dropped out of college all together. If one had to put money on the IQ of one over the other, the smart money goes with the graduate, that's just common sense. For every Bill Gates success story in this world, there are 1,000,000 college drop outs in this country who can't balance their check book.
Also. People have a right to express their views, even if someone else thinks they're wrong. It doesn't matter if that someone is one person or fifty million. If you don't agree, fine, state your view but do not suggest that they add something that would only be of use to one person.
No where did I suggest that Taco's jab at Bush was of use to only one person. I'm sure that a large number of
This is the exact reason that FoxNews is KILLING CNN and network news sources for fair and accurate reporting. It's about the NEWS to them, not their personal spin on the news to validate their own ideals and help them sleep at night.
And yes I know, I should not come to
And I assume you forwarded that to Mr. Gore thanking him for making the whole thing possible since he did "take the initiative to create the Internet" right?
(CNN, March 1999: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." - Al Gore.)
Also, ever seen Steven Hawking form sentence? It's not a pretty sight and takes a excruciatingly long time, so I guess that puts him in the same garden as Bush? Funny, Mr. Hawking is considered one the brightest minds to ever inhabit this rock, ever.
.. he has made statements such as, "Even though I won the popular vote..."
.. both sides of the aisle.
.. which is a statement of fact; it is not an opinion or a call to arms.
Hillary of New York has called for the abolition of the Electoral College.
As has Arlen Specter, a prominent Pennsylvania Republican. Ditto for Ray LaHood, a Republican representative who had drafted pre-emptive legislation to bring before the House if the reverse outcome would have happened (if Bush had won the popular vote but lost the electoral college.)
As I said
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The campaigning by both candidates, as well as the actual voting by the country, are made with the electoral college in mind. Both the candidates and the voters would have behaved totally differently under true popular vote.
.. the whole shebang. If people are willing to stipulate that there is a significant margin of error in the election results (by "significant", I mean "large enough to affect the outcome"), then they cannot possibly begrudge the right of Al Gore (or George Bush, or anybody) to call for manual recounts.
I'm not sure if I buy this. One of the big arguments made by proponents of the electoral college is that it makes it impossible for candidates to ignore small states and focus on the populated areas. I live in a small state with a whopping total of three electoral votes. During the campaign, we never saw Bush or Gore once. Not a single time. We saw Ralph Nader and Howie Phillips (whoop-dee-doo), and Bush Sr. stopped by for a few hours, but that was it. Small states are already ignored under the current system, and I can honestly tell you that it would not be possible to ignore them any further under a direct popular vote.
Secondly, the margin for Gore's victory in the so-called popular vote is something like 0.3%, well within of the margin of error.
What is the "margin of error?" This isn't a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll where some statistician on the telephone queries a select few voters and uses those results to extrapolate the results. "Margin of error" is a useful indicator in polls. This is the election itself. This is all the voters
Thirdly, the electoral college is the law of the land. We simply cannot violate it based on whim.
Right. And I don't think that any reasonable person has suggested otherwise (which is to say that I'm not aware of anybody who has claimed that the presidency should be given to Gore because he got more votes.) The fact that he did win more votes has significant psychological and political implications, but very few (if any) legal implications.
Fourthly, there are good arguments for and against the electoral college. If you're going to argue against the status quo, you should at least make a strong case for it.
To me, it's a matter of common sense and fairness. If Bush wins Florida by a couple hundred votes out of six million, giving him all of that state's electoral votes is simply unbalanced. Similarly, if Gore wins California by a handful of votes, handing him 54 electors is not fair and equitable. The current system is set up so that a Wyoming citizen's vote is worth less than a California citizen's vote, and that is diametrically opposed to the idea of a democracy where every citizen's vote is of equal value.
The electoral college was set up because the founding fathers did not trust John Q. Citizen to make his or her own informed decision about who the next president should be. Maybe this made some sense back in the days when information flow was scarce, but we passed those days a long time ago. The government should trust individual Americans to make up their own minds, and pursuant to this, it should employ a system where every American citizen's vote is of equal value.
Fifthly, Gore was more than ready to win on an electoral vote (see his tapes on CNN and company) when that was what the media was predicting.
This is true. And to be fair to Gore, you should also point out that out of all the voices calling for the abolition of the electoral college, his is nowhere to be found. Plenty of people, both Democrats (i.e., Hillary Clinton) and Republicans (i.e., Arlen Specter) have called for hearings on this, but Al Gore hasn't. Even after learning the results of this election, he came out and publicly defended the college as the "law of the land."
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
It far more important that the Florida counties not change their rules after the elections. Palm Beach clearly didn't count dimples at least since 1990. Recounting them now would change the rules.
But that is UnAmerican. You would be depriving somebody of their God-given right to contract out the making of ballots for [insert state] to their brother... err... I mean to the lowest bidder.
In Britain you have to put an X inside the box next to the the candidates name. If the X even touches the box, then that vote is declared spoiled, and the ballot slip is thrown away. If something other than an X is used, then the ballot is spoiled and the ballot slip is thrown away.
But that is UnAmerican. You would be depriving some [insert political party] canidate their God-given right cheat, lie, manipulate, recount, and sue if the election doesn't go their... err... I mean ask for a fair and impartial election.
Power attracts the corruptable. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptable.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
However, I clearly think that if Gore continues to go ahead with his lawyers in front of Democrat judges (who already have rewritten the law, in effect changing the rules of the game after the ball has been put in play), he's going to destroy his party.
Time will tell. Certainly his colleagues don't think so. Tomorrow, you will see a display of awesome party unanimity behind the contest. (Indeed, I think a Bush administration would assure a Democratic majority in both houses in but two years, but that's another story)
Americans hate lawyers, as do I. In my view, the person who, after multiple counts and recounts is resorting to using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to appoint him President.
Both sides hired and deployed lawyers. Only one side made a federal case of it.
I believe that at this point he doesn't stand much of a chance of succeding...
As between you and David Boies' legal advice, I know who's advice I would rely upon.
Surprisingly, weeks of recounts being done in Democrat counties that voted OVERWEALMINGLY for him, using hand recount rules made and remade on the fly by DEMOCRATS didn't change the results.
Actually, only ONE county was included in the final count, and Bush still showed a mere 500 or so votes. The reason Bush whined all the way to the top was precisely that he KNEW that a full recount would cost him the presidency.
Gore going any further proves that Gore thinks more of himself than the country to continue to be the cause of damaging faith in the Constitution, law, and fairness
Nice pabulum, but it might also mean that he thought he won the election, and that he owed a duty to his supporters to exercise the appropriate processes under our Constittution and the rule of law, to find out who, in fact was the winner.
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet. This shakes my faith in the Reno case against them, IMO, he has damaged his credibility severely by arguing specious cases on Gore's behalf.
So specious that he won a unanimous ruling of the Florida Supreme Court, blew Bush out of Federal Court in the Eleventh Circuit --TWICE--, and spanked George's attempt to bring a substantive claim on the unfairness (equal protection) to the Supreme Court. (They denied cert on that point.)
Time will tell.
(your sig about mindwire.org gave me this idea -- I will check it out as a possible new link.)
;)
I can no longer write off Rob's Bush-bashing as the rantings of a young man who has spent his few adult years building a website and has had little time left to think about other things. I've ignored it long enough. At a minimum, I can no longer promote this site on my own websites.
Compared to slashdot, my website is insignificant, but it's growing at 40% a month. It may mean nothing to slashdot but I intend to replace Cmdr Taco's baby with some other news site.
For me, and any other slashdotter who might want to replace a link, please reply to this message with any suggestions. I'm not looking for anything big and political -- I just want something reliably geeky.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Anything less and any US Senator can invoke a permanent "filibuster" and stop any action from occurring.
The 50/50 split is important in that that determines committee chairs and assignments.
Will in Seattle
I was just talking (cell phone) with a friend of mine who's been working for the Gore campaign, first in Pennsylvania and then in Florida. She's been offered work in Washington DC during the Supreme Court hearings on this.
It is not over.
I still figure we have until Dec. 12th before we get a real answer.
But, in case noone told you, it is official that the contested election in Washington State for US Senate is over. Republican Slade Gorton lost, Democrat Maria Cantwell won. Whoever becomes the next president will have a US Senate split 50-50, where you need at least 60 votes to override "automatic" filibusters or call issues to the floor from the committees where they will be buried. Even a dead vice-president (appointment of someone more right wing probable) for Bush won't stop that basic fact.
It will be over in four years. When the next election is over. And not before.
Will in Seattle
You know, from what I remember from my High School civics class, that's also how it works with the bills on the President's desk.
IIRC, he's got something like 10 working days to either sign or veto a bill. If he doesn't do either, it becomes law.
Again, IIRC, this was made a law because of presidents who would get bills passed by the Legislature, but wouldn't ever sign them or veto them (presumablly because the veto would be overridden).
(way late in replying) but actually no - that's not correct. If the president doesn't sign a bill it's refered to as a 'pocket veto' or 'putting it in a drawer' because it can't become a law without the signature. It's actually a very clever way to get a bill out of the way since for congress to override a veto there actually has to be a veto to override.
Yet another crack about GWB's intelligence. A friend of mine was curious and so did some research. He looked up Bush's SAT score: 1206 (pre-1995; it makes a difference). This puts him in the 95-98th percentile. Given also that he received an Ivy League diploma, I suppose he ought to be qualified as "Not Exactly Stupid."
Despite this, the largely liberal media spin has convinced everyone (including many supposedly enlightened slashdotters) that the man is too dumb to spell his own name.*
[*Or perhaps too stupid to fill out a ballot. Oh, wait. That would be a Gore supporter.]
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
Do you really believe that if someone cannot get this right then they are going to know if their vote is counted, let alone care?
Perhaps not, but since when does ignorance on the victims part make the act ok? If I were to steal something from somebody and they were too "stupid" to notice is that not a crime? It's just a slippery slope to go down. I cringe every time I see a reporter interview some ditzy kid, or some clueless streetwalker about their preference in canditate, and hear them respond in terms of personal characteristics or carriage, or because a friend told them that that was a good candidate. I think it is awful that campaigns are run like humongous product marketing efforts. But I *still* won't cross the line I mentioned above, for that one immigrant who came here to escape god knows what, doesn't know anything about the US, but still wants a voice in the democracy. To that person I'm not going to say that they are too stupid and discount their vote.
But yes, probably making a national standard with time-proven technology of paper and pen would help things a lot. Of course then there's the human counting margin of error, multiplied by the population size of the US in contrast to European countries.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
1. Americans don't know how to make ballot sheets.
Perhaps. But theoretically, each state is sovereign (or semi-sovereign), so they can determine their vote however they want. But, yes, I agree, there probably should be a federal standard accross all states and counties everywhere, for every type of office, so that when you go to vote, no matter what state you are in, you know how to.
2. Americans don't know how to count votes.
And what would you say if the voting machines themselvs are faulting and not punching cards correctly? Is that the voter's fault? It brings up the question of what technology we use to vote in the first place. Human counting is tedious and error-prone. But so are broken machines or buggy vote-counting software and apparatus. And by the way, AFAIK, there is no "intelligence barrier" to voting. Yes it means a lot of stupid people will vote, but as an American (left-leaning as I might be), it is incendiary to me that "if you are too stupid to follow the instructions, then you are too stupid to have your vote count". Whether you're stupid or not, the policies of your country still affect your life.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Ok, about now I don't give a damn who wins. Lots of people are clamoring that Bush won all the recounts, so he should just win. That's fine. However, let's just take a look at the electoral college. It exists ostensibly to mitigate the power of states with very large population while giving a boost to states with very low population - in other words it normalizes the voting power of states. I agree with this theoretical system. *However* if you look at how it is currently implemented, it does the exact opposite with respect to minimizing overwhelming majorities (one of its goals, as above). When states are winner-takes-all, that completely thwarts the purpose of the electoral college. For instance, in Florida, the guy who wins by even 1 vote gets ALL 25 electoral votes. This is the complete opposite of normalizing a vast majority, instead it amplifies a very narrow majority into a HUGE majority...hence the "wasted vote". It would be fairer if all states' electoral colleges proportionally represented the vote in their state. The electoral college would still be doing its job, because its job was to decrease or increase the voting power (read: electoral votes) relative to the state's size - its job was NOT (AFAIK) to tamper with the public opinion by implementing things like winner-takes-all.
