Talk Elections

I Realy Thinlk Gore sould Just Get out of it & Bush Won

I still think Gore won the election but he made a lot of stupid mistakes in the Florida legal battle.  What Gore should have done was after he retracted his concession, he should have requested a STATEWIDE recount, not concentrate on a few counties.

A statewide recount would have produced the same result, as demonstrated by exhaustive studies by the New York Times, hardly a bastion of support for Bush.

Every counting method would have produced a Florida victory for Bush.  And it would have been far greater had the networks not called the state for Gore while the heavily Republican panhandle was still voting.

Florida was called for Gore only 10 minutes before the panhandle stopped voting, though, so I doubt it had a huge effect. Anyone who was still voting would almost certainly at least have already been on their way to the polls, and thus unlikely to turn back. Also, why would people decide not to vote just because the state had been called for Gore, wouldn't they still want to turn out to vote in races further down the ballot? I realize that the call probably cost Bush some votes, but given that it was only 10 minutes before poll closing time I highly doubt that it could have been a great number.
Also, I've seen some studies that show that Gore would've won a statewide recount, although depending somewhat on what standards were used. I don't remember the specifics of these studies offhand, but I do know that it is not a certainty that Bush would have won any recount.

None of the recount methods would have included double-punched and disqualified chads, which would have given a Gore victory. As the Wash. Post put it, more Florida voters went to the polls intending to vote for Gore.

Bully! as TR would say it was about 1 hr 15 min before polls closed FL was first called as I remember looking at the clock.  I did that b/c I thought it was odd as the numbers at the bottom still had Bush ahead when it was called for Gore.

Also Gore was never ahead, not ever onc eit was called for Bush.  After NUMEROUS selective recounts Bush always lead.  The SCT did not "appoint" Bush as some Liberals love to claim and you can't steal something you already have.

That aside the election was run poorly, from poorly designed ballots to the early election night call.

2002 was better and so i think a lot of the bugs have been ironed out.  But that was with a Jeb landslide so hard to tell.

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/ARTICLES/ElectionNight/pe2000elecnighttime.php

Take a look at 7:50 PM Eastern, and 8 PM Eastern.

Yes, I know. The polls closed in Florida at 7 PM local time, hence they closed at 8 PM Eastern in the Central time zone portion of the state. Florida was called at 7:50 PM Eastern.

Maybe only one of the networks called it early or something I remember distinctly looking at the clock with about 1hr  15 min to go and making some comments to friends that it was unusual to do that and esp as I said with Bush ahead at the bottom fo the screen int he running numbers.

Perhaps at the time you were confused and thought that the polls in Florida closed at 8 PM local time rather than 7 PM. Most states close at 8 PM local time.
I am very certain that nobody called Florida for Gore at 6:45 PM Eastern. That would have meant that it would have been called while the polls were still open in the Eastern time zone portion of the state as well; the polls would have been still been open everywhere in the state. Every network called every state at about the same time since they were going with VNS projections. The networks' policy at that time was to not call states until 75% of the polls in the state were closed (which has, thankfully, been changed now to not calling a state untill all of the polls are closed).

I stil disagree.  See the networks were very slow to change as I distinctly remember a friend saying "Fox has moved FL back to neutral and laughing and saying, well it is fox" and then about 1.5 hrs later NBC finally and they were last.  Because I'll never forget as they moved it back to neutral Katie Couric look s shocked and says "Gosh I sure hope all my friends voted"

Good points.  Here's my problem with those who blame ballot cards and confusion for Gore's loss in FL:  Voting is a right, but it is also a RESPONSIBILITY.  When I go in to vote, I re-check my ballot to ensure that I have voted properly, that I haven't made a mistake or any sort of an ambiguous mark that could confuse.  I wonder why it is that so many blame this chad business on the system.  If they had taken the time and CARED ABOUT THE ACCURACY OF THEIR VOTE, they would have been more scrutinous of how their card looked prior to turning it in.  There is no reason we should have been subjected to the ridiculousness of chads.  But, isn't this what we've come to expect:  the left doesn't get what they want and they can't accept it gracefully.  Someone must have done something EVIL to take it away from them;  if they don't win it doesn't mean they lost, it means someone STOLE it from them.  Great point earlier by someone (?) who says, you can't steal something you've always had.  Who was it that said if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it's truth?  The left was clinging to this in 2000 and is still clinging to it now, and it's becoming quite tiresome and counterproductive.

