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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TraderGreg who wrote (5031)	12/6/2000 12:49:32 PM
From: Valley Girl	Respond to of 6710

According to testimony in Sauls' court, they originally decided not to do a hand-count because they only found 6 net additional votes for Gore after a manual count of 1% of the total ballots (said 1% concentrated in three precincts that went 90% for Gore). My recollection is that they were sued by Gore to force a full recount and later reversed themselves, possibly in response to the suit, but not because of any court order resulting therefrom. They then began a manual recount even while the FL SC was deliberating - they may have waited for the injunction that predated the final decision, since without said injunction they knew they couldn't finish by the deadline. Somewhere in here they also relaxed the standards for judging undervote ballots as votes (the infamous dimples). As I recall they were anywhere from 15-20% complete when the FL SC changed the deadline. At this point, it was clear to them that they couldn't make the deadline with the full count, and they decided on their third approach, which was to examine only the undervotes. I don't know whether they began this process or not before caving in one more time and abandoning the effort -- their stated reason was that they couldn't even be sure of finishing the undervotes by the deadline, though they were also reminded of their original decision that doing a partial hand-count wouldn't be legal. Somewhere along the line 1700 of the undervotes were examined. I believe they were examined in the course of the overall 15-20% hand count and not during the brief period when the board was planning to count only the undervotes. Finally, it appears based on testimony before Sauls that the three board members were each using a different standard for judging the ballots during the full hand count, further clouding everything they did. Overall, the M-D canvassing board did not distinguish itself in this matter and they look like a bunch of wafflers. This stands in stark contrast to the way Burton and the PB board conducted themselves. If M-D had simply continued counting using the liberal standards, they'd have been done in time for the results to be presented to Sauls during the contest phase. This would have made it much harder for Sauls to reject the claim that the outcome of the election would change (assuming they found enough Gore votes, that is). Instead Boies et. al. had to rely on incomprehensibly thick statistical testimony to clear that particular hurdle. They also had to proceed under much more time pressure than need have been the case; even if Sauls had still ruled against them, their appeal to the FL SC would not now have to be completed in time for a new hand count.