If you consider this, then the electoral votes might be split down the middle in Florida, and Gore would end up with the (small) lead. However, the same thing would be done for every other state, so we would probably still have a dead tie...but at least it would be representative of public opinion, which I personally read as there being very little difference in the candidates as far many major policies, just aesthetic differences.
Which brings me to my sig...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wonder if Slashdot were around 5-6 years ago how many OJ Simpson-related DNA articles we would have seen.
BTW, I agree Gore had every right to ask for recounts in the four heavily-Dem counties, and Bush blew a chance by not calling for recounts in heavily-Republican counties.
But by last Wednesday, the deadline for calling for recounts had long passed, and Gore's offer was good PR, but technically illegal - in that there was no basis in law to ask for recounts of any counties other than "Gore's four" at the time the "offer" was extended.
BTW, I saw a web site that listed the counties, their machine-counts, and the type of voting technology used -- most of the heavily-Republican counties used the Optiscan system and would not have been subject to the "hanging chad" issue.
It's an accident of statistics that Gore's four preferred counties happen to be (a) heavily-populated, (b) heavily-Democratic, and (c) used the punch-card system. Only this combination of all three factors - lots of votes to recount, a high probability of any machine-unreadable vote being Democratic, and a relatively high proportion of machine-unreadable votes - could have given Gore the win.
Given the experimental errors (even in Optiscan counties), the legal errors (should overseas ballots without postmarks count? should dimpled chads count?), I'm not at all convinced I know who would have won a "fair" hand count of the entire state.
Sadly, the reality we must deal with is that there are no non-partisans left, and there's no such thing as a "fair" hand count.
Yet even the hand counts as performed and accepted by largely-Democratic canvassing boards showed a win for Bush. On the grounds that Gore had every statistical thing going for him, and won almost all the "legal breaks" that changed the vote count, and yet still managed to lose, I believe he should concede.
But the fact is that I don't know, and don't think anyone will ever "know", who "won" in Florida. The result was within the margin of error. There's no way to know.
To make a long story short - thanks for calling me on those points. I'll clarify a few things too.
1) Yep, the machine recounts were automatic. Fair deal. I should have made it clear that I believed that recount was perfectly within everyone's right, and that it was non-partisan.
2) Yep, Gore's four counties were his to choose. And thanks for clearing me up on Volusia.
3) Yeah, the new certification date was what I was raising as "court making new law". I thought the point of the old certification date - in the original law - was to allow for a contest. Why have a deadline if the FSSC's only gonna extend it?
IMHO, the right thing to do would have been to allow to certify on the original date, then have Gore contest it the day after. It would have saved us a week, and Palm Beach would have been able to complete its manual recount as part of Gore's contest. Hell, Miami-Dade might have had time to finish its recount.
4) Bonus. Absolutely, Harris used her discretion. Whether it's "use" or "abuse" depends on who you want to win. It really is (IMHO) unclear; if it's intended that there's a limit on that discretion, then it's a poorly-written law. At any rate, it's moot, given the FSSC decision and it should have been moot, given my point above ;)
5) Yeah. Both parties (meaning both Bush and Gore, and the political parties they repreasent) have acted like total jackasses since November 7th. (Er... and heaps of elephant dung.)
The bottom line of this election is - and has always been - if you believe a dimpled/pregnant chad oughta be a vote (which it hasn't been in Florida for about 10 years), then you believe Gore won. If you don't, then you believe Bush won.
Gore has lost:
- Gore lost the original machine count, so he asked for a recount.
- He lost the machine recount, so he asked for recounts in four Democratic counties.
- Miami-Dade: Gave up, costing him 157 votes. He's sued them for certifying the results. Pending.
- Broward: Stopped, got sued, started again, recounted including pregnant chads. Gain of 500-odd votes.
- Palm Beach: Didn't count pregnant chads. Gain of ~100-odd votes. Gore's gonna contest/sue until he can get another 500 pregnant chads outa here.
- WTF's the other county that I forgot about?
;-)
- The Secretary of State certified the election a few days ago, and Gore sued (again), and the law which sets the date of the certification was essentially rewritten by the Florida State Supreme Court in order to give Gore another week to harvest votes. Bush is appealing, but probably won't win.
Which brings us to today.Mr. Gore. Give it up. You've lost. Deal with it and come back in 2004 against a weakened Bush.
Just because your mentor Clinton was a sucker for Hollywood doesn't mean you have to be. Just because he taught you how to "always attack, never defend", or that "the purpose of a lawsuit is not to win, but to harass", or that the way to win a PR battle is by "dead-agenting" your enemies (e.g. what your boss did to smear the repuation of Kathleen Willey, among many others), doesn't mean you have to follow in his footsteps.
Stop acting like a $cientologist and be your own man, Mr. Vice-President. It really doesn't become you.
Because the way you think it happens isn't the way it actually happens.
When electing a president here in the States, there's really two elections that happen. Or, to be nitpicky, fifty-one.
The population of each state casts their vote -- which is what's happening now. These votes determine who the electoral votes for that state should go to. Then, a while later, representatives from each state vote for the president -- and in some states, they aren't legally obligated to vote the way the state's population wanted them to.
So this is why the federal government can't regulate the ballots, or any part of the election. They're state elections, not national ones.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Machine counts are not 100% accurate, because no system is. However, they are at least impartial, which is more than can be said for the overwhelmingly Democratic manual vote counters. Statistically speaking, any machine errors will be evenly distributed for all the candidates, while manual recounts are subject to the conscious or unconscious biases of the counters. It's even less impartial when these recounts are done only in heavily Democratic counties, where ballots that the machines didn't catch are virtually certain to split favorably for Gore.
Gore got all the breaks in the recount, and he still lost. Game over.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Actually, the Florida SC fabricated a brand new certification schedule out of thin air, a textbook example of judicial activism with no basis in law.
6. Bush has been arguing against state's rights in the Florida & federal courts, when all the time he's claims that he wants to empower the states. He's lying to America right now and he's not even President yet!
Bush has been arguing precisely that the law as established by the Florida legislature should be upheld. The Florida Supreme Court chose to rewrite that law because they didn't like it, but even under their new schedule Bush has won.
7. According to mike, lawyers are un-American. On the other hand, screaming mobs of Republican partisans are democracy in action, I suppose.
Seems to me there's something in the Constitution about people peaceably assembling and petitioning for a redress of grievances. I know the Bill of Rights is out of favor with many liberals, but it is still the law.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Jeb Bush immediately recused himself from the proceedings in Florida. If you have any evidence that he fixed the election then present it; otherwise stop making such baseless accusations. (If in fact he had fixed it, GWB would have won by way more than 537 votes.)
The Secretary of State, is a Bush campainer, and is in line for an Ambassatorship if Bush wins?
The Secretary of State does nothing more than certify the results sent by the counties. The real power is held in the county canvassing boards that did the manual recounts, which are heavily Democratic.
the Republicans are seriously hipocritical. Not counting legal votes is a frickin' whitewash!!
You mean the military votes that Gore's lawyers specifically targeted for disqualification?
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
... and Ireland. Governed by coalitions for almost twenty years now, yet with the higest growth rate in the "Western" world, massive trade surplus, low unemployment, high educational standards, Socialised Health Care (!!!), and all the trappings of a civilised society. Don't confuse the political difficulties faced by Israel and Italy with anything caused by proportional representation; I'm sure if you think hard you might be able to come up with some other possible causes for those countries' political problems.
PR (when done properly) is a Good Thing, as it allows the votes of the people to be translated as accurately as possible into electoral influence. If that results in coalitions, so be it - it's up to the politicians to come to amicable arrangements between parties, not to rig the system so that only big parties ever get any influence.
Your suggestion is intellectually sound as far as it goes, and I am tempted by it, but unfortunately it contains a recursive fallacy - a fallacy very similar to that contained in the drunk driving law.
:-). But the difference represents a meaningless quantitative distinction.
Let us say for the sake of argument that we can all agree on a defined figure, say 1%, a difference below which is deemed statistically insignificant. This means if the vote is 49.099% to 49.000% (the remainder voting for other parties), we call for the drawing by lot.
What if the vote is 49.10000001% to 49.0%? We only missed the criterion by a statistically insigificant 0.00000001%! This is too close! Perhaps there will be riots if we do not make an exception to the defined figure and and draw by lot in this one special case. But we want to say we are ruled by laws - how can we arbitrarily bend them for the special case? On the other hand, how can we possibly come up with a law which anticipates this special case - and an infinite number of other possible special cases - and deals with it in an acceptable manner?
You see, we have only put off the problem to the next level. The recursion extends forever.
I consider this very similar to the drunk driving criterion. If your blood alcohol level is 0.07999%, you are OK; if it is 0.08001% you are subject to arrest (0.08000% I'm not sure which - as if a physical quantity can ever in actuality be an exact number
This is ever the problem with trying to arrive at precisely defined formulae. It's a quandary. We don't want to have discretion reach the level of fast and loose, but neither do we want arbitrariness to reach the level of absurdity and eliminate the possibility of adapting to nuances of individual case.
I'm afraid I don't have the answer, and it gives me no pleasure to point out the fallacy.
Path: mindspring!news.mindspring.net!nntp.primenet.com!n ntp.gblx.net!news.phx.gblx.net!ahbou-and -some-other-stuff!largely-for-ahbou!mostly-for-ahb ou!just-for-ahbou
From: "Rick B."
Organization: best of usenet humor
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Host: usr07.primenet.com
Followup-To: alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d
Subject: Re: copresidents
From: "Opus the Penguin"
Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams
Dave Wilton wrote:
>Opus the Penguin wrote:
>>Rich Clancey wrote:
>>>Since the Clintons introduced the notion of Hillary as
>>>Co-President, perhaps we could extend the idea. Let's have Gush and
>>>Bore make a joint appearance on television and admit that neither of
>>>them has a clue as to how to do the job, but that together they might
>>>be able to come up with something. Move another desk into the oval
>>>orifice and we'll have a joint presidency. They can arm wrestle for
>>>who does what on a given day. The voters will have the advantage of
>>>Bush's boyish charm and Gore's willingness actually to read government
>>>reports all the way through.
>>
>>Now *there's* a good idea for a new sitcom. What would we call it?
>
>Plot suggestion for the pilot: Al gets upset at George for using his
>stapler and paints a line down the middle of the oval office telling
>George to stay on his side. After much hilarity, they realize that
>this doesn't solve anything and Bill and George, Sr. enter and deliver
>sound advice about getting along with others.
Beauty!
It's a little late for a full season, but if we hurry up production we can
probably fit in 16 episodes.
Episode 2 - Suspicions abound when an anonymous letter describing Al and
George's situation appears in an advice column. (The writer refers to
himself only as "One of the two leaders of the free world.")
Episode 3 - Now that George and Al are in charge, Bill decides he's no
longer needed. The two presidents feign incompetence to convince him
otherwise.
Episode 4 - The Presidents have a card house building contest to decide how
to spend their free money from the taxpayers. Al's oversized ego
accidentally brushes the table and he loses. But George buys something with
the taxpayer money that they can both use.
Episode 5 - Al and George switch roles for a day to settle an argument about
whose job is the hardest.
Episode 6 - Fed up with what he believes to be Al's illicit phone calls,
George installs a pay phone in the Oval Office.
Episode 7 - George tells his buddies that he and Joe Namath are friends and
then is called on to deliver. Namath guest stars as himself.
Episode 8 - Trouble ensues when George and Al each want a White House
on-staff doctor of the same political party as himself.
Episode 9 - The two men have nightmares after telling each other they wish
the other one weren't President. They recant by episode's end.
Episode 10 - George accepts the task of preparing a recommendation on
foreign policy toward Russia but tries to talk Al into doing all his
homework.
Episode 11 - George and Al both wind up in the hospital. In the same room.
Episode 12 - After George criticizes Al's work habits on national
television, Al vows revenge.
Episode 13 - After some of his predictions come true, George believes he is
psychic.
Episode 14 - George tries to convince Al that conservatives are really good
people at heart. He gets a chance to prove his point when their car runs out
of gas during a visit to Orange County, CA.
Episode 15 - Al finds a homeless boy (Leonardo DiCaprio) sleeping in the
White House basement. His efforts to help the boy end up getting the kid
kicked out. He solves the problem by giving the boy the Lincoln bedroom.
