Dan wrote:
>First, the first document ("buchanan.doc") states that Gore was listed
>under the Reform slate while Buchanan was listed under the Dems. That's
>just not true; see
><http://www.boston.com/campaign2000/vote/florida_voters.htm>.
I am very ashamed of myself. I have been privately complaining about what I consider
to be the large number of misleading things that are being bandied about on the
internet and by representatives of certain candidates and then I go and send this out
without looking carefully at it. As far as I know there is NO evidence that any of the
ballots in Palm beach mixed the parties up. When I read this quickly I probably
thought the claim was that voters had been mixed up about what party they were voting
for. I sent this out because of the numbers it contained which I thought were
important to consider in light of the implication I took from Alex's piece that the
Buchanan vote was not surprising given the size of the county. I apologize to people
on the list for circulating erroneous information. Many thanks to Dan for taking the
time to provide such a good correction and my apology again for making it necessary.
A number of people have written about why the Buchanan vote might have been higher in
Palm Beach and all the reasons suggested sound good to me. However, unlike Alex I'm
not convinced that there is no way to sort it out. If the double punched ballots are
disproportionately Buchanan-Gore, or if the large Buchanan vote in the primary does
turn out to have been mainly a function of the size of the county then there could
still be something important going on there. But since this is not obviously on the
topic of the list let me leave it there. -- Bill
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL IM: wtdickens
