Carter: Fair vote in Florida unlikely...again.

[Mercutio]

In a Washington Post editorial (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52800-2004Sep26.html), former President Jimmy Carter says, among other things, The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.

Reuters article on same (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6343264)

And just to prove it is an international story, the AlJazeera version. (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B419BBEA-B3BB-4055-A3E1-2E920033CBB2.htm)

[BPSCG]

I think we should make Jimmy Carter a JREF Honorary Troll, with oak leaf clusters.

[varwoche]

I'd interested if there is evidence supporting this claim of Carter's:
Several thousand ballots of blacks were thrown out on technical grounds in 2000 and a "fumbling attempt" had been made recently to disqualify 22,000 blacks -- likely Democrats -- but only 61 Hispanics who were probably Republicans, as alleged felons, he added.

[Skeptic]

Funny, Carter had no problem at all instantly declaring Chavez' elections in Venezuela "fair"...

Perhaps Gov. Jeb Bush should use Chavez's methods, like gunmen firing into crowds of opposition supporters, or government-controlled counting stations, for Florida to satisfy Carter's exacting standards.

Then again, this is the same Carter who praised Yasser Arafat as a patient man of peace, so...

[epepke]

Originally posted by varwoche
I'd interested if there is evidence supporting this claim of Carter's:

There is, and I've read news clippings, but I can't find a reference.

Several months ago, the State of Florida reviewed a list of possible felons but automatically omitted Hispanic-looking names.

[CBL4]

The most significant of these requirements are:
A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place. Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.

Uniformity in voting procedures, so that all citizens, regardless of their social or financial status, have equal assurance that their votes are cast in the same way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy. Modern technology is already in use that makes electronic voting possible, with accurate and almost immediate tabulation and with paper ballot printouts so all voters can have confidence in the integrity of the process. There is no reason these proven techniques, used overseas and in some U.S. states, could not be used in Florida. The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."

CBL

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by CBL4
The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."

CBL

Actually, the problems started when the overwhelmingly Democratic elections supervisors screwed up the votes, and the partisan members of Jeb's administration wouldn't certify the results...its called checks and balances.

If Carter can find enough non-partisan people in Florida to run an honest election, good for him.

As it stands right now, the same people are still pretty much in place, with the same problems guaranteed to pop up again.

[Linda]

I think Carter is right on. The complaints he lists have been evident in Florida for several months now, and add to the situation that in many Florida counties, we've gone to the touchscreen ballots that leave no paper trail, and I'm sure we're going to be screwed up again. The Miami Herald has been detailing the problems for some time now.

It's possible parts of Florida won't even have their power back on by election day, and a lot of precinct polling places have been destroyed, and who knows how many poll workers will bail out due to personal problems dealing with the hurricanes.

Glenda Hood may have been a terrific Mayor of Orlando, but I'm not happy with the way she's running her Secretary of State office.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by CBL4
The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."
CBL
This makes me curious how electoral commissions are structured in other states. The potential for unfairness/corruption is obvious.

[CBL4]

Actually, the problems started when the overwhelmingly Democratic elections supervisors screwed up the votes, and the partisan members of Jeb's administration wouldn't certify the results...
Followed by the Democratic appointed Florida Supreme Court supporting Gore. Followed by the Republican appointed US Supreme Court supporting Bush. Also, in Republican counties, the elections supervisors were just as partisan. Disgusting partisanship was shown at every levels.
its called checks and balances.Not really. Checks and balances implies shared authority. Bush won because the Republican had more partisans at the highest level.

The Florida debacle occurred because:
1) The margin of victory was much smaller than both the margin of error and the number of questionable votes.
2) There was no clear way to count votes.
3) There was no unbiased person or group involved.

Number 1 cannot be prevented and probably will not be repeated. Carter calls for a predetermined common vote counting methods and for a non-partisan electoral committee. These are necessary to provide legitimacy when the margin of victory is tiny.

CBL

[CBL4]

Originally posted by varwoche
This makes me curious how electoral commissions are structured in other states. The potential for unfairness/corruption is obvious.I was curious and I checked Oregon and Washington. In both of these states, the Secretary of State is the chief election officer. Oregon prevents the SoS from taking an active role in election campaigns as Harris did in Florida. This clearly does not prevent partisanship but makes it a little less blatant.

I do not think Florida is special in most ways. They just had the unfortunate combination of Harris and Jeb Bush having the most say in elections. When you throw in chads, butterfly ballots and a margin of victory of approximately zero, it was a recipe for disaster. Because of the 2000 debacle, Florida just receives more scrutiny when something goes wrong.

In a repeat of a case like this, I would prefer the league of women voters to any elected or selected official.

CBL

[Luke T.]

Originally posted by CBL4
I was curious and I checked Oregon and Washington. In both of these states, the Secretary of State is the chief election officer. Oregon prevents the SoS from taking an active role in election campaigns as Harris did in Florida. This clearly does not prevent partisanship but makes it a little less blatant.

I do not think Florida is special in most ways. They just had the unfortunate combination of Harris and Jeb Bush having the most say in elections. When you throw in chads, butterfly ballots and a margin of victory of approximately zero, it was a recipe for disaster. Because of the 2000 debacle, Florida just receives more scrutiny when something goes wrong.

In a repeat of a case like this, I would prefer the league of women voters to any elected or selected official.

