Election Night 2000

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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

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

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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).

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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.

[Nym90]

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".

[Nym90]

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.