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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Bakunin who wrote (85598)	11/16/2000 3:33:50 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 132070

mb - I'm afraid that, in this instance, you are being blinded by your political desires. Please read the Brady paper or the Harvard paper; I think you will find their methods sound and conclusions irrefutable. I HAVE looked at them, and I have no complaints with their methods or their conclusions. It is their premises that are unsupported. They themselves qualify their entire studies that they are not applicable in the case of a special relationship between Buchanan and Palm Beach county. nationalreview.com "...Actually, the whole premise that politicians should receive votes at similar rates across all counties is suspect. Some counties simply have more Democrats or Republicans or Reform Party members than other counties. Doesn't one expect that strong Democratic counties like Palm Beach will give Gore a greater percentage of the votes than not so Democratic counties? Party membership in the different counties is just one way of measuring different levels of support. It turns out that not only is Palm Beach a heavily Democratic county, it is also a heavily Reform party, American Reform party, and Independent party county, with over 16,695 registered members in those parties. Buchanan and Gore still get "too many" votes, and Bush still gets "too few," though the differences are smaller than the ones obtained using the Gore campaign's method. One could probably "explain" the Buchanan vote even better by spending the time sifting through data on population statistics and past voting behavior. Take for example the fact that Buchanan lives part of the year in Palm Beach County and has many close friends there. Or, what about the almost 9,000 votes he received in Palm Beach in the 1996 Republican primary? ..." Regards, Don

To: Michael Bakunin who wrote (85598)	11/19/2000 11:30:07 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 132070

mb - ...I'm afraid that, in this instance, you are being blinded by your political desires. Please read the Brady paper or the Harvard paper; I think you will find their methods sound and conclusions irrefutable. The question dealing with the number of Buchanan and overvote ballots in Palm Beach depends on what hidden variables and special conditions there may be that could increase the Buchanan vote. These factors do exist, but are an indication of uncertainty, not necessarily reality. Having dug out the overvote totals and the precinct level totals and demographics, there is clearly a higher level of Buchanon votes in the extremely highly Democratic precincts, both the elderly white and the all but completely black precincts. Both also have a high level of both presidential and senatorial overvotes. Biasing everything in the Gore direction, the following is a sequential description of what would have happened in precinct 66. The question is whether ALL of the steps are credible. 1. Assuming that all overvotes, Buchanan and Gore votes were really Gore votes, then 97.2% (1460 of 1502) would be Gore votes before the card is actually punched. 2. Of the 1460 Gore votes, 82.4% are actually punched for Gore, and 17.6% (257) are punched for Buchanan. 3. Of these 257 Buchanon punches, 6.6% (17) are left alone to become recorded Buchanon votes and 93.4% (240) have Gore punches added to try to correct the situation, but only really result in the ballot becoming a Presidential overvote. These ballots are not replaced but remain in the recorded vote. The issue is whether this all hangs together in a credible whole. First, fully 17.6% of Gore voters are confused enough to punch 257 votes for Buchanan. Secondly, 93.4% (240) of these confused voters are alert enough to catch their own problem before leaving the voting booth. Thirdly, these alert proofreaders correct their problem by adding a Gore punch, paying no attention to the fact that they have now voted twice for President and do not ask for a replacement ballot. In summary, to accept the above requires a belief in an alternating sequence of confusion and alertness of the same voters. There are now more questions than answers without access to the actual punches of the overvotes. The other question is if there is a real reason why a registered Republican, or a McCollum voter has a huge disincentive to vote for Bush if, and only if, he resides in a highly Democratic district. In precinct 66, there are 159 registered Republicans, and there were actually 73 votes for McCollum. Yet there were but 25 recorded votes for Bush, a mere 15.7 percent turnout even assuming that none of his votes came from non-Republicans. Receiving only 34.2% of the McCollum total, Bush's vote is in sharp contrast to the typical pattern of the Bush vote exceeding the McCollum total by several percent. A scatter plot of the Bush yield of the McCollum vote versus the McCollum percentage of the Senate vote for all Palm Beach precincts show a clear pattern of collapse of the Bush yield as the McCollum percentage falls below 30%. Regards, Don