CBL

Florida had the unfortunate circumstance of being a close race. I doubt any state would survive the same scrutiny Florida has been subjected to.

[Luke T.]

http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml

What you did not hear reported was that the Florida 2000 election was not a startling anomaly. National studies on the issue demonstrated ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2-3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent.

This same study revealed that the number of ruined ballots in Chicago was 125,000, compared to 174,000 for the entire state of Florida. Several states experienced voting problems remarkably similar to those in Florida. But the closeness of the 2000 election in Florida placed it dead center in the ensuing electoral storm.

The Commission's report failed to note that elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat-the one exception being an official with no party affiliation. In fact, most of the authority over elections in Florida resides with officials in the state's 67 counties, and all of those with the highest rates of voter error were under Democratic control.

Of the 25 Florida counties with the highest rate of vote spoilage, in how many was the election supervised by a Republican? The answer is zero. All but one of the 25 had Democratic chief election officers, and the one exception was in the hands of an official with no party affiliation.

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state's only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate.

And the felon list?

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by CBL4
I do not think Florida is special in most ways. Tend to agree with you. The 2000 election was a "perfect storm". Most presidential elections have one or more states whose contests are breathtakingly close. Florida wasn't the only one in 2000; New Mexico was also razor-thin.

But New Mexico alone wouldn't have determined the outcome, because Florida has a lot more electoral votes at stake. And, in the same way, Florida would not have mattered if, say, California had gone for Bush. And California would not have mattered to Bush if Gore had been running away with 350+ electoral votes.

But here we had a "perfect storm" of events:

1) An election where the electoral vote was so close that any of several states could tip it either way, and ;
2) A very close election in one of those states.

If Bush had won California, the vote-counting would have gone on in Florida, and there might have been recounts to determine congressional races, but nobody would have made a big deal over it. Historians would later note that Bush had won Florida by one of the narrowest margins ever, but it would be a freak-show kind of statistic, of interest only to Jeopardy contestants.

Might be interesting to do some research to see how many times there have been states where the winning margin was 1/100 of one percent or less. I'll bet Florida 2000 wasn't the first.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Funny, Carter had no problem at all instantly declaring Chavez' elections in Venezuela "fair"...

Perhaps Gov. Jeb Bush should use Chavez's methods, like gunmen firing into crowds of opposition supporters, or government-controlled counting stations, for Florida to satisfy Carter's exacting standards.

Then again, this is the same Carter who praised Yasser Arafat as a patient man of peace, so...

Nice diversion but.... nothing to do with Carters criticism.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Luke T.
http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml

Who is Glenn Beck?

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Luke T.
http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml



And the felon list?

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.
This whole 'felon' business is a crock, anyway. The idea notion is non-democratic and open to error and abuse.

The figures he quotes



The Commission completely ignored the bigger story: Approximately 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida on November 7, approximately 68 percent of whom were registered Democrats. The Miami Herald discovered that, "among the felons who cast presidential ballots, there were "62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists, and 7 kidnappers. At least two who voted were pictured on the state's on-line registry of sexual offenders."



And what of the rest? After you discard teh robbers, dealers, etc, the usual suspects, the vast majority of 'felons' may be excluded from voting for reasons that are usually reserved for the vast minority of offenders.

[Meadmaker]

I did some reading about the "felon list" problem, and it was a very real problem, but it is unfair to blame Katharine Harris for it.

The real problem occurred when people were erroneously removed from the voting roles because they were mistaken for people who were convicted felons. Ironically, this occurred because Florida had had a razor close Senate race a few years earlier, and it had been noticed that so many ineligible voters cast ballots that the election could have been swayed by the results.

So, the legislature passed a law saying that the voting roles had to be purged of felons. Oh, and one more thing, it had to be done by a private contractor, because everyone knows that private contractors are always more efficient and better than government workers. Right?

The private contractor did a lousy job. That's right, friends. This part of the Florida election problem was brought to you by inappropriate privatization.

As with the election itself, Ms. Harris was just following the law.


(For context, I voted for Gore, and in my mind there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he should have won Florida, and the Presidency. However, no one "stole" the election. Gore just had the worst luck imaginable. It was very close, and every break fell Bush's way. Bush won on a technicality, but he won.)

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Nice diversion but.... nothing to do with Carters criticism. But everything to do with Carter's qualifications as an expert on fair elections.

[rikzilla]

Originally posted by Meadmaker

(For context, I voted for Gore, and in my mind there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he should have won Florida, and the Presidency. However, no one "stole" the election. Gore just had the worst luck imaginable. It was very close, and every break fell Bush's way. Bush won on a technicality, but he won.)

Thanks for being the very first Gore voter that I've ever heard this from. Rational,...sane,....and you say you're a Democrat? :D I knew there had to be a few out there!

Actually my opinion of the mess of 2000 matches yours exactly..(except for the "Gore should have won" part) The official, (and unofficial) recounts don't support your contention. But I do believe you're right on the mark for putting it down to luck...Gore just didn't have any.

-z

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by rikzilla
Thanks for being the very first Gore voter that I've ever heard this from. Rational,...sane,....and you say you're a Democrat? :D I knew there had to be a few out there!

Actually my opinion of the mess of 2000 matches yours exactly..(except for the "Gore should have won" part) The official, (and unofficial) recounts don't support your contention. But I do believe you're right on the mark for putting it down to luck...Gore just didn't have any.

