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

To: G_Barr who wrote (285291)	8/9/2002 2:25:48 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The machines correctly counted properly marked ballots and PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH got more votes. By all the laws and rules and procedures in place for the election the ballots were counted properly and all post evaluation show the results were correct and PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH won. Clearly you don't seem to be able comprehend what you read and I do wonder if you have ever read the decision or you simply did not understand what you read. Where did I ever say that "legal vote" means only a vote properly marked and counted by a machine.??? I am clueless as to how you could conclude I said a "legal vote" means only a vote properly marked and counted by a machine. You say the process is not important. Well the process is everything. The process is what is defined. To bad you don't have access to the text of the decision. The law does not refrain from searching for the intent of the actor in a multitude of circumstances; and in some cases the general command to ascertain intent is not susceptible to much further refinement. In this instance, however, the question is not whether to believe a witness but how to interpret the marks or holes or scratches on an inanimate object, a piece of cardboard or paper which, it is said, might not have registered as a vote during the machine count. The fact-finder confronts a thing, not a person. The search for intent can be confined by specific rules designed to ensure uniform treatment. The want of those rules here has led to unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects. See Gore v. Harris, ------ So. 2d, at ------ (slip op., at 51) (Wells, J., dissenting) ("Should a county canvassing board count or not count a 'dimpled chad' where the voter is able to successfully dislodge the chad in every other contest on that ballot? Here, the county canvassing boards disagree"). As seems to have been acknowledged at oral argument, the standards for accepting or rejecting contested ballots might vary not only from county to county but indeed within a single county from one recount team to another. The record provides some examples. A monitor in Miami-Dade County testified at trial that he observed that three members of the county canvassing board applied different standards in defining a legal vote. 3 Tr. 497, 499 (Dec. 3, 2000). And testimony at trial also revealed that at least one county changed its evaluative standards during the counting process.