Debunking the 2000 election theft CT

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by fezzic

CL, I wasn't quite sure whether you were referring to the recount effort or the larger disenfrancisement issue.

I think it was much easier to try for recounts, however many or few there actually were, than to try to have the entire State vote thrown out. Recounts can be ordered because of the closeness of the voting. I think most election experts said that the voting process always has a margin of error and the election fell within that margin.

Throwing out the whole election would be a much more serious and substantial measure and the democrats would likely have been loathed to go that route -- assuming it could be implemented in a timely manner since there was a specific deadline that would moot the tremendous effort as far as the Presidential race was concerned.

I think I'll stop now.

I don't recall the Democrats suggesting throwing out the election at any time during the recount.

The Republican dominated Florida legislature did suggest having the legislature directly appoint electors.

[fezzic]

Originally Posted by Kestrel

I don't recall the Democrats suggesting throwing out the election at any time during the recount.

The Republican dominated Florida legislature did suggest having the legislature directly appoint electors.

Very true and CL seemed to be asking why not (if one assumes the Democrats had all this 'evidence' or allegations).

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by fezzic

Very true and CL seemed to be asking why not (if one assumes the Democrats had all this 'evidence' or allegations).

If by "all this 'evidence' or allegations" you mean the evidence of unlawful disenfranchisement of voters in Florida, the answer is that the Democrats did not have it when the struggle over the recount was going on. It only began to come to light through the dogged work of Greg Palast in the days after the election, and he could not get any news outlet in the United States even to look into the story. His findings were published in the Guardian and the Observer in the UK and reported on the BBC, but a CBS news executive who initially seemed interested in the story declined to pursue it further because, he told Palast, it "did not check out." How did the executive try to check out the story? By phoning Governor Jeb Bush's office. (Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p. 15.) With the help of Joe Conason, Palast managed to get Salon.com to publish the first part of a two-part article on its Web site on December 4 (p. 16). But Salon.com declined to publish the second half, giving the same reason as the CBS executive: Governor Jeb Bush's office denied Palast's findings (p. 17). Eventually, Palast got the Washington Post to publish the second part of the article that he had originally written for Salon: it appeared in June of 2001, months after the end of the election process (p. 19).

It may be that Palast oversells his findings, but the main point is that those findings were a non-story in this country until long after they could have made any difference.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Kritikos

If by "all this 'evidence' or allegations" you mean the evidence of unlawful disenfranchisement of voters in Florida, the answer is that the Democrats did not have it when the struggle over the recount was going on. It only began to come to light through the dogged work of Greg Palast in the days after the election, and he could not get any news outlet in the United States even to look into the story. His findings were published in the Guardian and the Observer in the UK and reported on the BBC, but a CBS news executive who initially seemed interested in the story declined to pursue it further because, he told Palast, it "did not check out." How did the executive try to check out the story? By phoning Governor Jeb Bush's office. (Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p. 15.) With the help of Joe Conason, Palast managed to get Salon.com to publish the first part of a two-part article on its Web site on December 4 (p. 16). But Salon.com declined to publish the second half, giving the same reason as the CBS executive: Governor Jeb Bush's office denied Palast's findings (p. 17). Eventually, Palast got the Washington Post to publish the second part of the article that he had originally written for Salon: it appeared in June of 2001, months after the end of the election process (p. 19).

It may be that Palast oversells his findings, but the main point is that those findings were a non-story in this country until long after they could have made any difference.

Kritikos, I'm glad you're here. My question was a little stupid. but there are points it brings up. The voters turned away story was not reported in time is probably the best answer. I actually forgot that the slow election resolution and fast story development didn't overlap more than a week or so (first Salon story Dec 4, first Newsnight show a little before.)

Also there's the fact that even if they did know there's no easy fix. Either a re-vote or tossing FL's vote would be extreme, which was partly my point there. Plus Clinton had two terms, conservatives were angry, and if this contentious count went to Gore, things might have been ugly. For peace and grace alone, it would be smarter to slight the blue vote that year.

So the fact that the information remained little seen until too late just helped make swallowing the issue easier as it was all decided on votes cast and counted however they were and Bush won and that's pretty close to what the majority wanted.

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Kritikos, I'm glad you're here. My question was a little stupid. but there are points it brings up. The voters turned away story was not reported in time is probably the best answer. I actually forgot that the slow election resolution and fast story development didn't overlap more than a week or so (first Salon story Dec 4, first Newsnight show a little before.)

Thanks for the kind words, but you've lost me. What was the "stupid" question? If it has a non-obvious answer, surely it's not stupid.

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Also there's the fact that even if they did know there's no easy fix. Either a re-vote or tossing FL's vote would be extreme, which was partly my point there. Plus Clinton had two terms, conservatives were angry, and if this contentious count went to Gore, things might have been ugly. For peace and grace alone, it would be smarter to slight the blue vote that year.

