Reporters and War

[Jason]

Vanity Fair is hardly an unbaised source. For one thing, they say Gore is "obviously intelligent."

And what would you call insisting on recounting votes only in counties where you believed you had the most chance of getting more, while attempting to exclude mail-in votes (primarily from service men likely to vote for your opponent)? That's certainly not an attempt to "make every vote count", it's an attempt at overturning an election. It's a naked power grab, and the Supreme Court rightfully slapped Gore's hand while it was in the cookie jar.

No, I don't like the guy. What makes you ask?

[wdmundt]

So anything that doesn't agree with your position is biased? No matter what the content? Now I get what you mean by liberal bias. Anything that is to the left of FOX News, I would bet.

Florida was a huge screwup in the election. George Bush lost me when he decided to take it to court, rather than insisting that the votes be counted fairly.

[Jason]

wdmundt said:

So anything that doesn't agree with your position is biased?

No, you just happened to pick a source that is biased in favor of Gore this time. C'mon - it's pretty obvious the story's objective is painting Gore in a favorable light.
"He has demonstrated inner strength, rising from an excruciating defeat that would have crushed many men." And "In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that my father, Martin Peretz, was his teacher at Harvard and is an ardent, vocal Gore backer. I contributed to his campaign in February 1999."
Gimme a break.

Florida was a huge screwup in the election. George Bush lost me when he decided to take it to court, rather than insisting that the votes be counted fairly.

I agree, Florida screwed up big time, and there's blame to spread around to lots of people, particularly the media and their misplaced faith in exit polls.
When Republicans in the past lost close and somewhat questionable elections they conceded rather than try to destroy the people's faith in the system. I'm thinking in particular of the 1960 election, when Nixon (of all people) did the right thing by conceding.
Gore conceded, and then retracted his conscession. If Bush lost you when he had to sue Gore's campaign to prevent it from changing the rules for counting votes after the fact, then Gore lost me when he retracted his conscession. Bad form!
The Supreme Court decided 7-2 that the different standards used by the various counties in re-counting were incompatible and violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Elections only work if you follow the rules agreed upon before the election. We're seeing that problem again with several Democrats being sorely tempted to ignore the rules agreed upon before hand in (again) Florida and Michigan.

[wdmundt]

For starters, let's remember (or discover, as it may be) that the Florida Primary date was changed by the Republican-controlled Florida House and Senate, which also connected the vote to a vote on a change to Florida's screwed up touch-screen system to one with a paper trail. Voting for a paper trail meant a vote for changing the primary outside of what the DNC rules allowed.

Gore retracted his concession when it appeared that he might have won Florida, which had seemed impossible earlier in the evening. Are you seriously suggesting that had Florida gone to Gore, that Bush should still have become president because Gore conceded based on faulty information provided by the media? That seems like a logical outcome of your argument.

[Jason]

The DNC chose the stupidest method possible to "punish" Florida for holding its primary on a a date it didn't like - one that would only target the Democratic voters. There's no getting around that fact.

Gore should not have conceded until he was sure he had been defeated, and once he did make the decision to concede he should have stood by that decision rather than drag the election through the mud, and it got him nowhere.

[The Third Man]

gillianren said:

I'm unusual in that I think that the principle job of journalism is as much education as anything.

That is unusual, many would feel this should be the principal job of journalism

[The Third Man]

Jason and wdmundt, do you feel any of the actions you are talking about in the 2000 election were illegal, or is it just "stealing" because you don't like the respective candidates?

[Jason]

It's a fact that the recounts were found to be unconstitutional, as that's what the Supreme Court 7-2 decision determined. I suppose you could quibble whether "unconstitutional" means the same thing as "illegal", or whether using unconstitutional recounts to try to overturn an official election result is the same thing as "stealing" it.

[wdmundt]

My feeling is that the Florida voting was botched and that every effort should have been made to determine exactly how the people of Florida had voted, since the people of Florida would obviously determine the outcome of the election. The Florida Supreme Court twice dictated that recounts should go forward, but the US Supreme Court ordered the recounts to be stopped, primarily because the rules for recounting varied across the counties and SCOTUS thought the rules should all be the same. So... rather than mandate a recount that was the same for all concerned counties, the election was given to George W. Bush.

