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Circuit Court Okays Vote Swapping Site
scubacuda writes "C|net reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court has ruled in favor of Alan Porter's website, Voteexchange2000.com, a site enabling Gore and Nader voters to swap their Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. In response to the court's decision, Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's Southern California office, said, "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (For a look at some of the legal issues behind "vote swapping," visit Gigalaw)"
Yes, it's legal, but is it a good idea? There is a loophole in representative democracy which leaves it open to manipulation by this type of vote-shuffling - in a population of 5^n, 3^n can outvote everyone else if they're well placed. I would say that this is far, far worse for democracy than the recent irregularities in Florida, because this is now institutionalized.
Didnt Bush get less votes or is my memory wrong. Your electoral college lets the guy with the second moset votes win so sabotageing it cant be that bad if the most popular person doesent win. It would have been just as correct by that thinking.
Is hugely influenced by the amount of money a political party has. This is why it's so insanely difficult for an additional party to make any gains. Dems and Repubs have cornered the national government, and that is very sad. The only thing this does is make for damn sure that the same vanilla issues come up again and again, because the agendas of the big parties coincide with the agendas of business. Other parties, Green, Reform, Libertarian have hugely varied political goals that most Americans never learn about.
It's a pretty lame attempt to undermine the voting system which this country has had since it was founded.
Funny, I find a voting system that can elect someone who loses the popular vote to be pretty lame. And I mean that statement in both senses.
Bush won anyway. Looks like their attempt to sabotage the electoral college failed.
No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
You know, it actually sometimes surprises me that the government would even think they could or should do this.
But then, I remember the simple fact that the government will do whatever is in its power to retain its power.
Give them an inch, they'll take hundreds of thousands of square miles.
Can I get odds?
I'll give you 12 Gore votes for a Nader and a first round fringe candidate.
What's to keep an enterprising Bush supporter from logging on and promising to vote for the Democrat in exchange for someone else voting for Nader, and then voting for Bush anyway?
When it comes down to an honor system with no consequences, the results may not be as intended.
In 2000, it was Gore's election to lose, regardless of the Nader factor.
No, Bush won the only election that legally matters. There, he got more votes. The Electoral College election.
The most popular guy? Does not matter. What is this, People magazine?
Sabotaging it IS bad, since it is un-Constitutional. Vote fraud.
I spend a good deal of time before each election working cautiously to review information that is as non-partisan as possible in order to determine which candidates are the best, and it disturbs me when the so-called democrats and liberals stage sideshows like this to distract the American public from the task at hand. Issues like our right to bear arms and the economy are tossed to the wayside as we focus on things like stains on dresses and odd campaign contributions.
I know that my next visit to the polls will be a much more conservative one, and I hope yours will be too. We need to put the focus on what's important.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square."
Gore won California, but he did not win the nation. The nationwide popular vote NEVER has mattered. Bush also won Florida... many times. He win recount after recount, even with Gore throwing out absentee ballots of the military.
Bush stole nothing. All he did was win enough states to get enough electoral votes. That is not theft. It is, in fact, the same process by which Clinton won twice.
If Gore had won, he'd be in the white house. But he lost the electoral college, same way Bush I did against Clinton.... same way Ford did against Carter.....
Saying Gore Won is like saying Dukakis won. Might work in a Harry Turtledove novel, but it is not real history.
The court would uphold wife-swapping as well.
you can honestly think it would be possible to stop people from speaking with each other and deciding to vote for a specific person. It's another case of the internet empowering people with the ability to communicate more efficiently which upsets the status-quo and the people who rely on it. Another example of why the current Electoral College scheme is no longer viable in this country; we've outgrown it.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Congress absolutely runs on the quid-pro-quo of vote swapping: "I'll vote for your invasive, environmentally unsound, pork barrel project if you'll vote for mine". You think all those egocentric, power-mad, greedy lawyers in Congress actually read the bills that they vote on? Nope, they swap votes or follow the party line, often without having a clue what they're voting for or against. So much easier than having to think... and potentially so much more profitable.
A better approach: Ramsey Clark's initiative to impeach Bush (and other officials of his adminstration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft) --
http://www.votetoimpeach.org/
-kgj
"Other parties, Green, Reform, Libertarian have hugely varied political goals that most Americans never learn about."
Actually, America learns about these fringe extremists and rejects them. There is no cover up, no silencing.
"because the agendas of the big parties coincide with the agendas of business."
Business has nothing to do with it, another wacky conspiracy theory.
What does that mean?
"It will be many years, if ever, if Nader's mad dream of a totalitarian state gets another 50%."
As opposed to Bush's and Ashcroft's "You have no rights", and "I'll spy on you if I want to", you nasty ol' "enemy combatent" you. Yeah! Some choice.
Scenario: Texas voters trade with California voters, and in California, Candidate Bob narrowly defeats Candidate Nancy (all because of the trades). The Electoral College Rep knows for a fact that the trading is what put Bob over Nancy, so he goes ahead and votes for Nancy anyways (unless he is compelled to vote for Bob by law).
Make sense?
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
How the heck is this "interesting"? Trollish flame-bait, more like it... I mean, come on, "mean-spirited 1% of voters"?
Even if you think vote trading is a bad bad thang
because it undermines the system in place, it's for
that exact same reason it's a good thing. One way
or another, it shakes up the system a bit. It calls
more attention to campaign finance reform, and
raises questions about the current electorial
college system. I think the overall effect this will
have on the awareness aspect of things will outweigh
any perceived negatives. Perhaps we could have a few
more political parties receiving national level
campaign finance in the future. It's kinda
un-american to have two heavily dug in parties
receiving all that cash, with little chance in
hell of any other party getting to promote their
candidates. I'd imagine there would be plenty of
reform on many levels if we had 4 or 5 strong
political parties competing for your votes.
Competition == choice == good.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
He wasn't elected. Period. He has no rightful place in the whitehouse. PERIOD. He's a joke, a thief, a liar, a fraud, and complete and total idiot. END of story!
The electoral college is meant as a tie breaker/taxpayer vote. If you want to be a part of the process that actually ELECTS, educate yourself on the electoral college or MOVE to a state that has a lot of electoral votes. If you are from one of those states (IE Florida) then shame on you for not being activist enough for not getting your state to vote the way you wanted them too!
Most of the people that complain about Gore not winning, didn't even VOTE!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
How do you know that the person you would allegedly swap with would actually vote the way you agreed upon?? There is no way to guarantee that they will vote the "right" way. I personally think it would be foolish to swap your vote, you might as well give it away.
Anyone else?
The electoral college is an ingenious solution to a large problem of voter apathy in the country. Only a sad, small percentage of people actually vote in this country. That doesn't sound very fair does it? This delegates the burden of the process of getting your states' citizens to the polls directly to the states themselves; it simply allocates a certain percentage of weight against the total national vote (the electoral college). This way, every states' residents are like "representatives" for that state's vote. Unlike other countries, here in the US we like to retain certain powers and stature to the states as individual entities. The only totally fair way to vote by popular vote, is to do something like the census, which we all know is impossible.
"Nader's Nazis"? Geez. You'd swear the guy had promised to kill babies or something. It's sad that some people get confused and angry once the # of political parties gets larger than two. I won't waste my time responding at length to this obvious troll but the Green Party hardly dreams of a "totalitarian state". A government that responds to forces other than money? Yes. If that's totalitarianism, sign me up, Ralphie baby!
Freedom: "I won't!"
" I mean, come on, "mean-spirited 1% of voters"?"
Yes, they are 1%. And yes, they are very mean spirited, wanting to make government much larger and much more oppressive and much less accountable.
(Look at, for example, Nader's ideas on campaign finance reform. A system in which government rulers decide which government rulers replace them. Ugh.)
Hey, the Greens at least want to legalize marijuana, so with the Greens as governing party, you wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore (because of being stoned all the time).
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
To elaborate: the secret ballot--not letting another person watch you vote--has to be mandatory to be fully effective. It's not enough to give you the option of voting secretly in a voting booth with the curtain drawn. Allowing another person into the booth with you to watch you vote has to be prohibited. Otherwise you can be coerced into voting a certain way and "voluntarily" inviting a verifier (your boss, your abusive spouse, the local Mafia don, etc) to make sure you followed your orders. Of course your boss can ask you how you secretly voted, but without direct verification, you can lie to him. That's correct, an intentional and desirable characteristic of the secret balloting system is it makes a way for you to lie your way out of a bad situation. But that means "vote swapping" with total strangers on the basis of mere pledges is a pretty dumb idea. You don't and can't have any way to know how they really voted.
Type "receipt-free voting" to see how designers of computerized cryptographic voting protocols try to deal with this problem. It's a hard theoretical problem, quite difficult to do securely and keep all the nice attributes of paper ballots.
A system like this could potentially mitigate the huge distortions of a plurality system.
Although a better solution would be for voters to rank their choices, then use one of several formulas to tabulate it. Then Nader voters could have voted both honestly and strategically -- i.e. 1. Nader, 2. Gore, 3. Bush -- which would have expressed their true preference for Nader while not hurting Gore (vs. simply voting for Gore).