I don't know when other networks retracted Florida from Bush, but I know that CNN and CBS both did at the same time, since I was watching CNN and Dave's site here gives the call times for CBS. You are correct that the decision about whether or not to call a state was up to each network individually, but they were all using the same data. Usually different call times are not going to occur though because the networks are somewhat in competition with each other to be the first one to break the news. If one network is calling it one way, the others will probably follow unless they are sure that it is wrong, since they don't want to be seen as being behind the curve. It's somewhat of a sheep mentality unfortunately, in which expediency takes precedence over accuracy. Hopefully that will be fixed come 2004.

I can't believe, though, that anyone was calling Florida for Gore before any of the polls had closed in the Eastern time zone portion of the state, and if they had, it would've hurt the Democratic turnout in Florida too.

You are right that the voter does have a responsibility to make sure that their ballot is punched correctly. However, if the intent of the voter is obvious, but they didn't follow the exact letter of the rules in punching out their ballot, shouldn't their vote still count the way that they obviously wanted it to? I'm not saying to use it as an excuse to manufacture votes, I'm talking about a situation where the intent of the voter is clear but they didn't follow the exactly letter of the law. In that case, the spirit of the law says that the vote should count, I believe.
That's the kind of attitude that people hate about bureaucracy; the idea that process matters more than results, and that following the rules exactly is more important than intent. The spirit of the law should take precedence over the letter of the law, in my opinion. If the ballot is partially punched but it didn't go all the way through it should still count as a vote in a manual recount.

Well i think if Gore would have just said fromt he start I want a statewide recount, it all would have went a lot smoother.  

By just picking a few Dem counties it just looked bad.  

I have a lawyer friend that said on Thanksgiving as he watched a guy holding up a ballot take off his glass pass it to the next person, etc etc and yu just kept seeing those images, this is bull for both sides it is so subjective and their is no clear standard and the SCT will stop this BS.  And it ended up he was right as a lot of the decision talked about Equal protection.

PS- Looks like they had the bugs fixed in 2002, but I guess not as much scrutiny in a large margin win.

Yes, it is subjective unfortunately in a lot of cases. However, I think if you have a panel with an equal balance of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, judging it, you can have a fair recount.
You are correct that from the beginning Gore should've demanded a statewide count instead of just in those Dem counties. However later on he said that he would go for a statewide count instead since the GOP was opposed to the selective counts and Bush at that point said that he opposed a statewide manual count as well.

BUT the law did not permit statewide recount at that point.  As I remember Gore asked after the deadline.

Yeah, which was a huge mistake. He should have pushed for a full statewide manual count at the beginning, then there is no way anyone could accuse him of being unfair and the Republicans would have been left to argue that machines are more accurate than humans in counting votes.

I think your comment captures a key difference in the way Republicans and Democrats see the world.
You indicate the intent of the law is more important than the letter of the law.  Republicans believe the letter of the law defines the rules, and we should act accordingly.  If one doesn’t like the letter of the law than the proper course is to change it , not rationalize it away.

Case in point: in the recount Republicans/conservatives like Wonk believe the law is the law:  In FL the law is that each voter must assure that their ballot is cleanly punched through.  Hence a vote is never ambiguous, an improperly punched ballot was a non-vote.  But as you indicate, Democrats/liberals believe the letter of the law is of less importance than what they think the law meant to achieve, hence a partially punched ballot should count.
Here in NJ we had the Torricelli incident: He withdrew from the Senate race after the legal deadline, but the Democrats still wanted to (and succeeded in) changing ballot.  To Republicans it was a clearly written law and allowed for no replacement.  To Democrats it was equally clear the law should be ignored because the voter should have a “choice”.  
I think if you look at many political controversies, you’ll find the literal vs intent difference occurring.

Interesting point  zork, I hadnt really thought of it that way. The reason is that in the two examples you mentioned the literal interpretations favored republicans and the Intent favored democrats. Could you provide an example where each party stuck to the beliefs you outlined even though it was against them??

Btw ur contention makes some sense and I'm not disputing it; I'm looking for more evidence.

I would agree, that is a fundamental difference it seems between liberals and conservatives. My basic philosophy regarding that would be, why does the law exist in the first place? And then, use common sense regarding whether or not the basic tenets of the law are being followed, rather than looking strictly at the rule itself. The rule meant as a general guideline, but is no substitute for common sense.
Although, I would say that both sides may often be willing to reverse their opinions if it suits them politically. Also, in the case of Florida, there was no law dictating how ballots should be counted (which was a big part of the problem), thus liberals weren't arguing for any violation of the letter of the law, just for a different interpretation.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that the purpose of a recount is to get the most accurate vote count possible; if we made a serious attempt to try to glean the intent of the voter from each and every ballot, sometimes the subjective process would make mistakes and not get the correct intent of the voter, it's true, but overall, we should count ballots in which there was a partial punch, because there would have been far more ballots that were partially punched in which the voter wanted to vote for that candidate than there would be ballots that were partially punched in which the voter did not want to vote for that candidate. So even though there would be some mistakes in the recount process, overall the total vote count would be more accurate than it was before. And that's the intent and purpose of a recount, to try to get a more accurate count.

