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Grex > Agora35 > #204: The will of the people has been denied, the winner loses | |
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richard
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The will of the people has been denied, the winner loses
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Dec 13 06:00 UTC 2000 |
Thanks to the United States Supreme Court deciding to interfere in Florida
state issues, and denying the right of the Florida Supreme Court to have
the final say in interpreting the laws of *Florida*, it appears that the
candidate who lost the popular vote nationwide will be the next president.
All Al Gore wanted was for ALL the votes in Florida to be counted. The
undervotes, the hanging chads .etc If someone stepped into a voting booth
in florida, their vote should have been counted. Yet the SupremeCourt
seems to have said that not all votes need be counted.
So Bush is going to win an election he really lost. Gore isgoing to lose
an election he really won.
Gore wanted all votes counted. the supreme court says the people don't
vote for president, so their right to be heard on that question isnt
paramount. It isnt the most important thing. Its important sure,but
supremely important.
I disagree and I now support the abolishment of the electoral college.
The electoral college has served this year to thwart the will of the
people. That is a fact. This should not be allowed to happen again.
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| 96 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 1 of 96:
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Dec 13 06:08 UTC 2000 |
No, the electoral college has NOT thwarted "the will of the people." Certain
judges and justices, and one Secretary of State, have thwarted that will.
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rcurl
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response 2 of 96:
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Dec 13 06:53 UTC 2000 |
The electoral college might be considered to have asserted the will of
the *states*. If Bush wins, it is with just one vote more than the 270
required, and that one vote can just as well be viewed as coming from
the additional two votes that all the small states have, which Bush
mostly carried.
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senna
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response 3 of 96:
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Dec 13 07:19 UTC 2000 |
So the states really mattered, and the Electoral College worked. Why don't
you whine about the things that went wrong, instead of those that went right?
If Gore had lost the majority vote and won the EC, you'd be touting the
triumph of the constitution, and the Republicans would be clamoring for
change.
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polygon
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response 4 of 96:
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Dec 13 07:30 UTC 2000 |
It's clear that more people who went to the polls on Florida voted for
Gore than for Bush, but due to a variety of problems, some 90,000 of
those votes, mostly for Gore, didn't count.
That is one reason -- the main reason -- why Bush did not legitimately
win the election.
Another reason is that the majority of Americans who made a choice in the
matter chose Gore, by a margin of more than a third of a million votes.
That counts for nothing legally, but it will be remembered more in the
public mind.
Of course, Bush supporters are that the Electoral College is "the rules of
the game," but a presidential election is not a game played by party
operatives. Rather, it is the choosing by the American people who the
leader will be for the following four years. And the American people
did not vote for Bush. Just because of that fact, his ability to lead is
severely compromised, a result which cannot be good for the country.
All that being said, I'm opposed to an outright abolition of the Electoral
College. Winner-take-all-by-state is not something we should throw away
lightly. However, the nation as a whole should also be given a voice in
the process, by way of adding some additional electors, to be awarded to
the candidate winning the most votes nationally. The easiest way to do
this would be to have 51 at-large electors, one in each state and D.C.,
and they would participate in the electoral college voting along with the
other electors.
In a state that voted differently from the national result, the vote would
be however many to one. For example, in Michigan, 18 to 1.
It would still be possible for the winner of the national vote to lose,
but only under very weird circumstances.
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birdy
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response 5 of 96:
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Dec 13 07:51 UTC 2000 |
That does it. I'm moving to England. Oxford is a great school, and I like
the weather there. =)
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bdh3
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response 6 of 96:
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Dec 13 08:13 UTC 2000 |
Isn't it a fact that the 'absentee ballots' in many states are not
counted unless the election in that state is very close? Thus serving
military and others who otherwise qualify don't get their votes
'counted' either. I seem to recall hearing that there are way more
uncounted absentee ballots in california alone than the margin of
'victory' of Al-the-pal's. The game was played out long after the teams
left the field and by the rules. You don't like the outcome, change the
rules. *BUT* it is manifestly unfair to change the rules after the game
has been played to benefit one team.