I hope that the need for vote-swapping systems helps to call attention to the flaws of a plurality voting. These flaws do immense damage, by causing political parties to exist, which polarizes (and paralyzes) our government.
(Parties form because under a plurality system because candidates gain massive advantages by concentrating votes by eliminating similar candidates before the election takes place. Ranking-style voting completely eliminates this effect.)
Let's see...
A few thousand bogus email addresses, check.
Form letter requesting vote swap, check.
A simple script to automate it all, check.
Wow, one person can make a difference.
"Nader's Nazis"? Geez. You'd swear the guy had promised to kill babies or something.
Yes indeed, he did. Nader and his Greens are very strongly pro-abortion to the point of killing just-born infants.
"It's sad that some people get confused and angry once the # of political parties gets larger than two.
There have been many more than 2 for ages. What I get angry about is that there are too many fascists like Nader-nazis and Buchananites in a supposedly enlightened age. And my anger subsides when I realize that the Nader 1% showing proves that Democracy Works.
I won't waste my time responding at length to this obvious troll but the Green Party hardly dreams of a "totalitarian state".
It would be a waste of time, since you appear to be uninformed. Read their platform sometime; just about every item involves taking decisions from the people and giving them to government elites.
"A government that responds to forces other than money Yes. If that's totalitarianism, sign me up, Ralphie baby!"
If you don't like that, you would like Ralph. His ideas are the most greedy money-grubbing ever, with vast tax increases, even on small business.
If you prefer totalitarians who obsess over more than money, visit Nazi Germany. You won't find it in Ralph.
Who the heck moderates this up? Not relevant to the thread, bashes two political parties and tosses around random speculation.
Sad thing is this type of person is probably actually one of the more educated people who decides to vote for people based on real information and not television ads..
Anyone else ever concerned that the idiots will (or do) out number the educated voters? How many people go to vote just for the sake of voting and couldn't tell you anything about a single issue the canidate supports.
Ethics seem to be at an all time low and I can't believe anyone would propose such a thing as vote swapping. Flies in the face of everything a democracy is supposed to be.
I guess they believe, that somebody have learned to count correctly since the last time :-)
He, who dies with the most toys, wins
Please do not spam Slashdot with repeated message content.
Sorry, Ramsey Clark is not the kind of man you want to associate with. You only gain his favor by killing tens of thousands of civilians.
He has come out in favor of the Rwanda genocide, in favor of Saddam's rule in Iraq, and in favor of Serbia's invasion of Kosovo and Bosnia.
If Ramsey hates Bush, that says something good about Bush. I bet if Bush decided to exterminate the Canadians, Ramsey Clark would suddenly be his best friend.
Gore did NOT win.. he may have *appeared* to have more popular votes in florida, but the plain fact remains that the standards that were used to count so called "undervotes" was flawed and entirely subjective. They were using different standards from county to county as to what constituted "voter intent". See Bush v Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). That, my friend, is an attempt to steal an election - by looking at a piece of paper and saying "well, this person obviously wanted to vote for gore because his chad is dimpled."
Who the fuck are you, the hall monitor?
...would having 10 different options be better? I used to think having simply two parties was the worse thing for us. But now I wonder just how watered down politics and decisions would be if we had a plethora of parties? Could _anything_ be passed then?
I agree that money influences the options we choose from. The amount of money pumped into different candidates can certainly with enough sample points, lead to a prediction of a winner. But I don't consider it a rule. We've seen candidates with more money than entire parties lose to another candidate. If you're a profound, magnanimous, _charismatic_ leader you'll get your support (and thus money) to beat the other guy.
Watch CSPAN or CSPAN2. You'd be surprised what caliber of elected officals (especially in the house) run our country. These officals were by no means wealthy. They came from a district that put them there based not on money, but viral like "grass root" marketing. And their ineptness scares me.
Money nor party affiliation makes a candidate bad or good. We've elected moroons to office regardless to either of those variable.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
In a few days you will be incarcerated, then raped in prison a dozen times day for about five years until Bush gives the green light to waste your sorry ass.
What crap. If you have a specific argument against Nader's agenda, spell it out rather than just calling him a fascist. Something people on all sides of the political spectrum should remember when engaged in public discourse.
This is about an obvious quid pro quo. It is not shutting down a "Vote for Gore" or a "Vote for Nader" site. This isn't about free speech. What is the difference between this site and a site matching people willing to vote for Nader with people willing to pay 50 bucks to people who vote for Nader? The fact that the "recieved" part isn't monitary changes nothing.
If it does not violate the letter of the law it at least violates the spirit of what representative government is about.
Brian Ellenberger
Would be a voting system whereby you list the candidates in order in which you support them, so if the candidate you vote for comes second, your second vote would still go towards the your second favourite candidate. I believe there is a system like this in Ireland and Australia.
This court is one of the most-overturned circuit courts in the US. They are famous with coming up with some of the most crackpot far-leftist decisions. They recently came to fame by banning the Pledge of Allegiance. To quote from CNN:
I really would not hold any decision they make of any value at least until it has had a chance to go through the appeals system.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
at least as dangerous as Pat Buchanan!
Nice. Another politician with a tiny fraction of a power base offered as a dangerous threat. Personally I'm glad there are alternatives to the two main parties. But I hardly conceive of these alternatives as a greater danger than the people who are actually running things, or who actually have a chance to do so (e.g. democrats and republicans).
Let people give money to every party that has met the constitutional test required to be on the ballot. Only a sum less than or equal to $1000-$5000. Make it a felony punishable by pain of corporate liquidation for an incorporated entity to donate to a party or candidate. Meaning if Microsoft ever gives even $1 to the RP or DP then it will be summarily folded as a corporation and its assets redistributed to its shareholders. Same with unions. If the UAW gives a bunch of money, its assets will be distributed equally among its dues paying members and the union will be abolished by the US Government.
Money is not speech, but an advertisement is. If Microsoft or the UAW wants to run ads to help candidates, that's fine. But what you don't want is for them to able to legally give a lot of money to the parties. Include in the provisions banning corporate donations a provision that they cannot funnel money to individuals for the purpose of circumventing the law. You have no right to seriously propose that you take away the right to speak favorably about a candidate in public. You do have a right to demand that their ability to receive funds be extremely limited.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Google is now saying they were withdrawn for preparation for first strike. There is some news on IRC, but everthing is hush-hush right now. Anyone know a good news source?!
You may have all kinds of cute guesses about what Gore would have done, but never theless Gore got more votes any way you count it.
He ven got more votes in florida.
extremely unlikely...
Electoral candidates are picked by the winning party...it's sort of a gift for years of party loyalty.
If they did, they'd end their political career...end of story - Very very unlikely.
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
You have that in the US. I'm in the UK. Guess what? Your pishy "intelligence" services can't do anything about it. I can say "I'm going to rape George W Bush with a truck exhaust pipe, then slowly roast him over burning tyres" and there's not a lot you can do about me saying that.
see subject /\
yeah... drudgereport.
That's different, though, in that the votes are verifiable by name. With swapping among minority-party voters you could get some interesting Prisoner's Dilemma issues.
This goes on in the courts, too, BTW, up to the Supremes. Judges will curry favor with each other by abandoning their weaker preferences in return for help later with their stronger ones.
I'm leery of absentee ballots because they could lead to serious abuses. We complain about money in politics NOW, well... If the vote swapping is honor code, then I'm OK with it; but I would prefer that the ultimate vote remain in confidence. Nope, I don't know how to do it with voting-by-mail -- which will in time dominate I think -- but we *will* soon enough see a major vote-buying or vote-coercion (by a union, your boss, your party, etc.) scandal.
Some folks have even defending vote-buying as rational. Not me.
Uhm, isn't that discrimination? Criminals are citizens, too, with the same rights and duties as other citizens (at least one may think).
If that were true, would the state restrict their movements and activities for a proscribed period?
Criminals, in the United States, are those who have forfeited specific civil rights for a period prescribed by law. These civil rights include the ability to live and move where they choose, as well as other odds and ends (they can be forced into servitude, for instance).
The rights forfeited do not include the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and various litigation over the years has ironed out ad hoc rules as to what that entails.
Many states have decided that one of the rights which felons forfeit is the franchise, and that permanently.
Saying that this is 'discrimination' is meaningless. States also inflict voting discrimination on non-citizens, the deceased (except Illinois), and those under the age of 21.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Dude! Show me the numbers! I can't recall reading any summary which showed Gore had more popular votes in Florida, including news sources outside the U.S.
Besides at this point i'd take tolalitarianism over a police state that we are in currently..
ha...my neighbor bob is worse!!! the damn communist-faciest-totalitarian-libertarian-green-r epublican- democrat!~!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Not to say that I necessarily agree with all of it, but it seems to be a lucid argument.
it's not as uptodate as news.google.com, and WTF is with this site, there is nothing there, and look at the monospaceed fonts! ugly as hell. And too biased. Prince Charles opposing war?! wtf
We have a "clean" elections system here in Arizona thanks to the wisdom of the populace combined with the power of our direct vote on initiatives. I remember seeing a few Libertarian candidates accepting public money.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
The 9th Circuit has the highest appeal overturn rate of any circuit court. We're talking 3/4 of their decisions that get appealed to the Supreme Court get overturned.
