Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8614)	12/9/2000 1:53:46 PM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Hi Ron, Thanks for the link... Well, I think that was a pretty dumb comment for Gore to say and publish, but, hey, nobody's perfect.....<g> still, I think it would take a lot for most reasonable people to leap from that statement to the believe that Gore is the Devil himself.....<g> GZ

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8614)	12/9/2000 1:58:41 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

Experts Say Gore May Not Gain From Florida Recount Saturday December 9 11:54 AM ET 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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8614)	12/9/2000 2:45:35 PM
From: ColtonGang	Respond to of 10042

New tally starts, to be completed by Sunday Racing the clock, election judges sifted through thousands of ballots across Florida on Saturday in a partial manual recount ordered by the state Supreme Court. George W. Bush looked to the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt, but Al Gore argued that would only delay the ultimate resolution of the nation's improbably close presidential election. As the recount machinery geared up, Bush was rebuffed at mid-day by the state Supreme Court, where the justices refused to halt the recount to give time for the federal courts to rule. The White House is the prize that will go to the winner, since neither man could claim a majority in the Electoral College without Florida's 25 votes. Circuit Judge Terry Lewis set a 2 p.m. Sunday deadline for completing the recount.