-z What he said. Meadmaker is incredibly sane, for a Democrat. Hell, he's sane by any standard. I think he's wrong about who won the election, since every recount, including the one the combined press services did months after the election, had Bush winning.

But he's still someone you can reason with, a trait worth its weight in gold around here.

[Brown]

Originally posted by CBL4
Followed by the Democratic appointed Florida Supreme Court supporting Gore. Followed by the Republican appointed US Supreme Court supporting Bush.I respectfully take issue with this. The Florida Supreme Court did not "support Gore." It issued decisions pertaining to recounting the votes according to Florida law. There is NOTHING in the Florida decisions that indicated that the Florida court handed the election to Gore, or that indicated that the ruling would have been different if Bush had been trailing by a handful of votes rather than leading by a handful.

By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively handed the election to Bush, and ignored dozens of its own precedents to do so. Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas bent over backward (legally speaking) to stop the recounts. There has never been any credible argument that the U.S. Supreme Court would have ruled the same way if parties were reversed. The partisanship shown by the majority was blatant.

But to say that the Florida Supreme Court was just as partisan as the U.S. Supreme Court shows that one has not read or analyzed the decisions of the respective courts.

[Meadmaker]

Thanks for the compliments, folks.

When I say "should have won" what I mean is that more people intended to vote for Gore than intended to vote for Bush. Unfortunately for Gore, some of them voted for Pat Buchanan, and some of them voted for two guys.

I think the outcome was fair and legal, but it wasn't what the voters meant to do.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Brown
I respectfully take issue with this. The Florida Supreme Court did not "support Gore." It issued decisions pertaining to recounting the votes according to Florida law. There is NOTHING in the Florida decisions that indicated that the Florida court handed the election to Gore, or that indicated that the ruling would have been different if Bush had been trailing by a handful of votes rather than leading by a handful.


Brown, I think allowing a selective three county recount was pretty damn partisan. Their decision itself was a big copout as they circumvented the law by saying what they were doing was in the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law.

Gore supporters were very good at painting the supreme court who stopped that nonsense as being partisan. The image has stuck. I think their portrayal won.

Mind you, its pretty obvious that Gore would have won Florida if voting methods had been so braindead simple that even a borderline retard could vote. I'm still wondering why we are making sure people have an IQ greater than a carrot before letting them vote.

If you voted for Buchanan accidentally in Florida 2000, I think its safe to say your best contribution to society is reporting to the soylent green factory and not in helping up pick our leader.

[CBL4]

respectfully take issue with this. The Florida Supreme Court did not "support Gore." It issued decisions pertaining to recounting the votes according to Florida law. ... By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively handed the election to Bush, and ignored dozens of its own precedents to do so."The reality is there were no appropriate precedents. Each group's actions were exactly as would be expected by partisan groups. I disagreed with actions by Harris, the Florida Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, Bush and Gore. All acted in partisan manner. I have little reason to believe that any of them would have acted the same if the people were reversed.

CBL

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Meadmaker
Thanks for the compliments, folks.

When I say "should have won" what I mean is that more people intended to vote for Gore than intended to vote for Bush. Unfortunately for Gore, some of them voted for Pat Buchanan, and some of them voted for two guys.

I think the outcome was fair and legal, but it wasn't what the voters meant to do. That may very well be. But the problem for Gore was that it didn't matter who the voter meant to vote for, or who he thought he voted for, but who he did vote for.

And you know what? On November 2, thousands of people will screw up their votes again. Despite all the improvements in voting technology that may be in place, despite the example of Florida 2000 that should warn them to be very careful filling out their ballots, despite all the publicity.

That's because idiots are allowed to vote. And there is no such thing as an idiot-proof system (http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml96/96011.html).

[CBL4]

[i]Originally posted by Corplinx
If you voted for Buchanan accidentally in Florida 2000, I think its safe to say your best contribution to society is reporting to the soylent green factory and not in helping up pick our leader.You can joke about this but this was one of the many items that led to the impossibility of knowing the winner. I did an analysis of the Buchanan vote and it was clear that the butterfly ballots did confuse people and if they had not existed the election would have gone to Gore.

I think that more people in Florida intended to vote for Gore than Bush but more people actually voted for Bush. I cannot think of fair or logical manner to address this issue.

In my dreams, it went like this:
1) Gore conceded after the first recound.
2) Bush asked his brother for a new Florida election.
3) Bush won the new poll and invited Lieberman to be his VP (giving the democrats control of the Senate). Then Bush ran a relatively unpartisan administration. BTW, I voted for Gore.