Episode 16 (season cliffhanger) - Fearing he has lost his masculine appeal,
Al decides to prove his masculinity by doing a water ski jump over a shark.
By the way, I just thought of the perfect title for this show. Too bad it's
already taken.
Who's the Boss?
Oh well. My second choice, _Full House_, will have to do.... D'oh! _The Odd
Couple_?
All right, how about _You Can't Win 'Em All_?
Or, it's a little wordy, but _No Controlling Legal Authority_ works too. As
does _Now You Listen to Me_.
A small margin of error, perhaps, but still larger than the margin of victory. The error is also weighted against Gore, because his counties are the ones using punch cards. The Republican areas mostly use optical systems.
I disagree on this point. Optical systems are less likely to be error prone and, thus, require less manual intervention and interpretation. When considering "dimpled" ballots, you are assuming the power to be able to discern the will of the voter. Remember, only the Shadow knows what is in the hearts and minds of men.
Nationwide? The contested election involves Florida's delegation to the electoral college, and Florida may handle it in whatever manner we chose (persuant to the Constitution and what federal law there is, of course). If the election crossed a state line, you could argue for more federal intervention, but it does not.
When an election comes down to subjective manual recounts, this can hardly be called fair when taken in light that the rest of the country (for the most part) uses automated methods. To assume that everyplace else is correct yet do manual recounts in selected, heavily partisan counties is grossly unfair. Who's decision is it to use the punch cards anyway?
We hear of the so called "popular vote" in which there is only a 300K difference between the two major candidates. But, is this count even accurate? I would suspect not.
A nationwide manual recount is the only way to determine valid votes. As the decision in Florida will determine who becomes POTUS (a national position), a nationwide recount is the only acceptable solution (unless one candidates concedes). But, it will never happen for the very reasons you have stated...the other states have certified their results and the results are not being contested. So, the battle remains a state battle.
Nor is there a law saying they are not valid votes. It's up to the discretion of the county canvassing board.
Similarly, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the recounts were in the hands of the individual canvasing boards AND issued a new deadline. The fact that Palm Beach took Thanksgiving off and then failed to make the deadline is not an excuse to extend the deadline (consider they would have finished ontime and their results would have counted HAD they worked two hours on Thanksgiving). Similarly, in Miami-Dade, the canvasing board elected NOT to perform a manual recount. Is this not the rule set forth by the new law established by Florida's supreme court?
I do feel sympathy if honest votes were not counted (hell, I would probably be pissed too). But, how will we ever know the true count? Each time a ballot is touched, it is potentially altered. Just consider the number of chads on the floor following the recounts. If no ballots were altered (assuming non-intentional alterations...to be fair), then where were there chads on the floor and tables. Heck, even a sneeze might knock a chad out or the ballot may be bend inadvertently. At this point in the game, there is no honest, accurate way to perform a manual recount.
But, what I find really sad is the notional of class warfare as put forth by the Gore campaign. Even if Gore is correct (I'll argue he is not..but that is a battle for another day) and the tax cuts Bush proposes are for the wealthiest 1%, consider that those being taxed under Gores plan are the small and medium business owners. These are the people that make jobs available to the lower income groups. Make their life easier by reducing their tax burden and that may produce additional jobs though economic growth.
Also, consider the programs that Gore wants to implement. Where is the money for these programs coming from? If not from the lower income group, then it must be from middle and upper class. Guess what? That means higher taxes for those individuals which will mean one (or more things)...
1) Layoffs as the profit margine is decreased.
2) More people entering the non-working ranks (see 1).
3) Higher prices for goods in an effort to restore profit margin.
Who wins? Certainly not the poor folk. While decreased taxes may not mean lower prices in the stores, ultimately, they do mean more jobs and lower unemployment. Unfortunately, lower unemployment does not mean less individuals in poverty status. That's another issue that should does need to be address. I don't have a silver bullet for that one. But, I would suspect higher state or local taxes with that income directed towards programs in areas where poverty is higher.
Basically, I'm for new taxes and legislation AFTER all other measures have been taken and still a problem exists. Those other measures have not yet been taken. Hence, I oppose Gore's platform because he will introduce new taxes.
I also don't trust him on a variety of issues regarding personal privacy, military readiness, or his intent to create social policy through the courts.
Its time to end the election, and force the "winning" (if that's what you want to call it) candidate (by new law if necessary) to have a bipartisan cabinet.
RD
While your statements make total sense, they won't fly here in the US because election law is in the jurisdiction of the individual states.
The legitimacy of this presidency will always be questioned no matter who wins. From a statistically, scientific, perspective, the ballot pool is tainted and biased. The method in which ballots were hand counted has been subjective. Even the initial collection was tainted by the broadcast of exit poll results and "projections" by the media. The skewing is even greater when one considers the "manual" collection processes.
Consider Ballard County, for example. The manual recount reviewing team consists of two democrats and one republican. It took a consensus of two of the team members to make establish the intent of the voter. If all team members are honest (lets assume they are), then partisanship should not be a factor. But, if partisanship does come into play, the republican will almost always be overridded and the results favor the democratic candidate (in this case, Gore).
Secondly, the method of examination has been subject to change throughout the process. You can not obtain true results when the standards or methodology of the collection process is not consistent.
Thirdly, consider that there are sixty seven counties in the total ballot pool. Selecting three counties known to be highly democratic only introduces additional statistical bias and will futher skew the results.
From a scientific perspective, one has to conclude that the election is a statistical dead heat with no clear winner when using the hand recount method. Yet, if the automated method of counting is utilized, a clear winner is determined in a uniform, non-partisan way. In this case, machine counting has introduced a statistically small margin of error when compared to the subjective manual recount method.
The fact that somebody didn't understand how to cast their ballot correctly (nor did they ask for assistance) or to verify that they did, in fact, cast correctly, is not a reason to assume omnipotent powers and determine their will for them. Their ballots, in the election for president, should not be counted UNLESS the entire ballot pool is counted in EXACTLY the same manner. This would incure a state-wide, or more appropriately, as nation-wide recount. Neither state nor federal allows for this. Neither does the Constitution.
Now, consider the military absentee ballots. Federal law allows military members to send mail without a postmark. Yet, Florida election law requires them so many are rejected despite the voters intent being clearly descerable. A technicality? Yes. But, isn't Federal law supposed to override state law when a conflict arrises? Yet, "dimpled" ballots are given merit when no State or Federal law or standard exists to validate their acceptance (at least in Florida). To say "Texas allows them" is irrelevant...there is no Florida law allowing them or specifying what is a valid vote. Ironic that the Gore, if he becomes the president elect, wants to alienate the armed forces for which he would their Commander-In-Chief. In this regard, Bush has the upper hand. He will command the respect of the military which Gore will be despised. Loyalty of our armed forces will never be in question...they will defend the US as they are sworn to. But, they will have no respect for their leader. Expect to see many resignations and lower enlisted retention than normal over the next four years if Gore becomes president.
Finally, all this aside, I pity whoever becomes president. Not only do they have to try to heal the political divide in this county, but will also probably be blamed for the recession we are already entering.
Obviously, my perspective is probably clear, I think Gore should concede (and remain true to his word of accepting the final certification). But, he has indicated he will not due this and instead contest the election in Florida. So, again, we have a bending of the truth and and the law. What a sad state of affairs.
RD
Agreed. While I can't stand Gore, I don't recall him ever advocating the abolition of the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton, however, has stated that she would pursue actions to abolish the electoral college in favor of the popular vote.
So, are we heading for a Constitional convention in the next ten years as more and more legal attacks are made against our founding father's principles? Many people I speak with seem to think so.
We all speak of democracy and the will of the people. Many fail to to understand that we are republic and not a democracy.
Why is this so? Simply because of the fact that the original drafters of the Consitution feared what would happen placing the fate of the most powerful position in the world (next to Greenspan, of course) in the hands of illiterates or uninformed. Electors are chosen because they are supposed to understand the importance of their actions as well as the loyalty.
What the founding fathers feared the most is what has happened in this election. Along with the illiterate and uniformed, we now have people who can't determine who they actually voted for (some telemarketer had to tell them) or can't seem to ask for help (or a ballot replacement) when they make a mistake. So much for exercising good judgement and accept personal responsibility for their vote.
True, the electoral college has it faults. But, it has served us well for over two hundred years. We've always been able to settle our election disputes without resorting to violence - partisan or not. Pretty amazing, isn't it?
When the same individuals who can't remember who they voted for or why (or verify where they are registered to vote) learn the concept of personal responsibility and self determination, then I might advocate election via popular vote. Until then, let's keep what we got and end it as the law of Florida states should be the case.
Gore never gave in on national television, he phoned a concession directly to GW Bush (the dumb thing was he paid attention to "national television" and believed them when they said Bush was a clear winner.
Subsequently, he retracted his concession call in person to Dumb-ass Dubya. Nixon fought the Kennedy tallies in the courts etc for a month AFTER he made his OFFICIAl concession speech.
I decided that behaving ethically was the most nihilistic thing I could do. - Paul Pavel
I've heard this point brought up endlessly over the past few weeks, but it's somewhat flawed. This argument is one of the fundamental arguments against a popular vote for president. But what people that quote this are assuming is that EVERYBODY from these four states will vote for one or another candidate. That is NOT true (at least for this past election). In many of these states the vote is so SO close, but the electoral college is a winner-takes-all scheme.
If it was a popular vote instead, you'd still have a major constituent of Bush votes coming from these four states. In other words, it's very unlikely that these four states would unamimously (sp) vote for one or another candidate.
But this begs a worthwhile question. What is the fair way to count votes? People argue that a strictly popular vote puts too much power in the large urban areas. But why should a state with far less populace necessarily have more voting power relatively per capita? The electoral college seems to be a nice balance between a popular vote and a land-area vote. However, the winner-takes-all strategyof the EC seems a bit ridiculous. In the case of Florida, if electoral votes could be split, this whole counting/voting fiasco would be a non-issue. Give 12 votes to both Bush and Gore, and one to Nader. Or give the extra vote to Bush or Gore, whoever pulls ahead by a little. (I don't know the exact Nader percentage to know if he warrants a vote in this state.) But hinging an entire 25 EC votes over a handful of popular votes seems kind of counter-intuitive. (and this happened in many states this election, on both sides).
Besides you can't change the rules for electing the president in the middle of the game, as the Democrats are trying to do.
On a totally-unrelated side note, is it just me, or have other people noticed the major partisanship developing in the last several years or so? These kind of quotes, speaking out agsinst and eagerly insulting the opposing party of the poster, litter not only this slashdot thread, but all other political chatrooms I've seen lately. Have I just not been paying enough attention during my youth (I'm 25 now) or has politics gotten REALLY heated in terms of party-vs-party in the past few years? This is one of the reasons why the two-party system sucks (IMHO). If multiple parties made up Congress, it would be too scattered to have this kind of partisan bifurcation.
The funny thing is that if the tables were turned, both parties would most-likely be doing the exact same thing that their opposition is doing now. It would be interesting to see a parallel universe, and observe what said parties are doing, along with their own critics and supporters (like the above poster) too.
make world, not war
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The shareholder is always right.
If your standard for handing out the Presidency is what would happen in a more rational and fairer voting system, then Nader should probably be sworn in. See this online Condorcet poll.
Seastead this.
Machine recounts are more *fair* and unbiased than hand recounts. Notice how the hand recounts are only in selected, strongly Democratic counties. Notice how the standards vary all over the place (dimpled, pregnant, hanging... chad). It is more important (and far more possible) to have an unbiased count than a "accurate" count that is done by error-prone, bias-prone, fature prone psychics trying to divining the intent of voters incapable of doing what millions of others have done successfully: correctly produce a valid ballot.
The only good weather is bad weather.
And to top it off, we have socialized healthcare, too! Damn, looks like you need some other country to move to ;)
Gore has NOT won the national popular vote. The majority of states have not, and will not count absentee ballots arriving after Nov. 7. The latest figure was over 1million absentee ballots that would not be counted(estimated at over 60/40 in favor of Bush).
Whether or not you agree with the electoral college system, can you imagine what a _mess_ we would be in right now if we followed a popular vote only? Hand recounts in all 50 states would take MONTHS.
