Political Punch

Excellent article.

I find the underdog theory of why Hollywood favored the democrats in this movie hillarious.

They favored them because they're liberals, everyone knows it. They harm their crediblity by lying about the obvious.

Sorry Smith but you're repeating several false myths here that need to be corrected.

First, it was the GOP and there acolytes in the media that brought military ballots into it. Legal counsels for both campaigns issued what were virtually identical memos regarding the criteria for absentee ballots. The memo from the Gore campaign was leaked to the press and the GOP spun it to make it seem that Gore was targeting military ballots.

Second, you make the false assumption that military ballots would automatically favor Bush. Military ballots tend to skew the same way a district does. If a district in overwhelmingly Republican the military ballots will skew that way. The same is true if a district is overwhelmingly Democratic. That is why in the end far more miltary ballots were challenged by Republicans in Democratic districts than the other way around.

Third, you involk the false myth that there were no recounts or challenges in 1960. On Nov. 11, three days after the election, Thruston B. Morton, a Kentucky senator and the Republican Party's national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. A few days later, Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall, two Nixon intimates, sent agents to conduct what they called "field checks" in eight of those 11 battlegrounds. In New Jersey, local Republicans obtained court orders for recounts; Texans brought suit in federal court. Illinois witnessed the most vigorous crusade. Nixon aide Peter Flanigan encouraged the creation of a Chicago-area Nixon Recount Committee. As late as Nov. 23, Republican National Committee general counsel H. Meade Alcorn Jr. was still predicting Nixon would take Illinois." Recounts continued into December, but did not succeed in overturning the result of the election.

Finally, you say that it was deterimental to the country that this fiasco occured. What is determental about finding out the true winner of an election in a democracy?

We were a military family who lived in Alaska after my husband's retirement. Every year at election time we would get a ballot mailed to us with info on the Republician candidates from Florida. We had never lived in Florida or even visited Florida. The Republican Party was doing this to all overseas military families. Even when I sent back the package explaining the mistake we would receive another at the next election. The people at our base could not explain it. I thought about this when they were talking of counting the military votes in Florida which were 80% Republician in the 2000 election.

Hi James

re Read some old stuff and have to disagree with you...But...I will certanily agree that the republicans did not take any differnt position on "absentee" ballots than the democrats did on military ballots (also absentee ballots)

The democrats were the first to name military ballots in a memo. I suspect the republicans wanted military absentee ballots counted as much as democrats wanted all other absentee ballots, and both parties were not particulary happy about the other guys ballots being counted

Bigger point though, it has been detrimental to the country that this fiasco occured and much of the harm could have been avoided if there was no challange, hence the kind words about Nixon

What a great state Florida is,they screwed up the vote in 2000, again in 2004 and here we are again in 2008. Maybe voting is really too complicated for them. Hopefully they be able to get it right for Hillary's runs in 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 4048, 2052, 2056, 2060, 2064, 2068, 2072, 2076, 2080, 2084, 2088, 2092, 2096, 3000

"The ACTUAL recount, done by the combined media after the election ended, clearly showed that Bush WON the state of Florida. It wasn't the COURT that decided - it was the PEOPLE, as it should be."

The Media Consortium hired the National Opinion Research Center to examine 175,010 ballots that were never counted in Florida. The investigation took 8 months and cost $900,000. No matter what standard for judging ballots is applied, Gore wins.

"My mind closed and I started sending money to the republican effort the moment the democrats challanged absentee military ballots."

Response to Smith: Gore never challenged military ballots. Both campaigns issued memos from their legal advisers on the requirements for accepting absentee ballots. The memo from Gore's campaign was leaked to the press and the GOP spun it to make sound like the Gore was trying to supress military ballots even thought they were never specifically mentioned in the memo.
In the end it wound up that far more military ballots were throw out in heavily Democratic districts due to Republican objections than the other way around.

You omit two very important facts. First, there was no provision in Florida state law to request a statewide recount. Recounts had to be requested at the county level and the candidate had to show cause why that specific counties vote tally could be in error. There was no way with Bush team opposing them every step of the way could Gore request a recount in all 67 Florida counties due to the limited time frame.
Which brings us to the second fact that you didn't mention. On November 13th Gore offered Bush a statewide recount and Bush turned the offer down.

When you say no no no, the Gore campaign was just trying to get the Gore votes counted, try to remember that it was the Gore votes that had been stifled. If it had been calculated by the GOP that a further count would have made Bush's victory clear don't you know that Rove, Baker, Cheney, and W would have been happy to keep the process going?

