Bush v. Gore: The Endless Election

[Avatar4321]

Don't need to. I lived through it. I studied the news then. Don't need your spin fifteen years later.

Al Gore never won a single count.

Jesus told me Gore won! I'm 69 and I also followed it closely.

Jesus doesn't lie.

If you followed it closely then you know you are lying.

Are you saying Jesus lied to me?

Nope. You simply don't know Him.

 

[Lakhota]

Don't need to. I lived through it. I studied the news then. Don't need your spin fifteen years later.

Al Gore never won a single count.

Jesus told me Gore won! I'm 69 and I also followed it closely.

Jesus doesn't lie.

If you followed it closely then you know you are lying.

Are you saying Jesus lied to me?

Nope. You simply don't know Him.

Is that your Christian call to make?

 

[Avatar4321]

Don't need to. I lived through it. I studied the news then. Don't need your spin fifteen years later.

Al Gore never won a single count.

Jesus told me Gore won! I'm 69 and I also followed it closely.

Jesus doesn't lie.

If you followed it closely then you know you are lying.

Are you saying Jesus lied to me?

Nope. You simply don't know Him.

Is that your Christian call to make?

I don't need to. You've made it obviously clear.

 

[Lakhota]

Jesus told me Gore won! I'm 69 and I also followed it closely.

Jesus doesn't lie.

If you followed it closely then you know you are lying.

Are you saying Jesus lied to me?

Nope. You simply don't know Him.

Is that your Christian call to make?

I don't need to. You've made it obviously clear.

So that voice in my head ain't Jesus?

 

[Papageorgio]

Jesus doesn't lie.

If you followed it closely then you know you are lying.

Are you saying Jesus lied to me?

Nope. You simply don't know Him.

Is that your Christian call to make?

I don't need to. You've made it obviously clear.

So that voice in my head ain't Jesus?

It was the spirit of shitting bull.

 

[auditor0007]

The 2000 election, the most controversial in history, is revisited with testimony from key players who helped decide the outcome after botched results. Documentary.

Will air on CNN Monday night, November 2, 2015, at 9:00 pm ET.

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election

Executive Summary

Main

The Florida Recount of 2000 - FactCheck.org

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner | World news | The Guardian

Gore Won Florida - Democrats.com

Yes, Bush v. Gore Did Steal the Election -- NYMag

Who really won Bush-Gore election? - CNNPolitics.com - CNN.com

Gore's Victory - The Consortium

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Rolling Stone

Florida. How Soon We Forget. - The New York Times

Voter roll purge in the 2000 Florida election - SourceWatch

Florida’s flawed “voter-cleansing” program - Salon.com

This is history. We can't change it. Time to move on.

And just ignore Jeb Bush's role in all this? No thanks!

Worrying about the past is not going to change the future. Worrying about the future can lead to change in the future.

 

[Lakhota]

The 2000 election, the most controversial in history, is revisited with testimony from key players who helped decide the outcome after botched results. Documentary.

Will air on CNN Monday night, November 2, 2015, at 9:00 pm ET.

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election

Executive Summary

Main

The Florida Recount of 2000 - FactCheck.org

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner | World news | The Guardian

Gore Won Florida - Democrats.com

Yes, Bush v. Gore Did Steal the Election -- NYMag

Who really won Bush-Gore election? - CNNPolitics.com - CNN.com

Gore's Victory - The Consortium

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Rolling Stone

Florida. How Soon We Forget. - The New York Times

Voter roll purge in the 2000 Florida election - SourceWatch

Florida’s flawed “voter-cleansing” program - Salon.com

This is history. We can't change it. Time to move on.

And just ignore Jeb Bush's role in all this? No thanks!

Worrying about the past is not going to change the future. Worrying about the future can lead to change in the future.

Yeah, what good is history!?

 

[auditor0007]

The 2000 election, the most controversial in history, is revisited with testimony from key players who helped decide the outcome after botched results. Documentary.

Will air on CNN Monday night, November 2, 2015, at 9:00 pm ET.

Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - The Guardian

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election

Executive Summary

Main

The Florida Recount of 2000 - FactCheck.org

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner | World news | The Guardian

Gore Won Florida - Democrats.com

Yes, Bush v. Gore Did Steal the Election -- NYMag

Who really won Bush-Gore election? - CNNPolitics.com - CNN.com

Gore's Victory - The Consortium

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Rolling Stone

Florida. How Soon We Forget. - The New York Times

Voter roll purge in the 2000 Florida election - SourceWatch

Florida’s flawed “voter-cleansing” program - Salon.com

This is history. We can't change it. Time to move on.

And just ignore Jeb Bush's role in all this? No thanks!

Worrying about the past is not going to change the future. Worrying about the future can lead to change in the future.

Yeah, what good is history!?

Are we going to change it? Didn't think so.

 

[Lakhota]

Gloria Borger's CNN documentary was a dud. It didn't deal with any of the controversial issues such as voter purging and voter suppression and all the shady shit that Florida did to disenfranchise minority voters under Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris.

 

[Faun]

Oh my. . . . Some facts:

1. The Gore team only asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. If they were so concerned that "every vote be counted," why didn't they ask for a manual recount in every county that had a significant percentage of uncounted votes?

2. The Florida Supreme Court (FLSC), which was composed of seven Democrats, extended the seven-day deadline set by the legislature for certification. The law set a specific deadline for certifying election results. Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that state legislatures are to determine the time, manner and place of elections. State supreme courts do not have that authority. The FLSC overstepped its authority and acted as a legislature, and therefore its decision to order a statewide recount deserved to be overturned. See:

http://reason.com/0103/fe.re.election.shtml

3. The FLSC's decision to order a statewide recount of undervotes in Florida was decided by a narrow 4-3 margin. In other words, even three of the seven Democrats who comprised the FLSC dissented, including the chief justice of the court, Charles Wells. Chief Justice Wells wrote a stinging dissent, in which, among other things, he said the court's ruling had no foundation in Florida law:

I believe that the majority's decision cannot withstand the scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the United States Constitution. . . . The majority's decision to return this case to the circuit court for a count of the undervotes from either Miami-Dade County or all counties has no foundation in the law of Florida as it existed on Nov. 7, 2000, or at any time until the issuance of this opinion. . . . The prolonging of judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis. . . . I have to conclude that there is a real and present likelihood that this constitutional crisis will do substantial damage to our country, to our state and to this court as an institution.​

4. Seven of the nine SCOTUS justices agreed that the statewide recount was constitutionally problematic. Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter wanted to give Florida six more days to complete the statewide recount, but they agreed there were equal protection problems with the recount process. They voted with the minority because the five conservatives insisted on demanding that the statewide recount be completed by December 12. As Joseph Farrah observes,

To remind everyone what happened in that historic ruling, the court ruled 7-2 that the recount system in place did not meet constitutional muster. Seven justices in all found an equal protection violation. Five found three violations of federal law.​

Where the court was split more closely (5-4) was on the remedy. Only five justices agreed that recounts must stop by Dec. 12, the state of Florida's deadline for certifying elections. Two other justices, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, would have given the recounts six more days because Dec. 18 was the federal deadline for certifying the list of electors. ("Setting the Clintons Straight," WorldNetDaily, November 7, 2002, Setting the Clintons straight)​

5. The FLSC did not order a statewide manual recount of all uncounted votes, but only a recount of the undervotes, i.e., the ballots that didn't register a vote when they were read by vote-counting machines. Berkowitz and Wittes explain:

It was not a full manual recount of the presidential vote. Nor was it a full manual recount of undamaged ballots that failed to yield a valid, machine-readable vote for president, as would appear to have been required by the Florida Supreme Court's own principle that all votes should be counted in pursuit of a "clear indication of the intent of the voter." Rather, the Florida court ordered a manual recount of a subset of the so-called nonvotes, the undervotes, which are ballots (estimated to number about 60,000) with no machine-readable vote for president. Despite the objections raised by Florida chief justice Charles T. Wells in his dissent, indeed without explanation, the majority excluded from the recount overvotes, an entire class of undamaged ballots (estimated to number about 110,000) that were invalidated because machines detected multiple votes for president. And yet, like the undervotes, they too may have contained (and we now know did contain) discernible choices. ("The Professors and Bush v. Gore")​

