The "Intent of the Voters" is what's important (unless they're in the military)

Actually, things like humidity and just the fact that the ballots are being handled so much can change the ballots. The first machine count is actually likely to be more accurate than later machine counts.

I would hope that everyone that uses punch card ballots goes to at least an OCR system by 2004. Those ballots aren't as easily susceptible to damage or changing over time.



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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

Bt we're only talking about Florida. What happens in California at this point is irrelevant.


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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

I don't know much about your voting process, but I don't understand how this could be. Handling could make hanging chads fall off, I suppose, which would make the second count more accurate. Humidity? If those machines aren't built to handle humidity, then somebody should be answering for that. I understand you get some humidity down there. But I don't understand how it would, or why this would make the first vote more accurate than the second.

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The voting cards themselves don't handle humidity well. The machines handle the humidity just fine. The humidity can make the perferations that hold the chad to the ballot weaker. Add in the handling, and some chads may detach at one or more points and become a vote when they weren't before.

Adding to this conversation, a "pregnant chad" would not be counted by the machine regardless. Usually, a pregnant chad is not a vote. There is no standard in Florida, though. And some counties are counting votes that wouldn't be votes in other counties. So, if the goal is to also count the pregnant chads as votes, a machine count would never be accurate.

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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

Okay, let's talk about intent. IMHO I would include the ballots that weren't post-marked, but not the ballots that weren't signed or witnessed, nor the ballots that were postmarked late. The lack of signing or witnessing leaves too much room for fraud. Without those signatures, there may be doubts about whether multiple ballots may have been filled out by the same person. Getting them mailed out late is equivalent to not going to the polls on time.

It doesn't bother you. Fair enough.

It does, however, seem to bother the Republicans involved in Bush's campaign. These same people who were overly concerned about rules and regulations a week ago, seem to not care so much about them now that it adversely affects them. By posting this article to point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats, you've also successfully pointed out the hypocrisy of the Republicans.

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I agree that consistency in what is counted as a vote is important. I also don't see why pregnant chads should be counted. Surely it doesn't take much force to break the tabs of paper, and if none are broken I would assume the person didn't intend to vote for that individual and perhaps just placed the stylus there momentarily. That's where I would draw the line. But the long and the short of this situation is that 1000 votes or whatever it ends up to be out of 6 million is nothing. It's 1 in 6,000 votes or 0.0167%. There are so many possible sources of error and/or skulduggery that could cover that difference that this could be held up in court for ever. And if they simply make an arbitrary decision, either way, I think it will taint the presidency. They need to have a by-election/runoff for the whole state. That way the decision will be made by the people of Florida, as it should be.


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Problem with that is, though, that you couldn't set a new election, have it and get everybody's vote counted in three weeks anyway. And that's the deadline that Florida has to choose their electors according to US law.

Besides, a revote wouldn't express the will of the people necessarily. I would assume that since the voters know the election is as close as it is, many who voted for Buchannan or Nader wouldn't vote for those candidates again. You've also got questions about who to allow to vote in a new election, do you include registered voters who didn't vote on November 7th, or do you only include people who voted on November 7th? If you include only those who voted on November 7th, would there be lawsuits from voters seeking to participate in the election who didn't vote before? There would also likely be severe logistical problems is restricting the voters to only those who voted on November 7th.

And if you let people vote who are registered but didn't vote on November 7th, shouldn't you also allow everyone in the whole Country the opportunity to vote again? I'm sure there are some Nader and Buchannan voters as well as Registered Voters who didn't vote on November 7th in other states who would like another opportunity to vote, especially in those other states that were very close.

There's also a potential Constitutional problem with just letting people revote without the Congress passing a law authorizing the revote. Congress is given the Constitutional right to set the date for the Presidential election. Setting another date through the courts or through whatever other means is clearly unconstitutional.

I doubt an argument about the logisitics of a revote couldn't be settled before December 12th. I have a hard time believing that it could be settled by January 20th.

Elections in this country have been screwed up for some time. There has been fraud in many cases. There has been error. We use outdated machinery and ballots that are apparently prone to confusion in some cases and potential counting problems in other cases. What we should do is just go with whatever the Florida Supreme Court decides is the right rule (whether the handcounts will count or not) and then get to having the Congress pass a law requiring punch card ballots to be done away with (since that is the bulk of our problem here. Had Florida used OCR ballots, there wouldn't be as much potential for argument) and potentially adding some legal standards for ballot design.