The only way to deal with a situation such as existed in Florida in 2000 is to agree in advance to the rules to be followed, and then accept the result no matter what it is, as long as the rules are followed fairly.

I don't see how it can be called fair to count votes by people who didn't mark their ballots correctly.  The potential for abuse is tremendous in this situation.  I also thought it strange, if Gore were really interested in counting every vote, that he picked the four most heavily Democratic counties in the state as the only places he wanted a full recount.  And it was pretty bad symbolism to have the son of the famous election-stealer, Chicago Mayor Daley, as the head of his Florida recount effort.

One major difference between most Democrats and most Republicans is that a Republican who couldn't figure out how to mark a ballot correctly would be too embarrassed to be screaming his stupidity to the news media.  And many of the Democrats who claimed to have voted incorrectly were blaming a conspiracy (by a Democratic political hack election supervisor) for the flawed ballot in Palm Beach County.  It seems the victim mentality is very deeply ingrained in the thinking of many Democrats.

You are right that Gore should have asked for a complete statewide count and not just in the 4 counties.
I feel that counting dimpled chads or hanging chads for the candidate in question overall leads to a more accurate count, since the great majority of these ballots were intended to be counted for the candidate for which they were marked. I don't think there would be any abuse in counting ballots in which the intent of the voter is clear. It basically comes down to a question of whether the responsibility of the voter to cast the ballot perfectly correctly is great enough that someone who doesn't do so should lose their right to have their vote counted, even if the intent is clear. I would say that as long as the intent can be determined, the vote should count. Ultimately I feel that it is more important to get as accurate a count of the intent of the voters as possible than it is to have strict adherence to a particular procedure of casting a ballot.
You are also correct that rules should have been established in advance as to how to count ballots in a recount, and that once established those rules should be followed, but unfortunately Florida had no such regulations, which led to the entire debate about what should be counted as a vote.
As for Palm Beach county, the ballot was very poorly designed, and the Dems should have protested it before the election. After the fact it was too late to do anything about it, and votes cast for Buchanan can't be changed to Gore votes after the election.

Yes the dems should have protested the ballot before the election but the Democrats are the ones that designed it.

That was a hard one to argue.

Could you provide an example where each party stuck to the beliefs you outlined even though it was against them??

Btw ur contention makes some sense and I'm not disputing it; I'm looking for more evidence.
Ryan-
I think the Minnesota situation in 2002 is a good example.  Senator Wellstone died less than 2 weeks before the election.  While the Democrats were able to replace his name by the absolute deadline for doing so, a problem remained with all the absentee ballots already cast.  The law did not address how to handle it. The Republicans agreed to give absentee ballot voters a new ballot where they could write in "Mondale" if they so chose.  Or they could show up at the polling place and invalidate the absentee ballot and cast a new one.  The only problem unresolvable was absentee ballots cast for Wellstone where the voter had left town or just never got around to re-voting for Mondale or some other candidate.  Wellstone ended up with several thousand votes, but in the end Coleman had over 50% so it didn't change the outcome :) PS-Absentee voting can cause A LOT of problems!

Getting back to what you guys were dicussing earlier, I distinctly remember that Florida had been called before all the polls were closed.  I believe that it may have been by as much as a half-hour.  Further more, Fox ran behind all of the other networks on where it called for who, when, because I remember switching in between FOX and MSNBC, which was running ahead.  I also remember that FOX was the first network, by at least an hour to neutralize Florida (after they had recalled it for Bush) and was the first state to hand it over to Bush early that morning. (It was about 2:45).

Florida was called for Bush at 2:18 AM Eastern on CBS according to this site. But yes, Fox was the first to call it, with the influence of Bush's cousin probably coming into play there.
Florida was called at 7:50 PM for Gore on both CBS and CNN, I don't know about other networks though. I doubt it would have been as much as a 20 minute difference between CBS and CNN and any other networks.

MSNBC was punching them out as fast as they could get them that night (to boost ratings no doubt) and were very eratic.  They may have been the only ones to do it, but I know they called many states very early.

That doesn't surprise me that MSNBC would do something purely for ratings. Although all networks do this MSNBC seems to have even less integrity about it than other networks. They have hired some pretty outrageous people to do shows for them, probably primarily because they were "attention-grabbers".

Agreed.

agreed also!