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bdh3
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response 7 of 96:
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Dec 13 08:15 UTC 2000 |
(Oh, and my own 'team' didn't win as they never stepped onto the field -
indeed I don't even know who they were...)
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aaron
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response 8 of 96:
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Dec 13 11:04 UTC 2000 |
You don't know who you voted for? Hm.
The Bush spin doctors declared that Bush could take the popular vote from
absentee ballots, the day after the election when Bush lagged behind Gore
by 200,000 votes. Gore's lead soon expanged to 350,000 votes, and the Bush
spin doctors stopped talking about it.
The absentee votes, beady, are counted. It is just that when they can't
change the outcome of the election, it may not happen for a few weeks -
particularly in a state like California. Oregon's all-mail ballot illustrates
how long it can take to tally large numbers of mailed-in ballots.
From a "change the rules" standpoint, the U.S. Supreme Court set down a
particular set of rules in its first decision: "Don't change the law
established prior to election day." In their most recent decision, they
said, "A recount would violate Equal Protection, because you didn't change
the law as it was understood prior to election day by creating a
judicially imposed state-wide standard for reviewing ballots." Never mind
that the U.S. Supreme Court created this new Equal Protection standard
from whole cloth, yesterday.
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danr
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response 9 of 96:
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Dec 13 12:44 UTC 2000 |
I hope this weighs heavily over the Bush administration. Indeed, the votes will
be counted sooner or later under the Florida FOIA law, and the truth will come
out. I wonder how Bush will react then?
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bru
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response 10 of 96:
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Dec 13 13:50 UTC 2000 |
It never ceases to amaze me how petty some people become when they loose.
You dwell on the several thousand none-votes that occured in a few Florida
counties, but ignore the 3 million plus votes that occured nationwide.
Why are the Florida undercounts more important than those here in michigan,
or New York, or texas, or pick-a-state?
Why are broward, Dade, and Palm Beach more important than other counties in
Florida?
Why are Punchcard undervotes more important than optical undervotes or voting
booth undervotes?
Why is a pregnant chad more important than a dimpled chad?
What are the common standards you are going to follow for ALL UNDERCOUNTS?
Why is a democrat more likely to discern the intent of the voter by looking
than say a republican?
These are the questions that have no answer, that make it impossible to get
a fair recount of the UNDERVOTES.
Even if and when the recounts are done in the near future, you ar not gonna
get a consistent number from anybody. The conservatives are gonna reject the
dimpled, pimpled, adn pregnant chads. The Liberals are gonna count the
dimpled, pimpled, and pregnant chads plus any others they need to to create
a win.
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ric
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response 11 of 96:
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Dec 13 14:17 UTC 2000 |
Bruce - Dade and Palm Beach counties aren't more important. The state supreme
court had ordered a state-wide recount of all undervotes.
IMO, the people would care less about this if Al Gore hadn't won the popular
vote nationally. As it is, we want the election to come out the way the
popular vote did - with Al Gore winning.
More people went to the polls in Florida to vote for Al Gore than for the
shrub.
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sno
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response 12 of 96:
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Dec 13 14:40 UTC 2000 |
If you are going to do a recount, you do *all* the votes from the very
beginning. Selective undervote counts, excluding mistabulated or possible
overvote counts is very self-serving.
This whole fiasco was never about determining who won in a fair and
impartial way. I'm just sick of hearing liberal whiners here and
elsewhere (NYT) complain about the inequity of it all. It is all
inequity, and there is no way to keep partiality out of it.
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polygon
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response 13 of 96:
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Dec 13 15:13 UTC 2000 |
Re 10. "Why are the Florida undercounts more important than those here
in Michigan, or New York, or Texas, or pick-a-state?"
Bruce, you forgot about the Electoral College. There is apparently no
other state (except maybe New Mexico) where undervotes would have been
critical to the outcome.
"Why are Punchcard undervotes more important than optical undervotes or
voting booth undervotes?"
