response 150 of 216:

Nov 12 02:01 UTC 2000

Richard, you are wrong.  I strongly suggest you take a few minutes to
read the relevant documents.  Just to make it easier:

"Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may
direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and
representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress" (Article
II, Section 1, US Constitution).


"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for
President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an
inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their 
ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the
person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of
all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as
Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall
sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the
United States, directed to the President of the Senate; . . . The person 
having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be President, if
such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed;"
(Amendment 12, US Constitution).

It's not a majority of those who show up; it's a majority of those
*appointed*.  If I remember correctly, the southern states declined to
appoint any electors when Lincoln was elected the second time.  They could
have, but they didn't.  This is the situation that *may* pertain here:
Florida may decline to appoint any electors, thereby reducing the number
of electors and the number required to achieve a majority of those appointed.

Personally, I believe this all to be moot:  Florida will, indeed, appoint
its electors by the date the Congress has established for the vote.

response 152 of 216:

Nov 12 03:13 UTC 2000

Yup.  That's why Cheney registered to vote in Wyoming earlier this year (he
had been registered in Texas).  Just before he was announced as the VP
candidate, in fact.

response 154 of 216:

Nov 12 03:47 UTC 2000

Residency is up to each state.  That's why a Rockefeller can become
Governor of West Virginia.  Or how two boys raised in Maine can become
the Governors of Texas and Florida at the same time.  Or how a woman
born and raised in Arkansas can become the junior Senator from New York.
Cheney is not a resident of Texas; he is a resident of Wyoming.

A ticket of a President and Vice-President from the same state that took
that state's electors would face them with an unsurmountable problem:
They can't vote for both, so which one do they vote for?  It is likely
that the ticket would get enough votes from the other states' electors
that not getting their own wouldn't hurt them too much, but why fight it
unnecessarily?  One of them simply moves.  (Easier now than when the
requirement was first written, I'd guess.  Although they did get around
a bit even then.)

response 156 of 216:

Nov 12 04:37 UTC 2000

Oh, I should also point out that Hillary Clinton was born and raised in
Illinois, and moved to Arkansas to be with Bill Clinton, and that the Bush
boys were apparrently at least in part raised in Texas, not Maine.  Not that
that has anything at all to do with this discussion...

response 158 of 216:

Nov 12 05:03 UTC 2000

>what if a ticket has two partial punches, one for Gore and one for Bush, but
>the machine registered the vote for Bush.  The hand counter, not knowing
>that the machine read it as a bush ticket, and being the good dem that she
>is, counts it as a Gore ticket.

The "hand counter" is not a Democrat.  The way this seems to work in Florida
is that there are a bunch of tables, each occupied by an election official,
a representative of the Democratic Party, and a representative of the
Republican Party.  All three look at each ballot and agree to place it in
a pile for Gore, Bush, no vote, or overvote (multiple punches).  If they don't
agree that it is obvious, it goes in an "undecided" pile.  All the "undecided"
are passed to a panel that studies each one and rules on it.  My guess is that
the actual counting of the cards in the piles is done by a machine.  It's
as careful a process as you can easily make.  It is difficult however to
discern the voter's intent from a lot of incomplete punches, and the procedure
though not particularly biased, is dubious in its own ways.  There is probably
no such thing as an absolutely authoritive count.

response 160 of 216:

Nov 12 05:10 UTC 2000

I'm seeing some hints of what future President Bush would be like under stress
here:

  - "For the good of the country, this election must be resolved soon."
    Sounds to me like the classic leader's error of confusing his own good
    with the nation's good.

  - He's been declining to talk about his suit to halt the manual recount
    in Florida, leaving one of his people to talk about that, while he plans
    for his administration.  I read that as trying hard to look presidential
    by distancing himself from subordinates who do the non-presidential
    things for him.