So the fact that the information remained little seen until too late just helped make swallowing the issue easier as it was all decided on votes cast and counted however they were and Bush won and that's pretty close to what the majority wanted.

Now I'm the one feeling stupid, because, although I can understand your individual observations, I can't tell what point you're making. The thread has been rather long and tortuous, you know.

[Caustic Logic]

Oh jeez... the question is the one you were all discussing above, why the Democrats didn't push the disenfranchisement angle as the election was still in contest.

I think complexly and sometimes sloppy too, and usually rely on concise language to try and convey it all. But lately I'm spread thin and just missing the anchor points. I was admitting there was probably nothing they (the Gore team) could have done even IF they had Palast's info called in directly by Palast even at an early date. Once the vote is cast, toy have re-vote as the only realistic option. I wish I knew if there was a precedent or even a procedure for that.

My talk of tossing out the whole state's returns is irrelevant, They'd never be able to or want to do that for so many reasons.

As for the "grace" of favoring Bush over Gore due to the general political climate, that's just a personal thought. I can't say if it was a factor or not, or how big, or who was thinking that. Probably no one. Probably irrelevant too.

And finally, if they had had Palast's innfo in time, the Dems would be faced with an awkward situation - nothing much to do about it (as per above0 but still a major injustice that some people would be pushing them to act on. Just luck I presume, but the media helped make sure this was known to as few people as possible until it was too late. It made ignoring it a lot easier.

I hope that helps. Probably just makes it worse as usual...

[Kritikos]

Okay, I think I get it now.

I think we are all agreed that calling "Do over!" on the election was never an option, and never could have been one, unless there had been decisive proof of electoral fraud on a large scale.

It is interesting to look back at some of the "debunking" materials that you quoted earlier. For instance, let us re-read this passage from John Fund's book, as quoted on a Web page (bold type added):

Quote:

But in fact, every single recount of the votes in Florida determined that George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and therefore the presidency. This includes a manual recount of votes in largely Democratic counties by a consortium of news organizations, among them the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. As the New York Times reported on November 21, 2001, "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward." The USA Today recount team concluded: "Who would have won if Al Gore had gotten manual counts he requested in four counties? Answer: George W. Bush."

Fund alludes to the Media Consortium Ballot Project when he says "This includes a manual recount of votes in largely Democratic counties by a consortium of news organizations, among them the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times." As we saw (see the quotations in my post #73), that project did find that Bush would come out the victor under a manual recount in the counties selected by Gore. But the project also found that a recount in all Florida counties would have yielded a victory for Gore. So Fund's first assertion, that "every single recount of the votes in Florida determined that George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and therefore the presidency," is disproved by one of the documents that he himself cites -- or rather alludes to, as he does not explicitly identify it. (I have looked up the original passage in his book, Stealing Elections, p. 28, and I can verify that he provides no further reference than is included in the quotation.) I can think of two possibilities here. One is that Fund did not know of the second finding (Gore's victory under a statewide recount), but only of the first (Bush's victory under a recount in the counties selected by Gore). The other is that he knew of both and either lied about it or was careless of the truth in a fashion as culpable as an out-and-out lie. The first option seems to me exceedingly unlikely.

To take up CL's assessment again:

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

The guy's a Republican hack - I'll bet $1 right now his book spends pages discussing the dead people that voted in FL in '97 without one mention of the many living citizens who weren't allowed to in 2000.

On the evidence just considered, I am inclined to agree that Fund is a Republican hack. However, I've got his book open in front of me to a section titled "Doubtful Disenfranchisement" (pp. 31-33), and I think you would lose your dollar if anyone took your bet. Fund acknowledges that "the database of the names of felons set up for the state by Database Technologies, a private company, contained some errors [!]," but claims that an investigation by "the liberal-leaning Palm Beach Post" found no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted; on the contrary, it found that "the error rate was 9.9 percent for whites, 8.7 percent for Hispanics, and only 5.1 percent for African Americans" (pp. 31-32). He does not, however, provide a specific source. I turned up three articles in the said newspaper that mention Database Technologies, none of which contains these statistics. However, one article, titled "Felon purge sacrificed innocent voters" (May 27, 2001), said that "Of the 19,398 voters removed from the rolls, more than 18,600 matched a felon by name, birthdate, race and gender." That is a much smaller number of voters than the 57,700 in the lists found by Palast. (The greater proportion of matches by name, birthdate, race, and gender may not be so significant, given that, according to Palast, non-matching characteristics were simply omitted from the purge lists, and 40,000 people were correctly identified on the list but had had their voting rights restored to them.) There is also an article from the next day's issue under the title "Thousands of felons voted despite purge."

So things end up getting all murky again.

