Acquiunk wrote:Scrat, the numbers do not identify the winner or loser, you have to make your own judgment. What the data does show is the margins given various categories of ballots or legal situations, for example the margin if a four county recount had occurred as the Gore campaign had requested, in which case Gore lost. To my mind the crucial category is; all correctly marked, fully punched and scanned ballots, which shows Gore with a margin of +115 ballots. One of the bedrock assumption in any democracy is that all of the valid votes will be accurately counted.
With respect, the issue isn't which category you consider "crucial", but what other outcomes were possible. There were only two: either the full statewide recount would have continued as it was already being done, or Gore's four-county play could have been allowed to proceed. In each of these scenarios--again, the ones that actually were attempted, not somebody's idea after the fact of how it might have been done--Bush was the victor. Here's more from the CNN story I cited above:
Quote:Florida Supreme Court recount ruling
On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering a full statewide hand recount of all undervotes not yet tallied. The U.S. Supreme Court action effectively ratified Florida election officials' determination that Bush won by a few hundred votes out of more than 6 million cast.
Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore.
Gore's four-county strategy
Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide.
There were only 3 possible scenarios given the way things unfolded: 4-county recount, statewide recount, or no recount. According to the NOCR data and the very same analysis the NY Times used:
- If the original recount of the cherry-picked Gore counties had been completed, Bush would have won.
- If the statewide recount had been completed, Bush would have won.
- If the USSC halted the recounts (as they did), Bush won.
In all 3 possible scenarios, Bush was found to be the winner. It's as simple and factual as that, and people complaining about the "stolen" election are holding on to a convenient fantasy either in ignorance of or in spite of the facts.
