Given how close the election is and the likelihood that a recount in the Democratic counties would (will?) change the result, don't you think it would have been prudent for Bush to ask for a recount the counties in which he had an advantage?
Yes, he probably should have done so. I was pointing out that posters here seem to think Bush opposed recounts because of some massive conspiracy to take votes away from Gore. In fact, there was no such conspiracy. It was simply a case of the winner not asking for a recount. This is not rocket science.:)
At that point, PBC indicated they wanted to do a manual recount, but Harris said it was illegal!?!?!
Did she actually say this? Honestly, I don't recall. Clearly Florida law allows for a recount.
In any event, why was VC able to count its votes continuously, but not PBC? I don't recall hearing anything about VC dragging its tail waiting for a court ruling. PBC and MD have now had almost three weeks to count their votes, including machine and hand recounts. That seems like plenty of time to me.
Also, there were at this time lawsuits by Gore trying to force them to recount, which may have also been a factor in changing opinions on recounts.
IIRC, these lawsuits from Gore came up because counties stopped recounts due to a lack of a clear Gore advantage. MD might have been one of them, actually.
In any event, we have now had three vote counts (not even including all military absentee votes!) and Bush still won. What more does Gore want? He has stated he would abide by the recounts. The fact that two counties couldn't get them done by the deadline set by the Democrat-appointed supreme court of Florida is scandalous, but not because Bush won.
First off, Bush didn't ask for recounts because there was no reason for him to do so. Lots of people here seem to be missing this simple point. Why would someone who won an election ask for a recount? It would be ludicrous.
As for the manual recounts and failures of counties to finish them, recall that PBC started it's recount the day before Harris' original Nov. 14 deadline. They wasted four or five days! Both PBC and Miam-Dade halted and restarted their recounts at least once, for no apparent reason, though there was some talk of "needing to get permission from the court." I've never understood this point, because it seems to me that the count should be able to go ahead, though certification would require a court ruling. If someone can clarify, I would appreciate it.
I said "morally superior." Nowhere did I claim either candidate has been completely moral in this contest.
As for supposed SecState bias, it is a very serious charge to suggest that an elected official is not performing his or her duties according to the law. In fact, Harris was following Florida law by setting the original recount deadline and the court upheld her authority to do so. In addition the court specified that she could not "arbitrarily" refuse recounts after the deadline, a decision so weak it hardly qualifies as one. Essentially, the court washed its hands of the whole affair. She then certified final results yesterday at 5pm, the deadline given by the Florida supreme court.
I have heard lots of speculation about her bias, but not once has anyone in the Gore camp questioned the strict legality of her actions. They questioned her interpretation of the law and the court decisions, but never that she explicity went against Florida law. They have resorted to personal attacks not backed up by proof of wrongdoing.
Actually, the Electoral College was a compromise between the large and small states. The Electoral College ensures that candidates must win a broad range of support throughout the country. In fact, this election was a perfect example of the system in action. Bush won over a much more varied population base than did Gore.
The Electoral College compromise is not unlike the House/Senate compromise in that it serves to ensure that small states have a voice. Those who advocate abolishing the Electoral College should also advocate abolishing the Senate.
As for our election stability, I think that has more to do with the nature of our society than the Electoral College. Unlike most other nations on Earth, the population of the U.S. has never known any other system of government than a democratic republic. Even in colonial times, governors and colonial legislatures were elected. As we've seen throughout history (France, Weimar Germany, Russia), it is much more difficult to transition to a republic than it is to start one from the ground up.
Gore "offered" the statewide recount only after the SecState had set the original deadline and Bush had defended it. Gore knew there was no way Bush could backpedal and allow more hand recounts.
If Gore had requested a statewide recount in the first place he could claim the morally superior position. What he offered was pure spin.
While you're right that Gore has not directly attacked the Electoral system, he has made statements such as, "Even though I won the popular vote..."
