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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lawdog who wrote (94324)	11/29/2000 3:52:24 PM
From: Bill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Including the military ones?

To: lawdog who wrote (94324)	11/29/2000 3:53:39 PM
From: Timothy W. Johnson	Respond to of 769670

Lawdog - You know that old phrase move it or lose it? I am coining another one - LOSE IT AND MOVE IT.

To: lawdog who wrote (94324)	11/29/2000 3:57:16 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

How? Apparently Palm Beach still can't get it together. You remember them lawdog...they were whining for a 2 hour extension. Now, three days later they are still not done and still haven't figured out how to accurately hand count ballots. Quirks delay ballot tallying in Palm Beach County By BRAD HAHN and NEIL SANTANIELLO Staff Writers Web-posted: 10:43 p.m. Nov. 28, 2000 There are still no final vote totals from Palm Beach County's much-watched hand count of 462,000 ballots, almost three days after elections officials begged for a few more hours to finish the task. That final sprint to the finish -- with no one but Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to reconcile the numbers -- has led to inconsistencies and quirks that are delaying the release of totals, county officials said. In one case, 50 votes granted to Al Gore in the Nov. 12 machine tabulation vanished from the hand-count total -- and did not land elsewhere. County leaders downplayed the delay and said the numbers can be easily reconciled so totals can be released by noon today. "In that last dash to get everything done, they skipped a step or two, and that's unfortunate," County Administrator Robert Weisman said. "They just tried to rush through as many ballots as they could to get it done, and that leads to mistakes." At any given time during the hand count of presidential ballots, 25 teams of counters and monitors sifted through ballots, setting aside any unclear votes. Ballots deemed questionable were brought before the county Canvassing Board for a verdict, and a tally sheet noted the final precinct numbers. LePore later reviewed the results, comparing them to machine-count numbers, and signing off on paperwork, county leaders said. She worked through breaks and stayed into the early hours throughout the process to double-check the ballot math. On the other hand, Broward County hired an accounting firm to total its tallies when workers hand-counted 588,000 ballots -- leaving the Canvassing Board to focus on a single monumental task. "I guess in hindsight, you could have had someone doing that," Weisman said. The process apparently broke down near the end of the count Sunday, after the canvassing board missed a court-ordered 5 p.m. deadline for totals but continued counting a final 53 precincts. Exhausted from a 33-hour marathon to get the job done, LePore did not conduct an audit on numbers from the final precincts. And by Monday night, when tally sheets were brought to the Public Affairs Office to be added to a spreadsheet and released to media, problems were found. In addition to the 50-vote loss for Gore, there were other differences that Denise Cote, director of public affairs, called minor. With LePore often working 18-hour days for three post-election weeks and observing a nonprofit organization as it inspected ballots on Tuesday, the county suggested she get help in reconciling the numbers. It was unclear Tuesday night whether LePore followed that advice. LePore has been told not to talk to media by attorney Bob Montgomery, but the county released a statement Tuesday night saying the numbers would be reconciled and released by noon today. Several errors may have created the discrepancies, Cote said. Workers may have counted the ballots wrong, which would mean going back to the punchcards to check. Or totals could have been copied wrong when moved from one tally sheet to another. Either scenario would have been caught by a normal review, she noted. After LePore reconciled each day's counting, paperwork was delivered to County Attorney Denise Dytrych and county Facilities Development & Operations Director Audrey Wolf, who entered the figures into a spreadsheet to fax to the state. Most of the discrepancies in the audited results amounted to one or two votes, Dytrych said Tuesday. The differences could be attributed to machine error, such as ballots sticking together, she said. "It was very negligible," she said. "That's why we have mechanisms like that (a manual recount)." Still a 50-vote swing in an election where everything has become suspect certainly raises eyebrows. County Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the Canvassing Board, said Tuesday afternoon that he had not heard about the problems in the totals. Differences between human and machine totals at times can be explained by ballots getting stuck together when run through equipment or a simple miscount by workers, he said. "If there is a problem, obviously we will need to get together and address it," Burton added. "If there are votes missing, of course, I think they need to be resolved. We're trying to be as accurate as we can." Weisman concurred, but said he is confident the glitch can be solved -- especially since the ballots remain under lock and key and can always be inspected. Of course, the totals seemed to be a moot point when the county missed the Florida Supreme Court's extended deadline, and Secretary of State Katherine Harris dismissed any recount totals.

To: lawdog who wrote (94324)	11/29/2000 4:17:05 PM
From: miraje	Respond to of 769670

Count all the votes. Face the facts, this election essentially ended in a statistical tie. If you recounted Florida 10 times, you'd stand a good chance of each side winning 5. That being said, Gore has zero chance of assuming the presidency. Like it or not, that will be the inevitable result because of the way the rules of the game were set up. All the lawyers in all the courts in Florida can yammer away until they're blue in the face but it won't change the one most important fact, that being that the law ultimately places election decisions in the legislative, not the judicial, branch of government. The GOP controls both the Florida legislature and the US House and that's what lies at the end of the road in this contest. Whether or not you consider the vote count fair, Gore CANNOT win. Period. And his prolonging the inevitable is doing neither himself nor the country any favors, IMO.