To: Paul A who wrote (8771 ) 12/9/2000 8:55:01 AM From: Zeev Hed Respond to Paul, our system is unique, since it empowers smaller states with a slight advantage in the electoral college. As a result, on rare occasions, we elect a president that does not have th majority of the popular vote. In Florida, the situation was simply razor thin (like in New Mexico, where Bush did not object to recount in special counties to try and get a majority) and the normal mechanism could not resolve the situation to the satisfaction of all. Sure lawyers were fighting, and initially, the Bush camp was getting all the victories. They were "winning" in the machine count and of course their interest was to close the book as it was. The Gore camp saw it differently, the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final machine count did not congrue, so they wanted to know why. They then found out that the punch cards are not always punched and that the machines can read only "fully punched" cards. With maybe 50,000 to 100,000 cases where machines did not read a vote for president, it made a lot of sense to examine those undervote critically. The reason it has taken a month rather than a week is that the Bush lawyers used the law and the Florida secretary of state to their advantage to try and prevent the true count from happening. By the way, the Bush lawyers are still going to try their best not to count those votes that the machine could not count. First is the "request for a stay" at the US-SC, then there will be the trench fights at each county to intimidate the counters, delay the process by infinite challenges etc. I think that the FL-SC court did a very courageous thing (but Their Chief Justice is right, it may have a long term impact on that court) in order to get to the truth. I don't blame the Bush camp trying to use every legal weapon to try and preserve their slim margin. Nor am I blaming the Gore camp, after all they have the nationwide popular vote and the margin in Florida, is if nothing else, full of doubt, so they may even have the electoral majority, if, and only if, they can get the true count out. Since the lower courts have already decided (in Martin and Seminole) that disenfranchising voters (25,000 of them) because of law violations is not right, it is only "right" that the FL-SC court would rule that disenfranchising the other 100,000 or so voters whose votes could not be read by the machines is not right even if it conflict with some other election laws, as long as in no case vote fraud is committed.
