Election Night 2000

[dazzleman]

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.

[dazzleman]

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.