Some of their gems:
- Declaring the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional because it mentions "under God". Gee, I guess our currency and Constitution are also unconstitutional then as well.
- Deciding that the 2nd Ammendment didn't apply to individuals, despite the fact that every other Ammendment in the Bill of Rights does, and despite the prepondence of jurisprudence from other court decisions that say it does as well.
Just about any wacko, leftist cause coming out of San Fransisco gets venerated by these guys.
Is it any wonder that they approved vote swapping?
My guess is, they'd probably allow illegal aliens to vote as well. I guess the Democrats are still pissed about not being able to bus in enough homeless people with bribes of $10 and a carton of cigarettes to win the Congressional elections.
Yeah, troll would have been more applicable if I mentioned his enormous coccaine habit. :)
Think long and hard about that vote, because in the end it's just added to a number that is only used for reference. Are voting system has taken away all the power of the people and put it in the state. If e-voting becomes more widespread for elections even if we fall back on the people to break a tie, the numbers can still be manipulated.
Sorry, I didn't really answer your question. Bush is an evil fucker, because he is stirring up war in a previously stable, if not actually peaceful, part of the world. All he wants out of Iraq is cheap oil. The North Koreans are a far bigger threat than the Iraqis, but there's no sign of troops going in there - why? Because you got your arses handed to you last time?
In the rest of the world, we watch America with a growing sense of morbid curiosity. What stupid law will you pass today, to restrict your own freedom with no positive side? Which terrorist are you going to arm now, since the IRA has quietened down? There's actually a bookmaker in the UK who has opened a book on what Bush will fuck up next. Kyoto's dead, and killing a huge amount of American teenagers by sending them to the Gulf has pretty short odds...
And... and... the Zionist Masters and the Gnomes of Zurich are going to call upon Cthulu, Gamera, and Tinkerbell to bring on the End Times...
Wow. And you wonder why the US government doesn't really care what you think.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square.
.0001% of the ballots). But the fundamental problem is that it came down to a coin toss in the first place!
Wrong. It was a TIE. The number of votes one candidate got was WAY WAY below the margin of error, especially for a punch-card system. Unfortunately, the current election system had no way to deal with ties. So the result of the election was essentially random.
Forget the punch-cards and computer upgrades. What we really need is a change in the law to deal with statistical ties since such ties will happen in any system. What Florida should have done is have some sort of a runoff election between between the top two candidates.
Trying to change the random result by counting hanging chads is like losing a coin toss and asking if you can get a reflip. Eventually you would get a result in your favor (chad randomly fall off, someone misplaces
Brian Ellenberger
The Electoral College wasn't designed to enforce two-party goverment, but that's what it does today. Because the plurality winner in a state's popular vote takes all the state's electoral votes, only the top two candidates have a reasonable chance of winning. Anyone who votes for a third party instead of one of the two major parties is really just increasing the odds that his least favorite major party will win. (This is the "A vote for Nader is a wasted vote" mantra we heard from the Deomcrats two years ago.) So the current structure of the Electoral College simply helps the two major parties maintain their stranglehold on the government, and hence on political debate.
This ruling may help to weaken the Electoral College a bit by allowing minor-party supporters to concentrate their votes in states where they won't be hurting their preferred major-party candidate.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
it was a joke actually.... drudgereport is about as reliable as the STAR, or national enquirer.
Who the hell keeps on modding up this retards posts? He's either obviously trolling, or he has no sense of the world.
Yeah we lost the Korean War. The same way we lost the Revolutionary War.
Stupid prick.
Anyway you want o count chads, Bush won the electoral vote + the popular SOUNDLY in Florida (remember they didn't even count some Military votes) and anyone who still thinks Gore should be President is a sore loser and delusional.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
The secret part of thigns means nobody needs to know who you voted for unless YOU choose to tell them; it means you can't be lynched for voting for Bob.
You are mapping secondary benefits to it. I have the right to tell someone who I voted for, and to take that away is ludicrous.
that ruled the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional. keep that in mind.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Indeed Gore won the popular vote, widely known elswhere in the free world as the vote...
You didn't read the post. Of course you have the right to tell people who you voted for. You don't, and shouldn't, have the right to let them check up that you told them the truth. Otherwise, if Sheriff Bubba can demand to see your ballot, he can indeed lynch you for voting for Bob. A secret ballot means you can vote for Bob and there's no way for Sheriff Bubba to beat that information out of you in a way that he can check it.
I agree that our current system enforces political parties (causing them to exist by giving massive advantages to those who collaborate to remove "similar" candidates before the actual election), but I don't think the electoral college is the reason. The reason is simply the plurality system, where you are not able to fully express your full preference (for instance, saying that you prefer Nader, but would prefer Gore to Bush). Notice that even in state and local elections parties exist, in the absence of the electoral college. (although in places where there are runoff elections when any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote, political parties do not have as much influence)
That's not to say that the electoral college is bad. Some people say it gives advantages to small states (making people's votes in a small population state count more than the vote of a person in a large state), but the more dramatic effect is to make people's votes in a balanced state (i.e "swing state": one with nearly the same number of voters for each candidate) count much more than the vote of someone in a state that is tipped one way or the other.
but his point was about the popular national vote, the fact that it came down to a few dimpled votes in florida is the point! The nationwide margin was in the six figures, in Gore's favor.
One can take either of two views, that the system DEFINES justice, or it's trying to ACHIEVE justive.
If one takes the latter view, then one can talk about winning with respect to the justice that is the goal.
-pyrrho
Members of the public, on the other hand, are accountable to nobody but themselves. So they can and should have a secret ballot with nobody checking up on them. If that neutralizes vote swapping, that's a good thing. People should vote for what they actually want, not what someone else traded them for.
I can think of any number of actions to "shake things up a bit". What's so smart about doing something for the sake of just "doing something"?
Believe me brother, you may not like the present system, but things can get a lot worse. The Irans who thought the Shah's SAVAK was evil incarnate learned another thing when the secret police of the Ayatollah started torturing and executing people on a scale that made the Shah seem like Barney.
Most attempts to "shake up the system" have faired poorly for just about everyone involved. The only revolution where the revolutionaries didn't consume their own was the American one, and all things being equal, our system works out pretty ok. Besides, you want to shake up the system, we've got 30 million legal immigrants in the US, and upwards of another 10 million illegals, and we're importing another million every year. Trust me, in 50 years, things WILL be shaken up. You just may not like how they settle out.
Federal matching funds will deepen the deficit? Please. Bush's little pet wars will waste far more money than Nader can ever hope to get from the government.
As the war on terror continues and the war in Iraq gets underway, Bush will put the country even more hopelessly in debt than it already is. Clinton's hard work in balancing the budget, getting a surplus for the first time in who-knows-how-long, will be washed down the drain as Bush battles the man who tried to kill his daddy.
Some campaign funds for a third political party would be a drop in the bucket compared with this unconscionable waste.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square.
You are mistaken my friend. Gore lost (Thank God Almighty) fair and square.
The system worked exactly as it was supposed to with the exception of the elderly/confused/stupid citizens of Florida.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
depending on the state, there may be clauses in the state constitution or law which compells the electoral college person to vote for the candidate that wins in that state
Jewish (Orthodox or Conservative)? Muslim (Shiite or Sunni)? Christian (Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Mormom, Baptist)? I must've missed where the government said that Catholocism was the one true faith. And the government isn't endorsing anything, it's saying schools can have children recite the pledge of allegiance. The 9th Circuit said they can't, under any circumstance. If poor Bwani feels a little uncomfortable, or Richard the Atheist wants a little TV exposure because his kid in first grade has to recite a pledge, too bad. Reciting a pledge is not the same thing as separation of Church and State. Last time I checked, the President and Congress were not deemed the ordained ministers of God executing His or Her will on the unwashed masses.
Ramsey Clark is no idiot -- he's the genuine article. Also he's a private citizen, therefore not impeachable.
-kgj
Yep, died in the wool Communist and dictatorial appologist. I'm not sure which is worse, those who have no idea about the people, like Ramsey Clark, they associate, or those that do. The folks this guy has gone to great lengths to defend makes anything that Bush or Clinton did pale in comparison. Hey, but who cares if A.N.S.W.E.R. was formed by a much of Maoists, right? Communism is dead. It's not red anymore, it's GREEN. Lets forget about their support for Milosovich, and Kim Il Jong, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, they are anti-war now, damnit!