Thanks to all who answered my question about over and under votes you all are swell people. My comment about cheaters, look at Hillary, all she wants to do is change the rules so she could win,and if shoe don't win could u imagine what power she has to get her way? She is a condivng witch, and a looser. She needs to give up and go home. NOT TO NY EITHER

I am new at this so try to understand where i come from, I live in NY where the hill won . I didn't vote for her because she made a promise to bring jobs to the area where i live and as usual she failed like the rest of them empty.politicians. All she is thinking about is the working class voters, what about all voters, the lower and disabled, and the blacks. Don't our votes count as well, oopps am i bad, i keep forgetting we're not good enough for the high class witch, I just can't stand it when everyone can't be accepted when it comes to voting. If all votes were really counted, the REAL WINNER (S) would be in office. It was explained to me the only certain votes count.The under and over votes. What in the world is that. I never heard of such a thing, would someone please ezplain the differince to me, thanks.

Dan, understand your point, and you are right

My mind closed and I started sending money to the republican effort the moment the democrats challanged absentee military ballots.

What keeps nagging me is a quote I assimilated from George Bush when talking with Al Gore as Gore mounted the challange. I remember Bush: "oh you really don't want to do that".
Bush has never been particulary articulate but the depth of those few words haunt me. What would Bush have done in a reverse situation?
Go back to Texas I imagine.

In fairness to the Gore strategy people they may have made a tactical decision that asking for a state-wide recount was too ambitious an undertaking given the time constraints imposed on (or, depending how you look at it) or by a hostile Catherine Harris.

Ultimately, however, the selective nature of the hand count sought by Gore and imposed by the Florida Supreme Court was the excuse the Republican majority US Supreme Court needed to nix the recount effort.

That and the silly argument that America needed to know who the President was before the inauguration .

BTW, I have not seen the movie, but I think the most interesting epilogue is the ignominy earned by Harris for all of her ambitious, pro-Bush machinations, which was pretty much brought about by serial, scathing, Saturday Night Live portrayals of the Bush-Harris relationship. And wasn’t there even a satirical, short lived TV series spin-off about the Bush presidency?

GB's post that "The one study of all over and undervotes in the 2000 Florida election has revealed Gore would have won under all counting scenarios" is FALSE! The actual results revealed that almost no matter how the counting was manipulated to help Gore, Bush won! The only way that Gore could have won was so convoluted (count this, don't count that, etc), it was not real world. It is sad that the hate of those who lost power in 2000 has so poisoned the political atmosphere.

Smith, what you don't understand is that there were no procedures for doing a manual recount looking at hanging or dimpled chads or whatever. Each canvassing board would use whatever specifications they wanted when they did the recount. This had NEVER been done before.

So try and understand Gore whated to CHANGE THE RULES after the election so that he could win.

Every other election had had about the same number of over or under counts and nobody ever cared. All the Dems thought that was fine. What was different? The election was close and the Dems as always put winning ahead of EVERYTHING. Unlike Nixon they didn't put the country first. They have continued to show for the next 7 years that they are incapable of putting the country first. Way to go Dems.

Is not the NY Times a corporate entity with a vested interest in the status quo? Do you follow the view that international observers have of that election? What do you really make of all the Republican operatives who just happened to be present in Miami-Dade. This Floridian was there and you would be well-served to investigate further if this is a matter of interest to you.

This next election will indeed be interesting. We still have a Republican administration in Florida. Voter rolls are being watched more closely, but we will see.

Up to this day I'm still befuddled as to why Al Gore did NOT insist on a complete recount of the ENTIRE state of Florida. The Electoral College awards votes to a STATE. In Florida it is winner-take-all. (Not until recently did I notice in Nevada the votes can be split based on regional results.)

Because the margin was so minimal, the only fair way would be doing a state-wide recount. If Gore had proposed exactly that, it would've been irrational of the Bush team to object (with a straight face). Then there would not have been that much litigation, with precious time lost that could have been spent on the state-wide recount.

Gore lost in the U.S. Supreme Court. It appeared the Court helped Bush steal Florida. But that's not true. We would never really know who would have won after a state-wide recount. Various recounts by news organizations subsequently are not perfect alternatives. Because they were not done in the way the State of Florida would have done with the same level of neutrality.

(In 2008 I am with Hillary. If not her then McCain. I can't stand the Messiah. Just a footnote.)

talking about recount, and bush won. and gore tried to change the rules and clinton is trying to change the rules.

in hindsight, many of us wish gore had been able to change the rules.

and whether obama or mccain

many of us are going to wish clinton had been able to get the rules changed.

"No one who has objectively studied the vote fairly doubts that more Floridians cast ballots for Al Gore than Bush."Would that include the New York Times? They did a recount and concluded that Bush won. Objective people know that there was no "stolen" election. There was an ATTEMPT to steal the election, which was thwarted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Watch for the repeat in Denver!

You probably meant that comment about HBO and "the truth" in jest, but many people depend on one or a few corporate outlets for their information. I wonder how many of the posters have really done their homework on this one.