"You can say I am dreamer but I'm not the only one"

CBL

[Brown]

Originally posted by corplinx
Brown, I think allowing a selective three county recount was pretty damn partisan. Their decision itself was a big copout as they circumvented the law by saying what they were doing was in the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law.I'm not sure who you're referring to with "their." If you mean the Florida Supreme Court, then you have been misinformed. A review of the court's rulings (http://www.flcourts.org/pubinfo/election/index.html) shows no such partisanship.Originally posted by corplinx
Gore supporters were very good at painting the supreme court who stopped that nonsense as being partisan. The image has stuck. I think their portrayal won.It is not just Gore supporters. Many lawyers and court watchers were appalled by what the U.S. Supreme Court did. Law professors around the country have pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court's actions were contrary to well-established principles of jurisprudence, and you would be hard-pressed to find a single reasoned analysis in support of the U.S. Supreme Court's action. There are those who have said that only Democrats disagree with what the U.S. Supreme Court did, but such a view has no basis in reality.Originally posted by corplinx
If you voted for Buchanan accidentally in Florida 2000, I think its safe to say your best contribution to society is reporting to the soylent green factory and not in helping up pick our leader. I used to take this view, too. I did not think that the ballot was confusing, and I thought that those who miscast their ballots were either stupid or careless. I held this view until I saw photographs of actual ballots. In the sample ballots printed in the newspapers, the arrows on the butterfly ballots clearly pointed to distinct holes. But some of the ACTUAL ballots were not so well printed, and it was ambiguous at to which hole a particular arrow pointed to. When I saw what some of the real ballots looked like, I could easily understand how a person of average intelligence could be confused as to which hole corresponds to which candidate.

[Brown]

Originally posted by CBL4
The reality is there were no appropriate precedents. Each group's actions were exactly as would be expected by partisan groups. I disagreed with actions by Harris, the Florida Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, Bush and Gore. All acted in partisan manner. I have little reason to believe that any of them would have acted the same if the people were reversed. Once again, I respectfully submit that you are dead wrong. It is commonplace for cases that come before a court to differ from one another, but there nevertheless were a number of legal principles that the U.S. Supreme Court simply ignored. It is well-settled, for example, that when issuing a stay order:
1. The stay should not effectively decide the merits of the case.
2. The one seeking the stay must show irreparable harm.
3. The one seeking the stay must show a likelihood of prevailing on the merits.
The Supreme Court's stay order, which had the practical effect of stopping the recount while Bush was in the lead, ignored these three principles.

In the Supreme Court's final opinion (not the stay order), the Supreme Court ignored the constitutional case and controversy requirement as well as a wealth of 14th Amendment principles (among others). Justices Rhenquist, Scalia and Thomas, in particular, has long written opinions that the federal government should ordinarily refrain from interfering state matters. But here, all of that rhetoric was simply tossed aside, as these members of the federal judiciary sought to interfere in a big way with state recounting procedures.

You don't find this sort of disregard of long-held principles in the Florida Supreme Court's decisions. You are imputing partisan motives to this court apparently because you didn't like the result, without bothering to read or understand what the Florida court did or why it did it.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Brown
I'm not sure who you're referring to with "their." If you mean the Florida Supreme Court, then you have been misinformed. A review of the court's rulings (http://www.flcourts.org/pubinfo/election/index.html) shows no such partisanship.It is not just Gore supporters. Many lawyers and court watchers were appalled by what the U.S. Supreme Court did.

One of those documents has them condoning the three-county recount (versus the full state). I don't see how that isn't partisan.

Many lawyers and court watchers who voted for Gore were certainly appalled. I remember Alan Dershowitz going ballistic and foaming at the mouth on CNBC.

As long as they keep trying to claim a selective recount of 3 democrat heavy counties with the standards of a valid vote changed was non-partisan then I will keep saying BAH.

Mind you, I realize Gore would have won Florida if everyone voted as they intended to. I don't dispute it. I just dispute the Florida supreme court rubbish and the party line that they wanted "every vote to count" when their actions were the very opposite of that. Bah!

[shanek]

And moving on to other subjects, Carter also predicted that the sun will rise in the morning, that it'll be cold this winter, and that Microsoft will release at least 10 new security patches before the end of the year.

Hey, at least Carter's track record is better than Sylvia Browne's...

[Brown]

Originally posted by corplinx
One of those documents has them condoning the three-county recount (versus the full state). I don't see how that isn't partisan.During oral argument (http://journalism.medill.northwestern.edu/docket/00-949transcript.pdf), Chief Justice Rehnquist asked the following of Gore's lawyer: "I gathered from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Florida that the Vice President [Gore] did not ask for as broad a recount as the Supreme Court granted, but that it thought that to do just what he wanted would be unfair, and therefore out of fairness they granted the wider recount. Am I correct in that?" Gore's lawyer replied: "I think that's right. I think that's the way I would interpret it, Mr. Chief Justice." The Chief Justice was perhaps referring to the following language from the Florida court:In addition to the relief requested by appellants [Gore and Lieberman] to count the Miami-Dade undervote, claims have been made by the various appellees and intervenors that because this is a statewide election, statewide remedies are called for. As we discussed in this opinion, we agree.
...
Moreover, since time is also of the essence in any statewide relief that the circuit court must consider, any further statewide relief should also be ordered forthwith and simultaneously with the manual tabulation of the Miami-Dade undervotes.Perhaps you would care to direct me to the language where the Florida court denied statewide relief.Originally posted by corplinx
Many lawyers and court watchers who voted for Gore were certainly appalled. I remember Alan Dershowitz going ballistic and foaming at the mouth on CNBC.For a little more detailed analysis of why the U.S. Supreme Court went off the deep end, read "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President " by Vince Bugliosi.

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by varwoche
Who is Glenn Beck? Glenn Beck is one of the lesser known conservative radio talk show hosts. Think of a second-string Sean Hannity with a monologue.