[zaphod2016]

Not sure if this is appropriate for this thread, but this article was written by RFK Jr. after the 2004 election. The central premise:

Quote:

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

Back to 2000, another popular meme was/is that the Supreme Court nullified our democratic process by ending the recounts and effectively appointing George W. Bush President. I think Bill Maher had a joke about Bush Sr. giving Justice Clarence Thomas his job, and Thomas returning the favor (it was a 5-4 vote for those who can't remember; arguably Bush Sr. appointed the tie-breaker himself).

In the interest of skepticism, here is Scalia defending his decision in Bush v. Gore taken from a 20/20 interview:

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

Quote:

It was [Al Gore] who said: 'I want this to be decided by the courts'

That of course does not address the issue of disenfranchisement.

[Klimax]

There was revote mentioned and that it would not be done. Lets say it would be.
My questions are: What was original voter turnout and what would be for revote and which party would lose/gain more?

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Not sure if this is appropriate for this thread, but<snip>
That of course does not address the issue of disenfranchisement.

Lol. I was hoping you'd been a poll worker in 2000 who saw voters chased away by gun-wielding election officials. but this is a wider issue as well.

On the SCOTUS tie-breaker, for some reason O'Connor (Reagan appointee) is sometimes credited as the swing vote. Not sure why... But she wouldn't be if Thomas had'nt been one of the four...
Great video - I hate Scalia. Of course it wasn't politics, just obvious responsible clear-cut plainasday jurisprudence! All the Republican majority understands that. The other four, well, maybe some judges like to play politics...

Originally Posted by Klimax

There was revote mentioned and that it would not be done. Lets say it would be.
My questions are: What was original voter turnout and what would be for revote and which party would lose/gain more?

That's a good question with no sure answer and many guesses better than mine. The premise would be "again, with the right voter rolls." Wow. That's the same question we can't answer yet - would more be blocked with all purges done, but done right? Fund et al seem to think so. Palast et al strongly disagree. I'm not totally sure what numbers represent what and so on and over my head, so ...
Presuming all wrong barrings and wrong allowances were corrected, one vote per legal voter no more no less, and given less time before the re-vote to set up frauds (but more pressure to try), we'd have a (relatively) pure representative vote. Both sides would mobilize hard to 'win it even better this time!' but I think a second round, with all the masses shaken awake by the stakes voter turnout would be much higher and I'm guessing it would favor Democrats more. That's just a casual guess though.

2000 turnout in FL was relatively high - overwhelmingly so in some areas (and hence some of the problems). Numbers not handy.

[Caustic Logic]

Kritikos: Again, you have the initiative here - thread's yours for the moment, and you're blazing through it.
Anyone who crackes the book and shares has taken the bet, AFAIC. I knew I'd lose it technically, so only $1. Willing to pay! you'd almost have to mention the purge errors to get to why the lists were ignored, letting felons and other rabble vote in the billions. I actually guessed he'd mention but downplay it and swamp it in counter-points. He's got a whole section huh? Is that to be balanced or just room for lots of swamping?

Quote:

He does not, however, provide a specific source. I turned up three articles in the said newspaper that mention Database Technologies, none of which contains these statistics. However, one article, titled "Felon purge sacrificed innocent voters" (May 27, 2001), said that "Of the 19,398 voters removed from the rolls, more than 18,600 matched a felon by name, birthdate, race and gender." That is a much smaller number of voters than the 57,700 in the lists found by Palast.

There are so many numbers ere, different sets and subsets, it can and does make one's head spin. Finally one I can help on tho - these two numbers shouldn't be the same. I'm not sure how they got 19,000 removed, but Palast's big list was the revised DBT list with false positives and all, pre-screening. Between the counties that managed to re-instate some FPs and those that just ignored the lists and removed no one, the number actually removed should be well lower. It might be the number they cite.

Quote:

So things end up getting all murky again.

Just when you think you have it, that ol' catfish slips away inta the mud again. Yeah. That's why I can't guarantee to keep trying...

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Not sure if this is appropriate for this thread, but this article was written by RFK Jr. after the 2004 election. The central premise:

I would rather that we not get into the question of the 2004 presidential election, because I have been thinking of starting a thread of my own on that topic.

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Back to 2000, another popular meme was/is that the Supreme Court nullified our democratic process by ending the recounts and effectively appointing George W. Bush President. I think Bill Maher had a joke about Bush Sr. giving Justice Clarence Thomas his job, and Thomas returning the favor (it was a 5-4 vote for those who can't remember; arguably Bush Sr. appointed the tie-breaker himself).

Earlier in this thread, I reported the results of the Media Consortium Ballot Project, which showed that, given the way that Gore had pursued a recount, the decision of the Supreme Court to stop the process did not affect the outcome of the election (Bush would have won even if the recount in the counties selected by Gore had been allowed to finish). So, I said, one cannot make the case that Bush "stole" the election on the basis of the interruption of the recount in Florida. However, you are right to imply that this does not settle the issue of whether the Supreme Court decision, as you put it, nullified our democratic process. A crude parallel case: If I stuff ballot boxes for a candidate who has enough legitimate votes to win anyway, my act does not affect the outcome of the election; but it is still electoral fraud and still casts a taint of illegitimacy on the election. The Supreme Court decision did not affect the outcome of the 2000 presidential election; it does not follow that it was not a thwarting of the democratic process.

