And the Republicans have not strongly countered electronic recounts, but the manual recounts, where human manipulation and constantly altered standards for recognizing votes are the issue. Thus, the debate over dimpled ballots and hanging chads.
Manual recounts are indeed the issue. Gore wants the manual recounts, and Bush does not want them under any circumstances. I think on Election night both camps did the back-of-the-envelope calculations and came to the same conclusion: manual recounts would benefit Gore.
Issues of bias, differing standards, etc, are really side issues, since there are no circumstances under which the Republicans would have accepted manual recounts. Remember, Gore offered a statewide recount and Bush turned it down.
Manual recounts are standard procedure in very close elections and have been done in many other states without causing a circus. I put it to you that the chaos has been caused by Republicans, who have decried manual recounts as a zoo and done their best to turn them into a zoo. A statewide recount could have been done by now if it weren't for Republican delaying tactics (which were at least partly to blame for Palm Beach County missing the deadline). Their tactic is to delay and stall, while screaming "it's been three weeks!", "you've had recount after recount!", etc.
Again, these are anonymous ballots, ballots that could have been cast by non-citizens who were registered automatically under the "motor voter" law. No one knows who cast them, but only where they were cast.
Huh? ballots are supposed to be anonymous. Now you hold it against them? It is the job of the elections boards to let only legal voters vote. The presumption of the law is that ballots are legal unless fraud is shown. I suggest that the best way to tell if the ballots have votes on them is to look at them and use some common sense. This has never been done.
If you put a dollar bill in a change machine and the machine spits it out, it does not mean that you put in a counterfeit dollar. You might have, but you really have to look at the dollar bill to tell. |
