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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 216 responses total. |
eeyore
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response 50 of 216:
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Nov 9 22:11 UTC 2000 |
Absolutely. The fact that he can get up and say on tv that these votes aren't
his.....that takes alot. I really respect that.
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krj
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response 51 of 216:
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Nov 9 22:26 UTC 2000 |
Buchanan has long been one of the best orators in American politics.
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aruba
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response 52 of 216:
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Nov 9 23:22 UTC 2000 |
I just can't believe this. What a ride! People are going to be talking
about this 100 years from now.
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mcnally
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response 53 of 216:
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Nov 9 23:26 UTC 2000 |
My greatest hope is that the cliffhanger suspense of this election
inspires greater numbers of voters (especially the "my vote doesn't count"
types) to participate in future elections.
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i
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response 54 of 216:
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Nov 10 01:30 UTC 2000 |
At what point will being a President of bitterly-contested legitimacy
by random fluke or judicial fiat start seeming like a bad deal to Bush
or Gore?
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jep
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response 55 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:17 UTC 2000 |
I'm sure either candidate would be *much* happier to win the election
than to lose it, whatever difficulties arise during the winner's term in
office.
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gull
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response 56 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:37 UTC 2000 |
Re #46: That's a discrepancy of something like 1,500 votes compared to the
first count. Was it really that sloppy? Or is this due to absentee ballots
continuing to come in?
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mdw
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response 57 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:48 UTC 2000 |
Supposedly, one of the differences is that in some cases, the holes
weren't completely punched out. The chaff in the way prevents the vote
from being read the first pass, but then gets pulled out through general
handling and reads when the ballot is read a 2nd time.
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polygon
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response 58 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:50 UTC 2000 |
I am shocked at how sloppy Florida's election practices appear to be.
Here in Michigan, I have been through a number of recounts, both as an
official election worker, as a campaign volunteer, and as a campaign
manager. These recounts were for offices like district judge and county
commissioner, and most of the recounted precincts used punch cards like
the ones in Florida.
In all of these recounts, there were at most one or two votes changed IN
THE ENTIRE RECOUNT. In fact, the low likelihood of changing any votes at
all, let alone enough to affect the outcome, have tended to deter
candidates (at least in Ingham County) from asking for recounts. If you
lose by as much as 40 votes, what's the point of a recount to find out --
if you're lucky -- that it was actually 39?
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polygon
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response 59 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:51 UTC 2000 |
Re 57. But we had punch cards in Michigan, and that didn't seem to
be much of a problem. Maybe they have shoddy punch cards in Florida.
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polygon
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response 60 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:52 UTC 2000 |
Also, I'm hearing things like "finding 400 ballots that weren't counted
the first time." Again, hard to conceive of that happening around here.
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mdw
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response 61 of 216:
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Nov 10 02:58 UTC 2000 |
Too many senior citizens? (Sorry, couldn't resist...)
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richard
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response 62 of 216:
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Nov 10 05:13 UTC 2000 |
the Gore campaign is planning on asking for a second recount in the key
counties, done *by hand* Wonder how long it would take to go through a
couple million ballots one by one by hand?! And how many more ballots
would they find not counted that the machines missed.
Why are paper ballots even used anymore these days? It never occurred
to these people to use computer terminals in the booths, where you can
just go in and point and click your votes?
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beeswing
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response 63 of 216:
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Nov 10 05:20 UTC 2000 |
I thought the same thing Marcus did :)
At this point I'm so sick of everything I don't care who wins anymore.
I saw Buchanan on TV today and he actually said there was no way he
could have gotten that many votes :)
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richard
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response 64 of 216:
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Nov 10 05:22 UTC 2000 |
polygon, have you ever in all your experience heard of a case where
19,000 ballots were disqualified in one county alone?
I guess the question is, then, do these citizens down in palm beach
countyhave the consitutional right to be allowed to cast their votes
correctly, IF it was no fault of their own that their ballots gotcast
incorrectly. Gonna be one heck of a court case!
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gelinas
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response 65 of 216:
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Nov 10 05:52 UTC 2000 |
Re #17: No, I didn't miss your earlier post. However, that press release
did not include the text of the proposed amendment. So I wrote my own, as
the starting point for a debate of the subject. See Item 147.
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krj
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response 66 of 216:
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Nov 10 05:59 UTC 2000 |
One thought I had tonight: folks who work for the companies which sell the
punched card voting systems had better be looking for new jobs.
I doubt any jurisdiction would ever buy into such a system again
after the outcry in Palm Beach County, and jurisdictions which have
been using the punch-card systems will start looking for excuses to
dump them.
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senna
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response 67 of 216:
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Nov 10 06:39 UTC 2000 |
The electoral college has worked for years and, hopefully, will continue to
do so. One of the reasons it helps people in low population states it gives
them *something* to win. A single voter in Kansas is not going to feel very
enthusiastic if their vote is merely one in 100 million, but they can still
work toward their state's victory in electoral votes. They may not be much,
but they add up, and each state gets at least 3 to play with. Frankly, states
like Hawaii and Alaska might as well not be in the country at all if there's
no electoral college.
