Butthole Bandits 7 and a throwback to Jim Crowe

[Beskar]

No, Bush won because he got extra 500 votes in Florida. That's what got him elected, not the Supreme Court. SCOTUS merely stopped the recount.

No, Bush won because of Fox news announcing he won before the counts were even finished, so people were celebrating before the actual results. Then there was the whole butterfly ballot scandal, the overvotes/undervotes, and a bunch of various factors. The actual real result would have to involve completely redoing the vote from scratch. The difference was completely within the margin of error. Single misrecordings could have sent the vote in different directions.

[rvg]

No, Bush won because of Fox news announcing he won before the counts were even finished, so people were celebrating before the actual results. Then there was the whole butterfly ballot scandal, the overvotes/undervotes, and a bunch of various factors. The actual real result would have to involve completely redoing the vote from scratch. The difference was completely within the margin of error. Single misrecordings could have sent the vote in different directions.

Speculation is speculatory...
Dubya won Florida and with it the presidency. The rest is history.

[Ironside]

No, Bush won because he got extra 500 votes in Florida. That's what got him elected, not the Supreme Court. SCOTUS merely stopped the recount.

No, he won by 2000 votes, no 300, no 900, no 500. To be fair, the 300->900 was oversea votes, so that wasn't caused by a recount.

Speculation is speculatory...
Dubya won Florida and with it the presidency. The rest is history.

Let's put it this way. Was the winning margin small enough that some fiddling could change the result?

[rvg]

Let's put it this way. Was the winning margin small enough that some fiddling could change the result?

Certainly. But there is no evidence of any fiddling whatsoever, aside from tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

No, he won by 2000 votes, no 300, no 900, no 500. To be fair, the 300->900 was oversea votes, so that wasn't caused by a recount.

The margin was about 500 votes.

[Beskar]

Certainly. But there is no evidence of any fiddling whatsoever

It was within the Margin of Error. Simply honest mistakes would have been enough to skew it in either direction. Don't need any tinfoil theories.

Though there was a big issue with the butterfly ballots employed and it is known that the margin of error of those were very significant, and a source I read too long ago for my internet history was suggesting something like 500 votes meant for Bush were incorrectly done, and 3000ish for Gore (the numbers might have been bigger..)

[rvg]

It was within the Margin of Error. Simply honest mistakes would have been enough to skew it in either direction. Don't need any tinfoil theories...

That very well may be, but once again, we need specific examples of mistakes leading to miscounts. Example: the initial result in Florida gave Bush his victory. After a month of recounts the numbers were still in Bush's favor. The SCotUS did the sensible thing and stopped that exercise in futility in order for the winner to emerge and for America to have her president-elect. It was the right thing to do, it was the legal thing to do.

[Beskar]

That very well may be, but once again, we need specific examples of mistakes leading to miscounts. Example: the initial result in Florida gave Bush his victory. After a month of recounts the numbers were still in Bush's favor. The SCotUS did the sensible thing and stopped that exercise in futility in order for the winner to emerge and for America to have her president-elect. It was the right thing to do, it was the legal thing to do.

Don't get me wrong, it was probably the best decision to do at the time. There are multiple complications which could have arisen from alternative scenarios. However, the main point of contention is this statement "Bush won fair and square". That implies there are zero issues or problems which did not present themselves. However, issues did present themselves in the Florida election and this had major impact on the final result. I haven't said "Gore should have been president", I am more questioning the legitimacy of the event.

[Ironside]

Certainly. But there is no evidence of any fiddling whatsoever, aside from tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

The margin was about 500 votes.

And before the recounts started, there was 1784 votes in favour of Bush. And if you red the bottom parts of your link, you'll see that Gore could've won depending on the standard of counting. Let me put it this way, Bush's victory was within the margin of error for an election and that's a problem, even if you do have a fair win.

What you do want is to get a system, where there's one standard, so that a recount does give the same result and not an official 1200 vote difference. You also want a system where you can follow the recount, rather than "this machine with substandard encryption says so".

1-2% systematic difference only done during close elections and you can do it for decades before you'll see a clear tilt in the margin of error for the polls.

[Lemur]

Repeating myself, but I don't think there is a lot to take away from Bush v. Gore. The margin of victory was always going to be smaller than the margin of error. It was just a sad, unfortunate episode. Our system is not well-designed for close national elections.

[Fisherking]

There's an awful lot to take away from Bush v. Gore. Our system was unable to let the people speak, even with all the little amendments and additions over the last 200 years to try and emulate direct democracy. The people lost, and the Court went with the reactionary option because, honestly, did you think they wouldn't? Huge lessons to take away from Bush v. Gore. When they write the history books, they'll point to that election on the timeline and say "Right there. That's where it went sideways."

I don’t know how you can say that. Our elections have been going sideways for a long time.

We know there was vote fraud in the 1960 election. It is highly likely that there was enough to make a difference in most elections since then.

We know an awful lot of registered voters don’t vote yet in many states we find voter turnout over 100% and you think it is the people?

The Florida election was much like a Washington State election, some how the more times you count the votes, the more the Democrats seem to gain. It is not that Republicans don’t try it, they just are not very good at it.

It is also a problem in registering people ineligible to vote. Something the Democrats are very apt at. That is not counting the dead, who are always said to vote Democrat.

My self, I think the best way to represent the people’s views is to call up a sample of the population like we do for jury duty, but I am sure that would be manipulated too.

[rvg]

And before the recounts started, there was 1784 votes in favour of Bush. And if you red the bottom parts of your link, you'll see that Gore could've won depending on the standard of counting.

Could've, bu didn't.

Let me put it this way, Bush's victory was within the margin of error for an election and that's a problem, even if you do have a fair win.

How is a fair win a problem?

What you do want is to get a system, where there's one standard, so that a recount does give the same result and not an official 1200 vote difference. You also want a system where you can follow the recount, rather than "this machine with substandard encryption says so".

Floridians can apportion their electoral votes whichever way their heart desires. If they want to use "this machine with substandard encryption", then more power to them. Florida gets her say in the presidential election regardless of the method, as long as the method is indicative of the will of the Floridians (and it is).

1-2% systematic difference only done during close elections and you can do it for decades before you'll see a clear tilt in the margin of error for the polls.

It's not a big deal, unless the result is consistently slanted one way or the other.

[Ironside]

Could've, bu didn't.

And that means that it was decided by the court of law afterwards, since the preset rules weren't accurate enough.

How is a fair win a problem?

You were very close to something like this: Bush, Gore, Bush, Gore, Gore, Bush. Good luck talking about fair elections after that.

Floridians can apportion their electoral votes whichever way their heart desires. If they want to use "this machine with substandard encryption", then more power to them. Florida gets her say in the presidential election regardless of the method, as long as the method is indicative of the will of the Floridians (and it is).

It's not a big deal, unless the result is consistently slanted one way or the other.

That was my point. You can have consistent slanting by only having a few key persons involved and cover it up due to lack of transparency. The only way to detect it would be to dectect that chance isn't chance anymore.