To: Michael Bakunin who wrote (85598)	11/28/2000 9:57:22 PM
From: s martin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Did you see the MM rant ? The Presidency -- Just Another Perk Dear Governor and President-in-Waiting Bush: This has to be the first time in our history that a candidate who is losing BOTH the popular vote AND the electoral vote insists on being anointed President of the United States. I can understand why you expect this title to be yours. You have spent your entire life having everything handed to you. You have never had to earn your place. Money and name alone have opened every door for you. Without effort or hard work or intelligence or ingenuity, you have been bequeathed a life of privilege. You learned at an early age that, in America, all someone like you has to do is show up. You found yourself admitted to a wealthy New England boarding school simply because your name was Bush. You did not have to EARN your place there. It was bought for you. You then learned you could get into Yale with a "C" average. Other, more deserving, students who had worked hard for 12 years to earn their place at Yale were denied admittance. You got in because your name was Bush. You got into Harvard the same way. After screwing off during your four years at Yale -- and maintaining your "C" average -- you took someone's else's seat at Harvard, a seat that they had EARNED. You then pretended to serve a full stint in the Texas Air National Guard. But one day, according to the Boston Globe, you just skipped out and didn't report back for a year and a half to your unit. You didn't have to earn your military record because your name was Bush. After a number of "lost years" that don't appear in your official biography, you were given job after job by your daddy and other family members -- jobs you didn't have to earn. No matter how many of your business ventures failed, there was always another one waiting to be handed to you. Finally, you got to be a partner in a ball team -- another gift -- even though you put up only 1/100 of the money for the team. And then you convinced the taxpayers of Arlington, Texas, to give you another perk -- a brand-new multi-million dollar stadium. So it is no wonder to me why you think you deserve to be named President. You've haven't earned it or won it -- therefore it must be yours! And you see nothing wrong with this. Why should you? It is the only life you have ever known. I will never forget the footage of you sitting in your governor's mansion the night of the election when it was first declared that Gore had won Florida. Surrounded by poppy and mommy, and on the phone to your brother the governor of Florida, you were a picture of calm. You had not a worry in the world. You told the press that your brother had assured you Florida was yours. If a Bush said it was so, it was so. But it ain't so. And when it dawned on you that the Presidency had to be earned and won by a vote of the people -- yes, the people! -- you went berserk. You sent in hatchet man James Baker ("F--- the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway" was his advice to Poppy in '92) to tell lies to the American people and stoke the nation's fears. When that didn't work, you went to federal court and sued to stop the votes from being counted because you knew how the vote would turn out. What kills me is how you have turned to the big, bad, federal government for help! Was not your mantra, during every campaign stop, the following line: "My opponent trusts the federal government. I TRUST YOU, THE PEOPLE!" So now we learn the truth. You don't trust the people at all. You went running to the FEDERAL court to get your handout ("Trust the machines, not the people," you pleaded). But the judge didn't buy it, and for perhaps the first time in your life, someone said "no" to you. What will you do now? According to the New York Times, 90% of your campaign funds came from just 775 American millionaires. Oh, that they could bail you out of this mess! I wouldn't count on them -- it's not like they have suffered financially under Clinton/Gore. They know they will do just fine with the Kissin' Fool. I think, my friend, you are on your own. Mr. Bush, your only hope is that Gore will wimp out and throw in the towel. There is ample evidence of how Democrats love to cave. You and your right-wing friends know the Democrats are weak-kneed and spineless. You remember how Al Gore and all the Democrats voted to put that anti-abortion zealot Scalia on the Supreme Court -- and how 11 Democrats made the difference in placing Clarence Thomas there, too? That's your ticket. Spook Gore and his party into believing a focus group is mad at them, take a phony poll that backs that up, get the gasbag pundits to yammer and hammer him and maybe, just maybe, you'll get the latest plum prize that is not yours to have. Yours, Michael Moore