"Why didn't their (WA state) recount degenerate into a blizzard of lawsuits?"
Was WA state's recount instigated because of an automatic recount or a candidate requested recount? You seem sure that FL was a mess because of the officials. I think it was a mess because Al Gore and the democrats purposely threw out a million things in the hope that one would stick. Did Jackson and Wexler go to WA and try to start riots on behalf of the democratic party? I didn't here about it if they did. Also, I'll give you the point that WA state is probably more organized and structured than FL. Just my impression, nothing to back it up.
The automatic recount in FL went off fairly well, imo. It closed the gap somewhat. Al should have been a gentleman and conceded once the overseas ballots were added to the revised count. The country, our economy and Al Gore himself would be in much better shape imo. Instead he wanted to do some selective things that would only help HIS total. If you don't believe he did that, I would like to know what you thought he did to make sure all of GWB's "uncounted" votes were accounted for. A lot of people (that seems to be persuasive with you) felt that he actually tried to supress some votes that may have been for GWB. What do you think?
"were over 15% of the total due to bad ballot design"
Where do you get this statistic? I saw a lot of statistical comparisons at the time, and there were situations throughout the U.S. that were similar to the FL under/overvotes. Where were they over 15% specifically?
"Did anyone prove that Votomatics had no errors -- that every card in the machine-reject piles was the result of voter error?"
This is America, Nadine. Maybe you want our liberties (do the machines have liberties in addition to their biases) to change (or be taken away), but I like that you have to prove something happened, not prove that it did not. Are you with the IRS? <g>
"Second, there's no way to prove that person who committed the grave error of leaving a hanging chad was the same person whose vote failed to be tallied when the chad gummed up the machine"
That's a good point. Doesn't favor a dem or a repub though. Also doesn't qualify for the reasons the law allowed for a manual recount. Did chad's gum up the machines, btw? You are stating that as if it is a fact. The machine that would be "gummed up" would be the counting machines, not the vot-a-matic, right?
"some Florida voters did have the chance to vote over, because their precincts had equipment that told them if their ballot was no good "
We all have equipment that tells us wheter our ballots were no good. Eyes, sight, touch, polling officials, etc. Someday America may have a piece of equipment that can tell us about all of our mistakes. I hope I am dead by then.
btw, if the equipment that checked our ballots did not work properly, who would be responsible for that? Would Al have sued the actual machines, or the manufacturers of the machines? Possibly the people who purchased the machines. That may depend on whether they were demo or repub I guess.
"The reject rate of OpScan counties without it was 15%"
Again, that sounds high. Please provide the back-up. That actually means that OpScan machines are LESS accurate than the vot-a-matic (unless they had special options to check for voter error). What percentage of OpScan machines had the outrageous error rates?
Also - you make too many assumptions about what I approve and dis-approve of. I do not approve of machines with error rates of 15%+. On the other hand I do not believe that they have that high of an error rate. If they do not that high of an error rate, then the demographics may have something to do with it, which hurts the poor county/vot-a-matic, rich county/Op-Scan argument.
"So if they violated equal protection in the recount, how come they were okay in the count? If they were legal then, are they still legal now?"
The count was conducted by election rules that were in place at the time of the election. The re-count rules were not. If something was done incorrectly during the ORIGINAL count (your assertion is the 1st I have heard), then it should have gone through the courts like every other issue the dems thought up.
"Let me see if this restates your view. For the FSC to order a statewide recount without a specific standard beyond "intent of the voter" violated equal protection"
My position is that through a lot of legal wrangling with some of the best lawyers in the country Al Gore wanted to modify his vote count to overtake GWB's narrow lead. Through the legal wrangling back and forth, the case was ultimately settled at the highest level, with equal protection sighted as part of the justification (and rightly so, imo).
"So in your opinion the FSC had no power to order a statewide recount of a contested election under any circumstances whatsoever?"
Forget my opinion in this case. The facts are that by a 9-0 decision the US SC said that the FL SC made a bad ruling (do you agree?). They (FL SC) then built upon that bad decision (without justifying it to the US SC as requested) and mandated a hastily crafted state-wide recount that nobody asked for, and that had some serious equal protection issues. Again, SEVEN of the US SC ruled this way. Why won't you answer which ones were political iyo and which ones were not. I can only assume that you feel the 2 dissenting opinions were the only non-political decisions made by the US SC. That seems pretty hard to argue to me. So far, you have not even tried.
"Kinda renders moot the laws concerning the court's power to fashion remedies in contested elections"
NO, it does not. You seem to think (as many dems do) that the courts powers to fashion remedies exceed their obligation to follow the U.S. constitution.
Remember that all of the courts under the FL SC ruled opposite of them, 3 of them dissented on the controversial second decision (note that they were the 3 with the most senior members, including the chief justice), and SEVEN of the 9 US SC justices ruled against them.
These posts are getting a bit long, but i would like to continue. Is it ok to try just one point at a time, then we will see if we can agree on that or not, then see where we stand at the end. If this is ok with you, I would like to see your position regarding how the US SC decisions (9-0 & 7-2) were political. I don't know how else I can state my position on that. |
