Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
-
-
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!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ok:
---
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