The EC is a fair system, 4 major cities should not be able to determine the election. What needs to be done is to fix the real problem, punch-card ballots. I would definately support electronic voting in all counties.
RevT
proud Florida Browne voter
Most people also forget that Bush went AWOL for a YEAR, conveniently timed so that he avoided any drug tests.
Nevermind that he's just another rich kid who, no matter what titles his daddy buys for him, will never amount to anything.
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He "earned" them?
He certainly hasn't amounted to anything as Governor of my state.
No matter which way this ends, I'm still stuck with Dubya.
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No, Bush did not get the most popular votes. However, Bush did get support from a broader cross-section of America (Electoral Votes), and that's why he's going to be president.
Look at an election map. Bush carried states from Georgia to Alaska and every place in between. There's a lot of diversity that backs him. What did Gore get? A few big population centers. If EC votes went by district, rather than winner-takes-all, Bush's lead would have been even larger, since only the urban centers themselves would have gone to Gore and Bush would have picked up votes in the outstate areas.
The electoral college did exactly the job it is supposed to, preventing the "Tyranny of the Majority" from ruling the nation.
Constitutionally Correct
While it's true that many of the screwups in Palm Beach County are due to stupidity or carelessness on the part of the voters, it's also true that a better layout could have prevented about half of the mistakes. (Eliminating punch-card machines would cover the other half). Both the voters and the election officials are to blame here.
> Certainly 49,819,600 people can't be all that wrong now can they?
Well, it's pretty certain that 50% of voters are dumber than the average voter!
What's probably going to bother you much more than the outcome:
Just to conclude that it doesn't matter what arguments you bring up when supporting one or the other party's current behavior.
Maybe the next election there's e-Voting[tm], a simple user interface ("push here if you want X to be President") and a secure electronic network gathering these votes and counting and hopefully not get stuck because of some cpu bug :)
George Bush sr. also did a mostly good job, and I was surprised when he wasn't reelected - he had won a war, economy was on it's way back on track.
But Reagan doing a good job? The Iran-Contras deal was actually important (which the witch hunt with Clinton wasn't - the Republicans looked like idiots from overseas ), the debt got huge and the economy wasn't good.
I don't know much about Carter, but Nixon is mostly remembered for "I'm not a criminal" and Watergate.
Conclusion: The competition for "most successful president" isn't that hard :)
Well, he certainly hasn't done a good job in Texas and no matter what happens: He didn't win the election - the people didn't want him.
As a foreigner, it's strange to see the US election system - the system is weird (saying "Florida votes for Bush" or "Florida votes for Gore" doesn't make sense, when the result is about as 50-50 as it can get) and the execution (the part of the people actually voting, thousands contested votes, a result clearly within the margin of error (which for some reason is very large)) is on the same level as a third world country.
And it never ceases to amaze me that in the choice between a well-educated, intelligent, proven person who's been part of the most successful administration for decades and a not very bright, but "likable", person with a very bad track record it's almost 50-50.
1,000,000 - 990,000 = 10,000!!!
The bottom line is that the "margin of error' is greater than the measurable difference. We still don't know who won!
no sig.
Fair question. The country had been in a 10 year stagflation period (high inflation and a recession simultaneously-- something economists previously thought was impossible). Most downturns are brief-- the recession of 1990 was only about a year long, for instance. Here we had a full decade of mostly uninterrupted bad times. A number of public policies had been attempted, to no effect.
Reagan pushed for a massive tax cut, along with a gov't spending cut. He got the one, but not the other. Meanwhile, to combat the Soviets, he sharply increased military spending, both on equipment and on training.
While the result was massive budget deficits (something he originally campaigned on reducing), it was also a massive kickstart to the economy: cutting taxes effectively raised everyone's income (from work and investment). The recession finally ended after 1982, and lead to a long, strong economic growth period.
Meanwhile, he initiated a massive research program to develop a defense to nuclear weapons. Many people still disagree about whether the idea is possible, but there is no doubt that the money into applied high energy physics, space science, and computer control systems has paid off. As our conventional forces grew in strength and quality, the Russians faced a choice: either try to out spend us, or risk losing the edge in both nuclear and conventional military power. They tried to outspend us, and couldn't maintain their occupied possessions (eastern Europe, Angola, rebel forces world-wide, and, of course, the war in Afghanistan). So they fell apart.
Clinton's 'recovery' happened before he was even elected. Reagan had to work for two years to get his recovery. Both men were wise enough to stay out of the way of advancing technology and economic growth. Reagan, though, had to jumpstart an economy which was adrift.
My point was more that ideologues' hatred for Reagan is not grounded in actual, real live history. He did a great job, and turned us around at a time when we were on the ropes. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed when faced with these challenges-- Reagan succeeded. Clinton never faced a challenge as great as the economic and geopolitical perils we faced, so we'll never know how great he could have been under fire.
1) Actually, the CBO figures which revealed the end of the recession (a light and pretty short recession, as recessions go) were released about a week or two after the election-- and covered the previous quarter. When Clinton was asked how he could take credit for ending the recession when it was over a month before the election (let alone inauguration, let alone before he had time to actually do anything), he said it was because people knew he would be elected, and were so happy they went out and started buying things again.
If the recession ended 'almost the day of the election', that seems to argue that Clinton's policies had nothing whatsoever to do with the recovery. For what it's worth, that seems to be your argument, too:
2) You spelled Reagan wrong. Sorry to nitpick.
3) Most small businessmen supported Bush. I don't know how you could call the longest and strongest expansion in US history a state of 'constant fear'. What did frighten people was the Cold War, which Reagan won, and which is definitely attributable to the work of a president, unlike the economic cycles. At first, people were, under Clinton, also frightened that the government would nationalize the healthcare system-- effectively turning doctors and hospitals into a big government program. Then Congress changed hands and people have been pretty happy ever since.
4) To be honest, I don't know what your beef is with Bush or Reagan. If you like Clinton, you should realize that thanks to Congress, he has basically pursued the same policies-- and we've enjoyed growth of record strength and length. Clinton signed welfare reform and a balanced budget. He had to be dragged to each kicking and screaming, but both initiatives were so successful that he bragged about them, to roaring crowds, at his own convention.
5) Finally, as for Reagan, early in his term, Clinton listed Ronald Reagan as one of the presidents who he would like to be like, along with JFK, FDR and other Democrats. I don't know if you are old enough to remember ten years of humiliation overseas (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Angola, etc), runaway inflation (I remember earning 11% on a one year CD!), gas lines, or neverending recession, but that's the mess that Reagan inherited. Ten years later, the Cold War was over, inflation was dead, our energy supply was secure, and our economy was good. We still had problems, but I think you need to look objectively at the 80's.
Noone is denying that the 90's have been good, too. Clinton deserves some credit for not getting in the way of economic growth. In an economy like this, even though we have a recession on the way, every historical precedent says that Gore should have clobbered Bush. But I think one reason that Gore did so much worse than expected despite the good times is that people sensed that he isn't a moderate the way Clinton is.
I would actually say that whoever is elected president now, gets 75% of the people behind him; 50% of the voters (that's 25% of the population) and 50% of the population that didn't vote at all. The latter obviously don't care and will endorse either one as president.
A 75% mandate from the people, not bad.
<grub> Reading
Bush thinks there is too much violence on TV.
Gore thinks there is too much sex on TV.
So basically Bush thinks there's too much gore and Gore thinks there's too much bush.
What if a footballgame is lost by 0.0167% of a point? Or, suppose that in the final second of the game, the ball was near the goal line -- but closer than the resolution it could be measured with.
Should the "losing team" give up? Should the winning team pretend to be the unquestioned victor?
If that were the case, Gore wouldn't be trying to scratch up enough votes in Florida to win its electoral votes.
Your bias conveniently serves you. Think outside the box.
As with myself, a lot, if not a majority, of Americans vote for President and few other offices. Thus, there are bound to be many more pieces of chad left over from previous punches, and thus more chance for the chad to build up making it difficult or impossible to punch later ballots completely.
DISCLAIMER: This is not my theory, just one I heard on a call-in talk show. I happened to find it refreshing to hear someone giving fellow American's credit instead of thinking they're smarter than everyone else.
Again, another situation with many of the original variables removed.
Did the small school children have years of experience of reading left->right, top->bottom, left-page->right-page?
Were they the actual ballots, in the actual voting booth or simply paper copies? Were you in Palm Beach county to see if the ballot books were secured tightly enough in the voting mechanism that the arrows would line up with the holes mounted in the voting booth? I heard from someone in Palm Beach county who confirmed these suspicions.
Exactly! But its a double-edged sword.
Should either candidate be trying to claim a rightous victory from such a small margin? Bush is up now by 450 votes (out of 6,000,000 in Florida, a percentage of 0.0075%). Suppose Gore count scratch up enough vote to get up by 450 and we'd have the same miniscule margin. Yet Bush is talking like he is the undisputed winner and that Gore is an idiot for trying to wiggle around in that margin. If the situation were reversed, it would be the same.
The travesty isn't so much the butterfly ballots, voter intimidation, etc. Its the fact that the American election system allows for victories that are well withing the margin of error of the vote tallying methods. I think all close votes (maybe FL's 0.5% is a good boundary) should be determined in some other method (duel, vote-off, foot-race, etc.) rather than by meticuously recounting votes that still buzz around in that margin of error!
Yeah, just like in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson had no mandate due to a tie in the electoral college which had to be decided by the legislature.
It's too bad, that Jefferson guy had talent, but he wound up fading into obscurity, accomplishing nothing, and no one outside of history professors even know who he is.
As to you comments about my second point, I think that if the first point is adequately addressed, then machines not punching cards correctly will not be the issue.
Get people to make an X in a box with a provided pencil, and then use those machines they use for marking multiple choice examinations which detect the lead on the paper.
As for your being fired up about my 'if you're too stupid to...' comment, think about it.
Once every 4 or 5 years, people are required to make a mark on a piece of paper in a position which indicates their support for a chosen candidate.
Do you really believe that if someone cannot get this right then they are going to know if their vote is counted, let alone care?
Find funky gifts
> Thirdly, the electoral college is the law of the land. We simply cannot violate it based on whim.
It seems that most conservatives (GOP or otherwise, living in the south I've seen my share of really conservative Democrats ;-) ) view our nation's legal framework or ``social contract'' this way, and I do believe it is a valid opinion. (Students of constitutional law will recognize its manifestation in that field as a ``traditionalist'' or ``literal'' interpretation of the Constitution as opposed to a ``constructionist'' or ``liberal'' interpretation (basically a letter-of-the-law vs. spirit-of-the-law debate).)
However, I think that ``violation'' and ``reinterpretation'' are not synomymous. The government is valid only by consent of the people, so if an aspect of it turns out to suck, I don't think we (the people or our duly elected representatives), should hesitate to tinker with it. No law is graven in stone (c.f. the ever-mutable Tax Code :-)). Violation would be Gore saying ``Screw you people, I'm having my good buddy Clinton call out the Army to shoot all the Bush supporters. Fuck this democracy crap anyway..." (and I think even the staunchest GOP member would recognize the difference between an armed coup and vigourous legal attempts to have as many recounts as it takes to get an accurate vote tally).
Of course, this `if it sucks, change it'' attitude probably isn't suprising coming from a capital-L liberal and Free Software/Open Source subversive like me... ;-)
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<flame>
> I am a Republican, and voted for Bush, so obviously I'm biased.
Yeah, no shit?
> Americans hate lawyers, as do I.
Ahh, broad generalizations along the pattern of ``All good Americans do X! (Are you a good American?)". Long a staple of the conservative puerility (like a plurality but with less collective intelligence).
> ... is resorting to lawyers .. for the sole purpose of getting a Judge to appoint him President.
I think that he's using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to require that a FAIR, COMPLETE, and ACCURATE vote count be conducted, which is sort of a prerequisite for legitimacy in a democratic system of governance. The Republicans have done nothing since November 7 except obstruct this process.
> Gore blah blah blah Clinton machine.
Uhh, yeah. Like Bush has been the poor innocent village idiot in the corner not doing a thing. I recently saw some GOP flack on Hardball (probably normally caucasian but he was so into the Angry Conservative Bluster (TM, patent pending) when I channel surfed through he was about the color of a good merlot) saying at the top of his lungs that the Democrats were spending US$3million on lawyers. OK, how much has the GOP spent on lawyers?
