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To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (89592)12/8/2000 6:40:50 PM
From: Keith Feral  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
 
Art: The FL Supreme Court was given the chance to uphold the letter of the law. Even the lower courts ruled in favor of the law. The outrageous interpretative actions of the State Supreme Court have nothing to do with Qualcomm. Their divisive actions are going to seperate the Democrat's and Republican's to an extent they do not even comprehend. The real losers of this decision have nothing to do with Qualcomm's performance today or beyond. They have done a real disservice to this country.

I never had a problem with Al Gore contesting the election results. However, the Fl Supreme Court's decision overruled not only the competant findings of the District Courts but challenged the authority of the State Legislature which does not give them the right to conduct partial recounts past the election deadline. Hence, the Florida legislature is going to emphatically declare Bush the winner unless a full recount of the 6 millions votes in Florida is done by Tuesday.



To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (89592)12/8/2000 9:21:21 PM
From: cfoe  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 152472
 
OT: Art - I recommend you read the dissenting opinion of the chief justice of the FL Supreme Court. I have not read it (but will tomorrow), but the excerpt I heard read is a devastating rebuke of the majority. It almost sounded as if he was saying they brought shame to the Court.

No one said the process was "perfect" since it is run by humans, it is not. But it is the system we got and the rules are clear.

The counting of votes and determination of the winner must be done by rules in effect 6 days prior to the date of the election. That is Federal law and it is supreme over the states in a Presidential election.

If the US Supremes think that this has not happened, then they will overturn the Florida SC and there will be no further recount.



To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (89592)12/9/2000 12:39:10 PM
From: dan_oz  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 152472
 
Election OT: Art, remember your assumption that Gore received more votes in Florida is "no longer in dispute"?

Well, here's a dispute. Maybe if you visit a few more jail cells in Miami-Dade or block a few more military absentees you can get enough votes to put your man over the top.
___________________________________________________________
Saturday December 9 11:54 AM ET
Experts Say Gore May Not Gain From Florida Recount

By David Lawsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At first glance, the Florida Supreme Court's decision to order a manual recount of thousands
of ballots looked like good news for Al Gore, but a fresh analysis of voting data on Saturday showed that the Democrat
actually may lose ground to Republican George W. Bush.

``Gore may not be clearly advantaged by the statewide recount of the undercounted ballots,'' Harvard University professor
of government Jasjeet Sekhon told a group of fellow academics in an e-mail after crunching numbers into the wee hours of
Saturday morning. A copy of the e-mail was provided to Reuters.

Sekhon is one of a group of government and statistical experts from Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley,
Cornell University and Northwestern University who have closely followed voting irregularities in Florida's 67 counties since
the Nov. 7 election.

Sekhon and others analyzed data and distributed it via e-mail in light of a decision on Friday by the Florida Supreme Court
requiring a statewide recount of ``undervotes,'' which are votes that machines were unable to count but a person may be able
to discern the voter's intention.

The latest conclusion: It's anybody's ballgame, although the pattern suggests Bush may gain more votes than Gore.

Data from Duval county, calculated earlier, showed that more Gore ballots were spoiled or undercounted than Bush ballots.
But data from Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the only two that have done full hand recounts, shows that when ballots
were examined by hand Bush gained more votes than Gore.

Gore's Chances Less Than 50 Percent

A recount has never looked good for Gore, according to this group of experts.

``It's been the situation so far ... that if Gore gets his recount the chances of him winning are still less than 50 percent,''
Sekhon said in an interview on Friday before crunching the numbers again.

Before the latest analysis, the group's work showed that 49 counties had an unusual number of spoiled ballots because they
used obsolete punch-card machines or poorly made optical scanners.

One of those counties -- Broward -- counted votes by hand and had its totals included by Florida Secretary of State
Katherine Harris on Nov. 26 when she certified Bush as the winner of the presidential election in Florida.

A second county, Palm Beach, had its hand count added to the statewide total on Friday on orders of the Florida Supreme
Court. A third county, Miami-Dade, partially completed a hand count last month and its votes, too, were added to the total
by the state high court.

The addition of Palm Beach and the partial vote from Miami-Dade sliced Bush's certified lead of 537 votes down to just 154
out of nearly 6 million cast.

But that leaves 47 counties including the rest of Miami-Dade with an unusual number of ``undervotes'' due to flawed voting
equipment, according to the experts.

The Miami Herald also reported on Saturday that its own precinct-by-precinct statistical analysis suggests that Gore may not
reap enough votes across the state to overcome Bush's lead.

The Herald said that by a conservative calculation, the recount ordered by the state Supreme Court could boost Bush's lead
by about 40 votes. In addition, if disputed ``dimpled'' ballots were counted as votes, Bush could win the state by 278 votes,
the Herald added.

Machines Have Limitations

Whatever happens, the professors believe that the count should be done because it is the fair thing to do.

``It's a close election, and in a close election we know that the machines have limitations and miss obvious votes,'' said Henry
Brady, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and director of that university's Survey
Research Center.

``It gets down to a fundamental thing about human intelligence versus machine intelligence,'' he said. ``Humans are much
better at matching patterns than machines.''

The same group of academics served as consultants for a group of voters in Palm Beach county who contended in court that
the county's ``butterfly ballot,'' whose design was deemed confusing by some voters, caused them to spoil their ballots or
accidentally vote for the wrong candidate. The court case was rejected.

Harvard's Sekhon said their methodology showed that Gore lost a minimum of 4,500 net votes because of those problems in
Palm Beach county, and possibly as many as 9,400. Either total would have given Gore the state's 25 electoral votes,
enough to clinch the presidency.
dailynews.yahoo.com