response 304 of 409:

Dec 5 16:56 UTC 2000

Yep, go ahead and whitewash the whole county, make sure that every vote [not]
counts.  But will it play in Peoria?  (Depends on whether Peoria is under
Chicago's thumb, I guess.)

response 306 of 409:

Dec 5 17:08 UTC 2000

I think the issue is that they *weren't* properly filled out.  Having
election officials selectively fill out Republican ballots sure sounds
like fraud to me.

response 308 of 409:

Dec 5 17:10 UTC 2000

Read very slowly and carefully mdw:  The *ballots* were not touched by any
elections officials.  At issue are the ballot *applications*.  Such documents
in no way indicate anyone's preferences for elected office.

response 310 of 409:

Dec 5 17:48 UTC 2000

re #306: Fraud suggests malfeasance. This could simply be misfeasance.

re #308: The Florida statute was given its present form to prevent
         fraud in the application process, which necessarily carries over to
         the election process.

re #309: The Republicans sent out the applications, containing what they
         thought was all necessary information save for a date and
         signature, to probable Republican absentee voters. It was not
         difficult for them to identify and correct only those
         applications, as they had designed and printed them.

response 312 of 409:

Dec 5 18:07 UTC 2000

(applications.  here, one more time: applications.  once more, with
CAPS:  APPLICATIONS.)

(the officials were able to identify the APPLICATIONS sent out by
Republicans because the APPLICATIONS were missing voter ID numbers.  the
Republicans were permitted to fill-in the voter IDs on the APPLICATIONS in
Martin County because the Martin County office didn't have enough people
there to fill-in the missing IDs *as other counties were doing*.)

(any possible voter fraud could only have resulted if multiple ballots
were returned with identical voter IDs.  adding the proper voter IDs to
APPLICATIONS, which had to be completed *before* an actual ballot could be
sent out, would not in and of itself result in fraud.)

(it's still questionable as to whether the APPLICATIONS became official
records once received by the county and thus should not have been touched
by officials from either party, but voter fraud isn't the issue.)

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/12/11/county.html

response 314 of 409:

Dec 5 19:16 UTC 2000

carson, it is incorrect that voter fraud can only occur if multiple ballots
were returned. In fact, the 1998 case of absentee ballot fraud, which led to
the present language of the application statute, did not involve multiple
voting - it involved ballots being issued to ineligible voters.

response 316 of 409:

Dec 5 20:23 UTC 2000

This is sounding more and more convoluted, the more I hear.  Also, I had
thought this involved seminole county, not martin county - or are these
actually different cases with different things happening? In any event,
it will be interesting to hear what the judge(s) decide really happened,
and how the judges interpret whatever laws are involved.

response 318 of 409:

Dec 5 20:48 UTC 2000

  Salon has an article this week alleging that the private contractor
  hired by the state of Florida to provide lists of felons ineligible
  to vote apparently returned a very high rate of false positives, so
  that in counties where the lists were accepted as valid, a substantial
  number of erroneously identified supposed felons were removed from
  voter lists and denied the vote when they reached the polls unless
  they were able to prove that they were not felons (and how, one may
  ask, are you supposed to do that?)  In other counties the lists were
  refused when their inaccuracies were noted, in one case because a
  county election official found her name on the list erroneously.
  Of course those counties have to deal with the hysterical but effective
  Republican spin campaign about "felons who are allowed to vote when
  absentee ballots from our men and women in uniform are rejected on a
  technicality.."

  Unfortunately the Salon piece tries to spin an unlikely conspiracy
  angle on the story by pointing out the company's owners' ties to the
  Republican party (news flash:  company's owners vote Republican..) but
  the real story, in my mind, is the by-now-too-familiar story of what
  happens when data mining companies are contracted to perform a task
  like this without proper safeguards on the process.

response 320 of 409:

Dec 6 02:26 UTC 2000

Re the 2nd par of #315: that's why 313 says, "apparently, allegedly, to be
determined as a fact in a trial court." ;)

response 322 of 409:

Dec 6 06:28 UTC 2000

It's the Republican way.

response 324 of 409:

Dec 6 13:28 UTC 2000

So what, then, was the harm in letting them chedk up on it, or letting them
vote in person? Why circumvent the legal process?

response 326 of 409:

Dec 6 21:06 UTC 2000

From the numbers I've heard bandied about, my impression is that
throwing those ballots out is very likely to flip the results of the
election.  I believe I've heard "1500" and "60% republican" - those
particular numbers would drop Bush by 600 votes, which would put him
behind by 70 votes.  That may have been just one county, so if the
results are thrown out in both counties, there might be a larger shift.
Of course, this makes the hand-count court decisions even more
important, because if Bush succeeds in throwing out the hand counts and
going back to his original 930 count lead, losing 600 votes to absentee
ballots won't make the same difference.

Re #323, that word "*probably" is real interesting.  An amazing # of
people, including very probably many people who vote by absentee ballot,
work on the principle of "least hassle".  Grex picked up 25 members when
it was "less hassle" to become a member by credit card.  I'd bet a
significant # of those people didn't remember their election ID #, and
I'd also bet a significant number, either through forgetting that # or
for whatever reason, would not have bothered with the extra hassle
required to vote properly.

But, at this point, whether it would "*probably" have made a difference
or not doesn't matter.  Those 3,000 people who voted for Buchanan, or
19,000 who voted for both Gore and Buchanan, would likely not have made
that choice if it were available to them.  The as many as 1 in 3 people
who tried to vote in some precincts and were rejected because they
weren't on the rolls (apparently because they were thought to be felons)
would likely also have voted if the hassle of proving they weren't a
felon and were entitled to vote weren't so completely insurmountable.
The courts obviously weren't interested in what these other groups
"probably" would have done had they the opportunity, so I'm not at all
sure why they should be any more interested in this case.

I believe the interesting thing in this case is that it appears there
was in fact fradulent intent.  It's hard to argue the democrat who
designed the butterfly ballot intended her candidate to lose; it's a lot
easier to argue the republicans who acted to fix their own ballots while
opposing efforts to fix democratic ballots were in fact acting unfairly
and that the courts should act to correct this unfairness.  (Ok, ballot
applications, or whatever it was.)

Do you suppose when all the dust settles, that whomever ends up being
president might end up with a single digit lead over the loser?

response 328 of 409:

Dec 6 22:45 UTC 2000

At this point, it looks very likely the courts will end up being the
ones that recognize some particular count as being "The" count.  The two
parties may indulge in necrophilia after that, but I'd be very surprised
to see the courts at all interested in interferring with the actual
electoral college once it starts.  So yes, I expect that for practical
purposes, the dust will settle.