> (sub quote) ... less biased historians
You mean conservative ones you agree with?
> Boyd [sic], is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case. blah blah shakes my faith in the Reno case against them blah blah
How suprising that a Republican would argue in favor of a large business against that Big Meany, our government? You by any chance wouldn't happen to have four little letters in your Republican Standard Issue stock portfolio (M-S-F-T), now would you?
Sigh. Depressing that the world looks at people like you and associates the word ``American'' with that thundering ignorance. In short, fuck you, and fuck every fucking Republican in this excerable country. I quite honestly hope you all burn in hell.
</flame>
Flaming of moron aside, there have been so many irregularities associated with the FL vote, that I don't think we will ever truely know who won. In this instance, I think the 25 electoral votes should go to neither man (which would be worse for a party, conservative or liberal: to lose an election or win one in such a manner that half the country hates them for it?), and the election should be decided based on the other 49 state's votes (i.e. recalculate the required majority of electoral votes based on the total sans FL, and who ever crosses that line, wins).
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Probably best not to discuss memory errors when defending the Shrub (little Bush, as he is known in Texas)...
Still, even though I'm a Democrat, I laughed. Definitely +5 Funny. :-)
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How did we get here? Easy, stupidity.
Look around America today and tell me that having the occasional chlorine in the gene pool via natural or unnatural causes up through time until relatively recently was a bad idea. Better yet, watch any random five minute segment of Jerry Springer's show... :-)
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Nah. I live in Austin, and I've watched him as the Head Yahoo in this wacky state for while now.
The Shrub could only be Baseball Commissioner if he could figure out which end of the bat to hold. Fat chance, that... ;-)
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Woah. Must of missed that one! What was it, the lemonade stand he ran as a kid? In Texas he is legendarily bad as a biddnis (<--local pronounciation, doncha know? ;-) ) man...
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
... too gawddamn stupid to get a joke. ;-)
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it all comes down to "how are you doing?"
i don't see any problem with how i'm doing. I'm making a good deal of cash at 21. I've got a nice car, a nice place, and i'm certainly not wanting for any of the basic necessities of life except maybe a few more Playstation 2 games and legal marijuana (although that is almost a certainty in the next 10 years).
Bottom line - if this is what "shitty" democracy gets me, then hooray for shitty democracy.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
His father, by turning a blind eye while the S&Ls went nuts, with the end result that my Dad's career was destroyed.
Now I guess "Son of Bush" will fsck with mine?
It's not so much having a republican as president, it's the tendency for them to let questionable business practices slide -- the right wing cronies in high places really tend to rape the economy.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Specific example: Saturday morning, Bob Dole and a lot of other military veterans had a press conference to complain about 77% of the overseas military vote being thrown out. Fox News showed it live, and even MSNBC was showing it. On a hunch, I switched to CNN. As I expected, they were not showing it. They were making it an "un-event", as it would be said in Orwellian NewSpeak.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Why, the UN should've send some observers to make sure the elections in US occur without any violation or abuse of democracy. Preferrable countries to assemble the observing committee, are Russia and China, of course. Well, then, in a recount we might've suddenly discovered that the actual leader in the elections is ... Vladimir Putin.
-- "If you had fallen into a shit pit during a battle, lick yourself off and move on." - Jaroslav Hasek
What about the innocent people who are wrongly convicted ? Do they deserve to die ? Think about it, how hard do you suppose it is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time ? I am against the Death Penalty, not to protect the guilty, because god knows there are people in the world who just need to die. I am against the Death Penalty to protect the Innocent. In my book if the state of Texas or any state for that matter, put even one innocent person to death, that is way too many. Don't give me any "In order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.", because thats crap. I don't know anyone who would want to be innocent and face the Death Penalty, and for all of you who are for the Death Penalty, if you are ever convicted and sentanced to die, I expect you to push the needle into your own arm, pull the lever or put the gun to your own head, whether you are guilty or not, because you supported the Death Penalty and damn it, its the right thing and you must have done something wrong to deserve it.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
FLORIDA: The orange sunshine state.
Far out, man! The vote is changing right in front of my eyes.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, but Al Gore's website runs Linux so none of that matters.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Any voter could view and change their result on election day. After the poles close, only those votes cited as disputed by the election board could be changed. A dispute would have to be a bad checksum on the tape, or a bad punch, or some other flaw in the medium used to record the vote.
Voters could not change their results after election day unless a pattern of complaints emerged suggestive of a system failure. For example, one precinct having complaints a full standard deviation above the mean.
I find it ironic that so many people on Slashdot make fun of Windows for crashing as often as it does, yet expect the electoral system to crash. How would you feel if your server was down 0.5% of the time?
At one time, consumer OS's were expected to crash, then you wrote a high quality free *NIX. Well, in the future we may look back at a time when voting systems were expected to crash.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If we were using the popular vote, we wouldn't have this problem, of course, we would have different problems. Third Parties screw up plurality elections. That's why in America we don't have direct plurality elections. If no one wins a majority in the electoral college, the vote goes to the house. If there is still no majority there is a runoff of the top three candidates. The problem is that there is no such runoff for the states to choose their electors. This is because it is infeasible to ask everyone in a state to come back and vote again, but with new technologies instant runoff elections would solve this problem. You mark from 1 through whatever for each candidate in the order of preference. In the first count, you look at only the #1s. If there is a majority, you declare those electors the winner. If there is no majority, you eliminate all candidates except for the top two, and tabulate the votes again, the lower number winning that vote. If any candidates are completly unacceptable, you need not vote for them, and that number will be presumed infinity. If all the remaining candidates left are unvoted on your ballot, that ballot is ignored. In this past election, presumably this would have helped Gore and Nader (but also would have helped Bush and Perot in 1992). It would have helped Gore, because he probably would have won Florida in the instant runoff, with the Buchanan and Nader votes thrown out. But it also would have helped Nader, who would have surely gotten closer to his 5% with people free to vote out of principle and not out of fear. Perhaps best of all, punch card ballots would probably not be used in this type of election, only OCR and electronic. I'm not trying to whine here. If Bush wins, he won fair and square. But we should consider fixing this problem in the future. Hopefully it can be done on a state by state basis, but some have raised constitutional issues with it. If it's unconstitutional, we need to consider getting an amendment together.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The original poster posits a 1% accuracy. Now, your argument will be correct if that 1% is ad hoc. However, it does not have to be.
The way to go is to take data : say last 5 elections' ballots and then manually recount them to get an error rate. Then define this error rate as the "margin". Let's for convenient, say it's 1% with 99.99% confidence level (I am using standard "frequentist arguments" but it is not the best way, but will do for an illustration).
Now your argument about the difference between 1% and 1.0001% is no longer valid. Since statistically speaking, the difference is now significant. To put in other words : statistically it is not possible to "call" it either way if the margin is within 1% with 99.99% confidence. (Note the qualification "99.99 confidence"). But if the margin falls outside 1%, eg. 1.00001%, then the confidence is no longer 99.99% therefore a decision can be called.
Your Drunk Driving analogy is flawed because here it is an arbitrary margin, with a tenuous definition of "drunkeness" (i.e. how can one tell if a person is more "dangerous" with 0.08001% blood alcohol level than someone with 0.08%? since there is no clear line of division between "drunk" and "sober".). In an election, the line is clear : there is only two possibilities (win/lose).
I have no opinions regarding interpretation of statistics (i.e what is meant by "99.99% confidence") : controversy still rages. But the point is that there is a well-defined scientific way of going about doing these things. It's not fast and loose as you put it.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The Dem and Reps agree on so much there's not much need for debate. The only things they could debate on would be non-issues like abortion, debates which would give no illumination. Avoiding frank discussions of positions allows the government to maintain some of its more ludicrous stances.
Where has this come from?
Technology has broken down the barriers between states, thus amplifying the role of the federal government. Interest groups now find it quite worthwhile to pay large sums of money to make sure elected federal officials cease to consider the good of the public or any other principle when making the law.
Was it always this mindless name-calling?
Yes.
Does this irrationality hurt the country, or does it benefit it?
Hurt.
Does powerlessness at the top allows the country to function without impediments?
Not really. Power has an advantage: it can be used to do good things. Power has a disadvantage: it can be used to do bad things.
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share and enjoy
pray tell, if Bush's credentials (Yale,Harvard MBA, successful business, Governor) aren't enough to be president, then what is?
Its widely known that he got into both Yale and Harvard on his family name. As for his business record, he failed several times in business. Each time he was bailed out by his father's friends. He finally made reasonably well on a deal one of his father's friends brought him into. The governorship of Texas is almost a figurehead role, and the decisions he did make reflect poorly on his political career; what he did to the environment, especially, borders on the criminal.
Clinton was a governor too.
Bill Clinton was a governor for 14 years, and before that an attorney general. He's spent his entire professional life in law and politics.
As was Reagan, the best president of the 20th century.
How on earth was Reagan the "best president of the 20th century"? As far as I'm concerned Bush is another Reagan; a pleasant, bland clean slate that extreme right wingers can use to push their reactionary politics.
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Bill Clinton was a governor for 14 years
Let me amend that; Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas for about 10 years. Point still stands.
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While New Yorkers typically claim nothing in common with CA, their political views both tend to be very liberal, thus the same. The Electoral College is the only thing keeping our governemt fair.
Give me a break. Why the hell should your vote be worth more than mine? Just because I'm registered in New York? People from areas with low population density like much of the midwest are already overrepresented in the legislative branch. As long as we keep the electoral system they'll be overrepresented during presidential elections too, and personally I think every person's vote should be equally as loud.
Is it fair to let one group, even if more in number, from one small area determine what's best for everyone in the country, particularly for people thousands of miles away from them, who themselves have no say in their destiny, due to the system you want to see created?
Better than to be steamrolled by coalitions of small states in the Senate.
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Nixon didn't do what Gore is doing now because he didn't want to damage the country.
;.
That is a fallacy.
First of all, if Nixon had gained Illinois, he would still have lost the election.
Secondly, he DID contest the results. He just did it a lot quieter than Gore is doing now.
After the election, Republicans launched a multi-state attack on the election results. They created grand juries. They appealed to state elections commissions. They demanded, and received, recounts in several election districts in several states. They showed no widespread discrepancy. In fact, Nixon lost 3 electoral votes afterwards, as Kennedy was shown to have won Hawaii rather than Nixon.
You can find related stories on Slate or Salon
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Oooh, good idea. I've often thought that the most qualified leaders are smart enough not to want the job.
I'm reminded of a story I once heard about, I think by Clarke. After many serious changes in government and advances in technology, Democracy went the way of the dinosaur. The President was chosen by a big computer, which would choose the most qualified person in the country for the job.
Any person actually wanting to be President would be immediately disqualified. And the only way the chosen person would be able to get out of being President would be to do a good job at it. Hence, you end up with a bunch of highly-qualified folks doing a good job at being President just so they don't have to be President any more.
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
A good voting system makes it possible for there to be only 2 possibilities, either you clearly voted for the candidate or not. Nothing that allows judgesment calls....
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
And since the winner will be a murderer, we can immediately disqualify him for the presidency.
Seems a pretty ideal solution to me.
Democrat judges (who already have rewritten the law, in effect changing the rules of the game after the ball has been put in play)
Did you read the Florida Supreme Court ruling? I think they made an overwhelming case that the early certification "deadline" was not the law.
That said, I think they should have let Katherine Harris pick a new deadline guided by their (correct) reading of the law, rather than picking one themselves.
Whoa... You're pretty gifted with the language yourself.
Let's see: Gov. Bush has a Master's is Business and GRADUATED from Yale and Harvard.
Vice President Gore FLUNKED divinity school and dropped out of law school.
Gov. Bush used to be a jet pilot.
Al Gore invented fighter jets.
I VOTED FOR GEORGE W. BUSH! I'M PROUD I DID! AND I'VE READ ENOUGH ONE SIDED CRAP ON THIS SITE TO TELL THE STAFF OF SLASHDOT TO TAKE MY KARMA AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!!
No intent to troll here, but Bush's lead did drop by two thirds on the automatic recount. It is pure denial to ignore, for the counties that a recount were requested, within the scope of Florida law, did find a difference "capable of affecting the outcome of the race" existed. Again, by Florida law, this meant a further manual recount was justified. The counties had so much oversight via the media, party observers, etc. I find it hard to believe any fraud occurred, or that votes that didn't exist "suddenly appeared". Given that circumstance, the Gore side continued to rack up more votes.
