Here is why the Democrats had to shift the standard and start counting dimpled chads today, as well as one corner chads. What a bunch of phony balonies. I can't believe any intelligent person watching events unfold, does not see Gore's people trying to steal this election.
First it's selective counties, then it's shifting standards, then we have a coordinated effort to toss out as many military votes as possible, and now we have more and more shifting standards in order to help Al Gore win.
I cannot believe any court in the land would say this process is objective or legal. Today, they shifted the standard to dimpled chads. Tomorrow it might be dirty chads for all we know! How about oxidized metal fragments from the pin chads?? PATHETIC!
Article...Can hand counts offset Bush's 930-vote lead?
gopbi.com
By John Pacenti, Brian E. Crowley and George Bennett, Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 19, 2000
Now this is some serious number crunching.
With Republican George W. Bush's lead over Democrat Al Gore ballooning to 930 votes Saturday, the drool from the digit munching puddled among experts and party officials as they tried to guess whether hand recounts could change the outcome.
All are looking for any clues that point to whether recounts of ballots in three Democratic Florida counties will tip the scales toward the vice president or simply cause them to wobble a bit before again settling on the Texas governor.
One statistical guru said voters better grow some more cuticles for this nail-bitter, but the analysis doesn't bode well for the vice president.
"It's possible but doesn't seem likely," that Gore can erase Bush's lead, said Bruce Hansen, a economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Hansen, a non-partisan working with two other statisticians who are feeding numbers to the Democrats, said he finds that Gore should gain a little more than 600 votes after recounts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. That number is extrapolated from sample counts taken in each county last week, and could swing one way or another by as much as 200, he said.
Either way, Bush is the winner.
Democrats kept the spin positive, saying Bush gained fewer overseas votes than they expected. While 931 net new votes would overtake Bush, a Gore strategist said that the campaign wants a much bigger lead, "to make the outcome harder to challenge."
While there is little they can do to influence the counting of the ballots, Gore's team is keeping a careful watch on the count.
All this hand-wringing could be moot, though, if the Florida Supreme Court rules that Secretary of State Katherine Harris doesn't have to accept the new tallies from the recounts. The seven justices barred Harris from certifying the vote at least until they can hear oral arguments Monday.
The Gore campaign is arguing to the Supreme Court that Harris ignored the recounts based on an erroneous belief that a county can't hand count unless the machines are faulty. The Gore campaign says Florida law allows recounts whenever a county has evidence the recount could alter the election.
Broward and Miami-Dade counties so far are not counting dimples.
"The only hope for reversing the ballot would be the fact of the dimples," Hansen said. "It would be bizarre if the president would be selected on such a strange thing."
A clear strategy has emerged regarding the recount. Democrats hope to expand the number of questionable ballots put in play, while Republicans hope to keep as many of those votes out through objections.
One Bush adviser said they will continue to aggressively challenge "every single ballot" but that the campaign also is moving to a larger strategy. "We going to try our best to turn up the heat. We need to convince people that this handcounting is just not working."
All this crystal-balling was scoffed at by Jasjeet Sekhon, an assistant professor of government at Harvard University who specializes in statistical analysis of voting patterns.
"I don't think anyone could give you a really good guess," said Sekhon, who has studied the county's double-punched ballot statistics and votes for Pat Buchanan in connection with a lawsuit seeking a new presidential election.
Judge Charles Burton, the chairman the Palm Beach County canvassing board, also cautioned against making a prediction based on projections of the 19-vote gain by Gore in a hand recount of 1 percent of precincts on Nov. 11.
"I don't think you can take that 19 votes and say, 'Gee, it ought to be 1,900,' " said Burton, who noted the precincts in that sample were selected by Democrats.
The Democrats want to know. They hired Christopher Carroll of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard economist Lawrence Katz to project the votes Gore would net in the recounts in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Hansen has looked at Palm Beach County. Together the trio gives as close a picture as possible to the numbers game.
Hansen said he figures Gore will pick up nearly 300 votes in Palm Beach County, but that number could be as small as 209 or as large as 401.
In Miami-Dade County, the local Democratic Party Chief Joe Geller said Carroll told him to expect to pick up 125 to 225 votes for Gore.
If Broward County's pace holds up, the vice president will have a net gain of about 180.
Republicans were a little bit nervous with Bush's 930-vote lead. Some, such as Republican Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty said she preferred a statewide recount instead of just three Democratic counties -- a position that puts her at odds with the Bush campaign.
If anything is certain, the Democrats know they need to win the presidency on the under-votes. And if that doesn't work, strategists have said they might go after the over-votes -- ballots marked twice by confused ballots -- under the untested argument that most were clearly intended as Gore votes.
"It's just not fair that the Democrats have such a clear target," said one Bush adviser in Tallahassee. "It puts us at a big disadvantage. And there's really not much we can do about it at this point." |
