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

To: Bosco who wrote (115)	11/21/2000 11:51:24 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 644

Bosco I don't think there is any inconsistency in my logic. As it pertains to whether votes should count: 1. If the vote itself was legally cast and expresses the will of a bone fide voter, the vote should count regardless of whether there was any illegality going on "around" the voter. If there was illegal activity going on "around" the voter, the person committing such illegal activity should be punished, but not the voter. Thus: a. If someone bribed voters with cigarettes, the person doing the bribing should be punished, but the votes should count. b. If someone illegally helped fill out requests for absentee ballots, the person helping should be punished, but the votes should count. c. If someone was doing illegal electioneering on the premise of a voting booth, the person doing the electioneering should be punished, but the votes should count. 2. If a ballot doesn't meet the standards for being considered valid, or if chain of custody is violated, then the votes should not count. a. If an absentee ballot is not properly postmarked, it should not count, unless of course it was received prior to election day, in which case a postmark isn't needed. b. If an elderly ballot worker shows up the next day with a bag of ballots in his car that he says he forgot to turn in, they shouldn't count because the chain of custody has been broken and there is no way to know if fraud is involved. 3. I believe that manual recounts of computer punch cards is likely to be an inherently unreliable endeavor, and is subject to fraud. I don't believe that there is any constitutional right to a recount, and the only right that exists is as provided by state law, and thus that right is limited to what the law provides. In Florida the law provides no right to a manual recount, only a right to request the canvassing board to consider doing one, and if they decide to do one, it must be done in the time limit prescribed. Volusia County did exactly that, but the other counties have taken much longer, probably because rather than just counting the ballots they have engaged in a lot more activity trying to "interpret" ballots. 4. I believe that if a ballot is confusing, people have a right to complain about it before the election. If no one complains in a timely manner then they have no right to complain after the fact. Setting aside elections and re-voting should be done only in cases where there was clear fraud. If I had to summarize these rules, I would say that to avoid fraud we must only allow ballots to be counted that meet certain minimums as far as custody, but once counted we should be very reluctant to disqualify votes unless sufficient fraud is shown to make it clear that the votes to not represent the opinions of bone fide voters, and that we should use an objective counting method for the fairest possible results instead of relying on overly subjective interpretations of ballots. Carl