This will clear up EVERYTHING (yet another polical chain mail item)

Incorrect. Bush got more votes in Florida. When the votes were recounted on two occasions with increasingly lax standards for what consituted a vote, Gore gained but still did not overtake Bush.

I can't WAIT to read the Republican version of this detailing how "stupid" anyone who doesn't understand the decision is.

I gotta say though, if Mark Levine's really an attorney, I sure hope he gets to argue a case before the Supreme Court soon. It should be interesting to see how a court so fraught with political prejudices that it can't decide a case without letting them interfere deals with someone who's basically written a piece intimating he's smarter than the whole lot of them.

 

Do we have any Republicans against this?

 

There are some ludicrous statements made within that document, in particular:

Q: Tell me this: Florida's laws are unconstitutional, right?

A: Yes

Q: And the laws of 50 states that allow votes to be cast or counted differently are unconstitutional?

A: Yes. And 33 of those states have the "clear intent of the voter" standard
that the US Supreme Court found was illegal in Florida.

Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out?

A: Um. Because...um.....the Supreme Court doesn't say...

If you read the decision, the unconstitutionality derives from the lack of standards set forth by the Florida Supreme Court.

(From the decision)
"When a court orders a statewide remedy, there must be at least some assurance that the rudimentary requirements of equal
treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied."
.
.
.
"Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy."



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[guote]Originally posted by Transmission:
Do we have any Republicans against this?

Originally posted by SpaceCity:
Q: So why not separate the votes into piles, indentations for Gore, hanging chads for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate or the other so that we know exactly how Florida votedbefore determining who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations)have to be thrown out, the American people will know right away who won Florida.[/QUOTE]

I would hope anyone could see the problem with this -- counting ballots by different standards for the two candidates -- hanging chads for one and dimpled for the other. That's the problem.

Personally, I think the standard should have been if the stylus went through the card. It doesn't take any great effort to get the metal spike through the paper -- even on the examples they used, the voters managed this task in other races. Hanging, swinging, or pregnant chads with a bent corner that shows the stylus went through, are the only thing that clearly shows the intent of the voter. Counting dimples or creases or whatever, is silly.

I don't think a clear standard would have been overturned, but they kept broadening the standards, and applying different rules. Not to mention trying every possible arguement. If their concern was actually accounting for undervotes from the start, that could have easily been accomplished.
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Stay Cool...

[This message has been edited by dc sports (edited December 15, 2000).]

 

The lack of standards was set by the Republican-controled Florida legislature. The Florida Supreme Court simply followed the statute which only states "the clear intent of the voter." If they would of set a standard, it would of been shot down by the US Supreme Court for "creating law." So either way, Bush had a trump card in the eyes of the conservative court.

 

I wonder if Mark H. Levine is a real person. If so, he should be embarrassed to put together a piece of well thought out writing that is misleading, contains glaring inconsistencies and innaccuracies, and is full of propaganda.

In addition to the ones pointed out by TheFreak, we have :-

A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems.
Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties
record
99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely
Democratic-leaning counties record only 97% of the votes. So approximately
3% of Democratic votes are thrown in the trash can.
Downright incorrect and misleading. First of all, making broad generalizations about "Democratic-leaning counties" is vague and difficult to prove. Secondly, if 3% of the total vote is missed, only the Democratic portion of that vote is missed, NOT THE WHOLE 3%. If 70% of the county voted democratic, then only 2.1% of Democratic votes are missed. This may seem like a small issue to you, but when I read something that mocks the decisions of the Supreme Court, and is written in a condescending tone, I find it highly amusing that it contains errors that are misleading.

A: Yes, the Gore exception. States have no rights to have their own state
elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This decision
is limited to only this situation.
This is obviously comedy. If not it's obviously outrageous.

Maybe the whole piece was comedy.

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Maybe all the rulers are wrong.
Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info



[This message has been edited by davo (edited December 15, 2000).]

 

I'm not talking about standards. I'm talking about manually segregating the under and overvotes state-wide by putting them in seperate piles of dimpled, hanging, swinging, punctured, overvotes and no votes. Perhaps there would be a clear winner without even counting the controversial dimpled ballots?




[This message has been edited by Transmission (edited December 15, 2000).]

 

...of those votes that were counted...

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"Blues is a Healer"
--John Lee Hooker

 

You could say the same thing about Gore. He won the popular vote, as long as you throw out the 3 million votes across the country that "weren't counted".

 

You spin me right round, baby
right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

Dead or Alive

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'Deeds, not words, shall speak me.'

 

Actually, 7 of the justices found constitutional problems with the Republican-passed Florida "clear intent of the voter" statute. Yet, another 2 justices felt that it didn't justify a remedy of stopping hand-counts and disenfranchising even more voters. Another 2 justices (O'Connor, Kennedy) somehow felt the deadline on the 12th could not be surpassed and thus ruled with the majority, thus the 5-4. So, Mark Levine was correct when he said 6 of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the hand counts were legal. Although, he failed to state that 2 of them wanted standards set.

 

You sure can. Semantics is a wonderfully exact science, isn't it?


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"Blues is a Healer"
--John Lee Hooker

 

Very nice, mark!

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EZLN

 

On the Dimpled Chad issue: Personally, I have some problems with dimpled ballots. One reason is that it very possibly wasn't a vote. If anyone here has taken a scantron test, you'll get what I'm talking about. Sometimes you may not be certain about an answer but you rest your pencil on the square. You decide that's not the answer and pick a different one or don't pick one at all (SAT-style). In that case, you would have dimpled the ballot, but not intended to cast a vote. Dimpling a ballot is a very subjective thing.

If you ask people to tell you if a flat piece of paper (without a dimple) has a dimple in it, you'll get people who say it does. Not for any malicious intent, just because it's about perception.