[crimresearch]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by corplinx
Many lawyers and court watchers who voted for Gore were certainly appalled. I remember Alan Dershowitz going ballistic and foaming at the mouth on CNBC.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote Brown:
For a little more detailed analysis of why the U.S. Supreme Court went off the deep end, read "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President " by Vince Bugliosi
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Critics are a dime a dozen.

Derschowitz foaming at the mouth is about as significant as the sun coming up in the morning. He's the legal mind behind such notions as advocating the use of police torture and insisting that the 1st amendment right of association means that anyone can refuse to associate with police, prosecutors, or judges, thereby avoiding prosecution entirely.

Bugliosi is not too far away...

What's the matter, couldn't find Starr Jones' friend of the court brief?

The fact of the matter is, if you take every single law professor and so called expert commenting on that case, and total their years of experience as USSC justices, it still adds up to exactly the same number...Zero.

[Meadmaker]

Originally posted by BPSCG
That may very well be. But the problem for Gore was that it didn't matter who the voter [b]meant to vote for, or who he thought he voted for, but who he did vote for.


I fully agree. I think a lot of people took the wrong message from Florida, 2000. The message they took was that their vote didn't matter. On the contrary, the message they should have taken was that their vote did indeed matter. It mattered so much that a handful of people who meant to vote for one candidate ended up throwing the election to the other.

Take Gadsden county, home of the "caterpillar ballot". There, the presidential candidates were on two pages. A huge number of people voted for Al Gore on the first page, and someone else on the second. That means they voted for someone without knowing a thing about them. In fact, they didn't even know what office they were voting for, but they voted anyway. And, as a result, their guy lost. Their vote mattered a great deal, and they threw it away by being uninformed.

On the other hand, it was quite amusing to see a group of conservatives on the Supreme Court suddenly discover a whole new set of penumbras and emanations of the fourteenth ammendment.

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by Meadmaker
I fully agree. I think a lot of people took the wrong message from Florida, 2000. The message they took was that their vote didn't matter. On the contrary, the message they should have taken was that their vote did indeed matter. It mattered so much that a handful of people who meant to vote for one candidate ended up throwing the election to the other.

Take Gadsden county, home of the "caterpillar ballot". There, the presidential candidates were on two pages. A huge number of people voted for Al Gore on the first page, and someone else on the second. That means they voted for someone without knowing a thing about them. In fact, they didn't even know what office they were voting for, but they voted anyway. And, as a result, their guy lost. Their vote mattered a great deal, and they threw it away by being uninformed.
<SNIP>


And that lesson has been obscured in the 'shouldacouldawoulda' about the lawsuits...and here we are 4 years later with none of the real problems fixed...apparently because neither party wants them to get fixed.

[CFLarsen]

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

That supports the idea that blacks are being singled out:

Florida Census:
White 12,465,029
Black or African American 2,335,505
Source (http://florida.usl.myareaguide.com/census.html)

There are 5.3 times as many whites as blacks. But whites are only twice as likely to be put on the list.

[Jocko]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
That supports the idea that blacks are being singled out:



There are 5.3 times as many whites as blacks. But whites are only twice as likely to be put on the list.

So you're assuming. sans evidence, that blacks comprise a disproportionate percentage of the felon population.

Nice. Do you even know what a black person looks like, out there in the Scandinavian hinterland?

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by BPSCG
But everything to do with Carter's qualifications as an expert on fair elections.

You still haven't addressed his criticism.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
You still haven't addressed his criticism. I think others here - Luke T. in particular - have done an admirable job. My $0.02 is to add an observation I found on The Wall Street Journal's September 28 editorial page:The real spectacle here is that some Democrats are only too willing to exploit the painful history of black voter disenfranchisement for some short-term partisan advantage. And it just might backfire. Democrats played up the Florida fiasco in the 2002 midterm elections, repeatedly telling blacks that their votes hadn't been counted in 2000. Rather than being riled up, many black voters believed what they were told and stayed home.Can't provide link - requires paid subscription.

The elephant in the room that few people want to talk about is voter fraud - in particular, felon voting. Florida tried purging its voter registration rolls of ex-felons, to comply with the law which prohibits felons from voting, and when the contractor fouled up the job, the state was forced to discard their work - and got denounced as racist for their pains. As a result, 6,500 felons illegally voted (according to the Palm Beach Post) - more than ten times Bush's statewide margin of victory.

So, okay, maybe the ballots were a little difficult to figure out, and would require you actually look at the damn things before casting your ballot. But I have yet to hear any outrage from Democrats that so many felons were allowed to vote in 2000. Why is that?

[Rob Lister]

Originally posted by Jocko
So you're assuming. sans evidence, that blacks comprise a disproportionate percentage of the felon population.

Nice. Do you even know what a black person looks like, out there in the Scandinavian hinterland?

Jocko, that got me thinking. I hunted a bit on google and I was just about to give up. Regardless of the search terms I could think of most of the hits appeared to be less than uninterested parties. All of them quoted widely varying numbers using widely varying coloring (no pun intended). I finally happened upon

http://www.fcc.state.fl.us/fcc/reports/offenders/analysis.html

which provides what I think is accurate data regarding Florida, its felon population, and the demographics thereof:

Profile of Felony Offenders

A. Demographics

Approximately 86% of the surveyed felons were male and 14% were female. Fifty-nine percent of the felons were African-Americans and 42% were Caucasian. The remaining 2% were identified as Hispanics

Okay, so if true (and I don't know that it is) then the novice might expect that the purging is actually biased against whites, not blacks; the number of blacks and whites should have reflected that felon demographic percentage but it certainly did not.