There are rules in place now that should be followed. Throwing away the rules, deadlines, etc. is a far worse course of action than simply following the rules and dealing with whatever PR comes out of it. We are not a nation of opinion polls. Many things that have to be done are unpopular. If we ran this country solely by what was popular, there would be a lot of things about it that we wouldn't like. People will get over their current outrage. As a whole, people do not stay outraged for very long.

Throwing away the Constitution and our laws would be far worse than having some briefly outraged citizens.

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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

If we start saying that the Constitution is unimportant, we will regret it later. We have to follow the Constitution. If we don't we'll end up with a far worse country than we have now.

I don't particularly care what is done in other countries. If it violates our Constitution, then we shouldn't do it here.

If rely solely on public opinion, then I am sure we could get a law banning homosexuality in Texas and possibly banning abortions in Texas. We could easily get a law allowing school prayer. And I know I could get a law passed limiting free speech and free expression. If we throw our Constitution away, we have nothing left. I'll put up with a few weeks of a cynical electorate (and it will just be a few weeks. We'll find something else to get all worked up about in a few weeks) to follow the Constitution.

We survived in 1960 when Kennedy stole the election. We survived in the '70s when Agnew resigned. We survived in the '70s when Nixon resigned and we had a President that hadn't been elected to any national office (since Ford was voted into the VP spot by the Senate). We'll survive whatever happens in Florida. But we only survive because our Constitution lays out the rules that we follow. We won't survive if we throw the Constitution away.

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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

Shanna,
Voters who lost their vote because they didn't punch the card right made a mistake themselves. If someone else doesn't postmark your ballot, you can't do anything about it.

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Voters who lost their vote because they didn't punch the card right made a mistake themselves. If someone else doesn't postmark your ballot, you can't do anything about it.

Well, if you want to continue to ignore the facts, then you're right. The problem with your theory is that people who punched a legal vote are not being counted right now. These people did not make a mistake. They did exactly what they are supposed to. However the chad only came off 3/4 of the way. That's not the voters' fault -- he or she can't see the chad when he's voting. After he's taken the ballot out, you don't go pulling out hanging chads, etc. Hanging Chads are legal votes all across the country.

What do you think about military voters who didn't sign their name, or put their address as required, or didn't have a witness? This was clearly their fault -- should those votes be counted?


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Is it any coincidence that the Cato is the only Rocket with a temperature scale named after him?

I didnt think so!!!!

 

shanna,

We are still waiting for your reponse on his point about the postmark issue.

Mango


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[This message has been edited by Mango (edited November 20, 2000).]

 

What response are you looking for, Mango? I already said if votes are legitimate, they should count. My only concern with postmarks is if these votes were cast after November 7th. If there's no reason to think this happened, or if it's possible to determine that they were cast on time, they should definitely count.

For what it's worth, both the Florida Attny General and the Gore campaign have also said they should count.

I'm still confused why you make statements like this, though:

So the Democrats will do whatever it takes to void the votes of military personnel, yet didn't say anything about the felons voting for them?

First off, Democrats didn't do this. Local officials in ALL Florida counties -- both Republican and Democratic -- did this. The Democratic Attny General requested that this be corrected and those votes counted. How exactly did you make this into a Democratic action?

This is similiar to Republicans doing whatever it takes to void the votes of Floridians by not counting legal votes (Hanging Chads) "because of the law" but then demanding the law by disregarded for military votes, no?

The difference is the Democratic officials never said the military ballots shouldn't count -- in fact, they have now specifically said the exact opposite. I personally think this was done for political purposes, but nevertheless, only the Bush campaign is trying to restrict legitimate votes.


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Is it any coincidence that the Cato is the only Rocket with a temperature scale named after him?

I didnt think so!!!!

 

For the record, the machine counts usually count hanging chad ballots, especially one where the chad is only hanging by one corner. It depends on where the chad is situated when the ballot goes through the machine.

The machine also kicks those ballots out so that officials can see the ballot. Without a full hand count of all the ballots, they can note whether that ballot counts or not. Just because the machine kicks it out, doesn't mean that it wasn't counted under the "machine count" phase.

Chads that are pregnant (which may or may not be a legal vote) or chads with only one of the four corners punched (which also may or may not be a legal vote) are unlikely to be counted at all by the machine, but they do would be kicked out for officials to look at.