How many Greens do you know to say they are mostly uninformed? Or anti-technology? It's more about how the technology is used. How many lives does irradiation (of food, that's what I assume you are talking about) save? Inconclusive. The NYTimes last week did make mention of a study done in Europe that suggests that irradiating certain fats converts them to carcinogenic compounds. However, most things that are irradiated are vegetables and fruits, things low in fat, so, like I said, inconclusive. What's wrong with flash-pasteurization, anyway? Granted, nuclear power makes for cleaner air than burning fossil fuel, but where ya gonna stick the spent uranium? Can we keep it at your house for a while? Thanks! A better solution is growing corn or other biomass, and fermenting in to methanol and ethanol. Burning that you get almost entirely CO2 and H2O: clean. Back in the day, cars (Ford Model T?) used to have a lever: you can set it to gas or alcohol, gas for the city, alcohol for out in the country, where gasoline sales couldn't compete with alcohol fuel made by farmers. Right now, your car can run on 10% alcohol and 90% gas, and with an adjustment to the timing of the engine can run on alcohol only. A lassaiz-faire market? This country has never had one, nor is there such a thing in this day and age. The Fed has tight control over the expansion and contraction of the economy, furthermore, we have necessary anti-trust regulation in place, as well as tariffs on imported goods. For better or for worse, doing away with any of these at this point would be disasterous to the economy. So you can forget lassaiz-faire, which bwt != a "free" market. A market which thru lassaiz-faire came to be dominated by a monopoly is not "free" nor does it benefit the consumer. The Green model of the economy is actually truly capitalist, it treats natural resources as capital. Consider, for example, a forest. Forest makes more forest, just by sitting there. This is not only analogous to, but the very reason why, money makes more money just by sitting there, say, in a bank. Now if a company is using up all of its capital as fast as it can, would you call it successful? No, you'd call them morons. But under the current way of accounting, if you are using up natural resources faster than anyone, it looks like you are doing great, but you are really not. You haven't mentioned the Green stance on social welfare, perhaps you have an issue with that, too. Let me appeal to your enlightened self-interest (this will be a terribly gross oversimplification, forgive me). How do you feel about a scenario where a person has a choice between robbing you for food, or starving to death. Let's disregard for a minute how that person got to that point, that is a complicated question (in some cases, some people are just unskilled inept anti-social fuckups, and thats all). Now you have a choice between having that person trying to rob you, giving that person some money for food, or not dealing with this unpleasant person altogether, and instead giving some money to some third party that will pass it on to the person in question. Of the three, the latter is by far the most popular, and that's essentially one of the things we do when we pay taxes once a year. Hhmmph. What a horrible way to put it, but yeah, support social welfare programs, they indirectly benefit you. And vote Green. But even if you don't, you must agree that the satndard Parliamentary system is superiour to out two-party bullshit.
Can *you* prove that *you* don't have weapons of mass destruction?
1) I didn't say a word to excuse LBJ, or any other democrat. LBJ was a warmonger, and no friend of mine. Plenty more Democrats I've got no use for, as well. I despise the Bush regime, but that doesn't mean I love Democrats. For that matter, don't assume I hate all Republicans, because that's also not true.
2) Ramsey Clark is a man of principle and action. Do more homework before announcing your ignorance.
-kgj
Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see a link to the actual opinion. It resides here (pdf).
Doesn't make him a good man or a good leader or his causes just.
You said: 'Declaring the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional because it mentions "under God". Gee, I guess our currency and Constitution are also unconstitutional then as well.'
Out of the seven articles, and twenty seven amendments, of the US Constitution, nowhere is God mentioned. If you wish to really stretch though, the seventh article uses the word "Lord" in reference to the date of ratification: "...Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven...".
So your point about the constitution being unconstitutional refers to... What?
Ethics in goverment are more often used as a means
to an end as apposed to some set of values. The
parties are quite literally at war with each other
to maintain control. You'll see both parties doing
truly unethical things to each other, trying to
hide it, then crying foul at each other. Because
of this lack of geniune ethics in the system, you
don't ever have to feel the need to take the
"moral highground" on an issue like this. They sure
aren't going to in washington unless there is an
agenda to justify.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
When it comes down to an honor system with no consequences, the results may not be as intended.
And I think this may actually be a point in its favor. Since there were no binding agreements made (and no way to make the agreements binding), the whole thing devolves to "just talk". And just-talk (especially on political matters) is definitely protected speech.
This is the same court that said that file swapping (Napster) isn't allowed, but now says vote swapping is?
This is an interesting view of the events in Florida/2000. Saying that the Courts put Bush into power is too simplistict, and an easy scapegoat. It is worth noteing that unless a count is very close, few recounts change the outcome of a vote. This is true is most Western countries.
Talking about the popular vote is ridiculous -- if the popular vote decided the election, then the 2000 popular vote would have been completely different. Think of all the millions of people in non-swing states who stayed home, because their candidate either had no chance of winning or no chance of losing.
Additionally, the 13 states decided way back at the time the Constitution was framed, that the popular vote was not a good way to decide things. States with low population would never be heard. If we let the popular vote decide things, New York, California, and Texas would make all the rules, and because of this, none of the other states would have ever joined the union in the first place.
Additionally, where is your evidence that Gore won the final Florida vote count? I heard that independent recounts showed that Bush really did have more votes than Gore.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Atheists, humanists, budists, hindus, shintoist... I could go on.
Using the word "God" (especially with the capitalization the way it is) *is* an endorsement by the government for a select number of religions. And since it's changes have been by act of Congress this comes very close to Congress making a law respecting an establishment of religion.
How would you feel if your children were required to make a pledge daily endorsing "Stalin" as the source of authority?
That man is beating and mugging that lady in the street. Let's stop him - throw him to the ground, put him in a jail cell!
No, you say! Harming that man is just as bad as harming that lady. Two wrongs don't make a right!
Bah. Your moral clarity is so murky it looks like it might give someone a disease.
Vote swapping is about as dangerous as crossing your eyes. But if you're so quick to want to censor political speech, I just hope you're as vocal about "campaign contributions."
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state.
Come on people, start backing up your statements, its not that hard. Observe:
Bush won the popular vote in Florida. Here is my proof.
Thank you, come again.
Funny, I find a voting system that can elect someone who loses the popular vote to be pretty lame.
I'll make it easy with a simple example. Consider the World Series. In the World Series, a team can win 4 out of the 7 games, but still score less total runs throughout the series. It's not about who scores the most runs in the Series, but who wins the most games.
Likewise, in presidential elections, it's not who gets the most popular votes ("runs") but who wins the most states/electoral votes ("games").
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
A 'tie' is where two people get exactly the same number of votes. Voting systems aren't interested in statistical margins of error. They're interested in numbers of votes.
Take a math or science class sometimes, especially one with some probability. Nothing in this world is ever 100% Nothing. There is always an element of chance in the real world. Planes do not land safely 100% of the time. Computers do not run 100% of the time. You cannot calculate the force of an object to 100% certainty. Just because you aren't interested in statistics does not mean probability does not exist. If you are working in the real world you have to deal with probability.
And the ballots used in Florida were EXTREMELY prone to chance. Number one, they were paper ballots. They can be dropped, misplaced, or otherwise lost. Second, the ballots had those evil chads that were easily lost. There was a weird almost-Heisenberg like effect going on where the act of counting the ballots changed the outcome of the count due to chads falling off.
Note there are plenty of places with elections that require 51% of the vote to win and that have runoffs if noone gets above the threshhold.
Brian Ellenberger
... I'd like to beat persoanlly for being a larger hypocrite than usual. everyone knows that every single thing our reps vote on gets traded like Pokemon cards--"I'll vote for your gun/abortion/whatever bill if you vote for a new dam/highway/whatever in my home state."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Let's say you sign up to do this, and you swap votes with someone. He agrees to vote for Candidate X.
Let's say that he instead votes for Candidate Y.
How do you know? You cannot prosecute him, because you cannot force a man, under any circumstances, to tell you who he voted for in the United States. It's his right. End of discussion.
So it strikes me that a site like this is WAY open to abuse. And there is NOTHING that can be done about the abuse. In fact, it seems to me that not only is this not a way for voters to take back elections -- it is a way that candidates' campaigns can easily and legally abuse your rights, and get away with it.
Which is why I think this sort of thing should be illegal... because, quite simply, you have no way of ensuring that the other guy on the other side votes for who he said he'd vote for. And you can't -make- it that way without impinging on your own right to vote for a candidate anonymously.
Nebraska and Maine split by proportion of the votes cast.
Actually,
BUSH did legally win florida. He received numerous overseas votes from our military units.
There are numerous independent sources which confirm this.
This is a separate topic from the fact that:
1. The Supreme court made a hasty decision
2. Gore won more popular votes
Here's another article proving you wrong.
Besides, if Bubba threatens you with violence if you don't vote the way he likes, you can always call in the feds who will be happy to wait until he's about to beat you, and then take him away as an example. All kinds of police love examples, especially the kind that will make the news.
That's irrelevant anyway. If you can make a vote by absentee ballot, then your privacy is invalidated anyway because the technology exists to intercept your envelope, open it, and read your vote without your knowledge, and certainly without the knowledge of the individual on the other end who doesn't know how carefully you sealed your envelope, or how it was accomplished; is the tape holding it closed now the way you sealed it to begin with? They have no way to know. While someone who can open your envelope without making it look tampered with can surely reseal it as if it hadn't been opened (neither item is necessarily very hard) it illustrates the point that there is really very little actual guarantee when it comes to the mail. Just because it's illegal to tamper with and they consider it a non-issue doesn't mean it won't be tampered with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
According to PBS, "George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" to be counted." And if the popular vote is what would have counted, maybe Bush's election strategy would have been different -- and perhaps he would have won that one too. One thing I am glad of is that Gore is not president today. The man has no political identity or ideas of his own besides opposing George W. Bush -- nor does most of the American Left, sans the New Republic and Thomas Friedman and very few other exceptions.