Well, I'm mostly a novice but I'm open enough to realize that a little research would probably demonstrate that, while whites are twice as likely to be put on the purge list, it is only because whites are twice as likley to have registered in the first place.

Another explaination for the skewing is certainly possible.

[Brown]

Originally posted by crimresearch
Derschowitz foaming at the mouth is about as significant as the sun coming up in the morning. He's the legal mind behind such notions as advocating the use of police torture and insisting that the 1st amendment right of association means that anyone can refuse to associate with police, prosecutors, or judges, thereby avoiding prosecution entirely.

Bugliosi is not too far away...I get the distinct impression that you have strong opinions about Bugliosi's book, without having to take the trouble to read it.Originally posted by crimresearch
The fact of the matter is, if you take every single law professor and so called expert commenting on that case, and total their years of experience as USSC justices, it still adds up to exactly the same number...Zero. This is either a joke without a punchline, or a really stupid remark. It is simply untrue that one has to actually be a Supreme Court justice in order to comment intelligently upon what the Court did.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Brown
This is either a joke without a punchline, or a really stupid remark. It is simply untrue that one has to actually be a Supreme Court justice in order to comment intelligently upon what the Court did. Indeed.

Or maybe it's true that across the board the supreme court consists of individuals who are so profoundly wise that they are simply beyond reproach. [/straight man]

Applying this logic, there are precious few who are qualified to comment on the president or the congress as well.

[crimresearch]

So you have a distinct impression..so what?

This is a skeptic's forum..you can win a million bucks if you can prove that your 'distinct impressions' have any basis in fact or reality.

None of your other comments on this matter have.

If you could put aside your blinders for a few seconds, and get over your outrage that other people have the right to make up their OWN minds (instead of swallowing your beliefs, just because you want it that way), you might be able to participate in discourse, instead of your standard pattern of throwing out unsubstantitated assertions followed by ad hominem arguments and the completely ignorant assumption that no one who disagrees with you could have possibly examined the same material.

[BPSCG]

I'm convinced that in the year 2104, the last two surviving voters from the 2000 election will be throwing their canes at each other in the nursing home dayroom arguing who really won the election.

Maybe we should devote our discussion to looking to the future, and to how we should fix what went wrong, rather than the past, and how to change what can not be changed.

[DavidJames]

Originally posted by BPSCG
Maybe we should devote our discussion to looking to the future, and to how we should fix what went wrong, rather than the past, and how to change what can not be changed. I agree, but how do you fix what went wrong when there is a fundamental disagreement that something actually did go wrong (must less what it was). Brown, it seems to me, is simply trying to point out what went wrong.

[Brown]

Originally posted by crimresearch
If you could put aside your blinders for a few seconds, and get over your outrage that other people have the right to make up their OWN minds (instead of swallowing your beliefs, just because you want it that way), you might be able to participate in discourse, instead of your standard pattern of throwing out unsubstantitated assertions followed by ad hominem arguments and the completly ignorant assumption that no one who disagrees with you could have possibly examined the same material. There is a vast difference between holding an informed opinion and an uninformed one.

You obviously have a variety of opinons. Your comments, however, show nothing to indicate that you know what you are talking about.

You are entitled to your own opinions. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

You have expressed the opinion that none of my comments on this subject have any basis in fact or reality. That is an example of an uninformed opinion. As this thread shows, I have written about the writings of the United States Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court. I have quoted from them and have provided links for the benefit of those who wish read them themselves.

If you want to argue your point of view, fine, but you should back up your arguments.

[CBL4]

While I agree that the intent to vote for someone is not legally rellevent, there was still a question of what actually constituted an actual vote for someone.

I am, of course, referring to the infamous hanging and dimpled chads. There is no proper solution to which of these ballots should have been counted. It needed to be decided in advance and it was not. If not decided in advanced, it needed to be done according to previous recound procedures. If this did not work, it needed to be decided by some unbiased committee. If this did not exist, it should have been created. If it was not created, a coin should have been flipped. Anything would have been better than the disgusting partisanship shown.

CBL

[CBL4]

I defended Oregon but now I need to condemn them.

The Oregon Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury, was responsible for deciding whether Nader should be on the ballot this year. He is a Democrat. Guess what he decided?

I am not saying he was incorrect but just that him making the decision gives the impression of partisanship. He is not a campaign manager for Kerry nor was he a Kerry elector but there is still the obvious bias. He needed to come up a non-partisan way to make a decision.

CBL

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Brown
If you want to argue your point of view, fine, but you should back up your arguments. Don't hold your breath. I've participated in a number of threads w/crim and it is rare indeed when he posts anything other than unsupported opinion, typically in the form of incoherent, bellicose sniping. That he does so while clucking at others for their lack of skepticsm is the very epitome of hypocrisy. (Apologies for derail.)

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by Brown
There is a vast difference between holding an informed opinion and an uninformed one.

You obviously have a variety of opinons. Your comments, however, show nothing to indicate that you know what you are talking about.

You are entitled to your own opinions. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

You have expressed the opinion that none of my comments on this subject have any basis in fact or reality. That is an example of an uninformed opinion. As this thread shows, I have written about the writings of the United States Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court. I have quoted from them and have provided links for the benefit of those who wish read them themselves.