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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

Actually, hanging chad votes are apparently only legal in the 3 Democratic counties that are being recounted right now. Nobody else in Florida or anywhere else in the country that wasn't able to fully punch a hole has had the benefit of someone going back to examine their ballot.

You really should stop repeating Republican propaganda, especially when none of it is legally true or accurate in any way.

(1) Hanging Chads are legal all across the country. In some places, this is by statute; In others, it is by legal precedent.

(2) The fact that machines don't always count hanging chads is one of the reasons Manual Recount is authorized and legal.

(3) Hanging Chads can be counted in any county in Florida. It just has to be done by request of a candidate. The fact that GW Bush didn't want it done does not make it illegal.

(4) People all over Florida and around the country punch ballots resulting in Hanging Chads. This term and this process has been around for Decades.

Again, to repeat:

Actually, hanging chad votes are apparently only legal in the 3 Democratic counties that are being recounted right now.

Not at all true. GW Bush had every legal right to request manual counting of hanging chads. By the way, a Republican Congressman is using the law signed by GW Bush in Texas to hand recount CHADS in Texas. The statute in Texas states: "a vote must be counted if “at least two corners of the chad are detached” and “light is visible through the hole.”"

Even by TEXAS LAW, Hanging Chads are legal votes. Do you look at facts before you post?

Nobody else in Florida or anywhere else in the country that wasn't able to fully punch a hole has had the benefit of someone going back to examine their ballot.

Again, this was GW Bush's choice. The option is written into law for this exact purpose.

Which party (or their lawyers) was it that sent out a memo detailing exactly how to get a military vote disqualified?

I don't know. Show me evidence of this.
I do know which party made it clear that these votes should be counted.

Those votes most likely won't count anyway, unless the all-Democratic Florida Supreme court reverses the decision of judge Terry Lewis.

This is interesting. So what you're saying is that if one decision is made, it is partisan. If another is made, it's not partisan? Great logic. Not coincidentally, 5 separate courts (3 Florida courts and 2 Federal courts) rejected the Bush attempt to stop manual recounts.

And don't go into "the law was followed". Florida law is conflicting. There are some statutes creating deadlines. There are other statutes that say that the process takes precedence over those same deadlines. This is why the courts are involved.

For example, you say "we should follow the law" and then complain about canvassing boards determining voter intent. What about this law?

Florida Statute Title IX, 102.166.8: "If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent."

Are you saying we should only follow the laws you like?


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Is it any coincidence that the Cato is the only Rocket with a temperature scale named after him?

I didnt think so!!!!

 

TheFreak,

you should stick to the 'angry ranting republican' role. It fits you well. LOL.

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It just goes to show how skewed our priorities are when Mo Taylor makes millions of dollars while some high school teacher, that can actually rebound, scrapes to make a living.

If Mo were half the power forward that Charles Barkley was, he'd be 3'2" and still board more than he does now.

 

They're now saying that these military votes without postmarks will be counted, which is good since the law apparently says that a postmark isn't even required for those military votes.

So, I would expect that Bush's lead is going to increase a little bit more, potentially by hundreds of votes.

As for the evidence that it was Democrats who circulated a memo on how to get military votes disqualified, this story mentions it: http://www.msnbc.com/news/492686.asp

The relevant text:

Earlier this week, Mark Herron, a Tallahassee lawyer helping shepherd Democratic presidential election lawsuits through the local courts, sent a five-page letter to Democratic attorneys throughout Florida giving them tips on how to lodge protests against overseas ballots.

Such protests had to be filed before the ballot was taken out of the envelope. The letter focused on protesting military ballots. Democrats have been worried about those because in the 1996 election Republican Bob Dole beat Bill Clinton in Florida’s military overseas vote even though Clinton won the state.

Herron said he was retained by the DNC on Election Night.

“I’m not the only one that did this,” he said. “Everybody got the opportunity to argue their case in front of the canvassing boards.”

Asked about the high number of ballots thrown out, Herron replied: “I don’t know what the numbers would be. It was our position in a neutral way, these were standards everywhere.”

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Houston Sports Board
The Anti-Bud Adams Page

 

As for the evidence that it was Democrats who circulated a memo on how to get military votes disqualified, this story mentions it: http://www.msnbc.com/news/492686.asp

That really sucks, then. I wish both campaigns would stop this crap and let the process resolve itself. It would make everyone's lives so much easier.


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Is it any coincidence that the Cato is the only Rocket with a temperature scale named after him?

I didnt think so!!!!