As Gore said today, who would want to be President if they legitimately didn't earn it? Since GW trails in both the popular and electoral vote, this is especially true of him.
Dave, don't be surprised if Bush wins the national popular vote when all the absentee ballots are counted. Gore leads by a statistically low margin as it is, so I wouldn't so stridently assume Gore has the popular vote.
As you know, manual recounts are subject to human error and bias in spite of monitoring. (Even monitoring personnel can be corrupt).
The issue about "machine vs. manual" recount that most people don't understand is that if there is a problem with the "chads" (punched holes) that causes some punches by voters to not be read correctly, there is a high likelihood that errors by machine would be evenly distributed for both candidates. Likewise for fill-in-the-box ballots.
Therefore, machine counts are the most fair because even if there are errors, machines show no bias. When you introduce humans into the recount, a whole pandora's box is opened.
We can assume also that implicit in Gore's insistence on a manual recount is the hope that his Democrats are less capable of following ballot instructions and that their hole-punching or fill-in-the-box skills are inferior. He's banking on the fact that most Democrytes are more inept than Republicans. What a backhanded insult to his own party. And he's also probably counting on some kind of bias from human interpretation. There can be no other explanation as to why he objects to a machine count. Of course, he's got nothing to lose and everything to gain at this point.
In the end, machine counts are the most equitable and he knows it--he's no dummy. He has less grace than Nixon did in 1960 - true character.
I used to have a lot of respect for Gore's character, even though I didn't agree with him politically. If he had the political values I believe in, I would have much rather had a person of his style and professionalism in office than Bush because, admittedly, Bush is a poor spokesperson and symbol (as a President is supposed to be) of conservativism.
But after witnessing Gore's behavior throughout this ordeal, his true vicious colors are shining loud and clear. He's a political pit bull. Grrrrrrr! |
