Joel Blau
David Shemano wrote:
Boies is being disingenuous. The statute provides that the country canvassing board should do a manual recount if there is an error in the vote tabulation "which could affect the outcome of the election." Now think about this. You are George Bush. You are ahead. Why would you ask for a recount, if the only way you can get a recount is if the error "could affect the outcome of the election," meaning that the recount would have to show that Gore would win? Therefore, under the statute, Bush may not have even been entitled to a manual recount in Republican counties -- which all goes to show the absurdity of allowing losing candidates to pick and choose county manual recounts in a statewide election.David Shemano-----Original Message-----No, it is not completely cynical. As Boies argued this morning on the issue of a broader recount, it is not the plaintiff's responsibility to protect Bush from the incompetence of his own lawyers.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Joel Blau
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 5:23 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:5829] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)Joel Blau
David Shemano wrote:
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