If you want to argue your point of view, fine, but you should back up your arguments.

Actually, you were the one making arguments, and you are the one who has repeatedly failed to provide examples of the precedential cases that you claim the USSC was bound by and ignored, clearly indicating that you know nothing about jurisdiction, stare decisis, et al.

All I've done is point out your fallacies. And I will do so again:

Your statement that you have provided links to your references is fallacious...you have refused to provide links to all of those cases you cite as proof of the USSC ignoring precedent.

And my 'point of view', as you call it, that the USSC is not bound by what lower courts and lesser lawyers wish had happened, is one that you would have already learned if you had bothered to get your information from someplace a little more reliable than denizens of the talk show circuit like Dershowitz and Bugliosi.

[Brown]

Originally posted by varwoche
Don't hold your breath. I've participated in a number of threads w/crim and it is rare indeed when he posts anything other than unsupported opinion, typically in the form of incoherent, bellicose sniping. That he does so while clucking at others for their lack of skepticsm is the very epitome of hypocrisy. (Apologies for derail.) I see what you mean. He's not worth paying attention to.

[crimresearch]

LOL!!!

So I've backed TWO trolls into a corner where they can't come up with reliable evidence to support their claims, and are reduced to parroting that the facts refuting them (which others can clearly see) don't exist...
along with the usual ad homs, avoidance, straw men, projection and other 'woo in the headlights' tactics.

Keep on suckling at the glass teat, apparently real world evidence is too strong for you two.


;)

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by crimresearch
LOL!!!

So I've backed TWO trolls into a corner where they can't come up with reliable evidence to support their claims, and are reduced to parroting that the facts refuting them (which others can clearly see) don't exist...
along with the usual ad homs, avoidance, straw men, projection and other 'woo in the headlights' tactics.

Keep on suckling at the glass teat, apparently real world evidence is too strong for you two.


;)

Say what you want about me, but I would never call Brown a troll. He is one of the most reasonable, polite and respected members here.

[Meadmaker]

Originally posted by CBL4

I am, of course, referring to the infamous hanging and dimpled chads. There is no proper solution to which of these ballots should have been counted. It needed to be decided in advance and it was not.

This is the big lesson I took from the Florida election recount problems. Florida law bent over backwards to try and count votes of people, which seems like a good idea until it was put into practice.

Their law defined a proper vote, but then it said it would accept anything that showed "the intent of the voter". Very bad idea. If you accept "the intent of the voter", then Democrats and Republicans will end up seeing very different intents in two different ballots.

You can download the comments from the media recount site. For every overvote and undervote in Florida, it has comments on what the ballot looked like. Some were bizarre. What do you do with the ballot that was marked with a write-in, for "Jeb Bush". What about the guy who marked the box for Gore and Lieberman, and wrote in Lieberman?

Then there were the people who marked their punch card ballots with a pencil.

The only reasonable way is to have clear, defined, standards, and if you mark your vote incorrectly, you lose.

Here in Michigan we have a good system that catches an awful lot of bad ballots. An arrow points to each name, but the arrow is broken. You fill in the arrow for the candidate you wish to vote for. When the ballot is done, you give it to the officials, and they feed it into a reader. It doesn't count the vote at that point, but it rejects it if there are stray marks or overvotes.

[TragicMonkey]

I don't understand why they bothered with the fuss of a recount in Florida at all. Why not just do the whole thing over? There would have been an even bigger turnout, and people would have been more careful about their chads.

You'd think both sides actually preferred to argue about murky results than to get the actual will of the people expressed...

[CBL4]

Originally posted by Meadmaker
Their law defined a proper vote, but then it said it would accept anything that showed "the intent of the voter". Very bad idea. If you accept "the intent of the voter", then Democrats and Republicans will end up seeing very different intents in two different ballots.I was unaware of this. Do you have link with exact wording? Did it give any examples? This law would make Gore's claim is much stronger.

BTW, I totally agree that it is a horrible law.

Thanks,

CBL

[CBL4]

You'd think both sides actually preferred to argue about murky results than to get the actual will of the people expressed...Both sides wanted to win. Anything that would provide victory would have been acceptable. I was going to say "Anything short of murder" but I am fairly sure that some of the people involved would have accepted murder.

CBL

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
I don't understand why they bothered with the fuss of a recount in Florida at all. Why not just do the whole thing over?

Because you need to be very, VERY careful about when you can "cancel" a duly-held election and "redo" it with the excuse that you just want to find out what the people "really want", for rather obvious reasons.

[Meadmaker]

Originally posted by CBL4
I was unaware of this. Do you have link with exact wording? Did it give any examples? This law would make Gore's claim is much stronger.


http://www.sonsofliberty.net/florida_supreme_court.htm

I typed the phrase "intent of the voter" into google. The majority of hits (4350) were related to the Florida election. The URL above is from the first web site that made the list.

It also links to legal analysis of the election rulings, showing that the Florida Supreme Court did not err in its decisions, and that the US Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore really was quite extraordinary.

Gore's claim is indeed quite strong. Especially when you consider that if you count dimpled chads as votes, Gore won by 131. A dimpled chad is usually produced when someone intends to vote, but for some reason does not push the chad through.

But, nevertheless, I don't think Gore had the election "stolen". I think the race was simply too close to call, and he had horrible luck. The Florida statutes on voting were in some cases ambiguous, and in other cases contradictory, and each person in the chain did what he or she could to try and sort out the mess.