From a troubleshooting point of view, this tells me the county election officials were on the right track. If the vote had gone more less 1 for 1 where Bush and Gore were coming out the same, I would have been saying Bush won, no question about it. But my troubleshooting mind must admit the trend was clear, and with all the review, it is not imaginary, illusory, or wishful thinking. Furthermore, any observer that believed fraud was going on could have rasied their hand, asked for immediate intervention, filed a criminal complaint, and the camera's would have been there to help make their case. But, that hasn't happened has it?
If I may now draw a parallel, many here have railed against the bullying of companies such as MS, and complained about monopoly power, abuse of process, etc. But the real reason so many are for Opensource isn't about power or balance of power, but about maintaining an opportunity for truth to be recognized. That Opensource policy means people can speak their mind without fear, make suggestions without fear, and in the end we all get something better for it. And what does this cost us? Nothing more than a bit of time, to be sure in our facts, purposeful demonstrations, and representations.
Have we all become so jaded and polarized we now have blinders on? Have we lost sight of the higher goal of "get it right", not "get it right away"? Extending some of the theories I have read in this discussion to their logical conclusion have me wondering.. and for those that think I am pro Gore, rest assured I am not, but I will not abide by the turmoil sure to be created by "expediency" because..... by that reasoning, Microsoft is merely looking out for all our best interests...
I believe that at this point he doesn't stand much of a chance of succeeding... Surprisingly, weeks of recounts being done in Democrat counties that voted OVERWEALMINGLY for him, using hand recount rules made and remade on the fly by DEMOCRATS didn't change the results.
There was simply not enough time for recounts. Only one of those heavily Democratic counties (Broward) had enough time to finish.
If Dade and Palm Beach counties both had enough time to finish their manual recounts, then it in all likelihood would have changed the results. Miami was through with only about 1/4 of their counting and picked up about 150 votes (assuming this trend continued, this would mean about 600 votes). Palm Beach was almost done (2 hours left!) and Ms. Harris declined to give them the time to complete their tally in a blatantly partisan move. Furthermore, she rejected the partial recount, which netted Gore 180 votes with about 1000 votes to count. The Florida Supreme Court allowed her to accept the results Monday at 9 am if her office wasn't open at 5 pm on Sunday.
Both candidates had every opportunity - including during the Fl. Supreme Court explicitly asking the Bush lawyers - to request manual recounts in any county thought to be improperly counted. The reason Bush didn't was he didn't believe the recounts would favor him. Why? By happenstance, the counties that vote Republican have optical voting systems, which have significantly fewer undercounted votes. A recount wouldn't change the results much. The punch-card systems in heavily Democratic counties have a much higher percentage of undercounted votes. This means when manual recounts are made, the undercounted votes will (or at least should) result in votes being resolved. These votes are likely to be split in approximately same proportion as the rest of the vote in that county (unless there's some other consistent bias), resulting in a substantial gain for Gore. This is what we've seen, but due to limited time and substantial obstruction by Republicans, especially Ms. Harris, all the votes weren't counted.
The Republican arguments that these votes should not be counted fly in the face of reason as well as law. The job of elections officials should be to make sure that every vote gets counted. The provisions in Florida State law that allow manual recounts anticipate this. It is clear that manual recounts cannot possibly be made in the seven-day period after the election, which an earlier law allows. The Florida Supreme court explicitly recognized this conflict and said that the newer law has precedence (this is typically the standard in legal cases).
The bottom line: in all likelihood, a fair count of the votes would favor Gore. The Bush campaign has tried it's hardest to avoid recounts for exactly this reason.
This is neither News for Nerds, nor Stuff that matters.
'nuff said.
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Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
When we have more than one election on the same day (parish council, borough council, county council, parliament or european parliament) the papers are colour coded to make voting easier.
Dershowitz got old, and Johnny Cochrane really didn't do anything after OJ, so it falls to our main man David to show up just in the nick of time, presuming there are enough television cameras to capture his immortal smugness.
One anecdote from one of GWB's college buddies is essentially meaningless - just as meaningless as anecdotes about any candidate.
In France, when we have a rough 50%/50% votes, we start the election again.
When we find numerous irregularities, we start the election again.
So lives a Republic, else you have not a president, but a dictator.
Welcome to the Banana Republic of America !
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If Internet is Freedom, Linux is Democraty
ermmm..actually, if you read the constitution, you do not NEED 270 to win. You need a simple majority of electoral votes. the 270 is a majority of the electoral college when all states are present. If a state doesn't come, then you just need the majority. Chances are, Al Gore is going to attempt to tie up Florida until they hold the electoral college and force it to be held without florida, therefore he would have the majority. Hopefully, he will realize that he isn't gaining any popularity by screwing around with the courts and pissing the military off and he will settle down and concede tomorrow. Or he can tie up the courts and the election and piss off the military, and ALL the residents of Florida.
The anti-salmon
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But it is also rather uncommon for the guy who wins the popular vote to lose the election. And rare and wacky events always seem to come in sets...
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Let me give you the lowdown
Wow, I don't think I have heard the "Nader was a paid operative" wacko arguement yet, so thanks.
Next you'll tell me that Buchannan is actually beung funded by Mexican illegal aliens with co-funding from the National Meatball Circumfrence Safety Certiciation Foundation, right?
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Let me give you the lowdown
Ah, the tally for Florida might be over, and the lawsuits might be pending, but don't forget about the good ole' electoral college system itself!
;)
We vote for electors, not candidates. Those electors "usually" vote how the state totals come out, but who knows if a few of them change their mind? They aren't legally required to vote a certain way in every state, just in a few of them. In certain states, mis-voting gets you a small slap-on-the-wrist penalty as an elector.
These electors aren't all high-ranking rank-and-file politicians. A lot of them are small-town regular joes. Bush may have won Florida, but it would only take a small handfull of electors to swing things back to Gore if they wanted to.
Then again, it would take several LARGE handfuls of them to give it to Nader and be done with it, but that's a fantasy I'll keep to myself
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Let me give you the lowdown
More and more people I talk to are saying that we need a third party of some sort, because they are disgusted by the dirty politics of BOTH SIDES.
Just because I can't stomach some of the antics of Al "The Internet" Gore does not mean that I am a republican, and any republican who presumes that I am a supporter can take a very long vacation on the dark side of the Moon.
GWB will be the third president named George.
He needs to be very careful that he does not earn the name King George the III.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I believe it was the President of Zimbabwe who said (paraphrase) "I would like to offer officials from my country to act as official observers in your time of democratic crisis" or some such thing.
.sig
Whats really funny about this election is that the rest of the world is finding it terribly amusing - that the brash, vein, arrogant American's who always espouse the virtue of their 'example of democracy as being a shinning light' and all that jazz - funny thing is the system is corrupt, broken and ill-conceived. The Republicrats have seized control of the government, blatantly sell legislation to the highest bidders, the nation splits %50 - %50 in an election devoid of ideas or solutions to any real problems, and now Florida is going to drag the whole mess into months of litigation.
As a Canadian, who will take to the ballots tomorrow to elect our Prime Minister, I relish the debate that takes place between our - 5 - parties. I and most other people outside of the States think this whole affair is the funniest thing since the "Clinton Scandal" - America has become a parody of itself.
Here are the Four Things that anyone hoping for a better future can hope come from this Florida debacle:
A) Complete public funding of all elections, and an end to Big Business corrupting your 'democracy'. This is your absolute #1 problem, When/Why do people allow their politicians to openly take bribes?
B) See
C) Throw the electoral college to the trash.
D) Open the public airwaves to real civil debate -on a much larger scale- and remove the partisanship from the debate commission (who exclude all but 'there-own')
Well, at least bush will be the winner until the idiot lawyers get their hands on it tomarrow and steal the election from him. Quite frankly, I think that the hand counting is biased, because quite frankly humans are not impartial, we are going to see what we wish to see. If the lawyers and judicial system decide this election any further, I think I will move to Canada or some other country, because it will mean that all this country was founded on has been yet again trampled on by legal weasels.
If WORLD Then CHAOS = True Else OBLIVION = True End If
Absolutely.
Do one hand recount, at least of the undervoted punch-card ballots, preferably of the entire state to assuage the Bush camp's not unjustified concerns about selectivity.
That recount might well show Bush won. The margin of error would probably still be greater than the margin of victory, but at least we would have made a good-faith effort to determine the real result, rather than just saying "I won and I'm holding my hands over my ears so I can't hear anybody who says I didn't."
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Since the decision for whom to vote is truly binary (unlike most of life's decisions, for which we are usually offered only dichotomies, but closer inspection will prove that there are more than two choices)... I mean, voting is a matter of either you are voting for someone or you aren't. So why continue to blame the people who voted, rather than the mechanical issues of the voting system in Florida? IMHO Florida should be disqualified from voting in this election or future elections until they can be certified to have an election process that is not a circus. How's that for an unpopular argument?
I do not have a signature
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet.
Probably not, since his name is Boies.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
See the problem with the electoral college is that it makes this country seem pretty silly. It's an antiquated device that was questioned when it was first established. We've moved toward straight majority elections over the years; the senate is now popularly elected, and some states have revised the way they assign electors; however, it's not really enought. The US harps on fairness in other democracies, yet we can't even do it ourselves. Runoff elections would help; that way, Ralph Nader and other crazy third party candidates wouldn't rob the incoming president the chance for a strong mandate from the people. I think a straight majority should dictate the presidency; it's the fairest system we could devise, and any overhaul of our elections (especially after the circus in florida) would be a good thing. The point is that we really need to work on things; it's screwed up pretty bad. OK. Flame on...
he's a fucking fascists holding the sad world records of capital punishment per capita in his state. Way to go!
Your right. We should just let murderers go, lamenting the fact these people really are just misunderstood.
I'm sorry, but murderers have it too easy as it is. They get 3 square meals a day, TV, exercise time, and room of there own. Then after living for free on taxpayer money for 15 - 20 years, they get a death that takes less then 10 seconds to administer. That's the real injustice.
Insightful? Interesting? Blacchhhh. Somebody with some mod points take this guy down to at least a 4. Insightful is right out. Interesting has a case -- since a bunch of people followed up to this post.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Nevermind that he's just another rich kid who, no matter what titles his daddy buys for him, will never amount to anything.
Um, he's going to be a President... He's doing better than a fair amount of people so far.
end communication
It finally appears to be drawing to a close. Is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
Personally I know not. Only time and the courts will tell.
Both candidates have their good points and they certainly have their bad ones: Gore is an eco-fascist with the sensitivity of a chainsaw and Bush, well let's just say that he's just the son of his father.As many have pointed out it is no longer the people that decide the agenda of government but the large corporations and lobbying groups who have themoney, time and above all connections to stack up the votes for their concerns.
Ultimately though I think that despite all the averse publicity and so forth Americans should, to a certain extent, be proud that they have a country where the people can vote and have a chance in hell of their vote counting.
Elgon
the fact that there's almost 1000 posts suggests that perhaps this won't be over on /. for a while
Bush might be a Yale graduate, but do we know how he graduated? That's right--with a C average. A very hard thing to accomplish, even in those days of lesser grade inflation than is around today. So he's smart anyways though because he got there in the first place? I think not--remember daddy Bush, who also is a Davenport College alumnus, and remember the power of "legacy" at Ivy League institutions.
But the question has to be asked, When will it be over? I for one enjoy the civics lesson, but this election can never be decided with 100% certainty. It is absolutely impossible, barring a new election that uses a ballot that can be read with complete certainty of a "voter's intent." We will never know the true outcome of the Florida (or for that matter, any other state) vote.
So there must be another way to conclude this thing, and the Supreme Court is the law of the land. I'd like the candidates to say, "I will drop all other lawsuits so long as we both agree that the Supreme Court's decision is the state of Florida's decision."
That or a coin flip.
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Long time reader, first time poster.
Understand what this means. Mathematically, inconvertibly so, the presidency was won on a coin toss.
50% +1 is a quaint holdover from times past. We have long surpassed its capacity for accuracy. You cant exactly announce to 100,000,000 million people "all for Bush say aye. All for Gore, nay. Ok, the ayes have it." Well, you can and you do but you also hope that the result is statistically significant.
