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Post by PhantomWolf on Apr 2, 2008 16:11:11 GMT -4
At the time Florida use a punch card system. The problems come from having a bunch of cards all being punched at the same time and the voter not applying enough pressure to get a clean punch through the entire card. This meant that some of the ballots were dimpled, i.e. pressure had been pallied but there was no cutting about it, or had a chad, a partially cut area about the dimple. A hanging Chad was usually one with 2-3 sides cut from the ballot, but the 4th side attached meaning that it was not a clean cut and so the vote counting machine would not read it as a valid vote.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 16:15:00 GMT -4
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. The Florida Supreme Court recognized in those opinions that they were overruling the Florida election laws in allowing the recounts to proceed. Florida Statute required that the election result be certified by November 14. The Florida Supreme Court re-set the deadline as November 26, and then also said that recounts even after that new date could be counted in the certified vote. They ordered that campaign workers had to consider ballots with dimpled or hanging chads that they wouldn't have had to under the original laws. In short, they were legislating from the bench, changing the laws the first result came from. Technically they decided that the recounts were unconstitutional, not Florida Law per se. The recounts weren't following Florida law in the first place because the Florida Supreme Court had to override the law to allow them to continue. He wasn't following state law, he was asking the Florida Surpeme Court to override the state election law in his favor. To me that constitutes attempting to steal an election.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 16:32:11 GMT -4
At the time Florida use a punch card system. The problems come from having a bunch of cards all being punched at the same time and the voter not applying enough pressure to get a clean punch through the entire card. This meant that some of the ballots were dimpled, i.e. pressure had been pallied but there was no cutting about it, or had a chad, a partially cut area about the dimple. A hanging Chad was usually one with 2-3 sides cut from the ballot, but the 4th side attached meaning that it was not a clean cut and so the vote counting machine would not read it as a valid vote. Not exactly. Punch card ballots weren't used with multiple cards at the same time. One ballot has more than enough chads for a vote. The way it works is that you were handed a cardstock paper ballot with a bunch of perforated chad spots on it, and you slid it into a sort of metal overlay, lining up the two holes at the top of the ballot with two pegs. Then by turning the metallic pages on the overlay you lined up the candidates printed on the overlay with holes over specific numbered chads on the ballot, and you would use a stylus connected by a chain to the overlay to punch out the chad for your choice. If the card isn't lined up correctly on the pegs then the chad might not be correctly lined up with the holes and your stylus might only dimple the chad, or not punch it all the way out. That's why the voter instructions on paper ballots always said to make sure the stylus went all the way into the hole and to look at your ballot after you pulled it out and make sure there were no hanging chads. If you ruined a ballot by punching the wrong chad you were supposed to ask an election worker for a new paper ballot. Machines were used during the normal counts and recounts to read which chads were missing and read those as votes. The kinds of ballots that Gore wanted recounted by hand were mis-voted ballots that the machines didn't count - ballots with the chads not fully removed or dimples on the chad, or overvotes, with more than one chad punched out for the Presidential vote (which would be rejected by the counting machines as invalid votes). Of course, a dimple might mean the voter started to put the stylus through a hole and then re-considered, something there was a lot of argument about at the time.
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Post by Ginnie on Apr 2, 2008 16:43:31 GMT -4
Hmm. I always have just put an X in a circle across from the candidates name. I guess we aren't as technologically advanced up here.
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Post by wdmundt on Apr 2, 2008 16:50:02 GMT -4
The Florida State Supreme Court is the final arbiter of Florida state law. It sided with Gore. It is way beyond a stretch to suggest that Gore was doing anything like trying to "steal" an election when the final arbiter of Florida Law allowed that he was within his rights and within Florida law to make the requests that he made. It was an entity outside of Florida (SCOTUS) that countermanded the orders of the Florida State Supreme Court. So an entity outside of Florida decided how the Florida election was determined. Democrats have a legitimate beef with this. I'm not sure why conservatives have their shorts in a bunch about Gore, however. And just to bring this thread back to something like where it started, let's remember that Al Gore was a reporter for the US Army in the Vietnam war. He served there for five months at the end of a two year enlistment (he asked for and received a two month early discharge). Records of his service did not mysteriously disappear.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 16:51:34 GMT -4
Well since Florida in 2000 we've all been forced to upgrade (at taxpayer expense, of course) to electronic balloting machines that use touch screens and print a sort of "vote receipt" on a register tape. Not a reciept you can take with you - you're just supposed to read it in the little window to make sure the machine got your vote correct before it rolls over for the next person.
