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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 6:42:21 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Kenneth... I believe they are undervotes, and have not be MANUALLY recounted for the first time... Interesting use of the English language, isn't it? Btw, to state once again, an undervote is one in which no presidential candidate has been chosen, yet other candidates have been indicated. These folks are counting ballots which may represent deliberate attempt to abstain from choosing a presidential candidate. And this is especially the case when it is quite apparent that all the other chads were properly removed from these ballots, so why should anyone believe that undervote was anything but an abstention? If they are going to recount these votes, there needs to be a standard of evidence for making their assumption. The difference between "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "preponderence of the evidence". An undervote may meet the latter, but it certainly fails the former.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 8:06:30 PM
From: AmericanVoter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

isn't David Bois the same person who misrepresented and lied to the FL supreme court about the IL supreme court ruling... and now we are supposed to believe what he says...!!! or did he mean that the 10,700 ballots were not even counted for the third time !!! regards amein

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 8:09:47 PM
From: George Coyne	Respond to of 10042

Hey, David Boise is a lawyer, and supposedly a good one. He has mastered the art of lying with plausible deniability if necessary. By the way, what is the deal with him? Was he "loaned out" from his MS work?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 8:19:01 PM
From: Imran	Respond to of 10042

They were counted once, by a machine, and rejected. This is similar to what happened in Palm Beach with the "dimpled" chads, which were also rejected. Not ironically, Bois will argue in court this week that those "votes" weren't counted either. I guess it isn't fairly and accurately counted until it goes in the Gore column.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 8:56:48 PM
From: Frank Griffin	Respond to of 10042

Not counted because they chose not to vote for a presidential candidate. They voted, successfully, for other candidates in races they wanted to vote on. What the demos are saying is they didn't get a chance to vote in their stead by choosing their candidate for them since they elected not to vote in that race.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (7600)	11/26/2000 11:39:29 PM
From: Slugger	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

The Myth of Miami Gore never had a treasure trove of uncounted votes in Dade County. Sunday, November 26, 2000 7:20 p.m. EST Al Gore will address the country tomorrow to explain why he is still contesting the election. NBC News reports that one of his main arguments will be that a "complete" recount of Miami-Dade County would net him between 500 and 600 votes, enough to overtake George W. Bush as the winner in Florida. Mr. Gore and other Democrats are busy creating a myth that they would have clearly won the Florida recounts if only Miami-Dade County hadn't reversed course and cancelled its planned manual recount last Wednesday. Frustration on the part of grass-roots Democrats is understandable, given the steady diet of incomplete information they've been fed on how many Gore votes were likely to be found in a recount of Miami-Dade's 10,750 "questionable" ballots. But senior Democrats probably know better. Some are keeping the "myth of Miami" alive in part to keep up morale and so they can have something to litigate. So long as Miami-Dade's votes aren't hand-counted, the Gore people can believe they won Florida. David Boies, Mr. Gore's top trial lawyer, says that the end of Miami-Dade's manual recount "disenfranchised the vote of every voter who was not counted" and a full count would ensure a Gore victory. But a Sunday Los Angeles Times analysis by Ron Brownstein concludes that "if Miami-Dade County had been compelled to keep counting, it might have helped Gore, but probably not as much as is commonly believed." Brownstein quotes a senior Democrat who agrees: "Dade was never going to yield huge numbers." Democrats told him they only expected to pick up between 100 and 200 votes overall in Miami. Republicans were looking at a wash, with no overall change. Unlike Broward and Palm Beach, which gave Mr. Bush only 30% and 35% of the vote respectively, Dade was much more evenly balanced. Mr. Gore won on Election Day with only 53% of the vote, in part because six out of seven Cuban-Americans voted for Mr. Bush. This means that in any recount, Mr. Bush would likely have won about half of the "undervoted" ballots, those in which no clear choice for president was tabulated by the machine recount. Democrats respond that the Miami-Dade manual recount was clearly picking up a lot of votes for Mr. Gore before it was cut off last Wednesday. In the 135 precincts (out of 614) that had been recounted, Mr. Gore had picked up 157 votes. Democrats reasoned that at that rate they were on their way to adding between 700 and 900 votes to Mr. Gore's margin in the county. This is specious. Brian Kalt, an assistant professor of law at Michigan State University, has closely followed Miami-Dade's recount. He notes that by beginning in numerical order, it proceeded first through heavily Democratic precincts, many of which had gone for Gore by as much as 9 to 1. The 135 recounted precincts as a whole gave Mr. Gore 74% of the vote, compared with only 53% countywide. That means that the remaining precincts as a whole went for Mr. Bush, and would have delivered far fewer additional votes for Mr. Gore. "The count was just about to move into heavily Republican and Cuban areas," says Mr. Kalt. "Given how the rest of the precincts would have voted, I don't see how Gore would have picked up votes. If the trend had continued, an admitted if, Bush would actually have gained 400 votes countywide." Mr. Kalt's analysis squares with that of other political observers I spoke with. But such realities don't fit easily into the "spin rooms" of cable television, where even the anchors are parroting the line that Miami-Dade would have been a "gold mine" of Democratic votes. No one mentions that the Miami-Dade board originally had voted unanimously not to have a manual recount on Nov. 14, after a sample recount of three overwhelmingly Democratic precincts turned up only six extra Gore votes. The board voted to hold a recount only after it came under intense political pressure from Democrats and became the target of several Democratic lawsuits. The myth of Miami is now being extended by Democrats into other areas of controversy. Six Democratic congressmen have demanded that Janet Reno's Justice Department investigate whether some 100 Republican demonstrators "intimidated" the Miami-Dade board into halting its recount last Wednesday. Rep. Jerry Nadler says the demonstrators, none of whom were detained by police or touched anyone, represented "a whiff of fascism in the air." But none of the three members of Miami-Dade's election board were intimidated. One member of the board, David Leahy, says he saw only "a noisy, peaceful protest." He told the Los Angeles Times, "I was not intimidated by that protest. I saw it for what it was." Democrats have every right to use legal arguments to fight Mr. Gore's defeat in Florida. But having lost in four separate counts of the ballots--the original count, the machine recount, the overseas absentee count and now a selective recount of two Democratic counties--their claim that Mr. Gore won Florida is ringing increasingly hollow. The myths they're spinning may keep hope alive among their troops. But they have very little basis in fact. opinionjournal.com