posted on July 17, 2001 04:02:01 PM new
Actually, what I think bothers most people is two-fold.
One, Gore positively won more votes on a nationwide basis. If Bush had won more votes but the electoral vote situation was the same, not nearly as many people would have felt he *stole* the election.
Two, there has been lots of statistical analysis done on the Buchanan fiasco in WPB - Gore lost several thousand votes right there. I've studied statistics and I'm convinced of that.
posted on July 17, 2001 10:12:02 PM new
11/13/00 CNN reports, "James Baker, the balloting observer for Bush, said earlier today that Bush will 'vigorously oppose' the Democratic challenger's recounting efforts." Why is that? Doesn't George Bush want to
make sure that every vote is properly counted? After all, we have already seen some problems. The original count in New Mexico gave the state to Gore, but a recount may give it to Bush. Why is the Republican party seriously considering a recount in one state, but will vigorously oppose a recount in another? Either recounts are legitmate election procedures or they are not. The fact is that Republican candidates frequently make use of recount provisions. In fact, several news organizations have even interviewed prominent Republicans who presently hold their public office only because they won a manual recount after losing an initial machine tally. Florida, the state which will decide the election, started with almost 1800 votes separating the candidates. After the recount, it gets down to 327, even something around 50 (this number fluctuates).
Bush realized that if all votes which were actually cast for Gore are counted, he would lose.
"The Republicans were just following the law. The votes all had to be counted by a certain deadline."
Actually, that's incorrect. In a unanimous opinion, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of State was wrong in her actions. By law, the recounts had to occur and also be counted. Later, the Supreme Court overruled the Florida in a 5-4 vote. Several imporant points need to be made about that descision. First, the 5 justices who
voted for Bush were all Republican appointees. Of the 4 justices who supported the Florida Surpreme Court, 2 were Republican appointees and 2 were Democractic appointees. In a strongly worded minority opinion, one of the justices implied that the descision was nothing more than a political hack job which risked doing great harm to the integrity of the court. Second, even the majority agreed that the Florida Supreme Court had the right to order a recount. Their issue was smply that there was not enough time to do a thorough enough of a job to be "fair." And why was there not enough time? Because as reported by news organizations from the night of the election, the Bush campaign had a carefully orchistrated strategy to drag out all legal proceedings and thus "run out the clock."
The only reason Bush was successful is because he had political operatives in all the right places, on both a Federal and State level.
They subverted the election process, otherwise they would have lost.
posted on July 17, 2001 10:26:59 PM newBush realized that if all votes which were actually cast for Gore are counted, he would lose.
"This looks like a vote for Gore, notice if you hold it to the light just right there seems to be a dent."
Then two democrats and one republican on the canvasing committe vote on how to call the ballot. Surprise, surprise, they decide it is a vote for Gore.
Too bad they didn't get to cast... err count enough votes to change the outcome.
Now that it is all over (except for the beating of the dead horse on this message baord) have you noticed there hasn't been any more mention of changing the process of using the electorial college.
posted on July 17, 2001 10:44:11 PM new
I think that it's pretty well understood that a change or abolition of the electoral college would be so difficult as to be ineffective in any immediate change to the process that Bush abused to become president.
It shouldn't be interpretated to mean that there is no gain available from voter reform, or even from yet another legislative act which makes it more clear that the election process is a political one and not one which is within the scope of court protection or interpretation.
posted on July 17, 2001 10:44:26 PM new"Now that it is all over (except for the beating of the dead horse on this message baord) have you noticed there hasn't been any more mention of changing the process of using the electorial college."
Not really. Since the facts are entirely painful to republicans to see that their candidate is illegally in office, we and the rerst of the country will continue to bring up this very important subject and rehash it until you vote Democrat on the next ticket.
As far as changing the electoral college goes, I've heard enough analysis on it to understand that it is here to stay. What is more possible is to reduce vote fraud by bringing voting methods into the 21st century. That would work to stop the abuses of the republican party just as effectively as a direct vote of the people would.
posted on July 18, 2001 09:49:40 AM new
I have a dsl connection, actually. But I was in middle of downloading about ten mp3s. That will eat up bandwidth. That, and the fact that my 64 mb of ram and 90% full hard drive will slow things down.
