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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bosco who wrote (77)	11/16/2000 9:35:33 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 644

Re: your first post, obviously it was unrealistic for the Republicans to expect the manual recount to be finished this week. Until the absentee ballots are counted, Gore has no idea how many votes he needs to "find". Re: the question of manual recounts of punch cards in general, I think the whole idea is a joke. It is ridiculous that any state permits the use of such antiquated technology in the first place, but since they do, they should have to live with the results. Obviously the results of the first recount showed that virtually all counties (except a few democratic strongholds, notably Gadsden, Palm Beach, and Pinellas (?) produced results within a few votes. For some reason some of the Democratic counties showed significant increases in the counts for Gore after the computerized count, with the odd result that some then had more ballots than certified voters. When you get to manual count, there are a host of potential problems. When punch cards are handled, even without intending to do so, the punch cards can be modified as chads fall out. If someone intends to modify the results they can do so by perhaps twisting cards or stressing them to encourage certain chads to fall out. Of course manual counts are also subject to interpretation questions (the whole pregnant chad, swinging chad, dimpled chad, etc argument) and when you introduce an element of subjectivity there is no reason to believe that the results will be reproducible or accurate. Finally, manual recounts also introduce the possibility of human error into the equation. Therefore I personally believe that a manual count would have a much much higher error rate than a computer count. Nevertheless Florida law apparently permits this type of chicanery, so I guess it should be permitted. Should PBians in particular be penalized for having an antiquated system? I hardly think that is a fair question. More likely the question should be Should PBians in particular be rewarded for having such an antiquated system? The reason I have reversed the question is that they are going to use there antiquated local system to change the results of a nationwide election. Is this really a reasonable result? I agree that the US Supreme Court will not want to get involved. It would be far less damaging to our country to allow blatant voter fraud to take place unhindered by the courts than it would be for the Supreme Court to be seen as politicized. The country recovered from the Daley frauds in Chicago, and they will recover from the fraud that is now taking place in Palm Beach. Therefore the absentee votes will come in, Gore will learn how many votes he needs to find, and the manual counts will continue until he has enough. Then Harris will refuse to certify the manual counts, but the Supreme Court will force her to do so, and it will end there. But as I say, permitting this fraud will be far less damaging to the country than it would be for the Supreme Court to get involved because that way people will still respect the Supreme Court as an impartial non-political institution of ultimate authority. In an earlier post on this subject I said that if Gore can steal the election through vote fraud, so be it. That is an American tradition, and while illegal and immoral, it isn't a constitutional crisis. I felt much different about the possibility that a candidate could start demanding new elections after the fact when they lose. Thus I am content to let the process work. Carl