I was perfectly happy with the punch cards myself.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 17:03:10 GMT -4
The Florida State Supreme Court is the final arbiter of Florida state law. Arbiter, not legislator. They can't rewrite the law, and that's what they were trying to do by resetting dates, ordering election officials to consider ballots that were not counted under the earlier official count, etc. He was trying to steal an election by convincing the Florida Supreme Court to act outside its actual legal authority in his favor. There's nothing wrong with that. It was a national election for a Federal office, so of course the US Supreme Court had jurisdiction. No they don't. As I said, after all the recounting was finally completed by non-official parties the end result didn't change. The aberration was what the Florida Supreme Court and Gore were trying to do.
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Post by wdmundt on Apr 2, 2008 17:10:12 GMT -4
Evidence, Jason?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 17:21:34 GMT -4
Evidence that the Supreme Court thought the recounts were unconsitutional? Read their opinion: Bush vs. GoreGranted, the court doesn't come out and say that the Florida Supreme Court was over-reaching its authority, but it mentions the possiblity in the opinion, and it decided the violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution was enough to prevent the recount, so that it didn't have to consider if the FSC was over-reaching. The Supreme Court often likes to do this sort of thing - deciding one point of a case is important enough that the others don't need to be considered in their decision. This opinion also mentions the FSC re-setting dates, and mentions that Justice Breyer (who dissented) wanted to set the date to the 18th of December but that this would have violated Florida election law and was therefore not permissible, strongly implying that the re-setting of the dates the Florida Supreme Court attempted was not permissible either.
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Post by wdmundt on Apr 2, 2008 18:04:07 GMT -4
Jason, you made all sorts of claims about the shifty, shady, extra-legal things that Al Gore and the activist judges of the Florida Supreme Court conspired to do to steal the election. Evidence of that?
I think we all know how the US Supreme Court ruled on this.
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Post by wdmundt on Apr 2, 2008 18:18:46 GMT -4
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 18:21:51 GMT -4
Jason, you made all sorts of claims about the shifty, shady, extra-legal things that Al Gore and the activist judges of the Florida Supreme Court conspired to do to steal the election. Evidence of that? The specific actions the US Supreme Court regarded as unconstitutional are mentioned in the opinion. I don't think I made any claims that aren't supported by it, but feel free to point out something specific if I did.
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Post by wdmundt on Apr 2, 2008 18:25:24 GMT -4
Al Gore and his campaign can follow the letter of Florida law and if Florida law is unconstitutional then it is Florida law that is the problem -- not Al Gore. To attach malicious intent to Al Gore's action when he was following the law as it was written and as supported by the Florida Supreme Court is just silly.
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Post by gillianren on Apr 2, 2008 18:39:55 GMT -4
What delights me, or rather irritates me to pieces, is conservatives up here who go on about Gore being all whiny about recounts and such and then turning right around and demanding a new election when things are close for their gubenatorial candidate.
Also, the Supreme Court itself did something unconstitutional; their decision declared that that same decision was not intended to set a legal precedent, and that's pretty much what the SCOTUS is for.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 2, 2008 18:41:20 GMT -4
The Florida law was not determined to be unconstitutional, the additional recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court were. The Florida election law was not being followed until the US Supreme Court over-ruled the Florida Supreme Court and re-established the original, lawfully determined election results. Yes the Florida legislature realized the law could be better after the 2000 election, and later re-worked it to try to avoid the same problems, but as I said before you can't decide an election by changing the rules after the fact.
Yes Al Gore was obeying the orders of the Florida Supreme Court, but he petitioned for those orders in the first place, so he is the party ultimately responsible.
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