Here are the facts, more than you are ever going to want to know. Under
Florida law, any candidate may request a manual recount within a county within
the later of 72 hours after the election or when the county canvassing board
certifies the results to the Secretary of State. Upon the request, the
board has the discretion to do a 1% sample manual recount. If it does so,
and discovers an "error in the vote tabulation" that could affect the election,
then it must either (1) correct the error in the 1% and do a mechanical recount
for the remainder of the county, (2) have the Secretary verify the software, or
(3) manually recount all ballots.
The Secretary of State took the
position that "error in the vote tabulation" means a defect in the equipment or
software. Gore, and ultimately the Florida Supreme Court, took the
position that "error in the vote tabulation" includes any difference
between the mechanical count and the manual recount, which will always exist if
you use punch ballots, because of the problem of hanging chads. In
any event, Gore had the opportunity to request a manual recount in each of the
67 counties, or even only the dozens of counties that used punch ballots.
However, he was not looking for "defects" or irregularities in the equipment
(because none existed), he was simply looking for instances where the machines
were not counting hanging chads and dimples. The "undervote" rate in
Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade were not significantly different
than the dozens of other punch card counties, but they were the large Democratic
counties and the remaining counties were Republican strongholds.
Furthermore, after the Secretary certified the election, and Gore filed the "contest" portion of his challenge, he took the position that the court could only examine and recount the specific ballots that he (Gore) contested. Therefore, although he could have made the commonsense argument that there were over a 100,000 undervotes in an election decided by 500 votes, he made the argument that there were 13,000 undervotes in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, and the court should pay no attention that there were tens of thousands of identical undervotes in Republican counties. He made the same argument this morning to the Florida Supreme Court. Completely cynical.
In the abstract, I don't blame Gore for litigating under the circumstances. But the original question was why Republicans are not wishy-washy about the issue. I hope this explains why.
David Shemano
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of kelley
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 6:52 AM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:5780] Re: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem
Behavior (e.g., voting)
correct me if i'm wrong, but if memory
serves, there wasn't an option for a
statewide manual recount, at
first. there was an option for a statewide
machine recount. and
there was the possibility of challenging the result
in particular
counties. borehead's team (and shrubya's) already knew their
strategies
and the intricacies of state law well in advance, shrubya
probably more than
borehead because he was predicted to be in the boat
borehead found himself
in.
the first thing bore's team did was scour the state in search of
voting
problems. (TNR covered this quite thoroughly). they then
looked for
grounds upon which to ask for the manual recount. if you
know better, i'd
appreciate it you could point me to facts otherwise, but i
believe you have
to challenge on a county basis, since voting is a local
control issue. i
don't believe a statewide recount was an option unless
he had evidence of
some statewide problem. since elections are a
local affair, it would have
been unlikely that such irregularities would have
been rooted at the level
of the state. my county, pinellas, is heavily
democratic and there were
problems here. he could have asked for a
manual recount here, too. but i
think they chose not to because they
could only chose four. similarly, he
could have asked for hand recounts
where there was plenty of evidence of
racially motivated impediments to
voting, but he didn't pursue that tack.
in general, in the game of
politics, as you suggest, why should anyone do
something that doesn't keep
their advantage just to appear noble?
but, more specifically, given what
you said about being sympathetic, if you
were a pol who was convinced that
you would have won without nader taking
some of your votes, wouldn't you all
that you could do to turn things in
your favor, particularly if everything
you were doing was provided for
according to the law?
and, barring
that, were you convinced that you would have won had it not
been for the
weird votes for obscure third party candidates in two
counties, wouldn't you
have picked heavily leaning dem counties? wouldn't
you want to push the
stats back on your side, as fate seemed to have pushed
them to the other
guy's side?
and even absent those things that make you certain you are
the righful
winner, wouldn't you still wish to ensure that you won simply
because you
believe you ought to, particularly since the vote was so damn
close in this
state that a statistical blip in the other direction would have
turned it
your way.
i hate the guy. but when i think about it in
that way, his actions
certainly weren't stupid or extralegal or even grossly
unfair. i can't
imagine any reason why anyone in the game of politics
should be noble
since, as you say, that's simply giving the other guy the
advantage. in
hindsight, the option of a statewide manual recount seems
reasonable, but
at the time it simply was not clear that this was an
option--especially
since i think that one just doesn't ask the state to
recount, but has to
ask each county, unless the problem you identify
originates at the level of
the state b.o.e.
politicians are a slimey
lot, but most of them really think they're what
the world needs--in their
mind, they *should* try to win.
><<A comment - has anybody
met/seen/talked with/heard or heard of a
>single Republican who doesn't
stand solidly on Bush's side in this
>dispute?
>
>Why is it
that the Democrats are wishy-washy on Gore, while the
>Republicans are
hard-core for Bush?
>
>Perhaps they have a clearer
vision.
>
>
>Barry>>
>
>
>Since you
asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, so I can give
>you my
opinion. I actually was sympathetic to Gore for the first day
or
>two. The fact that he won the national popular vote, and was
only behind by
>several hundred votes in a state in which Nader received
92,000 votes, were
>hard to ignore. But then he lost me.
Instead of immediately requesting a
>state-wide manual recount, he asked
for a manual recount in four Democratic
>counties, and then started suing
the Democratic canvassing boards if they
>either refused to do a manual
recount, or refused to count the dimple
>ballots. He then turns
Kathryn Harris into Ken Starr, simply because she
>was doing her
job. (I am a lawyer and have followed this closely. She
may
>be a partisan, but she did nothing wrong and did not deserve the
treatment
>she received.) In other words, instead of playing fair,
Gore played power
>politics. And if he was going to play power
politics, then all was fair on
>the Bush side.
>
>I do not
know what Bush could have done differently. He was ahead -- was
he
>supposed to voluntarily change the rules to make victory more
difficult? If
>Gore had requested a statewide manual recount on
November 9, he would have
>had the moral upper hand, and I would have
supported him. But if he did
>that, he probably would have lost, so
he chose the "count every Democratic
>vote" strategy. He deserved to
lose after that.
>
>And that's how this bourgeois Republican
thinks.
>
>David Shemano