Not admirable traits in a leader.  Gore may be "quibbling" but at least
he's straight-forward about it, and not adopting poses.

response 162 of 216:

Nov 12 07:26 UTC 2000

They just had on cnn, the meeting of the Palm Beach county board of
elections.  They counted 1% of the votes by hand and showed a net plus to
Gore of 19 votes.  If you assume that 19 votes is an average for each one
percent, counting all 100% of the votes could produce an extra +1900 votes
for Gore.  Based on the fact that such extra votes could swing the
election, the board voted (vote was carried live) to order a manual
recount of all ballots in all precincts.  

response 164 of 216:

Nov 12 08:17 UTC 2000

I'd guess an important part of the recount would be to *also* count the
spoilt ballots, and perhaps try to take a stab at figuring out if there
is any sort of systemic fault in the spoilt ones.  If after a recount,
the margin of victory (for whichever side) is larger than the spoilt
ballots, then they can declare a victor and rest.  If the # of spoilt
ballots is larger than the margin of victory, and especially if there's
evidence of systemic bias in the errors, then that would seem to be
strong evidence that a re-election is necessary.

Presumably, there is no lack of hands that would be willing to count
ballots, so the real question may be a matter of figuring out how many
and which hands to trust, and coordinating the whole mess.  If I were
them, I'd probably be starting by asking how much time I had to do the
count in, figuring out how many people were needed to do that count, and
go from there.  I suppose if it turned out it was going to take longer
to do the hand count than to do a re-election, then that might be
another good argument to do so.

I haven't heard anything on those overseas ballots - things could get
*very* interesting if there's a net gain to Bush of, say, just under
2000.  Do you suppose we might end up having a 1 vote difference
determining the next president?

response 166 of 216:

Nov 12 20:43 UTC 2000

News that was glossed over a bit in last night's Palm Beach recount, that will
come back to haunt us, perhaps: They looked at 100 or so "overvote" ballots
-- where people had cast multiple votes. 80 of them were Buchanen-Gore (and
noone else), which is statistically significant support for the "confusing
ballot" theory.

response 168 of 216:

Nov 12 22:20 UTC 2000

On the grounds that, well, even though that's the law, it's not fair, dammit.
After spending a week telling Gore to lump it and live with what the rules
are, even if they don't seem fair, Bush is now turning around and (in my
opinion) whining that the legal but unfair rules may cost him the election.

My understanding, and the understanding of just about every one of CNN's
pundits, is that Gore hast he right to ask for a manual recount, and the
jurisdictions in question have a right to proceed with as much or as little
of a recount as they wish to, and neither the Secretary of State of Florida
nor the Federal Government has much to say in the matter. If the manual
recount differs from the machine count, then it becomes a matter of dispute,
but I beleive the last count (manual) becomes the "official" one.

Now the State of Florida (proxy for Jeb Bush) is rattling ITS saber and
insisting it'll simply ignore anycounty certifications it receives after
Tuesday. Given that Palm Beach County's hands have been tied by an injunction
not to certify, it'll be interesting to see where this falls out.

response 170 of 216:

Nov 12 23:21 UTC 2000

I think all of this backs up my contention that this is something that needs
to be settled by the courts.

I suppose Bush's lawsuit is going in that direction, but the comments that
go with it certainly seem more divisive than useful.

response 172 of 216:

Nov 13 00:17 UTC 2000

lets see...bush says this shouldnt be decided in the courts, then he
files the first lawsuit...

bush says there shouldnt be handcounts, yet his people agreed to a
handcount of some ballots in seminole county.  And he signed the law in
Texas that states explicitly that handcounts are a logical solution to
balloting disputes.

does the word "hypocrisy" come into play here?

The fact is that had this situation been reversed, and it was Gore who was
ahead by three hundred votes, you KNOW Bush would be pushing for
handcounts in counties where he thought his vote might be undercounted.  

response 174 of 216:

Nov 13 02:27 UTC 2000

If that 1% of ballots were chosen at random, and found an additional
19 votes for Gore, an estimate for the standard deviation in that
number is about 4.4, so the 95% interval is about 6 to 32, or, for the
full count, 600 to 3200. Looks worth recounting, as the null hypothesis
is rejected at the 5% level.