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Grex > Agora35 > #124: Win the electoral college but lose the popular vote? | |
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| 25 new of 409 responses total. |
albaugh
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response 50 of 409:
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Nov 8 17:18 UTC 2000 |
Yeah, if "they" tried to ban election status reporting by the media, even as
obviously flawed as it was this time, there would be cries of "cover up!",
which in other countries might be true. It's best to just not watch the whole
spectacle, as hard as that is to do.
I understand "good sportsmanship" and all that, but strictly speaking, there
is nothing for a candidate to concede - it's not like golf, where you can
concede a close putt to your opponent (and which in most tournaments, you
can't do anyway - he has to tap it in) - the numbers determine the election,
not "fair play". I don't mind that Gore conceded, then recanted, awkward
though that may have been. I wouldn't have care if he didn't concede until
the last minute, given this election.
I wonder if those people who had no problems with the continued existence of
the electoral college, when it looked like Bush might win the popular vote
but lose the election, are still in favor of it, now that the shoe is on the
other foot. I think that in this day and age, with the technology we have
at our disposal, it stinks that the EC is still in use. It was inevitable
that this situation would occur, and only then would the EC's dismantling be
called for.
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tpryan
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response 51 of 409:
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Nov 8 17:25 UTC 2000 |
I didn't tune into election results until 10pm. I wanted to
wait until at least that time to hear results.
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md
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response 52 of 409:
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Nov 8 17:31 UTC 2000 |
I feel sorry for Al Gore, who must've left quite a few fist-holes in
the walls of his house by now. If he ends up winning the popular vote
by 200,000+ but losing the presidency by a couple of electoral votes,
he could claim permanent disability and no one would argue with him.
(It'll send Tipper to a rubber room for sure.)
However, the story now has it that the anomalously high number of votes
for Buchanan in south Flordia, which had been puzzling the experts, is
now suspected to be the result of a confusing ballot form that caused
people to accidentally vote for Buchanan when they meant to vote for
Gore. (I'm not making this up.) The number of votes is said to be in
the thousands -- more than enough to offset Bush's tiny edge in Florida
and give the state's electoral votes to Gore. Some poor judge is going
to have to decide what to do about this, if anything. How did we get
to be the #1 superpower, again?
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gull
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response 53 of 409:
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Nov 8 17:45 UTC 2000 |
Re #49: I've never bought the assertation that the media coverage on
election day affects the election. Are people really sitting around
changing their idea of who to vote for based on who seems to be ahead?
Re #52: I think the results will stand, confusing form or no. I mean,
legally I think what people marked is what they marked, and you can't go
back and do it again just because some people were confused. I'd be shocked
if that happened.
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jep
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response 54 of 409:
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Nov 8 18:31 UTC 2000 |
Some people don't vote at all if they think the outcome has already been
decided and their vote won't matter.
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rcurl
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response 55 of 409:
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Nov 8 18:38 UTC 2000 |
Re #52&53: the vote will probably stand, but it might be thought
thereafter that Bush (if he wins) won only because of that fluke, and
hence his holding the office is illegitimate.
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senna
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response 56 of 409:
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Nov 8 18:42 UTC 2000 |
Sounds like your kind of a dream...
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rcurl
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response 57 of 409:
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Nov 8 18:56 UTC 2000 |
Well yes, I would have consider his holding the office illegitimate even
if he had won by a landslide. 8^}
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johnnie
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response 58 of 409:
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Nov 8 19:13 UTC 2000 |
And to make things ever-so-slightly more difficult, turns out that the
workers in one (heavily Democratic) precinct left behind a full (and
padlocked) ballot box, which was discovered this morning and turned
over to election officials. Oops...
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mooncat
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response 59 of 409:
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Nov 8 20:21 UTC 2000 |
Wasn't it in 84 (or so) that Californians heard how vastly Reagan was
winning so they literally got out of line and just didn't vote?
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aaron
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response 60 of 409:
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Nov 8 21:27 UTC 2000 |
The box was full of supplies, and not voters' ballots.
re #59: Worse than that: Carter conceded the presidency before their polls
closed. Democrats stopped going to the polls, and a lot of
Republicans were elected as an apparent consequence.
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janc
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response 61 of 409:
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Nov 8 21:53 UTC 2000 |
The news networks have gone so far as to refuse to call a state until it's
polls close. In fact, at least half of the states could have been called a
week ago (barring huge October surprises).
I don't think the media screwed up. I think the pollsters did a pretty good
job. The problem was that the margin of error in the polls was significantly
bigger than Bush's (Gore's?) margin of victory. No kind of exit poll is going
to correctly predict a margin of 1757 votes. The mdia, like everyone else,
was not mentally prepared for a race as close as this. Their past experience
misled them.
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mdw
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response 62 of 409:
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Nov 8 22:27 UTC 2000 |
Re #52,#53 - there's apparently at least one case where a voter went up
to an election official because she weren't sure who she voted for,
asked for a new ballot when she learned she had accidently voted for
Buchanan, and was refused. This even though the posters on the wall
apparently all say that you have a right to a new ballot in the case of
a spoilt one. I also heard that Bush had promised to prosecute any
voter fraud. Betcha he won't prosecute this one.