Hillary of New York has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Now, of course she is not directly involved with Gore's campaign, but it sends a very strong message to the nation. I get very nervous when people start talking about changing the Constitution on a whim solely to gain a political end. It's the same feeling I had when Columbine triggered the 2nd amendment brouhaha (and I'm by no means an NRA supporter!). It's not unlike the Prohibition situation.
So no, Gore has kept himself clean. He has sent his minions out to do the dirty work, as has Bush. As much as I dislike Bush, I dislike Gore even more given the events of recent weeks. How many recounts do we need?
So why didn't Gore request a hand recount in all counties? That would have been the most fair thing to do, but he knew quite well that Bush would probably gain votes in most of those other counties.
A hand recount of selected counties is unfair. It makes some peoples' votes more important than others.
Note that no one is making charges of any sort of election fraud whatsoever. Gore said he would abide by the results of the limited hand recount. He is not, and has lost what little respect I had for him before all of this started. Gore has placed himself in a situation where if he doesn't win, his political career is ruined. Even if he does win, barring some amazing policy decisions (unlikely with a divided congress) or dumb luck, he will not get a second term.
I believe the CD checks the BIOS. Since VMWare provides only one kind of BIOS, the check fails. If there were a way to swap in a new BIOS image, I suppose I could dump out my BIOS and use that. Alas, VMWare has no such facility.
Since the plex86 site seems to seriously lack documention, I thought I'd see if I can get an answer here.
Does plex86 support running the guest OS off a raw partition, or is a virtual disk required? There are two reasons I'd like to see raw partition support implemented:
Limited file size in Linux. I think it's 2GB in x86 Linux. I need a bigger disk! Supporting multiple disk images (which VMWare can't do, apparently) would help.
Windows licensing. This is what made VMWare's raw partition support critical for me. I have an OEM copy of Win2k that will only install under the "bare" hardware. It won't install from within VMWare.
I know Bochs was able to use raw partitions. Has this support been ported over to plex86, or are plans in the works?
Also, does/will plex86 support transparent network translation the way VMWare does. This is absolutely critical for me.
Don't think of it as "more important." Think of it as "important," because without the Electoral College, they wouldn't be. New York and California still have the largest say in the elections because they have the most representatives. This is not a case of discrimination and to cast it in that light cheapens the work against real discrimination.
The rest of your post argues for proportional allocation of electoral votes, which I am neither for nor against at this point. I don't have enough information to make a decision either way. I do know that depending on how it's implemented, it could make battles over congressional districting even more bitter than they are now.
However, I'll address your campaigning question because some people view the Electoral College as a way to get candidates to campaign in more states. It certainly does, but more importantly, it forces candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters. This is where Gore failed, not in the campaigning. Those states lean right because Gore couldn't make them lean left, not because there's some natural force that compels them to lean right.
We can argue all day about ballots. What it really comes down to is informed voting. The PBC ballot was accepted by the election commission. What we need to determine is how to improve things for the future.
A lot of people are complaining about punchcards, due to chad, multiple punches, etc.
When you mark no choices or multiple choices on a scantron, it's pretty hard to miss. Not so on a punchcard, where the chad can obscure a mark.
Of course it does! I just does it by state. Within your state, the popular vote determines the electoral votes. Some states split their electoral votes. This is a state issue and has nothing to do with federal law.
It's not that people in the Dakotas are "more important." It's that they need to have an influence on the election. If Gore couldn't carry the Midwestern farming communities, the fault is with his platform, not the electoral system. He didn't address the wide variety of concerns and viewpoints in this country and he paid for it.
As for the mapping of the states, it is somewhat arbitrary, but groups of states form regions, which tend to have similar societies. Bush won states from every region. Gore did not. This implies Bush appealed to a broader point of view than Gore. The system worked.
Good points. No system is perfect, obviously. It's just been my experience that fewer moving parts generally implies better reliability.
And you are most correct that scantron wouldn't have helped the ballot layout confusion. Only responsible designers and voters can help that. People need to understand that when they drop the ballot in the box, they are certifying that it is correct. I can't really fault the designer in this case because the ballot in question was designed for readability and was accepted by the election commission. There must be a statute of limitations on ballot design.:)
As for multiple valid answers, that's not really relevant to voting, unless, as Bill Mahr pointed out, you want "universal health care and a master race.":)
The election this year, far from exposing flaws in the Electoral College system, in fact validates it.