On Hanging Chads: This is kindof subjective. I can see full well how a "chad" wouldn't fall out and it makes perfect sense that voters may not get the "chad" entirely off. However, what about chads that got bumped out by accident? Should they be counted? -- it's not like you know which ones were intentional. When you move that many pieces of heavily perforated paper (from what I've heard/seen/experienced, the chads are easy to loose from the paper) you're bound to punch out or loosen (or dimple) some chads. Not maliciously, just unintentionally. For what it's worth, I doubt the votes (on the chad-based paper) are exactly the same as the ones cast on election night.

On the Butterfly ballots: I feel that this has become a moot point because of the circumstances involved. All parties had the opportunity to reject or suggest changes to the ballot. It contained OBVIOUS usability problems (Jakob Nielsen had an <a href="http://www.useit.com/hotlist/spotlight.html">excellent writeup</a> about this), but that doesn't mean we should vote over again. These ballots exist all over the country and many are EXACTLY like this. The ballots were flawed, but that should've been taken into account before the election, not now. This is the clearest example of "ex post facto" (after the fact) attempts in years. It's too bad that people made mistakes on their ballots. However, people /everywhere/ make mistakes. There were certainly people in Harris County who made mistakes on their ballots too. Should everyone who feels they made a mistake get to change their vote "ex-post-facto" (I like that phrase). Obviously there were a high number of mistakes in this instance. However, that does not mean that we should circumvent standards to affect the election in our desired way. Standards are in place to provide guidelines and to guide decisions. They don't exist to take up paper. This was an unfortunate instance. It's too bad it happened, but we can't cry over spilled milk. Move from this and learn.

On the Electoral College: I am a big supporter of the electoral college. This is obviously not particularly popular (no pun intended) stance right now, but it exists for good reasons. Without an electoral college, small states and populaces get screwed. New Mexico had 600,000 voters. Popularly, that's not really worth campaigning for. You expect as a major candidate, you'll get at least 200,000 of those votes, probably 250 to 300K. You don't stand to gain but about 20 to 50 thousand votes by campaigning in New Mexico. However, the five electoral college votes, while small, are much more valuable, and worth caring about (politically) than 50,000 votes.

To put it in perspective, 50,000 votes (out of 100,000,000 nationwide) is .05% of the national vote total. Thus, by caring about New Mexico, a candidate can get a .05% vote increase. However, 5 electoral college votes is almost 1% of the vote. Sure, it's not a whole lot, but it's worth paying attention to. Most of the US is comprised of small states like New Mexico (with 5 to 12 electoral college votes).

In a nationwide popular election system (democracy), it profits a candidate greatly to focus only on those states which have LOTS of people (California, FL, TX and NY) but those smaller states (Colorado, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tenessee, etc.) don't really matter. However, in an electoral college system (republic), small states are important. They aren't AS important as California, TX, etc., but they still are important. The founding fathers weren't idiots. There's a reason we have a House of Representatives AND a Senate. By having a Senate and electoral college, it allows small states to have a say. It prevents big states from ruling unopposed but to eachother. Throwing out the electoral college is kindof (not to the same degree, but still very significant) like throwing out the Senate and saying that people in small areas really aren't so important.

For what it's worth, it doesn't matter that Al Gore won the popular election. It doesn't matter in the outcome of electing the president. It also doesn't gague what the populace really wanted. The voting stats change based on the electoral college. If I'm a democrat in Texas, it's not really worth my time (everyone /should/ vote, but people don't based on reasons like this) to vote for Gore 'cause he's already lost Texas. Conversely, if I'm a republican in California, I'd rather watch a movie than go vote for Bush because he's lost the state already. By this reasoning, there could've been millions of votes accross America that weren't cast. They wouldn't have affected the outcome necessarily, but they could've changed the popular vote (either way - more for Gore or more for Bush).

What am I doing? I have an exam tonight . . . I should be studying

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"I am who I am, who I am, well who am I?" -- Dave Matthews Band "Dancing Nancies"

[This message has been edited by Vengeance (edited December 15, 2000).]

 

I wouldn't say I was against it. I do have had a problem with dimpled chads. Some dimples you may not be able to distinguish with the naked eye. How big a dimple is a dimple. And if you count dimpled chads, that means that dimpled chads count as a punch...that means you'd need to go back over the "legal" ballots and see if there was a dimple on another candidate. If there was, it now becomes illegal as a double punch? Or does a complete punch override a dimple and a swinging chad override a dimple but a complete punch overrides a swingging chad? I think that's what the Supreme Court saw. It didn't think a standard could be agreed upon in the time remaining. And then there was the question of new legislation after the election. It was a catch-22 with no time remaining. Rack it up to poor and abiguous Florida law. All states should review and fix this before the next election. I think we all can agree, we don't need another one like that.

I personally, as a Republican, would have like to seen a "three-count" of the ballots that were spit out without a presidential selection and allow for 2 or less hanging corners on a chad to count. I still think Bush would have won and the country would be more supportive. No dimples for the above reason - though in theory even a 2 "hanger" would run into the same logic as above.

Oh one more thing - could someone please give Jesse J a real job. Why is EVERYTHING against democrats a race thing? I know that there are still serious race issues in this country and more minorities are democrats but ... come on. <head shaking side to side and an eye roll thown in>

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This whole piece is a bunch of crap. What is this supposed to be clearing up again? I just skimmed through and immediately found some things that were wrong.

First off, the ballot was not illegal. Second, it was the FLORIDA Supreme Court that said it wasn't illegal.

The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the hand counts were unconstitutional.

The machine doesn't know if you're a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn't know if you're black or white either. If Democrats don't like the machines maybe they need to start attracting wealthier voters.

This can't be the same Mark Levine that used to appear on Hannity & Colmes all the time can it?