First, I did not vote for Shrub.
2nd, he in fact did have more votes in Florida, barely.
How does one person STEAL an election ? Please explain.
The real reason the electoral college was developed was to keep the larger states (i.e. New York and in particular Virginia) from dominating the presidency. This was also the reason for the two houses of the legislature, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
"No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square."
Actually, most reports showed Bush won the vote in Fl. What's amusing is that if all the vote for Nader were cast for Gore instead, Gore would have won FL and the election.
Funny, I find a voting system that can elect someone who loses the popular vote to be pretty lame. And I mean that statement in both senses.
The best way to think of the presidential election is 50 state elections, with a weighted average based on the population of each state. It gives states with smaller populations a voice in the decision process and forces candidates to visit more places than just NYC, Chicago, and LA when campaigning.
Vote for Pedro
This is like so cool! I stated my religion as "Jedi" on the sensus, but it just got counted under "other" or "invalid". That was so un-fair. Now you can actually vote for Vader? I just HAVE to become a US citizen. Of course, his first order should have to be issuing Storm Trooper style uniforms to the Army, and the Police. But I guess they should still learn how to hit things with their guns.
And imagine the face on those rusty old politicians when they find out that they lost to a "joke" candidate, like Jesse Ventura.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I voted for Bob. (I didn't want the clowns to win.)
This is essentially voter fraud. Not because it changes the number of the votes -it doesn't- but because it changes the placement of the votes. A regional election, which is what "the election" really is, no longer accurately represents the wishes of that region. That perverts the entire electoral process, and undermines the entire concept of representative democracy.
Free speech? Perhaps, but free speech does not shield you from the law, it only states that such speech cannot be banned. This is the real issue behind shouting "Fire!" in a theater: it is your right, but if you incite a panic, the fact that you had the right to say it won't shield you from the consequences of your actions. This should have been treated the same way; political speech is fine, but it shouldn't save people from the consequences of defrauding the electoral process.
Do demorats ever stop whining? Every major investigation into the final tally in Fla put Bush as the winner. Thank God that was the case. I shudder to think of the shape we would be in as a country with Gorebotron in charge. Remember the red areas on the map? This IS Bush country. Keep crying.
Ralph Nader was/is a candidate for the Green Party. If you want to see Darth Nader, you could look at Hardware Wars.
One man, one vote. You vote where
you live. If you don't like where
you live, move. This won't stand.
They are attempting to rig elections.
A USian saying that someone has "no sense of the world". God, that's priceless. Thank fuck you'll never breed.
Oh, by the way, no-one is modding these up. I've got assloads of karma, so this will just keep coming right at you at +1 until I get bored.
I believe shutting down sites like this is a clear violation of the 1st amendment right to free speech. If free people want to barter votes across state lines, that's their right. It seems like a worse crime to me to circumvent free speech than to undermine the electoral process. The promises made online should not be binding, however, and shouldn't ever be incorporated into a future computerized voting system. If I promise to vote for Gore so you vote for Nader, and then I vote for Bush instead, you shouldn't have any recourse. That's the risk you take in trying to circumvent the system.
Vote for Pedro
Gore did NOT win the popular vote.
In the popular vote the difference between numbers for each candidate were far less than the margin of error. Therefore there was NO winner for the popular vote.
People don't seem to realize this.
Every recount in Florida has been in Bush's favor.
The statewide popular vote was in Bush's favor.
The electorial college vote was in Bush's favor.
The county-by-county vote across the nation was in Bush's favor.
And the popular vote across the nation was not in Gore's.
How can you possibly still believe that Gore rightfully won?
"Vote-swapping" is a way to compensate for the shortcomings of the electoral college. The only reason people vote is to change things the way they want. But if they know the voting system itself is screwed up so much that their vote won't make a bit of difference, why vote? If someone can talk to people around them with similar views and they all agree to vote in a certain way that mutually benefits them all, why is that wrong? Because other people aren't using similar tactics and thus being short-changed by the electoral college? Then the EC needs to change or more people need to start doing the same thing so that everything is fair. Don't forget that the EC is the real problem here, not how people vote.
What has happened here is that a bunch of people with similar views got together and found a way to vote better. It isn't any more wrong than people rearranging their schedules and car-pooling to the polls to make sure they all vote. I wouldn't call either of those things dumb.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Funny, I find a voting system that can elect someone who loses the popular vote to be pretty lame.
Basic Civics and Government are no longer taught much in the US, and this post is perfect evidence of such (and of the liberal media bias).
The United States is not a Democracy, it's a Republic.
The founding fathers thought things through with great care -- it's not accident that the Electoral College works the way it does, and the system worked astoundingly well in 2000.
What the Gore camp did was sleazy. What the Democrat judges on the Florida Supreme Court did was even sleazier.
Millions of votes weren't counted. It's very likely, because military personnel voted overwhelmingly for Bush, that Gore didn't even win the "popular election" if it would have actually existed. (IIRC Gore "won" by 358K and over 2.5M votes weren't counted.)
The Senate, however is another story. A Republican Senate was elected by the will of people, but Jumpin' Jim Jeffords switched parties and "stole" the Senate.
Sheesh. I'm not even a Republican, but fair's fair. Even Al Gore admits Bush won the election, btw.
Oh yes... The USA is still a federation of States (that's why the call it the Federal Government, not the National Government). Vote swapping with someone in another State is unfair because it violates the intent of the framers of the Constitution.
There is no margin of error on vote counts.
This may seem stupid, and non-statistical, but it is true. A vote count is a legally binding number. Statistical error doesn't apply to it.
How can you actually swap or sell your vote when you are alone in the voting booth and noone sees where you put the x? I don't understand this, yes please give me your money and tell me who to vote for - I'll just vote for whoever I choose to vote for and take your cash. The non-verifiability of the vote makes buying/swapping votes impossible.
I mostly agree. However like everything, the mandatory seceret ballot must have exceptions. An election judge, is often needed to help elderly/blind/handicapped, and that position much exist or some otherwise perfectly good voters cannot get their vote counted. These judges must never alter someone's vote, no matter how stupid, nor tell anyone how someone else voted.
You are right though, vote swapping should be legal, but verification that the vote was properly swaped must be illegal.
I don't like "receipt-free voting". A better solution is a paper receipt that MUST be deposited before you leave. The paper may or may not use OCR/bard codes to recored your vote, but it must have a verifiable name on it. If anyone accuses the computer system of fraud, just count the paper receipts by hand and you can verify that the comptuer works (or that someone is cheating as the case may be).
The 9th Circuit did not "okay the vote swapping site." They did not rule that California was wrong in shutting the site down, and they did not rule that such sites are legal under the US Constitution.
All they did in this ruling was hold that the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lawsuit under Railroad Commission v. Pullman, a fairly obscure case allowing federal courts to abstain from hearing a case when issues of state law would moot the federal issues. They held, in essence, that abstaining from hearing a case under Pullman is generally inappropriate when the case involves First Amendment issues, because the federal courts have a strong interest in protecting First Amendment rights.
They said nothing at all about the merits of the case; they only said that because the case is brought under the First Amendment, it should be allowed to go forward in federal court.
Hence the quote (right there on the front page, you don't even have to read the article!), "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (Emphasis added)
So calm down, this case is far from decided yet. And regardless of whatever the Supreme Court's record in overturning the 9th Circuit may be (that's another rant entirely, but suffice it to say that the statistics are somewhat misleading in this case), I'd be very surprised if the Court even heard an appeal from this decision, let alone overturned it. Not only is it a fairly minor procedural issue, unlikely to attract the attention of a Court that decides less than 100 cases a year, but the decision is entirely in accord with all the relevant Supreme Court precedent.
Clinton's hard work in balancing the budget, getting a surplus for the first time in who-knows-how-long, will be washed down the drain as Bush battles the man who tried to kill his daddy.
Yes, Thanks for cutting NASA's and the CIA's budget!!!
p.s. It was the Republican congress that balanced the budget.
In mathematics they have a thing called "integers". Integers are whole numbers.
Let us imagine a hypothetical election between candidates Smith and Jones.
The number of votes received by candidate Smith can be indicated by an integer. This is because whole votes are cast, and a finite votes are cast.
The number of votes received by candidate Jones can be indicated by an integer. This is because whole votes are cast, and a finite votes are cast.
In this election, Smith would win if the integer representing the number of votes he received was greater in value than the integer representing the number of votes with Jones received. Interestingly enough, the reverse is also true.
Now this is the tricky part. You see, ballots don't exist in a probabilistic state. Any given ballot is cast for one candidate or another - not 70% for Smith, or 98% for Jones.
The nice thing about ballots, consequently, is that you don't need to try to "predict" the value of one - you just read it. You cannot predict the force of an object to 100% certainty, but you can predict the value of a ballot to 100% certainty. If you can't, then it's unreadable - and thus uncountable.
Feel free to check with your local board of elections if the concept needs further clarification.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
spineless slimeballs.