Because punch card undervotes are something like an order of magnitude
more common than other types of undervotes, and because, in Florida at
least, punch cards were used in Democratic areas. I think statisticians
have estimated that, if all of Florida had used optical scan ballots
as were used in many counties, there would have been 90,000 more votes
counted. That's 90,000 people who went to the polls, voted for president
and their votes were not counted.
But you know all these things, much as you and other Republicans will try
to ignore them or fudge the matter. The majority of Americans who made a
choice between Bush and Gore voted against Bush, by a margin of more than
a third of a million votes. And Bush was declared the winner in Florida
because thousands of Gore votes didn't get counted. Those are the facts.
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klg
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response 14 of 96:
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Dec 13 17:09 UTC 2000 |
Grow up and get over it. So your guy lost. There will be
another election in just four years.
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anderyn
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response 15 of 96:
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Dec 13 17:59 UTC 2000 |
I don't know that most people voted for Gore rather than Bush -- how about
those who voted, say, Green party, or Libertarian, or just chose not to vote
for President? I mean, to me, it's much more likely that a lot of people chose
not to vote, because they didn't like the choices...
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rcurl
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response 16 of 96:
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Dec 13 17:59 UTC 2000 |
Are you immortal? A lot of people die in a four year period, and many
of those will suffer more, depending upon the outcome of *this*
election. I think " another election in just four years" is a rather
heartless perspective.
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rcurl
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response 17 of 96:
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Dec 13 17:59 UTC 2000 |
#15 slipped in.
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pfv
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response 18 of 96:
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Dec 13 18:03 UTC 2000 |
hehe - "waaaa"
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gelinas
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response 19 of 96:
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Dec 13 18:26 UTC 2000 |
I would have *loved* to have ALL of the votes recounted in Florida. But a
certain group was very much opposed to having ANY vote recounted. The failure
of the recount rests on their heads, not on those who were given the choice
of only settling for a partial recount.
Last I heard, the recount mechanism required looking at all the untabulated
votes, both over- and under-votes. But that got lost in the general effort
to stop _any_ recount, didn't it?
Rather than creating another 51 electors, I think we should work to eliminate
the "winner-take-all" rule. We can only do it in our own states, but that's
enough for me: Let's make sure that Michigan is NOT a "winner-take-all"
state four years from now.
Richard, you can do the same for New York.
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albaugh
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response 20 of 96:
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Dec 13 18:28 UTC 2000 |
90K Gore votes weren't counted - utter bullshit. Go ahead and whine 'til the
cows come home. Yes, it's disappointing that things weren't set up properly
ahead of time to allow both automated counting and manual recounting to take
place. But *ahead of time* is the time to take care of such things, not
changing the rules mid-process when "your guy" needs the votes to get ahead.
As for the popular vote winner not becoming president, it will be the 4th time
in history, not the first, so nobody should be shocked (though it hasn't
happened in the lifetime of anyone still living, of course). So to claim that
this somehow makes Bush a bogus president is also bullshit. But I happen to
believe that the EC *should* be eliminated for election of president, and go
with a straight popular vote, since the president is not beholden to any
particular state(s), the way members of congress are.
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gelinas
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response 21 of 96:
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Dec 13 18:47 UTC 2000 |
He didn't say "90K Gore votes weren't counted." He said "90K votes were not
counted."
And things *were* set up ahead of time to count those votes. Some people
chose to ignore the mechanism for recounting, though. This debate will
continue without resolution.
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scott
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response 22 of 96:
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Dec 13 19:45 UTC 2000 |
In this rather bizarre year, I'd say that Bush is getting the booby prize --
a tainted election and a sure-to-be vilified presidency.
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polygon
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response 23 of 96:
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Dec 13 21:03 UTC 2000 |
Re 15. If you're responding to me, I said "of those who made a choice"
between Gore and Bush, Gore got the majority. I didn't say he got a
majority of all votes cast.
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polygon
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response 24 of 96:
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Dec 13 21:13 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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