The democrats faced the distinct possibility that they were going to win the
election on electoral votes and lose the popular vote, and I have little doubt
that both sides were preparing various scenarios to deal with that. The roles
are reversed, and suddenly it's a bad thing for the dems. Interesting. From
what I've seen, though, the Dems are primarily looking at Floridian
irregularities, and while they'll definitely bring up Bush's loss of the
popular vote in critique, it looks like they aren't going to spend the next
four years acting like he's an illegitimate president. Decently classy.
I think it's notable that the 92 and 96 elections would probably have
had radically different outcomes if the electoral college hadn't been in
place.
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bru
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response 68 of 216:
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Nov 10 12:56 UTC 2000 |
what is the normal level of voter error in an election?
What is legally acceptable voter error?
only 8 counties in florida had no change in the recount, and they were
counties with low voter turnout of only 4000 to 6000.
Most had minimal errors of 1 to ten vote changes, some had 50+
The three big changes were
Orange County 1/2% variance
Palm Beach 2% variance
Pinellas 1% variance
if you add in the 19,000 ruined ballots in palm beach it comes out to
something like 4% error rate. Not a great percentage, but enough to see there
are problems here. But this is a local problem that the local people have
to fix. They should vote out those responsible and vote in someone who can
fix the problems.
Even so, 95% of the people in the county were able to figure out how to use
the system and are not concerned with their votes. Should they be held to
the whim of 5% of the people who were to stupid or too ;azy to take the time
to do it right?
What about Imus in New York? He apparently said he made a mistake on his
ballot by voting for two people where he needed to vote for one. Should he
get the chance to recast his vote in New York? How many others in NY made
similar mistakes. How many across the country?
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gull
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response 69 of 216:
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Nov 10 15:30 UTC 2000 |
Re #62:
> Why are paper ballots even used anymore these days? It never occurred
> to these people to use computer terminals in the booths, where you can
> just go in and point and click your votes?
--> Think about it. If you punch a paper ballot, there's a physical record
of how you voted. That record can't be changed, because you've physically
made a hole in the ballot. If there's any question, you just re-count the
paper ballots.
If you use a computer, there's no real proof that (a) your vote was
logged correctly, and (b) that it wasn't changed by someone after the fact.
Computerized records are trivial to alter in ways that aren't very easily
detectable.
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polygon
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response 70 of 216:
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Nov 10 15:42 UTC 2000 |
Re 64. Literally speaking, the answer is YES. In every partisan primary
in Michigan, in every precinct that uses punch cards, five to ten percent
of the ballots are invalid due to the voter punching holes in more than
one party section. In Detroit, that was a huge number of ballots, much
more than 19,000, and it is part of the reason Detroit doesn't use punch
cards any more.
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richard
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response 71 of 216:
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Nov 10 15:47 UTC 2000 |
each county uses different ballots--- the ballots in palm beach
county were flawed, they listed the candidates in one order and the
holes in another. This caused large numbers of people to vote for
the wrong candidate. This is an irregularity. It should be considered
the decent and right thing to do to allow them to re-vote. If the
situation were reversed, the Bush people would be asking for the same
thing.
This only matters because this irregularity swung the election. There
is no evidence that any irregularities anywhere else in the country
directly affected the outcome. These voters in Palm Beach have a right
to have their voices heard. Their right to vote was infringed upon by
a ballot that caused their votes to get mis-recorded.
,
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richard
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response 72 of 216:
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Nov 10 15:49 UTC 2000 |
oh, and in 1992 and 1996, clinton won the popular vote, so there not
being an electoral college would have made no difference whatsoever.
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polygon
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response 73 of 216:
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Nov 10 15:56 UTC 2000 |
Re 72. But at least in 1992, he only got a plurality of the popular
vote.
Here's a cute solution that would keep the Electoral College, avoid
going to the House in plurality cases like 1992, and yet almost always
give the election to the popular vote winner. Create AT-LARGE electors,
the number of them equal to the number of electors in the largest state,
and give them to the candidate who wins the popular vote.
It would still be possible to win the Electoral College without winning
the popular vote, but only under circumstances that would raise questions
about the popular vote winner's inability to win enough states.
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fitz
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response 74 of 216:
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Nov 10 16:04 UTC 2000 |
Re #66: Punched cards are indeed already at a dead end, for the technology
is forty-years old. Those districts that have already invested in the
hardware support for punched card voting might have a reason to continue with
the status quo, but I doubt that any governmental entity will ever purchase
punched card ballots for a new system.
One existing alternative is pencil-marked, scannable sheets which are familiar
to all who have taken standardized tests. Polling place scanners can reject
spoilt ballots immediately, election results can be batched at the close of
the polls, and hand recounts are feasible.
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