Originally Posted by Klimax

There was revote mentioned and that it would not be done. Lets say it would be.
My questions are: What was original voter turnout and what would be for revote and which party would lose/gain more?

I don't see how anyone could give any credible answer to your questions about a revote. They would require pure counterfactual speculation; one could just as well pull numbers out of one's . . . hat.

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Kritikos: Again, you have the initiative here - thread's yours for the moment

Oh noes!

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by Kritikos

I would rather that we not get into the question of the 2004 presidential election, because I have been thinking of starting a thread of my own on that topic.

Good call- I will stay on topic then.

Originally Posted by Kritikos

Earlier in this thread, I reported the results of the Media Consortium Ballot Project, which showed that, given the way that Gore had pursued a recount, the decision of the Supreme Court to stop the process did not affect the outcome of the election (Bush would have won even if the recount in the counties selected by Gore had been allowed to finish). So, I said, one cannot make the case that Bush "stole" the election on the basis of the interruption of the recount in Florida.

And as Scalia pointed out- it was Gore, not Bush, who brought it to the courts. If Bush knew that the justices appointed by Reagan & Bush Sr. were ready to appoint him Pres. why wait for Gore to bring it to the courts?

As far as I can tell, there are 3 main branches of the 2000 election CT:

1. The Supreme Court appointed Bush- Scalia says this is rubbish; Gore himself opened this can of worms so its hard to pity him for the way it turned out.

2. Disenfranchisement- I've seen plenty of editorials from both GOP and DEM alleging targeted disenfranchisement. People from both parties were prevented from voting in 2000, although it seems that the Dems had far more cases of disenfranchisement. Perhaps they simply followed-up more than the GOP, who lost interest after winning.

3. Voting Machines- this is the one branch of the CT that feels the most plausible to me. Not sure if its been linked already, but HBO did a documentary called Hacking Democracy that investigated these claims further. Watch on Google Video for free.

Originally Posted by Kritikos

I don't see how anyone could give any credible answer to your questions about a revote. They would require pure counterfactual speculation; one could just as well pull numbers out of one's . . . hat.

This is a great point, and it illustrates just how futile it may be to prove disenfranchisement as any sort of organized conspiracy. It is quite possible that all those who were prevented from voting in 2000 were victims of incompetence, not malice.

But the voting machines? As a computer programmer I can personally confirm that the old Diebold machines were junk and easily hacked. And as a citizen, I think any electronic voting machine should (at a minimum) provide a receipt to both voter and polling place, so that results can be manually confirmed and contested. Putting the supreme power of our democratic process into a "black box" and simply assuming it is infallible is insane on so many levels, I can't see why any Republican, Democrat or Anarchist would support this.

Sadly, I didn't get to Florida until 2006, so I missed the action in 2000. However, I live in Brevard county, which is pretty red, so most of my neighbors were pro-Bush before the election recounts anyway.

[Klimax]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

This is a great point, and it illustrates just how futile it may be to prove disenfranchisement as any sort of organized conspiracy. It is quite possible that all those who were prevented from voting in 2000 were victims of incompetence, not malice.

But the voting machines? As a computer programmer I can personally confirm that the old Diebold machines were junk and easily hacked. And as a citizen, I think any electronic voting machine should (at a minimum) provide a receipt to both voter and polling place, so that results can be manually confirmed and contested. Putting the supreme power of our democratic process into a "black box" and simply assuming it is infallible is insane on so many levels, I can't see why any Republican, Democrat or Anarchist would support this.

Sadly, I didn't get to Florida until 2006, so I missed the action in 2000. However, I live in Brevard county, which is pretty red, so most of my neighbors were pro-Bush before the election recounts anyway.

Aren't you certain blogger and expert? (Freedom to Tinker)

ETA:After reading more,maybye not.(But still close on issue of voting machines...)

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

And as Scalia pointed out- it was Gore, not Bush, who brought it to the courts. If Bush knew that the justices appointed by Reagan & Bush Sr. were ready to appoint him Pres. why wait for Gore to bring it to the courts?

As far as I can tell, there are 3 main branches of the 2000 election CT:

1. The Supreme Court appointed Bush- Scalia says this is rubbish; Gore himself opened this can of worms so its hard to pity him for the way it turned out. [. . .]