It wasnt this time. Not by a long shot.
Truly a remarkable event. I'll leave to someone else to ponder out loud what the chances of such an event occuring were in the first place
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Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.
I am a Republican, and voted for Bush, so obviously I'm biased.
However, I clearly think that if Gore continues to go ahead with his lawyers in front of Democrat judges (who already have rewritten the law, in effect changing the rules of the game after the ball has been put in play), he's going to destroy his party.
Americans hate lawyers, as do I. In my view, the person who, after multiple counts and recounts is resorting to using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to appoint him President.
I believe that at this point he doesn't stand much of a chance of succeding... Surprisingly, weeks of recounts being done in Democrat counties that voted OVERWEALMINGLY for him, using hand recount rules made and remade on the fly by DEMOCRATS didn't change the results.
Gore going any further proves that Gore thinks more of himself than the country to continue to be the cause of damaging faith in the Constitution, law, and fairness. And he is the SOLE cause of all this. Some day, when less biased historians write of this era will paint this election and Gore's actions as the final chapter of the corrupt Clinton machine.
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet. This shakes my faith in the Reno case against them, IMO, he has damaged his credibility severely by arguing specious cases on Gore's behalf.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"NOTE:Whenever said user admits freely and openly to listening to Rush Limbaugh, please ignore all subsequent statements as they are irrational, unfounded and unnecessary.
/."
Please continue with your regularly scheduled
Not only do I listen to Rush Limbaugh, I also used to host a talk radio program on AM 930 WRVC in my home town about 2 years ago.
What's wrong with conservative views? Don't mistake conservatives for Republicans who like corps. I don't.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If machine recounts are more accurate than hand recounts, why was there a difference of 1400 votes after the second machine recount? Sure as hell doesn't sound like "two votes in a million" to me.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the ballot boxes that kept turning up that poll workers had just "forgot" to turn in. Woopsie. "Hey.. I realize this is like.. my ONLY obligation in this whole process.. to turn in this box.. but I just plum forgot. Hey look at that.. 95% of the votes happen to be for Al Gore. Isn't it a good thing I found this box of ballotsin my trunk?"
The media nightmare that the election of the presidency has become is just insane. I read somewhere something that hit the nail on the head: The reason the election was so close was becuase we, the American Public, had been given two candidates who were nowhere near adequate to truly lead this country. Whomever comes out of this mess, the the current story is that Bush has it, will not be truly fit to do the job as it should be done.
That is why the election was so close. Not only in Florida, but all over this country, people saw the candidates being presented to them and did not know what to do. What does one do with two mediocre choices,
when there is no other worthy option? Most chose to find things they believed to be the better of two evils, the candidate with the least amount of undesirable characteristics. Others, out of desparation from being faced with such inadequacy, did the only thing that would seem right and choose the impossible, and nearly as mediocre, third or fourth candidate. Whatever the choice, we all will end up with one who in all truthfulness, shouldn't be in the
Oval Office.
I believe the source of this difficulty is not the lack of good candidates, but something else. The early race for the election saw some good candidates, and some good potential. But they all faded away, dropped out, and disappeared. It begs the question, why?! Perhaps it has something to do with the wide held belief that we live in a Democracy; that it is the majority who rules, and the government that shall rule us. This is a complete fallacy. This country, as you would hear in any Elementary or High School History class, is Republic. It was designed to be run, for the people, by the people, with a small government serving them, not the other way around. That is why goverment-business and property is always called public, becuase it belongs to the people. We are living in an age where the original goals of this country have been lost. The people no longer hold any control in this country; it is the government, the political machine, the media, and the corporations are the ones who control this country. (More info on why we live in a Republic, here.)
Then we have the media. They were so swayed by those in charge of the parties, that we had no choice but see the people that they chose us to see. The politicians don't campaign to the people anymore, they only campaign to the media. I'm sorry, but the media isn't the one in the voting both, it is the people. Those politicians who don't pay up the dues or the news anchors choose not to pay attention to get no coverage. Then, the best eople, those who by all rights would be the best leaders for our country, choose not to even attempt to run, in fear of what the media machine would do to their lives. It seems there is something critically wrong here
So now what? Well, for now, I think all we can do is put up with the ludicracy in front of us. But meanwhile, we need to begin to take back what was ours. This country was designed for the people, and only the people are the ones who will be able to take it back. If we do nothing, and expect the next guy to do it, well then, we deserve to be sucked into the media corporate madness that has evolved around us.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
About two days after the "selected counties" recount offer, Gore offered to hand recount the whole state. Bush politely declined and went running to federal courts to stop any recounting. It was an odd move for someone who values state's rights so much.
Basically, this whole situation reminds me of a football (either kind) game where the last play is disputed. The winning team will run into the locker room as quickly as possible. The hope is that the officials will decide that it's too much of a hassle to get the other team back on the field and just call the game.
-B
obviously you are a troll, but...
The people have spoken? The people are pretty evenly divided on this issue. And with all of the lawsuits and count-lawsuits, I don't think we will see the end of this until the Electoral College votes. And maybe not even then -- wouldn't it be a hoot if one of the electors change their vote from Bush or Gore to Nader, and we ended up without anyone having the 270 required to win?
The only ray of light in this entire process is perhaps the hope that some sort of standardization of voting proceedures and machinery will happen nationwide
This is sort like when you keep telling your boss that you need to invest in new technology because it is broken (underpowered, unreliable, etc.), and they keep saying "no", until the day that their business is seriously affected by the old systems in place (computer dies, the backup system doesn't work anymore, etc.).
Maybe it will finally become a priority to spend some money to upgrade to optical scan technology in those places that are still dealing with punched cards and hanging chads.
Unfortunately, I can also see local election boards saying "wow, we will never have an election that close again, so now we don't have to worry about it".
But the Bush campaign HAS and IS engaged in the same thing. The whole fluster over the absentee ballots revolves around stretching the law. By law, unpostmarked ballots shouldn't be counted. But the DEMOCRAT in charge of making that decision finally decided to bend the law and allow them. So in one case it's "screw the technical law- it's the will of the servicemen GOD COUNTRY BLAH BLAH AT TOP VOLUME" and in another it's "we MUST follow the strict technicality of the law! GOD COUNTRY ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD!" It's isn't hard to find such positions totally hypocritical. In one famous example, Bush lawyers lobbied intensely to disqualify 13 absentee votes from country employees that they believed to be for Gore, but were without precisely proper ID. When they found out that the votes were mostly for Bush, however, they dropped all challenges. I also find it hilarious that this supposedly "states rights" "we trust local politics over those fatcats in Washington (just not those good Republican fatcats- they're all right)" party is the one appealing to the Supreme Court (a move quite disturbing in it's implications for the ever expanding power of federal courts, espcially considering how flimsy the rationale for a federal suit is)- the one saying that local people just can't be trusted. That doesn't exactly paint the Gore camp as saints. They are quite craven and willing to fight. But at least there's little question of that. But the fact is, there is legitimate ground for a fight here. I really can't say which side is right. And I'm fairly suspicious of someone who claims that they can. And hey, you are a hypocrite, because you only look at a situation long enough until the view you get pleases your preconcieved notions.
Your aims are laudable (I don't want those wackos in New York and Los Angeles picking my president), but the electoral college does not solve the problem. Instead, it gives disproportionate representation to large cities in rural states, such as Fargo, ND.
My personal opinion is that a successful candidate for president must receive more than half of the votes cast nationwide, and a majority of the votes cast in each of at least 26 states. Clearly there is no fair voting system that can guarantee this, so you would have to leave the current president in office, or leave the position empty, until a new election could be arranged.
A brief rant on the vice-presidency: I really think the idea of "presidential tickets" is counter to the spirit of checks and balances. Particularly in a close race like this one, a large number of people think that both candidates should be in the Whitehouse. Perhaps the prospect of your opponent being in your office every day for the next four years would make candidates more positive during campaigning.
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E_NOSIG
First of all, I'd like to point out that before all this madness occured, it was thought that Bush may win the popular vote, but Gore win the electoral vote. Gore didn't complain about that possibility. Now we come to the interesting proposition that Gore may have won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. Now (gasp!) Gore doesn't think that the electoral system is fair.
Is that so?
Can you produce a single quote or statement since this election concluded where Gore has called for the abolition of the electoral college, advocated hearings to investigate it, or "whined" about the electoral college "not being fair?" Don't waste your time trying, because he hasn't. Plenty of people -- on both sides of the aisle, I might add -- have done exactly this, but Gore has not been among them. He has, in fact, done the opposite; he has defended the electoral college as the law of the land, which it obviously is.
(But far be it from me to rain on your fire and vitriol!)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
It seems that for the most important political job in the US (and arguably much of the world) the applicants should be the greatest of the great statesmen. They should be the brilliant minds that make people want to listen, the kind of person who could (literally) write _the_ textbook on politics. Instead, we get dolts who get ramrodded through the system. Is being governor of a state enough of a qualification? I don't think so. Neither is being a lawyer.
How we got into this mess is beyond me.
OK, here's what I suggest in order to prevent that from happening again... You have to look at the problem in a scientific/statistical way. When you know that the difference in votes is in the order of 1000 for a whole state, you already know that the result, after recounting, WILL NOT BE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT... whatever you do.
There is then only one solution that makes sense: Put the two names in a hat and draw one. This is as scientific as the recount, but it saves lots of time and money. Of course, since I'm not american, I cannot vote for that law...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Let me bounce these facts off you:
I wish this was over too, but it ain't. Gore gave them a chance to do it right -- hand recounts in ALL of Florida's counties. But Bush refused, because he knows he'll lose if votes are accurately counted. Whether or not he'll get away with this swindle remains to be seen, but I fully support the efforts of the Gore team to see justice done here.
Well, no, not really. :-) The balance of power between the States and the Federal government is a dynamic one, the result of ~200 years of subtle and non-subtle pushing by both sides. The Federal government can exert strong control over some things which it has been given direct control of (and this is a suprisingly small list of things to people living in other countries), every thing else it basicaly has to persuade the States into doing.
A prime example of this is the 55 MPH speed limit on the nations roads. For (what, 15? 20? 30? know it was in effect when I was a little kid 15+ years ago), this was pretty much universal across the country. The Federal government did not put this into place by fiat (even though they did build the interstate highway system), but rather by saying ``if you (a State) wish to gain the benefit of Federal highway and transportation funds, here is what you must do...", a list that included a raising of the drinking age from 18 to 21 and a lowering of the speed limit to 55 if applicable(which really, really sucked by the way in a state like Texas where I live, becuase the place is so goddamn big (bigger than France) that at 55 it takes quite a while to drive from one major city to any other).
It's not like the States are trying to make an issue out of this, it's something they genuinely have the right to determine at the state level (furthermore, the State can't say anything about how some things are done ``on the ground'' by the local election boards, or else you know that Ms. Harris would kick the Palm Beach board straight in the ass...). The only way the Feds could try to influence this would be to try something similar to the highway funds thing (i.e. indirectly through money, like by offering a carrot of grants to pay for the upgrade(s) or by offering a stick in terms of taking away funding if they are not done).
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There's not supposed to be *any* margin of error in the actual vote. That "margin of error" phrase has been drummed into our heads by pollsters.
Regardless of who wins in the end, one of the first acts should be to pass legislation for a new, modern vote system verifyable by some kind of encryption key to preserve anonymity.
I've been thinking that each ballot should have a public key attached, and that each voter should get a card with a private key when they vote. If there was any disputed ballot, the public keys would be posted by precinct both on line and in major newspapers (think full page, fine print, and hopefully a low percentage of disputes).
It would be each voter's responsability to check and make sure that their key was not on the disputed list. In order for them to verify their votes, they would have to use their private key. The vote could be ammended anonymously online via SSL or in a private booth at the local courthouse. If the disputed ballot is not ammended within a certain time frame, it should be thrown out, case closed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They could have graduated from MIT with honors and it wouldnt matter; my original point would remain the same: just because Bush (OR Gore for you repubs) has a different ideology from you _doesnt_ mean you have to make unsupported and idiotic claims about them.
It's not just ideology though. I didn't like his father that much, but I recognized that he was basically a competent president. I voted for Clinton, but I didn't worry about Dole; he seemed a decent man who would do a fine job if elected. The claims against Bush aren't unsupported or idiotic. He has made several factual errors in his speeches; he has misrepresented himself as a moderate when in fact he is to the right of most of the Republican party; and he has basically no real credentials to be President.
