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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.
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
first of all, the US legal system is a conflictual one. it's ugly, unpleasant, bitchy, but it works quite well, actually.
Of interest, AFAIK the only state in the Union that must consider dimpled ballots on manual recounts is (drumroll please) Texas! and Bush signed into law legislation (HB331 of the 75th congress of Tx HB331) a bill that favors manual counting in a recount situation. I love irony.
Unless Gore goes way, way too far, he will not be damaging the constitution or any of that jazz--with the race this close, a very accurate count is important. I'm in favor of inclusion of the dimpled ballots, but that would get lot of foul-play cries (if the non-postmarked military ballots are excluded, so should the dimpled ones, and vice verse as well).
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
99.9% of 2 million?
.999 = 990000
Have you done your math?
1000000 *
So, out of 1000000 (1 million) votes, 990000 are correct.
1000000 - 990000 = 1000
1000 > 2
in fact, 1000 is almost twice the margin of victory (537)
Do you understand the need for a manual recount now?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
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!
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.
The judges said the law was inconsistent. Therefore it needed interpretation. The interpretation was that the counties could recount if they so chose, and the certification deadline needed to be moved to accomodate. That is hardly changing the rules. So the counties that had large problems with ballots recounted manually. Or, rather, one of them did. Another was harassed by people flown in courtesy of the Republican party to harass vote recounters in Democratic counties. Another couldn't finish in time. None of the Republican counties chose to recount manually.
Those were choices made on a county by county basis. Really the secretary of state should've
1) set standards for manual recounting
2) had the entire state manually recount
No matter what happened in that case, I think it would have achieved maximal trust in the process in Florida and the US. Arguing that a piece of crap election process should be allowed to stand as is forms arguments of patent lunacy.
Let's not forget the accuracy of the count in Florida is at least 10 times worse than the vote tally difference. The entire Florida election is one big ugly mess. The voting and counting process is horribly inaccurate. In the case of a nearly tied vote, the only appropriate thing to do is to work as hard as possible given time constraints to improve the accuracy. Unfortunately Bush's Florida campaign manager is in charge of the process, the Florida legislature is Republican, and the State Supreme Court is stacked Democrat. Any moves made by either side would immediately be interpreted as partisan and destructive - yet improved voting accuracy is essential to our trust of the election process. Gore is fighting mainly for his votes, and Bush is fighting to force acceptance of the piece of crap. I'd rather see efforts made to achieve maximal accuracy in the entire state.
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.
For all the blame throwing, Bush has contested the vote in more counties than Gore. But ask yourself one question before assessing Gore's actions. Suppose on election night Gore has won by 1900 votes, not Bush. Do you really think that Bush would not have gained the lead by now ?? Do you think he would have used any less tools to challenge the election than Gore ? I suspect he would have gained far more votes than Gore has (were the tabled turned), and it would have been done much more smoothly.
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.
Gore's lawyer is David Boies, not Boyd. He was IBM's lead attorney when they had their antitrust case dropped. His strategy then was to stall and delay - a very successful strategy. He was the Attorney General's offices lead attorney against Microsoft. By most accounts he was stellar against Microsoft. He also represented Napster against the record companies. This is clearly a very efficient lawyer who enjoys taking on cases of national importance that work at the edges of the interpretation of the law. Don't forget, the value of a lawyer is based on how he does with what he's got. So far Boies has beaten Microsoft for the government, beaten the government for IBM, and negotiated a settlement for Napster. I don't think he is worried about the phone ringing for more cases.
Let's all hope that the case in Florida moves in ways that allow us to maximally trust the accuracy of the process. I doubt that will happen - I don't think either candidate really wants it.
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