Al Gore failed to carry his home state.
Had he won there the result would stand at
277:260.

Although I am still displeased with the outcome, election night 2000 was the most exciting evening that I have ever been a part of.

Got to give you that!  Was watching when they called FL for Gore as Bush was ahead below int he vote talleys,then MI and PA went that way and Bush's lead grew in FL, I was like what the f***.  and then it was great watching the liberal commentators squirm as they had to move FL back to the undecided column.  

Katie Chouric " I sure hope all my [liberal] friends voted in FL"

Tom Brokaw (thinking he was off air when PA went to Gore) "There we got it now"

But then arond 2AM CST BUSH WAS DECLARED THE WINNER and word came that Gore had called Bush to concede.  We all started drinking champaign and partied till we passed out.  Only to wake up and be put through a month of confusion by  Al Gore and his selective county recounts and then cry as the GOP stole the election, even though Bush NEVER trailed and it is hard to steal something you already have.

But clearly exciting and came out right in the end!

That is a great quote jravnsbo.  I will use it often

your welcome WONK.  I love that one and with Candidates such as Dean and Gephardt running on a platform of repealling all Bush's tax cuts, ie accounting for MASSIVE TAX INCREASES including the loss of the child tax credit and reintroduction of the marriage penalty on middle class families look for it often in the coming campaign.

No.  He is done.

It is nice of you to bother with all these questions, Dave.

I do it out of habit.
But I still am not sure if you were talking to me with that statement.

What do you mean? Wasn't it you who stated Dave as first name (I saw the name David on your forum). Or are you referring to something else?

Yes, I am Dave. I thought that you may have been talking to Dave Leip, as he puts up with Prez's multiple posts.  Sorry about the misunderstanding :)

Ahhh...I get it! :) Dave Leip seems to put up with everything we write, which is nice in a way.

It is nice, but also strange.....
Some people like Mr. Prez would piss me off if they were at my board.

Gore is the one that didn't want Clinton to campaign for him, not the other way around.

mr prez who are you talking to?  please specify.

He was talking to me, I'm pretty sure.

Can you blame Gore?  If you had been US Grant or Horatio Seymour in 1868 would you have wanted the impeached, reviled Andrew Johnson campaigning for you?

This is a different situation.  Clinton's job rating was still near 70% towards the end of his presidency.

Yeah but Andrew Johnson was impeached b/c he vetoed a bill.  But yes good point.

Plus didn't Johnson get elected to the senate and then blasted them on the floor of the senate ( talk about great drama!!)

As MiamiU points out, Clinton would probably have helped Gore despite all the allegiations against him. He would probably have done a tremendous difference in Arkansas, and in other close southern states, like Tennesee or Missouri. That could have been enough to give Gore the election.

If Gore had won one more state he would have won the election.  Clinton could have gooten him Arkansas, no doubt.

ok accepting your premise that Gore made a very poor decision in not having Clinton come along, whcich I do believe was a dumb move.  Have Clinton live in AR and go to big fundraisers if nothing else for party functions.

Aren't you glad this poor decision maker that has changed who he was many times without the pressures of being President Lost?  I don't think he would have handled the foreign policy challenges half as well as Bush has done.

Gore ran a bad campaign, that doesn't make him a bad president.

ok point taken.  But you dodged the question.  Maybe I'll make another thread.

Dave's a tolerant man of the new millennium. Yea for Dave!  [/brown nose]

Here, here... :)

Gore ran a perfectly fine campaign.  Democrats are too hard on Gore.  He didn't run a perfect campaign, but neither did Bush.  Both have 20/20 hindsight suggestions I'm sure. Bush spent money the last week on states that he lost by double digits like CA and NJ.  Gore did a great job of holding down Nader's vote.

Gore ran a pretty weak campaign.  He was boring as hell and carried no message.

Kerry and Gephardt most likely would amount to the same thing, but worse since they hadn't served under a popular president for 8 years.

It's kind of funny that Republicans mostly admit now that Gore made a mistake in not having Clinton campaign. During the 2000 campaign, they were begging him to use Clinton, chortling about how it would be political poison with moderate swing voters. Maybe at the time they were using some sort of reverse psychology? Or were all of you saying the same thing at the time, that Gore was dumb to not use Clinton? It seemed like most of the Republicans on CNN and the like were always saying that using Clinton would be the kiss of death for Gore's campaign.

I think That the Networks called before all the polls Closed

What happened with the people who think that Florida was called before all polls closed is that the VNS exit polls were leaked to some media sources who reported that exit polls showed Florida for Gore.   Some of the democratic political wonks on the networks mentioned the exit polls in FL.