I could not disagree with Jason more about the nature of the recounts. I could not disagree more with the suggestion that a recount was somehow akin to "stealing" the election. Al Gore's campaign followed Florida State law as it was written at the time. As I said, I believe every effort should have been made to determine exactly what the people of Florida had done in the election -- and this was not what happened.

[Jason]

wdmundt said:

My feeling is that the Florida voting was botched and that every effort should have been made to determine exactly how the people of Florida had voted, since the people of Florida would obviously determine the outcome of the election. The Florida Supreme Court twice dictated that recounts should go forward, but the US Supreme Court ordered the recounts to be stopped, primarily because the rules for recounting varied across the counties and SCOTUS thought the rules should all be the same. So... rather than mandate a recount that was the same for all concerned counties, the election was given to George W. Bush.

I will just repeat that in my view you can't decide an election fairly by changing the rules afterwards. Using different standards for what counts as a vote and taking longer than election laws allow breaks the rules and invalidates an election in my view. Those laws are there for a reason, and apparently the Supreme Court agrees with me. The Florida Supreme Court was exercising judicial activism when they decided to ignore the laws in favor of getting a result other than the official one - they were trying to exercise legislative power they didn't have. The Supreme Court confirmed that the election had to be played by the official rules, and that we couldn't just make things up as we went along.

All elections are imperfect in determining what the people want. U.S. elections very rarely invovle a majority of those who can vote, so you can never even say that an election result is really what the people wanted. The state should make a reasonable effort to get an accurate vote, but trying to count dimples or determining if a chad is hanging or not is going too far. There comes a point where you're just washing garbage and confusing the result even further.

In my opinion, if a voter didn't vote correctly, then it's their own fault for not following the rules, and their vote should not be counted. Ballots aren't rocket science, or tax forms.
At Utah polling places (even when we had paper ballots) there were quite clear instructions on how to make sure your vote would be counted, and you can always ask a campaign worker for help if you're iliterate or otherwise handicapped. Outside of malfunctioning machines or mis-printed ballots there really is no excuse for not voting correctly.

I could not disagree with Jason more about the nature of the recounts.

Oh, you probably could if you tried hard enough.

I could not disagree more with the suggestion that a recount was somehow akin to "stealing" the election. Al Gore's campaign followed Florida State law as it was written at the time.

The U.S. Supreme Court of the time felt the recounts were unconstitutional by 7-2.

As I said, I believe every effort should have been made to determine exactly what the people of Florida had done in the election -- and this was not what happened.

Counts after the fact using the standards Gore wanted determined that Bush did in fact win. So the Vote of the people of Florida did win the result they asked for, whether they believe it today or not.

[Ginnie]

I'm missing something here.
Are the facts that a recount couldn't be done or what?

Around here, recounts are regularly done in ridings when candidates votes are very close.

[wdmundt]

As I said, the Gore campaign followed Florida election law as it was then written in asking for recounts. The Florida State Supreme Court twice agreed with the Gore campaign and ruled that the recounts should proceed. So Gore was not in any way changing the rules after the fact. The US Supreme Court decided that the Florida law was unconstitutional. To claim that Gore was attempting to "steal" the election makes no sense, when he was following the state law and utilizing those actions that were allowed by state law.

[Jason]

ginniegatrit said:

I'm missing something here.
Are the facts that a recount couldn't be done or what?

Around here, recounts are regularly done in ridings when candidates votes are very close.

Recounts were done, and then the Gore campaign requested more recounts to be done in counties that they felt were heavily democratic. All sorts of varying standards of what constitutes a vote were trotted out - whether a hanging chad was a vote, or whether a dimple on a chad was a vote - in an attempt to get more votes for Gore, and campaign workers went over ballots that had already been counted three times to try to determine if they had been counted correctly or if the "voter's intent" was different than what had been officially recorded in earlier counts.
It was ridiculous.

[Ginnie]

And a chad is?

[wdmundt]

The Florida Supreme Court sided with the Gore Campaign in its requests. Al Gore did nothing wrong and made no requests that were not allowed by Florida law, as far as I know. What is ridiculous is vilifying him for his attempts to take those steps that were allowed by state law.