I don't see how to square this with the fact that George W. Bush et al. were the petitioners in Bush v. Gore, or the fact that it was the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 9, 2000, at the behest of the Bush team, that stopped the recount in Florida. The first paragraph of the majority opinion reads:

Quote:

On December 8, 2000, the Supreme Court of Florida ordered that the Circuit Court of Leon County tabulate by hand 9,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County. It also ordered the inclusion in the certified vote totals of 215 votes identified in Palm Beach County and 168 votes identified in Miami-Dade County for Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., and Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democratic Candidates for President and Vice President. The Supreme Court noted that petitioner, Governor George W. Bush asserted that the net gain for Vice President Gore in Palm Beach County was 176 votes, and directed the Circuit Court to resolve that dispute on remand. ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op., at 4, n. 6). The court further held that relief would require manual recounts in all Florida counties where so-called “undervotes” had not been subject to manual tabulation. The court ordered all manual recounts to begin at once. Governor Bush and Richard Cheney, Republican Candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency, filed an emergency application for a stay of this mandate. On December 9, we granted the application, treated the application as a petition for a writ of certiorari, and granted certiorari. Post, p. ___.

[TruthersLie]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

In another thread a member here posted this, which I chose kind of arbitrarily as an example of posts I've seen comparing the recent spike of noise from the Obama Birthers with the *similar theory* that bush stole the 2000 election, a debunked myth fueled by fermenting sour grapes from hardcore Liberals who just hated Bush because of his freedoms and 'cause he won it fair and square.



I can accept that - I suspect, strongly, there was a conspiracy of collusion between key people to implement illegal tactics to ensure they won. By the narrow margin, it seems they measured carefully and went for the subtle look - nearly flush, not waaaay too far off... I first suspected this as the election happened and came down to, of all places Florida, with one candidate’s brother as governor and his state campaign director as Sec of State, no wonder he won – but there was the narrowness of it – 537 votes IIRC, and the controversies over ballots and a re-count demand, which was then shut down with the narrowest Supreme Court majority possible. Somehow… that smelled fishy to me.

No secret, I was never a fan of the man, his party, his policies, his style, nor later his manipulation of the shock of 9/11 into the reckless aggression that’s gotten us all in such a mess – nor for that matter his blatant theft of the 2000 election!

Recently I came to suspect my thinking on this issue has been muddled, as I started looking into the available debunks. Rather than try to scan the whole field and get at underlying patterns, I’d like to see first what people have to say about this whacked-out sore-loser conspiracy theory. Links, key quotes, y’know, the standard. Who has debunked this and where? I started looking myself but realized there are multiple motivated minds here to cover that aspect with gusto.

All right, thanks.

Caustic.

You know that the MSM did several indepth analysis of the of the 2000 election and there are several prominent recounts done by the New York Times and others which show that Bush did in fact win (based on the legal challenges brought up by gore...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/12/news/mn-3240

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Nov11.html

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by TruthersLie

Caustic.

You know that the MSM did several indepth analysis of the of the 2000 election and there are several prominent recounts done by the New York Times and others which show that Bush did in fact win (based on the legal challenges brought up by gore...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/12/news/mn-3240

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Nov11.html

It has been a long thread, so I can't blame you for not reading all of the posts that followed the first one, but the answer to your question is: yes, Caustic knows that a recount in the counties selected by the Gore team would have come out in favor of Bush. He also knows that a statewide recount would have come out in favor of Gore. Read this post.

[TruthersLie]

Originally Posted by Kritikos

It has been a long thread, so I can't blame you for not reading all of the posts that followed the first one, but the answer to your question is: yes, Caustic knows that a recount in the counties selected by the Gore team would have come out in favor of Bush. He also knows that a statewide recount would have come out in favor of Gore. Read this post.

Hey Kritikos.

I posted as I was reading. My post was done about 1/3 of the way down through the first page. I have subsequently finished the thread.

[zaphod2016]

Bush v. Gore

Holy smokes, what a clusterf***.

Scalia is right- Gore initiated the first legal proceedings, however, there were also several actions taken by Bush, Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. This moved quickly, bouncing though several courts and appeals before landing on the Supreme Court's desk.

The justices voted 7-9 that the Florida recounts violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The real issue- and root of the CT- is what to do given this fact. Gore wanted a constitutional recount; but the SC ruled 5–4 that no constitutionally-valid recount could be completed by the December 12 (safe harbor) deadline.

Its been a long time since I looked at this; I had forgotten what a mess it was. If anyone has a link to a non-partisan analysis of the court's decision, I'd love to see it. A decade out, all I can find is editorial after editorial, each more biased than the last.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Bush v. Gore

Holy smokes, what a clusterf***.

Scalia is right- Gore initiated the first legal proceedings, however, there were also several actions taken by Bush, Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. This moved quickly, bouncing though several courts and appeals before landing on the Supreme Court's desk.

To clarify Gore started legal moves. Bush didn't need to, had Harris' certification. This then led to the more famous counter-suit Bush V Gore.

also 9-7 above should read 9-0.

[Brainster]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Not sure if this is appropriate for this thread, but this article was written by RFK Jr. after the 2004 election.