6. It wasn't Bush's fault that the four Gore-selected counties couldn't complete their manual recounts prior to the statutory certification deadline. One of the counties that Gore selected, Miami-Dade County, didn't even begin its manual recount until after the statutory certification deadline had passed. Then, Miami-Dade County suspended its manual recount five days after it started it. Another one of the four Gore-selected counties, heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, failed to complete its manual recount even by the extended deadline set by the FLSC because it chose to only work half days and to take Thanksgiving Day off! It wasn't Bush's fault that the Democratic election officials in Palm Beach County were so lazy and inefficient even though the outcome of the presidential election was on the line.

7. The Gore campaign targeted military ballots for rejection on any technical grounds no matter how trivial. Gore lawyer Mark Herron sent a five-page letter on November 15, 2000, to Democratic attorneys throughout Florida, detailing how to challenge military absentee ballots. This certainly didn't seem to be in keeping with the Gore team's battle cry of "count all the votes" and "every vote should be counted."

8. One of the Gore-selected counties, Broward County, changed the criteria for determining votes from manually counted ballots in the middle of the first manual recount. Broward County began their recount using a strict standard for determining votes, which primarily required clear punches or chads hanging by one or two corners in order for a vote to be counted. About midway through the process, the standard was changed to a more liberal standard, which allowed dimples and pregnant chads to be considered primary evidence of voter intent. This change gave Gore an extra 884 votes. Changing the rules in the middle of the game is not usually viewed as fair or proper.

9. Another one of the Gore-selected counties, Palm Beach County, also changed vote-counting standards during the manual recounts. Before the recount got under way, the canvassing board set a hard, clear policy on "how to judge invalid ballots." According to those rules, a vote could be counted from a ballot only if the ballot's chads had two or three corners disconnected. But, just hours into the recount, the canvassing board, which was controlled by Democrats, changed the standard to a more liberal one in which only one corner of the chads had to be disconnected.

10. One can make the perfectly valid argument that Bush won the Florida election among votes that were properly and legally cast. It wasn't his fault that so many Democratic voters in Palm Beach County couldn't figure out the butterfly ballot, which, after all, was designed by a Democrat. Nor was it Bush's fault that so many Gore voters made extra marks on their ballots, which caused them to be disqualified (as overvotes).

11. There would have been more time for a court-ordered recount in the contest phase if Gore hadn't challenged the certification of the election results, as Katherine Harris points out in her new book, Center of the Storm. Some of Gore's legal advisers urged him not to challenge the certification but to focus on the contest phase that would follow certification. If Gore had done this, there may have been enough time to complete the manual recounts. But, Gore chose to listen to his political advisers rather than his legal advisers. Gore's political advisers were afraid that if Bush were "certified" as the winner, this would create the impression that the election was over. So Gore chose to contest the certification. He failed, and in the process he used up precious time that could have been used for the manual recounts. That wasn't Bush's fault either.

12. Bush may have received several thousand more votes in Florida if the TV news networks had not prematurely projected Florida as going to Gore even though he had only a razor thin lead and even though the polls in the heavily Republican Florida panhandle region were still open. The Florida panhandle is in the central time zone, an hour behind the rest of the Florida. There were reports of long lines at the polls in that area, and of people leaving when they heard the state had been called for Gore. Some analysts suggest the media's premature projection of a winner in Florida may have cost Bush as many as 10,000 votes from the panhandle. Other analysts put the number at around 5,000 votes. If this is true, the recounts may never have been requested in the first place because Bush would have had a much larger lead from the first machine count.