When you look at the nationwide county-by-county breakdown of winners, you can immediately identify all of the cities, because they are colored for Gore. Bush won over a much more geographically diverse portion of the country than Gore did.
Bush won at least one state in each major region of the country (Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, etc.) and Gore did not. This implies that in some way, Bush appeals to a more diverse segment of the population than Gore does. Assuming absentees go as expected, Bush won the election. This is how the system is supposed to work.
There is absolutely no reason not to use a simple scantron. In my district we used the "connect the arrow" ballot. Simple. Hole punching and loosely hanging chad is a recipie for disaster.
Another thought I had last night is that Oregon is on to something! If everyone used a mail-in ballot which had to arrive by Tuesday, media projections couldn't influence the vote. Of course, there is less control over what happens to those ballots in transit, but manipulating federal post is already a felony.
IA64 has no such compatability problems. The bundles indicate dependencies and there are pipeline interlocks.
VLIW is only a problem in the "classic" sense. That is, when instructions are explicitly scheduled to function units and nop's are inserted to handle latencies. IA64 doesn't require this.
Ah, but that might be interpreted as "I don't have enough information to make an informed choice," which is actually a great statement in itself, but does not necessarily mean "none of the above."
I was referring to earlier complaints that some states don't accept spoiled ballots. Whether an official "none of the above" option appears on the ballot is a separate issue. Right now, the only way to vote "none of the above" is to spoil the ballot.
IMHO, rejecting spoiled ballots is a much better practice than accepting them as "none of the above."
The woman who was standing in line in front of me at my polling place managed to vote yes and no on three city
propositions. I don't think she was very bright, but at least she got a second shot at it.
Just a comment on general opinions I've seen here. This is not a reflection on whatever beliefs you might hold.:)
I see a lot of complaints that improperly marked ballots were not immediately rejected and therefore people didn't get a chance to vote correctly. I also saw a lot of complaints earlier about the inability to vote "none of the above" through spoiling the ballots. You can't have it both ways.
Here in Michigan, the ballot machine rejects any invalid ballot and the voter gets another one. I think this is far better than allowing "none of the above" votes.
To be more correct, your analogy would work like this (to parallel the recent election):
The Yankees win four out of the seven games, but score less runs overall than the Braves do.
Each team fields a number of representatives to a final "game" based on the number of series games won. The Yankees send four, the Braves send three.
These seven people vote on the winner of the series. four votes for Yankees, three for Braves. Yankees win.
The key point you missed is that the electors are very, very partisan. It is extremely unlikely that electors will vote contrary to the votes in the states. The 11 Republican electors from Tennessee aren't going to vote for Gore. One might vote for Buchanan, but there is no way they will lean left.
IMHO, the entire election is so close, it boils down to Poissonian statistics. I think the entire country should perhaps re-do the
election, because the margin of error is so small.
No. The Constitution is the law of the land and we must follow it. If the Electoral College cannot make a decision, it goes to the House. No re-vote.
We have a chance to set this situation right. It would be an outrage not to.
Which is why we cannot allow a re-vote. Voting with future knowledge would not represent the will of the people. It would represent the anger of the people at an outcome they did not like and/or a compromise of the people's will in cases where folks change their vote even though they did not vote incorrectly the first time.
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Yes, he probably should have done so. I was pointing out that posters here seem to think Bush opposed recounts because of some massive conspiracy to take votes away from Gore. In fact, there was no such conspiracy. It was simply a case of the winner not asking for a recount. This is not rocket science. :)
Did she actually say this? Honestly, I don't recall. Clearly Florida law allows for a recount. In any event, why was VC able to count its votes continuously, but not PBC? I don't recall hearing anything about VC dragging its tail waiting for a court ruling. PBC and MD have now had almost three weeks to count their votes, including machine and hand recounts. That seems like plenty of time to me.