On the whole, I found his evidence that vaccines cause autism more compelling.

I pointed out several years ago, that his claim that the GOP simply changed 80,000 votes from Kerry to Bush in 12 rural counties was completely ridiculous:

Quote:

You see, these really are rural counties so the idea of shaking an 80,000 vote swing out of them is contrived. Bush got 382,000 votes in those counties, so we reduce that to 302,000. And we up Kerry's 168,000 to 248,000. So Bush got 54.9% in those twelve counties, as compared to his 67.4% the prior election, a 12.5 percentage point decline in Bush's share of the major party vote in those twelve counties between 2000 and 2004. How does that stack up with the rest of Ohio? Well, actually Bush didn't lose 12.5 percentage points compared to 2000 in any other county. His worst performance was about a 5 percentage point drop.

Farhad Manjoo, writing in Salon, dismissed the rest of Kennedy's article.

Here's an amusing thought, though: What would the conspiracy theory have looked like from the GOP side had Bush narrowly lost Florida in 2000?

Media complicity: The decision to call Florida for Gore initially would have been cited as the reason Gore won. Remember, the call of Florida came before all the polls in the state were closed; there's a part of the Florida panhandle that's actually located in the Central Time Zone. It's a conservative part of the state, and I'm sure there would have been claims that many people didn't bother to vote, or turned around when they heard the rumor that Gore had already won.

Vote-O-Matic guy would be a household name.

The three other states that narrowly went for Gore would have come under a lot of scrutiny. Gore won Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico by a combined margin of about 10,000 votes. The statistically unlikely scenario of Gore winning all four very close states would be cited as evidence that the Democrats had voted early and often as the old gag goes.

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Bush v. Gore

Holy smokes, what a clusterf***.

Scalia is right- Gore initiated the first legal proceedings, however, there were also several actions taken by Bush, Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. This moved quickly, bouncing though several courts and appeals before landing on the Supreme Court's desk.

Gore didn't initiate the court battles. The Bush campaign filed the first lawsuit by either campaign in the Florida recount, Siegel v. Lepore.

Quote:

Plaintiffs' Complaint alleged that the manual recounts violate the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of due process and equal protection, and deny and burden the First Amendment's protection of votes and political speech.

I find it hard to believe that counting the votes by a method known to be more accurate is a violation of the First Amendment.

[Brainster]

Originally Posted by Kestrel

Gore didn't initiate the court battles. The Bush campaign filed the first lawsuit by either campaign in the Florida recount, Siegel v. Lepore.



I find it hard to believe that counting the votes by a method known to be more accurate is a violation of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court found for Bush on the equal protection argument (14th Amendment). Remember, that Gore's lawyers only wanted recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. It was a colossal blunder.

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by Brainster

The Supreme Court found for Bush on the equal protection argument (14th Amendment). Remember, that Gore's lawyers only wanted recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. It was a colossal blunder.

The Florida election law in effect during the 2000 recount didn't take into account that a recount might be required in a statewide race. Recounts had to be asked for on a county by county basis. If I remember correctly, the possible errors in that county had to be enough to sway the entire race.
(I would check this, but link I had to Florida law as of 2000 no longer works).

Yes, the Supreme Court did invoke the 14 Amendment in Bush v. Gore. However, the ruling found an arbitrary December 12th deadline in election law as more important than a Constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

To clarify Gore started legal moves. Bush didn't need to, had Harris' certification. This then led to the more famous counter-suit Bush V Gore.

also 9-7 above should read 9-0.

Oops. That should read 7-2. From the wiki: "Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties."

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Oops. That should read 7-2. From the wiki: "Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties."

Oh. The 9-0 was for Bush v. PBC canvassing board, thot that's what you meant. Did they ever rule on the different voter roll purging practices from county-to-county? Some allowing felons, some barring saints, some doing both. That's not equal protection, but I guess they weren't ruling on that.

There's sure a lot of confusion here!

Kestrel, you're on the ball - the thread's yours as well.

Quote:

The Florida election law in effect during the 2000 recount didn't take into account that a recount might be required in a statewide race. Recounts had to be asked for on a county by county basis. If I remember correctly, the possible errors in that county had to be enough to sway the entire race.
(I would check this, but link I had to Florida law as of 2000 no longer works).

I don't know primary sources on the law, but I am still reading a bit. Indeed, a statewide recount was never pursued - just four counties is nightmare enough. the counties specified for hand counts were Palm beach (PBC), Miami-Dade, Volusia, and Broward, and represented "nearly one-third of the total ballots statewide."

For the record, I checked for Fund's book but no luck at my local library. I got Palast's book tho, the Bush V Gore book (compiled rulings + essays, ed Kristol and someone, right leaning), the Miami Herald investigation book version, and Wash Post's Deadlock book. The las has some interesting bits on this. How it was decided in PBC, on Nov 11, the canvassing board met to meet the Gore campaign's challenge - a manual recount would be decided if enough errors surface on a sample run of 1% of county ballots, from four precincts selected by the Gore camp.

The three-person panel was SoE LePore (reistered Dem at the moment), Carol Roberts (Dem, county commission), and chaired by Circuit Judge Charles Burton ("an enigma"). If the panel decided the sample was problematic, a county-wide re-count would be required. [p 86-87]

Gore's lead lawyer Kuehne pushed for inclusion of all marks of voter intent - pinpricks, hanging and dimpled chads. Personally I think that's the right way to go for non-partian reasons. But it was also political - "Democrats make more mistakes than Republicans," one expert says. LePore explained this was against standard PBC policy - the neddle had to have passed though the ballot. Dimpled ballots were thus out, ruled under-votes (ie - voter intent was ruled to NOT VOTE FOR PRESIDENT AT ALL).

From there they discussed various acceptable standards - three-corners rule, etc. At first they proceded on the "sunshine rule" - as long as you could chad was separated enough you could see sunlight trough part of it. Fairly liberal, basically a one-corner rule. Bush's leadllawyer Mark Wallace consented until he saw too many Gore votes laid down. "They were finding light and glimmers of hope," he later explained his objection. [88] Kuehne suspected Judge Burton was working with the Bush team. One day he took a long lunch break (actually visiting with K Harris' lawyer Carpenter to discuss the standards) and came back to announce the sunshine rue was no good - at least two corners had to be broken.

Final result - 33 more gore votes, 14 for Bush. Roberts decided this justified a full recount and announced so to Dem cheers and Repub jeers. Carpenter passed on Harris' view - that "only evidence of machine malfunction or a natural disaster" would justify a re-count." LePore, author of the butterfly ballot, retorted "The vote difference ... was not due to machine error." Nonetheless, "Roberts and LePore voted to proceed. Burton voted no." [89]

A passage, p 90

Quote:

tens of thousands of ballots across Flroida had registered no vote on the counting machines, and they were overwhelmingly concentrated in Democratic precincts. Could anyone truly believe that all those people turned out to vote but then skipped the biggest race on the ballot?

Probably not. But since more of these active non-voters happen to also bump the Gore spot in a non-voting way, then state law permitted people to pretend they believed that.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Kestrel

Gore didn't initiate the court battles. The Bush campaign filed the first lawsuit by either campaign in the Florida recount, Siegel v. Lepore.

Filed Dec. 6, nearly a month after the election? Monday November 13, 10am local was when:

Quote:

Volusia County sues to extend certification deadline. Lawyers for Palm Beach County, Gore campaign join suit. Bush lawyers join Florida to block extension.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/el...agtimeline.htm
Others for fun:

Quote:

11/15: Harris asks the Florida Supreme Court to make counties stop hand-counting ballots “pending resolution as to whether any basis exists to modify the certified results” after Tuesday’s deadline. She seeks consolidation of all election lawsuits in Tallahassee.

11/20: Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga rejects a Democratic petition asking for a county re-vote because its "butterfly" ballot was baffling. Labarga says he "lacks authority" under the U.S. Constitution to call a new election.

Also, on re-vote, "Deadlock" p. 77 says in the days after the election "Democratic county commissioners were talking openly about conducting a whole new election."

Also, the county-by-county appeal standard is in Florida law. There's no provision for statewide recounts, only county-level. [77]

Quote:

I find it hard to believe that counting the votes by a method known to be more accurate is a violation of the First Amendment.

The 14th ammendment consideration is always that standards for re-counting have to be uniform, and they weren't. No one seems to care if they should be uniformly excellent or evil, just consistent. Point being that would take time to draft and approve new standards and there were various timelines ticking, legal and psycho-political.

The constitution demanded uniformity, or so thought the five judges who wrote the consistent re-count policy, which is "no one recounts." That blurry snapshot, that 537-vote lead, is the POTUS official portrait of winning margin. Snap. Thousand copies in Post Offices nationwide beneath Bush and Cheney. Oh well, it works.

ETA: And the slippery fish here is that even in all this hooplah, if the hand counts still going had NOT been blocked, and kept the same standards, Bush still would have won the state. ... Right?

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Filed Dec. 6, nearly a month after the election?

The link I provided was from the appeal. Siegel v. LePore was filed in US District Court on 11/11/2000.

[BenBurch]

Well, actually, it was stolen. By the Supreme Court. In a ruling unlike any other ruling in the history of that court.

See; http://www.daveross.com/marklevine.html

[Caustic Logic]

Kestrel: okay, sorry I missed that. Nov 11 that would make it the first or among the first lawsuits then. I'm not sure when Gore's first challenge was, but no later than Monday the 13th, and that to extend the time for recounts already underway.

Now if Florida was suing anyone before/aside from responding to Gore challenges, it would have to be autonomous county-level actions - automatic re-counts. This is worse than stopping a partisan campaign maneuver, it's Florida intervening against pre-existing Florida law there to protect Democracy. And remember Bush's campaign was running Florida. More or less.

Ben Burch: Ben, Ben, Ben... you pop in here on page 3... (lost for words)

In context of a very good link however, thanks!

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Brainster

</snip>Kennedy <snip>

There you go, hop on the acknowledged derail track...
Hey, welcome back!

Quote:

Here's an amusing thought, though: What would the conspiracy theory have looked like from the GOP side had Bush narrowly lost Florida in 2000?

<snip>

Vote-O-Matic guy would be a household name.

<snip>

etc.

That's more than amusing. It's actually a pretty good thought exercise. But I can't dive into it so no bother even wading, but still a worthwhile perspective. All things considered I think a Gore victory emerging from the ugliness of Florida would have been worse, in a lot of ways. The 9/11 nutters looking to stolen-election POTUS Gore and his Globalist cabal... you think Birthers are bad...

Okay that was a little wading but that's all.

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

Well, actually, it was stolen. By the Supreme Court. In a ruling unlike any other ruling in the history of that court.

See; http://www.daveross.com/marklevine.html

This is a damn interesting read, and very entertaining. However, it come across as a tad... biased. I'd love to see one of our resident right-wingers post a response to this.

Even if we assume Bush would have won Florida anyway, this article doesn't help my opinion of the SCOTUS any.

[Minadin]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

Well, actually, it was stolen. By the Supreme Court. In a ruling unlike any other ruling in the history of that court.

See; http://www.daveross.com/marklevine.html

Originally Posted by Minadin

I also find it funny that the exact same people who were mad about the popular vote in 2000 when Bush won the Electoral but not overall Popular vote, were trying to obtain a victory via the Electoral vote in 2004 when their candidate clearly lost the popular vote.

Yeah.

[BenBurch]

No matter who SHOULD have won, the votes needed to be counted.

It was not a proper thing for the SC to decide.

You can steal an election you would have won like you can frame a guilty man - neither is right.

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

No matter who SHOULD have won, the votes needed to be counted.

It was not a proper thing for the SC to decide.

You can steal an election you would have won like you can frame a guilty man - neither is right.

Can anyone find me some concrete evidence that Thomas and Scalia had a conflict of interest; that their sons were working for Bush directly? This is the most egregious claim (IMO) of the above link. Its something I don't want to believe.

It also strikes me as extremely fishy that Bush v. Gore applied "only to this one case", whereas most (if not all) SCOTUS rulings have established a more general precedent.

As far as "count every vote", I wish it were that simple, but its not. Gore had no interest in counting every conservative vote, and once Harris was on board, Bush had no interest in counting any votes. And it would seem our entire national voting system is one big clusterf*** that violates equal protection under the 14-Amendment. I agree with you that every lawful vote should be counted, but that's the issue exactly- what was a lawful vote, once the equal-protection clause had been violated? Were ANY votes lawful? The way I read this: technically no.

But more disturbing to me, two elections later, very little in our election system has changed.

[BenBurch]

I can find you that, but so can you, if you google. And Mark Levine (who, BTW, was a Fullbright Scholar and worked as a Nazi-hunter for the DOJ) is not the only lawyer to have made those observations.

[BenBurch]

http://tinyurl.com/ly9psv

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

I can find you that, but so can you, if you google. And Mark Levine (who, BTW, was a Fullbright Scholar and worked as a Nazi-hunter for the DOJ) is not the only lawyer to have made those observations.

It was my sub-par Google-Fu skills that first led me into the land of conspiracy, so I like a little guidance now and again when dealing with unfamiliar topics. I can find plenty of hits for anything I search for; determining truth is more difficult.

The first hit says it best:

Conflicts of interest in Bush v. Gore: Did some justices vote illegally?

Quote:

This article cannot accurately be cited for the proposition that any particular justice did or did not violate conflict-of-interest law by voting in Bush v. Gore. A well-equipped law library contains all of the resources needed to determine how the law treats certain facts. But determining what the facts actually are requires more. In the field of history, that "more" is the relentless digging of historians committed to resolving a mystery. In law, it is a forum where witnesses can be heard and cross-examined and evidence can be subpoenaed. Ultimately, the question addressed by this article is not whether any of the justices violated conflict-of-interest law by deciding Bush v. Gore. Instead, the ultimate question is whether it is worth investigating to find out whether the press reports are true.

[BenBurch]

When the highest court in the land does not avoid even an appearance of COI that would merit an investigation, the battle is lost already. And go google up some other legal opinions on Bush V Gore. It was an abortion of a SC decision.

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

When the highest court in the land does not avoid even an appearance of COI that would merit an investigation, the battle is lost already. And go google up some other legal opinions on Bush V Gore. It was an abortion of a SC decision.

The more I learn about it, the more it offends me. That said, I would appreciate an opposing view.