Well, ladies and gentlemen, Gore will probably be our next president.
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My projection of a net gain of 620 votes for Gore in Palm Beach county here:
Message 14787585
was actually conservative, since the sample of 1/100 th of the votes produced a net gain for Gore of 19 votes. If the sample was a representative sample of the county, then the board member's projection of a 1900 vote net gain for Gore should be pretty close to the eventual result (19*100=1900).
So, if the Bush challenge to the hand recount fails in the federal courts (a certainty, IMO), and if a now almost certain attempt by Bush to extend the hand recount to all Florida does not succeed (probable, IMO, since it will be changing election rules after the fact), Gore will become president.
Hand recounts in other close states will not reverse the outcome, unless there are substantial outstanding absentee ballots in those states. In any case, I think that Gore would fight tooth and nail such recounts, if they violate those states' recount rules, since an acceptance of recounts in those states in spite of their rules would open Florida to a universal recount.
In retrospect, it seems that Gore's threat of lawsuits and encouragement of private lawsuits to rectify the PB county ballot problem and his obvious loss of numerous votes because of it, may have been designed to gain moral legitimacy for this partial vote recount. The partial recount favoring Gore is morally wrong, but it does follow all the rules. The PB ballot problem favoring Bush is morally wrong too, but cannot be counteracted without breaking the rules.
It seems to me that Daley and Christopher have thoroughly outmaneuvered Jeb and Baker and successfully neutralized the stupidity of the PB Democrat official that designed that county's disastrous ballot. Also, it seems to me that Gore is not as dull as he seems. He was carefully plotting strategy while Bush was giving media interviews and "preparing for the transition."
Kyros |