IIRC, these lawsuits from Gore came up because counties stopped recounts due to a lack of a clear Gore advantage. MD might have been one of them, actually.
In any event, we have now had three vote counts (not even including all military absentee votes!) and Bush still won. What more does Gore want? He has stated he would abide by the recounts. The fact that two counties couldn't get them done by the deadline set by the Democrat-appointed supreme court of Florida is scandalous, but not because Bush won.
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As for the manual recounts and failures of counties to finish them, recall that PBC started it's recount the day before Harris' original Nov. 14 deadline. They wasted four or five days! Both PBC and Miam-Dade halted and restarted their recounts at least once, for no apparent reason, though there was some talk of "needing to get permission from the court." I've never understood this point, because it seems to me that the count should be able to go ahead, though certification would require a court ruling. If someone can clarify, I would appreciate it.
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As for supposed SecState bias, it is a very serious charge to suggest that an elected official is not performing his or her duties according to the law. In fact, Harris was following Florida law by setting the original recount deadline and the court upheld her authority to do so. In addition the court specified that she could not "arbitrarily" refuse recounts after the deadline, a decision so weak it hardly qualifies as one. Essentially, the court washed its hands of the whole affair. She then certified final results yesterday at 5pm, the deadline given by the Florida supreme court.
I have heard lots of speculation about her bias, but not once has anyone in the Gore camp questioned the strict legality of her actions. They questioned her interpretation of the law and the court decisions, but never that she explicity went against Florida law. They have resorted to personal attacks not backed up by proof of wrongdoing.
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The Electoral College compromise is not unlike the House/Senate compromise in that it serves to ensure that small states have a voice. Those who advocate abolishing the Electoral College should also advocate abolishing the Senate.
As for our election stability, I think that has more to do with the nature of our society than the Electoral College. Unlike most other nations on Earth, the population of the U.S. has never known any other system of government than a democratic republic. Even in colonial times, governors and colonial legislatures were elected. As we've seen throughout history (France, Weimar Germany, Russia), it is much more difficult to transition to a republic than it is to start one from the ground up.
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If Gore had requested a statewide recount in the first place he could claim the morally superior position. What he offered was pure spin.
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Hillary of New York has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Now, of course she is not directly involved with Gore's campaign, but it sends a very strong message to the nation. I get very nervous when people start talking about changing the Constitution on a whim solely to gain a political end. It's the same feeling I had when Columbine triggered the 2nd amendment brouhaha (and I'm by no means an NRA supporter!). It's not unlike the Prohibition situation.
So no, Gore has kept himself clean. He has sent his minions out to do the dirty work, as has Bush. As much as I dislike Bush, I dislike Gore even more given the events of recent weeks. How many recounts do we need?
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A hand recount of selected counties is unfair. It makes some peoples' votes more important than others.
Note that no one is making charges of any sort of election fraud whatsoever. Gore said he would abide by the results of the limited hand recount. He is not, and has lost what little respect I had for him before all of this started. Gore has placed himself in a situation where if he doesn't win, his political career is ruined. Even if he does win, barring some amazing policy decisions (unlikely with a divided congress) or dumb luck, he will not get a second term.
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Does plex86 support running the guest OS off a raw partition, or is a virtual disk required? There are two reasons I'd like to see raw partition support implemented:
I know Bochs was able to use raw partitions. Has this support been ported over to plex86, or are plans in the works?
Also, does/will plex86 support transparent network translation the way VMWare does. This is absolutely critical for me.
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They're cheaper, smaller and they suck less power. Why wouldn't we want one, unless you absolutely need top-of-the-line video/sound/etc. right away?
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The rest of your post argues for proportional allocation of electoral votes, which I am neither for nor against at this point. I don't have enough information to make a decision either way. I do know that depending on how it's implemented, it could make battles over congressional districting even more bitter than they are now.
However, I'll address your campaigning question because some people view the Electoral College as a way to get candidates to campaign in more states. It certainly does, but more importantly, it forces candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters. This is where Gore failed, not in the campaigning. Those states lean right because Gore couldn't make them lean left, not because there's some natural force that compels them to lean right.