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Don't blame me. I don't live in Florida.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Yes, California doesn't need to tally the absentee ballots in their race, since Gore won by over a million, but those ballots could put Bush into the lead in the POPULAR vote! Neither side can claim the popular vote in this election. This lie has been propagated in the media, and ignores the many uncounted votes in this close election (200,000 votes, and with Bush garnering a 2-1 margin on those military ballots, the California vote COULD easily swing the poplar vote his way).
Democrats are known cheaters when it comes to elections. It is well known that there was considerable fraud in the Kennedy-Nixon race. The biggest incidence was in Chicago, where ballot boxes were stuffed with Kennedy votes. Nixon just didn't pout about it.
LBJ was elected fraudulently in Texas. All the precincts (precinct, county, not sure) came in, except the one where his good buddy was sherriff. He was losing by 10000 votes. The returns from that precinct gave him a margin of +10500 in that area. Go figure.
Democrats are well known to give people cigarrettes to go vote. Of course, they are just giving out cigarrettes for voting - not necessarily voting Democrat. But, if you are dirt poor and don't care anyway, aren't you going to vote for the guy that just bought you a carton.
The police found a Democratic Florida State Senator driving around with a ballot machine in his car on election day. No clue what that was about.
Fraud was not necessarily committed. The counting machines are known to be inaccurate. There has never been an election in which the margin was smaller than the accuracy of the machine. Hand counting cannot possibly be more accurate.
The reason so many more Gore votes are turning up is because they are in highly Democratic areas. He had 70% of the vote down there. So, when they find a ballot that wasn't counted the first time, it has a 70% chance of being for him. That is why he only asked for a recount in those counties.
Despite what he says in public, he doesn't give a shit about the will of the voters. He only wants the will of the people that voted for him. He and Lieberman keep acting like they are doing the 'just' thing, but they are trying to skew the vote towards themselves.
They made all attempts to throw out the military vote because it is known to be traditionally Republican. What about the will of those voters? Ahh, screw em - they're only serving their country, what the hell would they know about who should be Commander in Chief?
I didn't vote for Gore because he is a major league asshole (to quote George Bush, who was talking about someone else). This whole election thing has made me think I was right in thinking that.
Don't try to justify what Gore is doing. You can't. I'm not saying Bush is acting 100% respectably, either. I'm just saying Gore is being a bigger ass.
Its far from over. This is now going to go to the Florida suppreme court. Basically, they said Bush wins, but without counting ANY of the hand counted ballots, but instead is going from the number from the machine count. So its far from over, It could still go either way. But right after they announced this, Leiberman was there announcing that Gore is contesting. Now its up to the courts. This had to happen, because now it can be argued. We'll see what happens. Expect to see Bush's people talking about 'we need closure, we won, lets call it an election', and expect to see Gore's people say 'Every vote must count, we must have fair results' Get ready for another few weeks....
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
Does it really matter what practices are used elsewhere?
Changing the rules after the election is intrinsically unfair. Can any rational person deem it otherwise?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Given the choice between Evil and Stupid, i'll take Stupid just about any day.
;)
I voted for Browne, btw.
closure with a President with the qualifications of a head of lettuce is still closure
Certainly 49,819,600 people can't be all that wrong now can they? This is more votes than CLINTON got so I guess that means good 'ol Billy Boy has the head of a rotten squash?
I've also yet to see a head of lettuce graduate from Harvard AND Yale. Didn't Gore drop out of college at one point? I think yes.
And with this I suggest a new filter option in my profile, as well as giving me the ability to filter out Jon Katz, I suggest we also now have the option to filter out bleeding heart liberal editorializing that only goes to show why almost 50,000,000 people in this country DO NOT agree with you and your views.
Bush is infinately more qualified as president than CmdrTaco and company are qualified at editorializing.
Of course that's not saying much, but most people do forget that Bush is a Harvard AND Yale graduate.
RevT
proud Florida Browne voter
This is a mantra we hear frequently, but which misses the point entirely.
It may very well be that more votes were cast in favor of Bush than Gore. The fact remains, though, that at no time has the margin of victory been more than 1,725 votes, or about .02% of the Florida votes cast.
In a single county, Miami-Dade, there are more than 10,000 ballots that punchcard readers registered as having made no vote for president. We know that in many counties votes have been undercounted because these "hanging chads" sometimes get pushed back into the hole when they are fed into the machine.
The current margin of victory is 537 votes, or about 1/20th of the number of undervotes registered in Miami-Dade alone.
So it is ridiculous to be saying "we counted the votes, and Bush won, and then we counted them again, and Bush won!" In point of fact there are thousands of votes that haven't been counted at all.
We're not talking about dimpled chads or butterfly ballots. We're talking about holes clearly punched in ballots and not counted by machines which, while neither Republican or Democrat, are also old and poorly designed. Is anybody on Slashdot really prepared to take the position that mechanical devices -- particularly 40 year-old mechanical devices -- can do everything automatically and never need human intervention?
So we counted some of the votes, and we didn't know who won, and then we counted some of them again, and didn't know who won, and then in two counties we counted all of the votes.
And apart from those two counties, we still don't know who won. And we won't until we count all the votes.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
volatile int president;
while (!president)
{
recount();
whine();
sue();
}
More people voted for Not Bush than for Bush or Gore; therefore, Not Bush wins.
However, more people also voted for Not Gore than for Gor or Bush; therefore, Not Gore wins.
So, with Not Bush and Not Gore in office, I guess we're stuck with someone else. But who? Nader? BRAK? OOG? Slashdot Cruiser?
ANARCHY!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ok:
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First, we don't have a "popular vote". The so-called "popular vote" is really just the sum of each state's votes. The campaigning by both candidates, as well as the actual voting by the country, are made with the electoral college in mind. Both the candidates and the voters would have behaved totally differently under true popular vote.
Secondly, the margin for Gore's victory in the so-called popular vote is something like 0.3%, well within of the margin of error. So not only can we say that recounts (like those we've had in florida) could result in shifting of numbers, but we can also reasonably presume that the slightest change in behavior of either of the candidates could have overcome that margin (i.e., under a popular vote).
Thirdly, the electoral college is the law of the land. We simply cannot violate it based on whim.
Fourthly, there are good arguments for and against the electoral college. If you're going to argue against the status quo, you should at least make a strong case for it.
Fifthly, Gore was more than ready to win on an electoral vote (see his tapes on CNN and company) when that was what the media was predicting.
> On to the subject of the dimpled chad and all that. There were ballots that were clearly punched through for all other offices but "dimpled" for president. Was this voter incapable of punching the holes? I think not.
You should have said, "I think. Not."
There is ample legal precedent for counting dimpled ballots. Counting the voters' intent is even the law in backwards places like Texas now, thanks to a law supported and signed by none other than GuuB himself.
Why so? Because the whole point of holding an election is to find out what the voters want.
> As far as the whole military absentee ballot thing goes...
Pure spin by the Republican attack dogs. See my post on the topic elsewhere under this article.
> On an added note, in Palm Beach County, FL a local news station took that "butterfly ballot"...
Another thing that the "liberal media" isn't bothering to tell everyone is that "butterfly" ballots caused so much confusion in the 1984 election that the US Congress ordered an investigation (General Accounting Office, IIRC), and the investigators reported back that such ballots were inherently unreliable, and recommended that they should not be used anywhere.
The shame is that state and local officials are not aware of these things. I wonder how many voting systems are just snake-oil solutions being peddled by someone out to make a profit? (I hear that the county commissioners in the county where the capital of Texas is are going to vote within a month about whether to upgrade to a slick new computer voting system. They probably don't have the first clue about the pitfalls with such systems, as recently discussed in comp.risks. Their decision will be based on the fact that they tried it in a single booth during this election, and "didn't have any problems with it". In the event, they are dragging their feet because of the price tag rather than because of concerns for system integrity, auditability, and the other issues recently identified by people researching computer voting.)
> They only recounted Democratic counties.
Agreed. IMO any election in any jurisdiction with less than a 2% difference between the top candidates should trigger an automatic hand recount throughout the jurisdiction. (And here the "jurisdiction" would be Florida, since that is the source of the block of electoral votes.) Notice that under my rule, a couple of other states would have needed statewide recounts as well.
> And, as far as I'm concerned, the changes in counts are more due to human error now than machine error then.
There is absolutely no basis of this claim, other than by invoking the Republican SpD's as authorities. Before this election, everyone agreed that hand counts were more accurate in a tight situation, and machine counts were just useful because of their superior speed and cost effectiveness whenever an election was not too terribly close.
> By the way, this isn't even the worst election in US history. Take John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
Also, a very complex situation with Rutherford B Hayes, ultimately resulting of a postponement of the inauguration until March of 1877 (IIRC). And some decisions by the US Congress that sound distinctly unconstitutional to me.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Really, how would that be any worse than what we have right now? Whoever becomes President will lack any kind of mandate, that much is clear. What is more important, though, is that no one really wants either of them. Like in the 1800s with Hayes and Tilden, the election was so close there that they finally came to an agreement: Hayes will be Pres. (Republican), but would not seek a second term, and he would not change any policy substantially. This should be what happens here -- preserve the status quo, get rid of the two of 'em as soon as possible, and start fresh in four years.
Yeah US History!
OK, I can't represent a completely British point of view here (not having had time to personally consult with all 60 million+ Brits), but amongst my friends there are two very basic faults with the voting system:
1. Americans don't know how to make ballot sheets.
Surely every state should have the same design for ballot sheets, and they should be boring and completely free from any attempts at design. A simple table which contains a cell for the candidates name, and a cell next to it for the vote is all that is needed, nothing more, nothing less.
2. Americans don't know how to count votes.
In Britain you have to put an X inside the box next to the the candidates name. If the X even touches the box, then that vote is declared spoiled, and the ballot slip is thrown away. If something other than an X is used, then the ballot is spoiled and the ballot slip is thrown away. That may seem harsh, but the rules are clearly laid out for everyone to see, and they are uniform across the whole country. The reasoning behind it is that if you are too stupid to follow the instructions, then you are too stupid to have your vote count. The idea of a judge being allowed to change a vote because the voter intended to vote for someone else is ludicrous. If there is more than one vote on the ballot slip, then it is spolied, end of story, and one stupid voter has lost the chance to have their say.
That's all that was needed to make this whole election an open and shut case; simple ballot papers, and simple rules.
Find funky gifts
First of all, I'd like to point out that before all this madness occured, it was thought that Bush may win the popular vote, but Gore win the electoral vote. Gore didn't complain about that possibility. Now we come to the interesting proposition that Gore may have won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. Now (gasp!) Gore doesn't think that the electoral system is fair.
Next point it why Gore won the electoral vote. He won by a margin of somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 votes. He won by a greater margin than this in New York City alone. What this means is that, outside of NYC, Bush had the greater popular vote. So, is it really that unfair, Al? This is one reason for having the electoral college - so one city can't choose the president.
On to the subject of the dimpled chad and all that. There were ballots that were clearly punched through for all other offices but "dimpled" for president. Was this voter incapable of punching the holes? I think not.
As far as the whole military absentee ballot thing goes, Gore just managed to upset the people who risk their lives for this nation. Probably not a very good plan...
On an added note, in Palm Beach County, FL a local news station took that "butterfly ballot" and replaced the candidates with cartoon characters. They then asked small children which circle to mark to vote for a particular character. Guess what? They figured it out... (and, keep in mind, that ballot was approved by the Democrats, published in the newspaper, and sent to the home of every registered voter prior to the election.)
Even if Gore had won the Florida recount, what would it mean? They only recounted Democratic counties. And, as far as I'm concerned, the changes in counts are more due to human error now than machine error then.
Of course, it's not over yet- but it should be. I think everyone is entirely sick of this. Time to move on.
By the way, this isn't even the worst election in US history. Take John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Jackson won both the popular and electoral votes. BUT he didn't have a majority. Henry Clay had managed to take enough electoral votes away that no one had a majority. So, the two candidates with the most electoral votes go to the House. Clay threw his support to Adams, who won the election despite an obvious loss to Jackson. Interesting stuff....
The above is my opinion on a few of these matters. You're entitled to your's too. Don't troll me. Don't flame me. Let me be.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman