Re: Youtube: Watch in horror as Republicans steal the NEXT election
- From: esponda2@xxxxxxxxx (F R)
- Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:46:29 -0400
david,
this sounds like a pretty evenhanded analysis of what hapened in 2000.
also keep in mind that the tv stations declared gore the winner in
florida even though the panhandle is in a different time zone and their
polls were still opened for an hour. this is an overwhelming republican
area. in addition, gore wanted to discount overseas soldiers who were no
doubt more rep than dem. he wanted to disenfranchise them because they
did't put a stamp on their letter when they voted.
my conclusion? both parties have no idea of what the "HIGH ROAD" is and
both would do anything within and somemes without the law to win.
see below:
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By Dennis Cauchon, US TODAY
George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed
ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first
full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes
? more than triple his official 537-vote margin ? if every dimple,
hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA
TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first
comprehensive review of the 61,195 "undervote" ballots that were at the
center of Florida's disputed presidential election.
The Florida Supreme Court ordered Dec. 8 that each of these ballots,
which registered no presidential vote when run through counting
machines, be examined by hand to determine whether a voter's intent
could be discerned. On Dec. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the hand
count before it was completed. That gave Bush Florida's 25 electoral
votes, one more than he needed to win the presidency.
USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers hired the
national accounting firm BDO Seidman to examine undervote ballots in
Florida's 67 counties. The accountants provided a report on what they
found on each of the ballots.
The newspapers then applied the accounting firm's findings to four
standards used in Florida and elsewhere to determine when an undervote
ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of the standards, Bush holds the
lead. The fourth standard gives Gore a razor-thin win.
The results reveal a stunning irony. The way Gore wanted the ballots
recounted helped Bush, and the standard that Gore felt offered him the
least hope may have given him an extremely narrow victory. The vote
totals vary depending on the standard used:
Lenient standard. This standard, which was advocated by Gore, would
count any alteration in a chad ? the small perforated box that is
punched to cast a vote ? as evidence of a voter's intent. The
alteration can range from a mere dimple, or indentation, in a chad to
its removal. Contrary to Gore's hopes, the USA TODAY study reveals that
this standard favors Bush and gives the Republican his biggest margin:
1,665 votes.
Palm Beach standard. Palm Beach County election officials considered
dimples as votes only if dimples also were found in other races on the
same ballot. They reasoned that a voter would demonstrate similar voting
patterns on the ballot. This standard ? attacked by Republicans as
arbitrary ? also gives Bush a win, by 884 votes, according to the USA
TODAY review.
Two-corner standard. Most states with well-defined rules say that a chad
with two or more corners removed is a legal vote. Under this standard,
Bush wins by 363.
Strict standard. This "clean punch" standard would only count fully
removed chads as legal votes. The USA TODAY study shows that Gore would
have won Florida by 3 votes if this standard were applied to undervotes.
Because of the possibility of mistakes in the study, a three-vote margin
is too small to conclude that Gore might have prevailed in an official
count using this standard. But the overall results show that both
campaigns had a misperception of what the ballots would show. The
prevailing view of both was that minority or less-educated Democratic
voters were more likely to undervote because of confusion.
Gore's main strategy throughout the post-election dispute was to secure
a recount of any kind in the hope of reversing the certified result.
Bush's strategy was to stop the recount while he was ahead. But his
views on how recounts should be done, in the counties where they were
underway, would have been potentially disastrous for him if used
statewide.
Bush and Gore were informed Tuesday of the new study's results. Both
declined comment. But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "The
President believes, just as the American people do, that this election
was settled months ago. The voters spoke, and George W. Bush won."
The newspapers' study took three months to complete and cost more than
$500,000. It involved 27 accountants who examined and categorized
ballots as they were held up by county election officials.
The study has limitations. There is variability in what different
observers see on ballots. Election officials, who sorted the undervotes
for examination and then handled them for the accountants' inspection,
often did not provide exactly the same number of undervotes recorded on
election night.
Even so, the outcome shows a consistent and decisive pattern: the more
lenient the standard, the better Bush does. Because Gore fought for the
lenient standard, it may be more difficult now for Democrats to argue
that the election was lost in the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court
rather than the voting booths of Florida.
The study helps answer the question: What would have happened if the
U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the hand count of undervotes?
However, it does not answer all the questions surrounding another set of
Florida ballots: the 110,000 "overvotes," which machines recorded as
having more than one presidential vote. These ballots were rejected by
the machines and were considered invalid. Some Democrats say if all of
Florida's overvote ballots were examined by hand to learn voters'
intent, their candidate would have prevailed.
USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Gannett and Knight Ridder newspapers
also are examining Florida's overvotes for a study to be published later
this spring. Overvotes contain some valid votes, mostly instances when a
voter marked the oval next to a candidate's name and then wrote in the
name of the same candidate.
No candidate requested a hand count of overvotes, and no court ?
federal or state ? ordered one. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the state
court's failure to include the overvotes in its recount order as an
example of arbitrariness.
Immediately after Gore conceded the election to Bush, The Miami Herald
began to evaluate what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had
not stopped the recount of undervotes.
Florida is one of the few states that permit members of the public to
examine ballots after they've been cast. The Miami Herald and the BDO
Seidman accounting firm began examining ballots on Dec. 18. USA TODAY
joined the project in January. The last undervote ballot was examined
March 13.
Florida law requires that political parties be notified of ballot
inspections. The Republican and Democratic parties took different
approaches to the three months of ballot inspections.
The Democrats took a hands-off approach. They rarely showed up at
election offices during the evaluation. "We want to see what you find.
It's not our role to be at the table with you," Tony Welch, spokesman
for the Florida Democratic Party, said during the newspapers' study. "If
we're spinning and the Republicans are spinning, people won't believe
the result."
He said at the time that the party expected the outcome would show that
Gore received more votes than Bush.
By contrast, the Republicans attended every ballot inspection. They
devoted hundreds of days of staff and volunteer time. The party delayed
cutting its post-election staff of field directors from 12 to 6 so it
could staff the ballot inspections. Some Republicans took meticulous
notes on the contents of the ballots. Others just watched. The
Republican Party of Florida published a daily internal memo called
"Reality Check," which critiqued the media efforts to examine ballots.
In an interview before the results were released, Mark Wallace, a
Republican lawyer assigned to critique the media inspections, said, "The
media appear ready to offer unprecedented liberal standards for judging
what is a vote. The appropriate legal standard is what was in place on
Election Day: cleanly punched cards only."
Before this election, almost nothing was known by the public and by
political parties about what types of marks appear on undervotes and
overvotes, which make up about 2% of ballots cast nationally. The
newspapers' study shows how both parties predicted incorrectly which of
these ballots would help them.
Democrats and Republicans noted that voter errors on punch-card voting
machines were most frequent in low-income and predominantly minority
precincts. Because these voters tend to vote Democratic, the disputed
votes were assumed to be a rich trove of support for Gore.
Likewise, both parties noted that the 41 Florida counties that used
optical-scan ballots, a system similar to standardized school tests,
tended to vote Republican.
Bush supporters attacked Gore for asking for hand counts in three
Democratic-leaning counties. If any hand count occurred, it should
include the Republican-leaning optical-scan counties, too, the Bush
supporters said.
The USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows that the Democratic
and Republican assumptions were largely wrong. The undervote ballots
actually break down into two distinct categories:
Undervotes in punch-card counties. In the 22 punch-card counties in
which BDO Seidman examined undervotes, 56% of the 35,761 ballots had
some kind of mark on them.
The study found that punch-card undervotes correlated less to race or
party affiliation than to machine maintenance and election management.
Counties that maintain machines poorly ? not cleaning out chads
frequently, for example ? have plentiful undervotes. The study shows
that when undervotes are hand counted, they produce new votes for the
candidates in proportions similar to the county's official vote.
For example, in Duval County, where Jacksonville is the county seat,
Bush defeated Gore 58%-41%. Among the undervotes, Bush defeated Gore
60%-32% under the lenient standard and by similarly comfortable numbers
under all standards. Bush picked up a net of 930 votes, including 602
dimples.
Likewise, in Miami-Dade, where Gore hoped to score big gains, he
received 51% of the marked undervotes, about the same as the 52% that he
got in the official count.
Undervotes in optical-scan counties. In the 37 optical-scan counties in
which BDO Seidman examined undervotes, one third of 5,623 ballots had
discernible votes.
The most common was when a voter made an X or check mark, rather than
filling in the oval properly. Other common errors included circling the
candidate's name or using a personal pencil or pen that couldn't be read
by the machine. Black ink that contains even a trace of red will not
register on many vote-counting machines, even when the mark appears pure
black to the human eye.
The study shows that these errors were disproportionately common among
Democratic voters. For example, in Orange County, home of Orlando, Gore
edged Bush 50%-48% in the election. But Gore won the undervotes by
64%-33%, giving him a net gain of 137 votes. That accounted for half of
the 261 votes Gore gained in optical-scan counties, which Bush won
overall by 53%-44%.
The study found that optical-scan counties are the only places where
Gore actually picked up more votes than Bush: 1,036 to 775 for Bush.
In the punch-card counties, where Gore had placed his hopes, his chances
of winning a hand count were washed away. On dimples alone, Bush gained
1,188 votes. When all the possibilities are combined ? dimples,
hanging chads, clean punches ? Bush outdid Gore by 8,302 to 6,559.
USA TODAY's analysis is based on accepting Bush's official 537-vote
margin. This figure includes hand counts completed in Broward and
Volusia counties before the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.
The newspaper also accepted hand counts completed in Palm Beach,
Manatee, Escambia, Hamilton and Madison counties, plus 139 precincts in
Miami-Dade.
These hand counts, which were never certified, reduced Bush's lead to
188 ? the starting point for USA TODAY's analysis.
The newspaper excluded these counties from its analysis. However, BDO
Seidman collected data in these counties, and they are available on
USATODAY.com.
In the end, Florida's presidential election remains remarkably close by
any standard: 2,912,790 to 2,912,253 in the official count.
In an election this close, the winner often depends on the rules and how
they are enforced.
frank
.
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