Hi Zeev Hed; Re the absentee split in FL...
My guess is that this year has a much higher rejection of absentee votes than usual, and it is because of stricter adherence to the law. In other words, since the vote counters are being watched carefully, they are being more careful. That said, the higher Republican survival rate is probably due to Republicans being more careful, on average, than Democrats in filling out those ballots. Among the military, the officers are more Republican than the enlisted are, and the officers are undoubtedly more careful in filling out forms (as well as better educated &c.)
Broward county did a full manual recount of something like 167,000 ballots (1/3 of the county's precincts) and only gave Gore an extra 59 votes:
cnn.com
At that rate, it looks like Bush won the election, fair and square, no need for any stealing, and even if Gore succeeds in only letting the more Democratic counties do recounts. According to the following link, Broward county uses Votomatic punch cards.
election.dos.state.fl.us
Note that the above link does have some errors, in that some counties marked as using punch cards have since moved on to more modern technology. But if Broward is an example of the kind of vote totals Gore is going to get, the election is over and Bush won fair and square. Unless the Broward counting started with the more Republican precincts first...
Gore took Broward county by 210,000 votes. The other counties where Gore did very well were Dade at 39,000; Leon at 22,000; Orange 6,000; Palm Beach 117,000; Pinellas 16,000; St Lucie 7,000; and Volusia 15,000. With the sort of rates Broward is showing, Gore will pick up well under 500 votes total in the recounts. Unless Broward was "high grading" their Republican precincts, it's over, and Bush won, fair and square (but with a good bit of squealing).
County totals in Florida:
tdo.com
As far as why the Republicans haven't taken the Gore campaign up on the request for a full state recount, maybe the reason is that one in the hand is worth several in the bush. Especially when the Republicans don't trust the Democrats to fairly recount 67 counties at the same time. Personally, I think they should have taken Gore up on it, if the courts would allow it. It's important to have the President be accepted as the legitimate winner by both parties.
-- Carl |