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albaugh
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response 63 of 409:
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Nov 8 22:59 UTC 2000 |
Properly marking / selecting a ballot candidate cannot be considered a spoiled
ballot. It seems far fetched that someone could select the wrong candidate
on a clearly marked ballot, but even so, if discovered *while in the process
of voting*, I can't see the voter being denied a fresh ballot to start over
with. But *after* voting has completed, to then suspect or discover that
somehow the wrong selection was made, and want to recall the ballot and redo
the voting, that "doesn't meet the standard" for me, and I don't consider such
a ballot to be spoiled.
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md
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response 64 of 409:
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Nov 8 23:01 UTC 2000 |
If Bush ends up winning sufficient electoral votes while losing the
popular vote, he should consider putting together a bipartisan
administration, with a Democrat for Attorney General, for example, and
other key posts. Maybe not 50/50 and maybe no serious liberals, but
enough to show he understands how he got elected. It'll take some hard
conversations with Republican supporters and cronies he's already
promised the positions to, but if he has a brain that's what he'll do.
Oh, um, never mind.
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scg
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response 65 of 409:
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Nov 9 01:20 UTC 2000 |
I'm a little unclear on how all these people voted for Buchanan by accident.
The explanation I've heard was that Gore was on a different page, but I would
have expected that to just really confuse people, not to cause them to vote
for Buchanan. Was there more to it than that?
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scott
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response 66 of 409:
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Nov 9 02:15 UTC 2000 |
I haven't seen the ballot online yet, but I saw it on TV news. They had a
single column of punch-holes, with the names alternating on left and right
sides:
Gore @
@ Buchanan
Bush @
@ Nader
etc.
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mdw
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response 67 of 409:
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Nov 9 03:00 UTC 2000 |
I gather the order was more like:
Bush
Buchanan
Gore
etc
Since Bush was 1st, an off-by-one error was less likely for him.
Buchanan was on the other page (not just the other side of the current
page), so it apparently wasn't immediately obvious that he was part of
the problem. There may also have been alignment issues - I know when I
voted in ypsi (punch card system), the pages were about 1/4 hole above
the actual holes. I don't think I misvoted any because of that, but if
the alignment had been only a bit worse, it might have been a real
issue.
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mcnally
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response 68 of 409:
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Nov 9 03:10 UTC 2000 |
Salon has a graphic which makes it clear how the columns were laid out,
though it doesn't look any more confusing to me than many ballots I've
used.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/07/results/florida_ballot.g
if
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mooncat
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response 69 of 409:
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Nov 9 14:29 UTC 2000 |
Okay, now imagine you're elderly, your eye-sight isn't so good, and the
writing is so small (was that web page shown in actual ballot size?).
That puts a different spin on things.
Given everything I've heard... I can't imagine that many people in a
mostly Jewish community would vote for Buchannan.
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bru
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response 70 of 409:
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Nov 9 15:22 UTC 2000 |
actually, the democrat whop put the ballot together set it up that way so she
couldf make the names bigger and easier to see for the elderly. It was
approved by the voting commission, and seems straight forward and clear to
me.
That said, I have never liked the punchcard ballots, nor the current arrow
ballots we use here. No chance to change your mind without calling a worker
and getting a new ballot.
Give me that large clumsy looking machine with all the switches on it so I
can pull each one dow, change my mind and push it up, and nothing gets
recorded until you pull that big lever back across that opens the curtain with
a big CHUNK! sound.
Now thats voting!
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jep
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response 71 of 409:
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Nov 9 15:58 UTC 2000 |
re #61: William Bennett, interviewed on CNN late on Tuesday night,
jumped all over the CNN crew because they announced their initial result
for Florida (that Gore had won) before the polls closed in the western
part of the panhandle, which is in the Central time zone. The CNN
people told Bennett they do not announce the totals for a state until
75% of the polls have closed, not 100%.
USA Today on-line has a photo of the ballot which caused confusion in
Palm Beach County, Florida:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/ballot/frame.htm
It seems clear enough to me. But if people say they were confused, I
guess they probably were.
There appear to have been other "irregularities" in Florida. 19,000
spoiled ballots for president (compared to 3,700 for the Senate)...
There's some humor in the situation, too.
Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, whose father overturned the popular
vote in Illinois in 1960 and got JFK elected over Richard Nixon by
counting the votes of thousands of dead people: "I assume the courts
will take a serious look at what may be an injustice unparalleled in our
history." Unparalleled since 1960, but we don't want to mention any of
that, do we, Mr. Daley?
Then there's the three people who want to have a court order another
election, just for Palm Beach County. How would that work? I trust no
court is going to throw out the election and have Palm Beach County
elect the president on their own.
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aaron
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response 72 of 409:
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Nov 9 16:12 UTC 2000 |
It's a great story, but it isn't true. Even without Illinois, Kennedy would
have won the election.
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jep
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response 73 of 409:
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Nov 9 16:31 UTC 2000 |
And without Texas? I understand there were "voting irregularities"
there, too.
I'm no expert on the 1960 presidential election. I don't know what
parts are true and what parts aren't. It was a long time ago, anyway;
before I was born. Things turned out well enough over time.
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aaron
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response 74 of 409:
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Nov 9 17:04 UTC 2000 |
Sure, John. There were voting irregularities everywhere.
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