13. Bush may have won a statewide manual recount. An independent accounting firm studied over 20,000 of the Florida undervotes and concluded a manual recount of the undervote ballots would not have produced a Gore victory. Studies have also shown that Bush would have won if the first manual recounts had been allowed to continue (i.e., if the recounts in the four Gore-selected counties had been completed). Another study found that Bush would have won in three of nine recount scenarios. In an article titled "Under the Two Most Likely Scenarios, Bush Wins Florida," Palm Beach Post staff writers said,

Al Gore was doomed. He couldn't have caught George W. Bush even if his two best chances for an official recount had played out, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of 175,010 uncounted Florida ballots from last November's chaotic presidential election.​

Let's start with your first item...

1. The Gore team only asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. If they were so concerned that "every vote be counted," why didn't they ask for a manual recount in every county that had a significant percentage of uncounted votes?​

By law, Gore could seek recounts only in counties where there could be enough votes to change the outcome of the election. By what law could Gore have asked for recounts in counties Bush won which couldn't contain enough uncounted votes to overturn the election?

102.166

(1) If the second set of unofficial returns pursuant to s. 102.141 indicates that a candidate for any office was defeated or eliminated by one-quarter of a percent or less of the votes cast for such office, that a candidate for retention to a judicial office was retained or not retained by one-quarter of a percent or less of the votes cast on the question of retention, or that a measure appearing on the ballot was approved or rejected by one-quarter of a percent or less of the votes cast on such measure, the board responsible for certifying the results of the vote on such race or measure shall order a manual recount of the overvotes and undervotes cast in the entire geographic jurisdiction of such office or ballot measure. A manual recount may not be ordered, however, if the number of overvotes, undervotes, and provisional ballots is fewer than the number of votes needed to change the outcome of the election.​

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

 

[Faun]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

"...Miami family held him captive..."

Lol

See, that's why Gore lost. Cuban Americans DESPISE your heroes Fidel and Che.

 

[Papageorgio]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

Didn't do him any good to pander, he lost anyway. He was pretty transparent to the informed voters.

 

[Faun]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

"...Miami family held him captive..."

Lol

See, that's why Gore lost. Cuban Americans DESPISE your heroes Fidel and Che.

Who knows what you call holding someone against the law if not hostage?

At any rate, according to you, the Cubans community stabbed Gore in the back after he defended them.

 

[Staidhup]

Gore lost. If one wants to relive the past go ahead, retreat to your basement and type away.

 

[Lakhota]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

Didn't do him any good to pander, he lost anyway. He was pretty transparent to the informed voters.

Yeah, those "informed" voters who put Bush in the White House. That's funny.

 

[Papageorgio]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

Didn't do him any good to pander, he lost anyway. He was pretty transparent to the informed voters.

Yeah, those "informed" voters who put Bush in the White House. That's funny.

At least we weren't dumb enough to put Gore into office, that would have been a disaster.

 

[Faun]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

Didn't do him any good to pander, he lost anyway. He was pretty transparent to the informed voters.

Yeah, those "informed" voters who put Bush in the White House. That's funny.

At least we weren't dumb enough to put Gore into office, that would have been a disaster.

Couldn't do worse than Bush, the president with the lowest job approval ever recorded.

 

[Lakhota]

I know! We'll send armed troops into Little Havana on the holiest Christian weekend to kidnap and kid and send him back to Fidel! What could possibly go wrong?

^ Reason #1 Why Gore lost Florida

Too fucking stupid.

Aside from the fact that Elian was ordered to be returned to his father by court order, which Reno carried out after Elian's Miami family held him captive...

Gore was on the Miami family's side on the matter...

Elian Gonzalez saga still vivid for many, 10 years later

Vice President Al Gore, who was running for president at the time, broke ranks with the Clinton administration, calling for the matter to be settled in Florida's family court system.

Gore was accused of pandering to Florida's Cuban-American voters, because the state was a battleground state in the presidential vote.​

Didn't do him any good to pander, he lost anyway. He was pretty transparent to the informed voters.

Yeah, those "informed" voters who put Bush in the White House. That's funny.

At least we weren't dumb enough to put Gore into office, that would have been a disaster.

Actually, you weren't smart enough.