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Politics : Why is Gore Trying to Steal the Presidency? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jimbo Cobb who wrote (2030)	11/22/2000 5:49:19 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3887

"more people showed up to vote for Gore than for Bush across the entire state of Florida" My statement was based on exit polls, particularly in Palm Beach County. The networks used these polls to predict a Gore victory, prematurely as it turned out. But later, the supposed inaccuracy of the exit polls was explained by the numbers of voters who THOUGHT they were voting for Gore when they actually ended up voting for Buchanan and/or voting for Buchanan and Gore, in which case the double vote was automatically thrown out. It is impossible to correct the incorrect punch for Buchanan, which in itself would have given Gore about 2000 more votes. That figure comes from Buchanan himself, who stated that he didn't see how the kinds of voters that live in particular precincts in Palm Beach County would have voted for him. In other words, he agreed that there must have been some confusion that would have given him at least 2000 more votes than he expected. This is a fairly strong argument that very likely more people voted, or intended to vote for Gore than for Bush in Florida. So it is not mere opinion that Bush received a minority of votes. As to whether he ends up in the minority or majority, that whole matter is now in the courts. No matter what the outcome, it is clear that we will NEVER know how many people actually voted for Bush and how many actually voted for Gore, irrespective of what the "official" count turns out to be. More broadly, when you have a voting system that allows a certain amount of inaccuracy, it is generally not considered important unless the vote is so close that every vote counts. It is now clear, if it wasn't before, that the punched card system used in Florida is inadequate. Nothing can be done about that for the current election, but no one should be satisfied with a system that can produce such a mess so easily. Art