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Was it the Chad?
We can argue all day about ballots. What it really comes down to is informed voting. The PBC ballot was accepted by the election commission. What we need to determine is how to improve things for the future.
A lot of people are complaining about punchcards, due to chad, multiple punches, etc. When you mark no choices or multiple choices on a scantron, it's pretty hard to miss. Not so on a punchcard, where the chad can obscure a mark.
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It's not that people in the Dakotas are "more important." It's that they need to have an influence on the election. If Gore couldn't carry the Midwestern farming communities, the fault is with his platform, not the electoral system. He didn't address the wide variety of concerns and viewpoints in this country and he paid for it.
As for the mapping of the states, it is somewhat arbitrary, but groups of states form regions, which tend to have similar societies. Bush won states from every region. Gore did not. This implies Bush appealed to a broader point of view than Gore. The system worked.
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And you are most correct that scantron wouldn't have helped the ballot layout confusion. Only responsible designers and voters can help that. People need to understand that when they drop the ballot in the box, they are certifying that it is correct. I can't really fault the designer in this case because the ballot in question was designed for readability and was accepted by the election commission. There must be a statute of limitations on ballot design. :)
As for multiple valid answers, that's not really relevant to voting, unless, as Bill Mahr pointed out, you want "universal health care and a master race." :)
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When you look at the nationwide county-by-county breakdown of winners, you can immediately identify all of the cities, because they are colored for Gore. Bush won over a much more geographically diverse portion of the country than Gore did.
Bush won at least one state in each major region of the country (Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, etc.) and Gore did not. This implies that in some way, Bush appeals to a more diverse segment of the population than Gore does. Assuming absentees go as expected, Bush won the election. This is how the system is supposed to work.
What a great election!
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There is absolutely no reason not to use a simple scantron. In my district we used the "connect the arrow" ballot. Simple. Hole punching and loosely hanging chad is a recipie for disaster.
Another thought I had last night is that Oregon is on to something! If everyone used a mail-in ballot which had to arrive by Tuesday, media projections couldn't influence the vote. Of course, there is less control over what happens to those ballots in transit, but manipulating federal post is already a felony.
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VLIW is only a problem in the "classic" sense. That is, when instructions are explicitly scheduled to function units and nop's are inserted to handle latencies. IA64 doesn't require this.
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IMHO, rejecting spoiled ballots is a much better practice than accepting them as "none of the above."
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Just a comment on general opinions I've seen here. This is not a reflection on whatever beliefs you might hold. :)
I see a lot of complaints that improperly marked ballots were not immediately rejected and therefore people didn't get a chance to vote correctly. I also saw a lot of complaints earlier about the inability to vote "none of the above" through spoiling the ballots. You can't have it both ways.
Here in Michigan, the ballot machine rejects any invalid ballot and the voter gets another one. I think this is far better than allowing "none of the above" votes.
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To be more correct, your analogy would work like this (to parallel the recent election):
The Yankees win four out of the seven games, but score less runs overall than the Braves do.
Each team fields a number of representatives to a final "game" based on the number of series games won. The Yankees send four, the Braves send three.
These seven people vote on the winner of the series. four votes for Yankees, three for Braves. Yankees win.
The key point you missed is that the electors are very, very partisan. It is extremely unlikely that electors will vote contrary to the votes in the states. The 11 Republican electors from Tennessee aren't going to vote for Gore. One might vote for Buchanan, but there is no way they will lean left.
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No. The Constitution is the law of the land and we must follow it. If the Electoral College cannot make a decision, it goes to the House. No re-vote.
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Which is why we cannot allow a re-vote. Voting with future knowledge would not represent the will of the people. It would represent the anger of the people at an outcome they did not like and/or a compromise of the people's will in cases where folks change their vote even though they did not vote incorrectly the first time.
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No, no re-vote is fair and is thus illegal. People would vote with future knowledge. How many Nader voters would now vote for Gore?
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