Vote swapping is relatively harmless but that doesn't mean it should be encouraged. These rules apply for only one election, although a somewhat huge election because it represents control of 1/3 of the federal goverment's powers. But it's important to remember that you are voting for your state's choice for a President. The President is not your represenative in the federal government; he is the states' representative to the world and he is a check to the power of the leaders that represent you.
He's also our leader, so it may seem a little unfair that he can be put there with a minority of votes, but there are very good reasons behind it. There's one consolation - your vote does count as much as someone else in your state.
In regard to the Electoral College forcing a two party system, why does a two party system exist in congress? All of our votes count the same there. If there were more or better leaders in the other parties, being brought about more interest in those parties, you would have six or seven parties like they do in the UK.
I don't believe that an election process designed to keep highly populated states from electing a president that only listens to them is the reason behind the lack of political parties. It's more likely a combination of the general indifference to the political process, the great deal of compromise that goes on to get laws passed and/or the vote stealing (whoring) by swinging to the center during elections.
They're all going to look the same eventually. But who really cares? Life's too short. Drink and be merry!
State representation was addressed with the number of electoral votes given each state, not with the creation of the electoral college.
The creation of the EC itself was more a matter of dealing with the problem of information exchange (that, and the desire to leave the higher seats of power as far removed from voters as possible).
The issue of information flow was a big problem back in the original founding of this country. It took days or weeks for news to travel around, and even when it did reach an area, it wasn't guaranteed to reach everyone.
Today, we have a literacy rate that is virtually 100%. Information travels instantaneously in a number of formats that everyone can access in one form or another.
In 1791, the vast majority of voters didn't even know the names of the top candidates running. It was foolish to expect that even a small fraction of the population had the slightest idea what each candidate's platform was.
In 2001, anyone who cares to watch can see political debates as they happen. Anyone who is so inclined can find out even the tiniest details of a candidate's platform. Everyone in the US knows that Gore "invented the Internet" and Bush "put food on his family."
The issue of information exchange has been conquered. The distrust of the populace has eroded to the point where in many states, the electors are legally required to vote the way of the majority. The simple fact that people even get to vote for the president shows this erosion - originally, the state legislatures voted for the electors, which in turn voted for the president. The only say a voter had was during the election of the state legislature. States no longer have any real power, nor do they continue to push for "state representation" in government. Finally, the last election showed a major flaw of the electoral system. Not only did the winner of the popular vote lose the election, but the election was held in a deadlock waiting for the results of a single state. In effect, the US didn't elect Bush. Florida did.
Why, then, should we not switch to a popular vote? Why, in a system of government that champions the idea of "majority rules", do we allow the majority to lose?
Let plurality die.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Even that is a little suspicious, however. Who did those recounts? Probably bitter Democrats, because it's going to be tedious work recounting ballots, so Republicans are probably not going to want to do it (because they won, so why risk a recount that would undermine Bush?). As evidence, when they compared the media hand recounts to the official hand recounts (for those regions that completed their recounts before the courts ordered a halt), the media count showed more Gore votes than the government count (with official observers from both parties).
Anyway, I don't know why I felt a need to go into that, it really is best put behind us. One thing I do find kind of amusing is that I have an uncle who voted for Bush in Palm Beach County, butterfly ballot and all.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Why should it have a name on it? Normal ballots don't have names, they just only give one ballot to each registered voter who comes in. All you have to do is record the number of registered voters who came in, and make sure the number of receipts matches up. Or print two receipts, one with a name, and one with the vote. Put them in different boxes, and make sure the two boxes end up with the same number of receipts.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
1. The Supreme court made a hasty decision
The Democrat judges on the FL Supreme Court made their partisan decision for political, not legal reasons (which IMHO is shameful). The US Supremes rightly overturned their decision. The FL recounts showed that Bush got more votes regardless.
2. Gore won more popular votes
This bogus "fact" is not true. Among other reasons; (1) the President is not elected by "popular votes" and (2) not all votes were counted, including those of a huge number of overseas military personnel (who overwhelming voted for Bush).
From the NY times website:
"In the calendar year 2001, the Ninth Circuit terminated 10,372 cases, and was reversed in 14, with a correction rate of 1.35 per thousand. The Fourth Circuit, reputedly the most conservative circuit and the circuit with the second-largest number of cases reviewed by the Supreme Court, terminated 5,078 cases and was reversed in 7, making a correction rate of 1.38 per thousand. "
strange, most critics of the 9th circuit like to regurgitate soundbits about the the 9th circuit without even doing their research.
cheers!
More States' Rights? What "more" rights are you refering to?
I want to swap all my Cowboy Neal votes in the Slashdot polls!
http://www.kubuntu.org/
It should be noted that there were over 100 million voters in that election. The margin in the nationwide vote between him and Bush was not much larger than Bush's initial victory in Florida (under 2000 out of under 6 million). Gore has little more claim to having won the popular vote than Bush has to having won Florida, and can you imagine what a nightmare it would have been if we'd been trying to recount the entire nation's votes? If nothing else, at least the electoral college allows us to compartmentalize our voting irregularities.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You can't imagine Gore as president? I certainly don't think Gore would be a great (if even good) president, but ANYONE could do what Bush does. The things our nation has gone through are terrible, but I think any president would have done as well or better. How hard is it to look in to a camera and say that we're going to hunt down every terrorist, OF COURSE he says that, he SHOULD say that, ANYONE would say that.
We may be indire straits, but don't think that Bush is anything special.
In Russia (present day, not Soviet) it is rather common for politicians in rural areas to buy votes for bottles of vodka or other goods.
If we let people swap votes like this then we basically acknowledge that votes are like any other goods that can be bought and sold. The next step will probably be people selling votes on eBay, or wholesale discounts on votes, or something even worse. The principle would be the same. This, while being an interesting idea and somewhat justified in our wacky political system, will be dangerous to democracy in the long run, and will certainly not be the right way to cure the problem.
When men used to be men
If you're talking about legally binding numbers then none of it really matters anyway, as the electoral vote is the only national legally binding number for presidental elections.
If you're talking about actual votes, though, the margin of error in the machines is higher than the difference and so there was no winner.
So which is it? Are you talking about the irrelevant official numbers or the numbers of people who actually voted for each man, which can never be known.
If the laws were to favour atheism, the coins would say "In NO god we trust".
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this (that I've seen, anyway). Arrow's Paradox says that the voting system will always be flawed; perfection, just like in every other aspect of life, is unachievable. However, it amazes me that we still refuse, as a country, to examine changing the way in which winners of elections are determined. If 60% of the country is split between two candidates of similar ideological location, it is plain silly that the third candidate wins.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
God to see that someone is trying hard to get rid of tha maniac Bush!
Credibility doesn't matter to these people. If they have this vague suspicion and they repeat it to themselves and their fellow travellers enough times, it becomes truth to them.
"Bush stole the election." - reality is, Gore tried to steal the election. Prior to the actual election, it looked like Bush would win the popular vote but lose the electoral college vote. The democratic pundits reminded us that this was ok...right up until it turned against them.
"Bush is stupid." - This is my favorite. Right up with ->
"Bush is evil." - They say these two about every Republican. Reflexively.
Unless it's someone like Jeffords, who, by all accounts really IS an idiot, but once he crossed the aisle he became "a thoughtful, intelligent maverick".
First they start out "candidate x is stupid". Then when candidate x wins, it's because he's evil. Phantom police kept minorities from voting. They conspired to make the ballots confusing (oops, ballot was designed by a Democrat...that's how evil the Republicans are! They plant sleepers). He made Congress actually vote on a war resolution before an election, how dare he!
To Democrats, the only difference between a Republican and a member of the KKK is the choice of clothing. The slightest gaffe by a Republican, and the person will be hounded out of office, but Jesse Jackson can call NYC Himeytown all day long and Lieberman will still be kissing the shakedown artist's pinky at the end of the day. And then there is the little matter of Senator Byrd (D). The only active sitting member of the Senate that really was in the KKK. But lets get real, it's not as if the Democrats were really inclusive about race. How many minority Cabinet level officials did Clinton appoint? Compare to Bush. Oh yeah, I forgot, people like Colln Powell, or Condaleeza Rice, they aren't black, they are oreos, sellouts, uncle toms. Minorities automatically lose their minority status by choosing something other than what their betters think they should choose. No indepedence allowed for the colored folks on the Democratic plantation.
If you look at the agenda of the left, it ultimately comes down to a will to power and a dissolution of the things that make America America (like the Constitution and it's population). They can't be expected to uphold decent standards of honesty and truth, otherwise they might actually be accountable for their failures, instead of claimg credit for Republican successes.
IANAL, but as far as I understand Israeli law this would be a criminal offence (election bribary).
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
Yep, that's exactly right. I did my master's work on electronic voting. I came away unconvinced that any purely electronic scheme ever will be adequate.
One reply in this thread commented that there should be receipts, but they must be deposited before the voter leaves the voting area. Such an arrangement is actually a very good idea, but is still receipt-free -- after the voter leaves, there is no proof that a particular vote was cast. (It's a good idea because it leaves physical tokens that can be used to perform recounts, or count verification.)