Gore would have had a lot more sympathy from me, and I suspect from lots of other people, if he had not called for a selective recount at first. This was very clearly and unmistakably a partisan ploy hoping to achieve an unfair advantage. Had he called for a full recount right from the beginning, he might be President today.

But he didn't. I think he's a college professor, or something.

[crimresearch]

The Florida statutes on voting were in some cases ambiguous, and in other cases contradictory, and each person in the chain did what he or she could to try and sort out the mess.

...Gore would have had a lot more sympathy from me, and I suspect from lots of other people, if he had not called for a selective recount at first.

It didn't send a very good message to file a lawsuit demanding that black and Jewish voters from overseas have their clearly legible votes thrown out because they lacked US postmarks.

And once one side lunged for their lawyers in a 'win at any cost' bid, it was on...whoever came out on top at the end would always be seen as the product of lawyering, not of honest voting.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Jocko
So you're assuming. sans evidence, that blacks comprise a disproportionate percentage of the felon population.

I don't have to assume. It's a fact that blacks comprise a disproportionate percentage of the felon population:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/2000percent/FL_Black.jpg
Source (http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/FL_Black.shtml)

And, FYI, it isn't just felons who are excluded.

Originally posted by Jocko
Nice. Do you even know what a black person looks like, out there in the Scandinavian hinterland?

Yes, I do. Although it has nothing to do with the data, we have blacks here, although not that many. We have quite a lot in New York, where I lived for some years.

What is wrong with these numbers?

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by crimresearch
for the 3rd time, you racist troll...consider yourself on ignore with the rest of your racebaiting buddies

Source (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46197)

O......K.

[corplinx]

I think both sides fail to realize that the reason negros may be overrepresented in felon purging is because since they make up a disproportional amount of the felon population and have culturally significant names, white/asian voters will likely not get caught by those names.

As usual, there is a much more mundane answer than people are willing to accept.

[Ladewig]

Originally posted by Meadmaker
Then there were the people who marked their punch card ballots with a pencil.



I'm going to need to see evidence for this claim. The punch ballots I have used in two different (non-Florida) states had template holes that were far to narrow to put a pencil into. Furthermore, trying to decide which part of the ballot to mark without putting the ballot into the template would be purely a guessing game.

[Ladewig]

If one decides to add race as a factor when comparing the voter list to a felon list, it would help if the felon list included the option "Hispanic."

Knight-Ridder (http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/9298887.htm)
As The Miami Herald prepared its report, a Tallahassee judge ordered the Division of Elections to make the database public. Less than a week later, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and The New York Times reported that Hispanics - who tend to vote Republican - were largely excluded from the list because a criminal records database the state used to find ineligible voters doesn't use Hispanic as a race. Thus, many Hispanic voters with criminal records were excluded from the list given to local election chiefs, a striking lapse.


and don't overlook:

Citing two ongoing internal investigations, the Elections Division refused to allow The Miami Herald to interview other key people. Nor has the state fully responded to a Herald request for the documents used to compile the memo.

[Meadmaker]

Originally posted by Ladewig
I'm going to need to see evidence for this claim.

I don't have the URL, so if you want to find it, you might have to google a while.

The media recount was conducted by a research group from the University of Chicago. On their web site, you can download all sorts of data about the Florida recount, including a comment sheet for all sorts of ballots that weren't easily classifiable.

From what I could tell about the people who marked their ballots with pencils, and there were not many of them, the punch card was numbered. So was the ballot. Instead of sticking the card in the machine and using the stylus, these people took a pencil with them and checked off the spot on the ballot next to the person they wanted to vote for. It's fascinating stuff, seeing what people did with perfectly good ballots.

Also, the site has a program that you can enter various types of recounts and determine who won if those standards were used. For example, you can compare the "It counts as a vote if two corners of the chad are detached" method, versus the "It counts as a vote if sunlight is visible through the chad" method.

[CBL4]

Originally posted by Meadmaker
Gore's claim is indeed quite strong. Especially when you consider that if you count dimpled chads as votes, Gore won by 131. A dimpled chad is usually produced when someone intends to vote, but for some reason does not push the chad through. Thanks for the link. I was unaware of this but I am not sure how relevant it is:
"Where a ballot is so marked as to plainly indicate the voter's choice" and "clear indication of the intent of the voter". A number three pencil or pen mark in a box is plain and clear but it is a dimpled chad? I tend to doubt it.

I guess my position remains unchanged - it was an irresolvable problem and an unbiased group was needed to make the decisions. Unfortunately, none was available.

CBL

[Meadmaker]

Originally posted by CBL4
Thanks for the link. I was unaware of this but I am not sure how relevant it is:
"Where a ballot is so marked as to plainly indicate the voter's choice" and "clear indication of the intent of the voter". A number three pencil or pen mark in a box is plain and clear but it is a dimpled chad? I tend to doubt it.

I guess my position remains unchanged - it was an irresolvable problem and an unbiased group was needed to make the decisions. Unfortunately, none was available.

CBL

Agreed.

[Ladewig]

Originally posted by CBL4
an unbiased group was needed to make the decisions. Unfortunately, none was available.

CBL

There are a variety of unbiased groups capable of making those decisions. Neither party was prepared to turn over the task to such a group.