Another reply said that it was silly to try to take away the ability for one to tell another how a vote was cast. That has nothing to do with receipts. The point here is that one should not be able to *prove* how a vote was cast.
Yet another reply pointed out the need in some cases for an election administrator to aid disabled voters. That's a good point, but note that neither the voter nor the election administrator should be able to *prove* that the vote was cast a particular way.
Gore lost every recount in Florida. The final florida count, gore lost.
Gore lost the electoral vote, and with all this retarded blustering about the supreme court "selecting" him, that vote went 7-2 against gore.
Finally, not 1 democratic senator had a problem with ratifying the results. They ratified it unanimously. They could've easily refused.
That's only because we don't have a full accounting of each and every vote in every single state. We only do that in states where the election was close, statewide.
I'd think a 500,000 vote difference... less than 1% would warrant a recount AROUND THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. Its a close election, and with irregularities around the country, and areas ripe for fraud like California, such an event would've made Florida 2000 look like a picnic.
I think its unfair to look at the general election, considering how close that was, and focus only on Florida and bemoan the problems Florida had. Florida's problems were obvious only because the election _in_florida_ was so close. I'm quite certain that everything said about florida could and would apply about most of the rest of the country, but who cares, since Gore won California by 1,000,000 votes, so who's going to recount California? Who's going to recount Idaho? Washington? Texas? None of those states were as close as Florida was, so there's no incentive to recount those states.
Unless you think people should have the right to sue Mc Donalds for being fat?
I think you're forgetting why the Founding Fathers instituted the system of the Electoral College.
They had strongly (and rightly so) feared that a Presidential election by direct national vote count would put too much power to urban areas to the detriment of rural voters. In those days, who wants to have elections decided by voters in Boston, Philadelphia and New York City? The Electoral College gives rural voters a much stronger influence in the Presidential election, eliminating much of the unfair overwhelming advantages of urban areas.
Hey,
the secret ballot--not letting another person watch you vote--has to be mandatory to be fully effective.
I understand what you're trying to say, but wouldn't your policy make absentee voting as a whole impossible? That doesn't seem a big improvement for disabled people, the elderly, etc.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
So, why would anyone who has principles enough to support Nader even consider helping Tipper get anywhere near the White House? That's the part I don't get.
I've seen quite a few posts regarding the electoral college being the source of many of our problems, but I'd like to counter that there are very good reasons why the electrical...er, electoral college exists:
(1) It partitions voting into smaller entities, which makes validation easier. Can you imagine the idiocy we would have seen in 2000 were the vote for president a pure popular vote, and within (say) a 20,000 vote margin? Yowza; the recount would have gone on for years.
(2) It forces candidates to have wide appeal. If the vote of someone in Nebraska were perfectly interchangable with the vote of someone in New York City, then candidates would spend no time at all trying to address the problems of non-city dwellers: only urban voters would matter, and fuck everyone else.
(3) States are sovereign entities who rightly get part of the vote. Lots of people in the US (including most everyone in government) sadly don't understand what federalism is: a system whereby the states and the Union are both sovereign governments with specific and partially-overlapping powers. The state governments are supposed to, by themselves, have a say in the federal government, which is why the Senate used to be appointed by state governors and why the elector allocation is proportional to state population PLUS 2 for the state itself.
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]
You obviously meant Clinton's hard work boning interns and dodging subpoenas from women he molested.
It is worth noting one of the key tenets of the vote swapping arrangement - it is a strictly voluntary arrangement. In essence, two people enter into an unenforceable contract stating that if one person agrees to change his vote, the other person will also do the same. However, there is no binding authority to insure that either of these people do this; when they enter into the voting booth, they could just as readily both revert back to their original thinking, or one or the other could also choose to revert back to her original thinking.
... by voting on representatives to the college, citizens of a state such as Virginia (which stretched west to the Mississippi in the late 18th century) would have their wishes respected in a reasonably timely manner. Moreover, the framers of the Constitution very specifically did not say how these electoral representatives were to be chosen by each state, conceding that political and economic differences would also lead to differences in choosing that representative.
... it would only be a little less complicated. It does, however, tend to provide a multiplier effect in many cases, as a number of states have adopted a winner take all system that disproportionately hides the popular vote in favor of the states' vote.
In essence, what this means is that the vote swapping service is an educational tool - it helps to inform both participants about the politics within other states so that they can utilize their vote to maximum effect. This is the principle reason that it was okayed by the Ninth Circuit Court; there was no binding requirements upon either participant, and it served to insure that a voter could better make his vote count.
I think the arguments against this here on Slashdot have been disingenuous. The Electoral College is an artifact of an earlier era which made sure that the election process didn't take several years to accomplish
Today, the electoral system is a tool that is used by both parties simply as one more political weapon. The system would be no less corrupt in a direct democracy
Vote swapping is intended to counter this, somewhat. It is actually quite good for third party candidates because it accomplishes two tasks - it insures that voters don't end up giving a vote to an extreme candidate on the other side of the political by splitting the vote between two relatively similar politicians on their side, and it means that third party candidates can be voted on in safe states ensuring that they can get funding under the complex and often grossly biased electoral funding system. It also has a third effect - the leadership for the parties is not in fact elected positions at all; instead they tend to be entrenched political kingmakers with no real checks on their own power. A system such as vote swapping provides a way for the membership of a given party to send a strong message to the leadership without necessarily promoting an extremist candidate.
Your complaint about the implementation of the separation of church and state would be more effective if you didn't quote the tired old examples of the pledge or of posting the 10 commandments. It may be more insightful to decry the tax-exempt status of religious organizations. Or to denounce the practice of only recognizing "legitimate" religions when determining who may officiate a marriage or who may minister to soldiers. It would help your arguments if you tried to nail down a good definition of "religion", as many minds qualify atheism and agnosticism as being "religions", and of "framers", as this could constitute (heh) a lot more people than just the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. It would also be interesting to read your views on politicians' and bureaucrats' right to free speech.
Please don't argue how those framers' mentioning God in their writings did not refer to a particular Christian formulation, as such arguments (while well documented) are fruitless and the beginnings of a potential counter-argument, e.g. some under-specified dieism is still a religion, and if the framers embraced it in a limited fashion, then we are doing no worse.
Please also note that nowhere in this comment have I specified my position on the matter at hand, though I hope that doesn't restrain you from making incorrect assumptions.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I find almost all of what Andrew Dice Clay says offensive. Occasionally, he's tolerable on standard network TV. (The fun part there is just watching him try to get through 10 min of air time without saying something he's not alloud to say.) Since I find his speech offensive, I don't go to his shows, and never rent his videos, etc.
I also find "In God We Trust" being stamped all over our currency offensive. The difference between Andrew Dice Clay and our currency is that I can avoid Mr. Clay, but I have to use currency everyday. True I don't have to read it, but that's not the point. Just having it be there, written right on the face of the money, in a nation which supposedly has a basic rule about separation of church and state is offensive. IMHO, the currency should be impartial.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
"What crap. If you have a specific argument against Nader's agenda, spell it out rather than just calling him a fascist. Something people on all sides of the political spectrum should remember when engaged in public discourse."
The fascist label is a very accurate description of Nader. I'd rather be accurate than courteous.
I wonder what recounting the other states would have found. The Democrat party is dead set against anything to stop voter fraud, and a remnant of the "vote early vote often" Chicago Daley machine was a key figure in the Gore campaign.
Remember the incident in the election where Democrat Party officials were paying homeless people with cigarettes to vote? There was widespread fraud with this, Mexican citizens in California voting in U.S. elections, "four leg" voting, having Democrat Party officials fill out ballots for people, and the like.
"Clinton's hard work in balancing the budget, getting a surplus for the first time in who-knows-how-long"
Clinton opposed balancing the budget. Remember the balanced budget amendment he opposed? He submitted out of whack budget after out of whack budget until the "Year of the Informed Voter", in 1994. The GOP took over the house and balanced the budget.
The current recessions started in Clinton's last year. Tom Daschle has been stopping every one of Bush's efforts to fix the economy in the hopes that more Democrats will be elected by people who blame Bush for getting nothing done. Sheesh.
"will be washed down the drain as Bush battles the man who tried to kill his daddy"
His daddy was the President of the United States. Actually, Bush is not trying to kill him. He is instead trying to dethrone Saddam in an effort to end the years-long war in which Saddam has invaded many countries, and kills tens of thousands of his own citizens per year.
If you are anti-war, you will support Bush's effort to stop Saddam's war against Iraq and other countries.
Oops, the line But they would have direct voting representation in the government should be ended with "in a parliamentary system".
How many Greens do you know to say they are mostly uninformed?
Ignorance is bliss: they are fat, happy, and dumb.
Or anti-technology?
They oppose it unless the ruling elites control it.
It's more about how the technology is used.
Yes. Used by ruling elites, and not the people governed. That is what they want.
Granted, nuclear power makes for cleaner air than burning fossil fuel
No it does not. Remember the plutonium-laced clouds that billowed out of Chernobyl?
A better solution is growing corn or other biomass, and fermenting in to methanol and ethanol.
Are you Tom Daschle, on the ADM payroll???
A lassaiz-faire market? This country has never had one, nor is there such a thing in this day and age.
But it is desirable.
furthermore, we have necessary anti-trust regulation in place,
Which are abused, as in the Microsoft case, to punish those who succeed by making better products.
as well as tariffs on imported goods.
Tariffs? Get rid of them all. All they do is make people pay money to the rulers for making the personal choice of buying a better product.
For better or for worse, doing away with any of these at this point would be disasterous to the economy.
They would greatly improve the economy and prosperity (if you got rid of them)
The Green model of the economy is actually truly capitalist, it treats natural resources as capital.
No, it is fascist, since the rulers make the decisions not the people.
How do you feel about a scenario where a person has a choice between robbing you for food, or starving to death.
Not as realistic scenario. You forgot the big #3: work for a living, instead of stealing
you must agree that the satndard Parliamentary system is superiour to out two-party bullshit.
No. In the U.S. you have many parties. It is just that except for two of them, they support unpopular ideas. The wackos are weeded out at the ballot box. In the parliamentary system, the wackos can get elected and waste time and resources braying in the chamber floors.
- I like/dislike corporate donations to the following political party
- I like/dislike preserving the environment
- I have liked/disliked the following legislation
- etc...
You use this site to direct you to products that are from companies that fit the agenda you have described, on a sliding scale. If you're looking for an mp3 player and they're available from ten manufacturers at various price points, you end up seeing those price points AND alongside them you see the prices as moderated by your agenda. Instead of picking the cheapest mp3 player based soley on price, you pick the cheapest one via the moderated prices shown. You don't pay the moderated price; you simply CHOOSE based on the moderated price, then pay the actual price. Whether you actually buy through the website is tangential, the point of the website is to give you the information needed to choose from whom to purchase in such a way that you advance your agenda.In the list above, the "I like xyz legislation" concept could be linked to a corporation by examining the sponsors of the legislation and then examining their corporate donors.
You can adjust your profile and the weighting factors you associate with your agenda items. You can dissect any given moderated price, diving into hyperlinks to read what foundation there is for the price moderation presented.
Crucial to this site is the notion that it doesn't exist to advance any particular agenda... it exists to allow consumers to express their agendas through their pocketbooks.
Also, this doesn't allow a single company to grab (for example) all pro-environment consumers by being the only company to promulgate a pro-environment agenda, and then gouge those consumers any price they think they can sneak in... instead, the moderated price of their item still has to compete with the moderated prices of other items, even those from anti-environmental companies, thereby allowing the competition to include the dynamics of the actual prices and the DEGREE to which a company has been deemed to align itself with a given consumer's agenda. The consumer decides how important each aspect of their agenda is.
Some of the information needed by the website org to usefully categorize a given company are publicly available, such as outright donations to members of congress. But in addition to that, more fine-grained disclosure of information can be incentivized by allowing website browsers to penalize companies that have not provided a standard suite of information as requested by a company. And a consumer has the option to extrapolate information from an owning corporation to its subsidiaries, which can fill in a few blanks as needed.
Paramount is that it is the consumer that is making the choices and expressing themselves monetarily. I believe that consumers could be attracted to this concept in large numbers, and that companies would take notice and be motivated by the direct financial consequences of their actions.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Have you considered Approval voting? Each person gets more than one equal vote. If you can live with another candidate as a compromise, cast one more vote for him or her to say so. A great way to trump both the EC and the standard plurality / majority voting method. And you don't have to have the same candidates on the ballot everywhere or even know every candidate like Condorcet.
The problem is you have to make a Boolean decision based on fuzzy data. It can be proved mathematically that there is no completely fair way to choose a single winner in a 3 party system.
Hmm... Does this mathematical work take into account compromises or simply assume each voter will only settle for one person?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
With the difference comming down to a mere few hundred votes, it is important to realize that all of these counts and recounts did not factor in the absentee ballots. Knowing that there are several thousand absentee ballots (florida is a BIG supplier of military troups) and that absentee voters vote overwhelmingly republican, the results would have gone to bush without a doubt. It's pretty sad that states dont count their absentee ballots before giving their results. In my opinion this is because there usually arent enough to sway the vote and the media is anxious to know right away.
I'm glad to be out of the military now, and have my vote actually be counted!
I think that it's safe to say that popular opinion would demand that text be removed immediately, on the same argument that was used to remove the mandatory speaking of under god from the pledge.
Your thinking of the wrong name. When I leave the polling booth I don't want MY name on the ballot. I want the name of the guy I voted for. I cannot read bar codes, if the reicpt was just a bar code list of who I voted for I would have no way to verify that the machine didn't register the wrong vote for me and also print off the wrong one. If the reicpt has the name of the guy I vote for anyone can come back latter and do a hand count to make sure the machine didn't rig the vote.
For a description of why they are flawed, see: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_00.html
I'm afraid that after looking through the reference that you gave, I don't see how Approval voting is a flawed system. From the text...
What happens with approval voting? Well, as I have set up the problem so far, we don't have enough information -- we don't know how many electors actively oppose each particular candidate. Let's assume that the Gore supporters and the Nader supporters could live with the others' candidate, but the voters in both groups really don't want to see Bush in the White House. (This is not at all an unreasonable supposition, given the voting preferences we started with, but remember that this is a purely hypothetical example.) In this case, Nader gets 15 million votes, Gore gets 9 million votes, and Bush gets a mere 6 million. All in all, it's beginning to look as though Nader is the one who should receive the Electoral College's votes for California.
This, after the following preferences have been listed:
6 million rank Bush first, then Nader, then Gore.
5 million rank Gore first, then Nader, then Bush.
4 million rank Nader first, then Gore, then Bush.
It seems like most of the voters of California get who they want or could settle for. No problems identified here that I see. (The only logical flaw being that the EC still exists in this hypothetical scenario.)
As for the summary of Arrow's proof, here is how the author describes it:
Sadly -- and surprisingly -- the answer is no. In 1950, the Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow made a startling mathematical discovery -- a discovery for which he was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Suppose, said Arrow, that we want to find a way of tallying the votes in an election. What kinds of conditions must that tallying system satisfy in order for it to give a fair outcome? One obvious condition is that if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B.
Condition 1: 100% of voters want candidate A. Everybody casts one vote for candidate A, and most everybody casts an equal vote for someone else. Here's a list of candidates and how many from the voting populace voted for each.
(Note that in these charts, the sum of the percentages should never be more than 100 x Number of candidates. This first chart assumes everybody cast exactly 2 votes, but the rest do not.)
Candidate A: 100%
Candidate B: 60%
Candidate C: 40%
Condition 1 has been met.
Another obvious requirement is that if the tally system puts candidate A above candidate B, then that ordering between A and B should remain the same if one or more voters changes their mind about some third candidate C.
I'm assuming that the condition claims that the people who are voting only change their preferences for candidate C, not A or B. With approval voting, if you change your mind about a candidate, you simply don't vote for them anymore, or you do. If they were the only person you would have voted for, the condition is then only reasonable if you do not vote. Otherwise you would not only be changing your views on candidate C, but on B or A as well.
Before the change:
Candidate A: 90%
Candidate B: 80%
Candidate C: 95%
After the change: (Less people vote for C)
Candidate A: 90%
Candidate B: 80%
Candidate C: 85%
Now candidate C is between A and B in ranking, but A and B have not changed and still represent the voting populace's opinion accurately. Candidate A still ranks above candidate B. Condition met. If Arrow is saying that the order of candidates has to remain A -> B -> C or C -> A -> B, allowing the latter of the two but not the 85% situation makes the requirement absurd.
----
So did I do something wrong? Or did the author of the article poorly represent Arrow's claims? If neither, how is Approval voting flawed?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
in situations like those. There should of course be safeguards against abuse. As it stands, absentee ballots are about the favorite method of election fraud, just because of stuff like this. Use of absentee ballots should also be curtailed, especially the mailed-in kind. Absentee ballots that you actually bring to a certified polling place (any polling place, not necessarily the one where you live) and cast at the polling place would help with that problem a lot. Of course there would still have to be a few exceptions, but the numbers could pretty small.
A) Both candidates campaigned with the electoral college in mind and Gore lost. Your so-called "popular vote" outcome is merely a side effect for them, but now that Gore lost he wants to have it decided differently. This is sort of like losing a game of basketball, but then insisting on that you actually won because you controlled the ball for a longer period of time, i.e., it's just plain stupid.
B) Voters would behave differently under a popular vote system. In other words, if you're Republican and you live in California, then you may as well stay home during most Presidential elections in our current (electoral college) system. A popular vote would change voting behavior radically in many states.
C) Well a third effect, you have the media feedback effect, whereby they sway opinion based on their analysis through the lens of the electoral college.
You just can't take the total votes and call it a popular vote. This is especially true in the past election where the total vote margin was very small. Hell, you can't even say that we'd have had both candidates running under a popular vote, whereby everyone acted as if the popular vote was the determinant, because the calculus of each political party may likely have been different.
Lastly, Florida didn't elect Bush, they were merely one part of a whole that voted for Bush. That'd be sort of like arguing that the 200k people would have elected Gore under your imaginary popular vote. Absurd!