Once Again, Bush and Popular Vote In 2000

[Annie]

I don't think at this point in time, I should have to 'prove' this, but I will because there is amnesia and spin going on. In a couple of threads this issue is once again making an issue. Oh how some conservatives forget and dems hammer home their spin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000

Media post-electoral studies/recounts

After the election, USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes, that is, ballots which did not register any vote when counted by machine. BDO Seidman's results, reported in USA Today [7], show that under the strictest standard, where only a cleanly punched ballot with a fully removed chad was counted, Gore won by three votes. Under all other standards, Bush won, with Bush's margin increasing as looser standards were used. The standards considered by BDO Seidman were:

* Lenient standard. Any alteration in a chad, ranging from a dimple to a full punch, counts as a vote. By this standard, Bush won by 1,665 votes.
* Palm Beach standard. A dimple is counted as a vote if other races on the same ballot show dimples as well. By this standard, Bush won by 884 votes.
* Two-corner standard. A chad with two or more corners removed is counted as a vote. This is the most common standard in use. By this standard, Bush won by 363 votes.
* Strict standard. Only a fully removed chad counts as a vote. By this standard, Gore won by 3 votes.

The study remarks that because of the possibility of mistakes, it is difficult to conclude that Gore was surely the winner under the strict standard. It also remarks that there are variations between examiners, and that election officials often did not provide the same number of undervotes as were counted on Election Day. Furthermore, the study did not consider overvotes, ballots which registered more than one vote when counted by machine.

The study also found that undervotes break down into two distinct types, those coming from punch-card using counties, and those coming from optical-scan using counties. Undervotes from punch-card using counties give new votes to candidates in roughly the same proportion as the county's official vote. Furthermore, the number of undervotes correlates with how well the punch-card machines are maintained, and not with factors such as race or socioeconomic status. Undervotes from optical-scan using counties, however, correlate with Democratic votes more than Republican votes. Optical-scan counties were the only places in the study where Gore gained more votes than Bush, 1,036 to 775.

A larger consortium of news organizations, including the USA Today, the Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, the Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. According to their results, under stricter standards for vote counting, Bush won, and under looser standards, Gore won. [8] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request.

According to the study, only 3% of the 111,261 overvotes had markings that could be interpreted as a legal vote. According to Anthony Salvado, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who acted as a consultant on the media recount, most of the errors were caused by ballot design, ballot wording, and efforts by voters to choose both a president and a vice-president. For example, 21,188 of the Florida overvotes, or nearly one-fifth of the total, originated from Duval County, where the presidential race was split across two pages. Voters were instructed to "vote every page". Half of the overvotes in Duval County had one presidential candidate marked on each page, making their vote illegal under Florida law. Salvado says that this error alone cost Gore the election.

Including overvotes in the above totals for undervotes gives different margins of victory:

* Lenient standard. Gore by 332 votes.
* Palm Beach standard. Gore by 242 votes.
* Two-corner standard. Bush by 407 votes.
* Strict standard. Bush by 152 votes.

In 2003, United States citizens living in the state of Florida were asked who they voted for in the 2000 Election as part of the Statistical Abstract Census. The results showed President Bush receiving more than 1000 votes more than former Vice President Gore. However this result was badly tarnished when it was discovered that the man responsible for this census had links to the original Bush campaign in 2000.

http://www.bushwatch.com/gorebush.htm

And just by the factor that the SCOTUS got involved, a pro-dem site acknowledges the facts, but disses the results.

How Bush Lost Florida But Won
In The Supreme Court And The Media

by jerry politex, www.bushwatch.com

Ever since Bush was selected by the Supreme Court by a vote of 5-4 to take over the U.S. presidency, the Dems have said that a fair and thorough recounting of the Florida vote would prove that Gore won. While the jury is still out on whether the reported Consortium recount, published late Sunday November 11, was fair and thorough, let's assume that it was. What does it tell us? It tells us that Gore won the Florida electoral vote, the U.S. Supreme Court took the presidency away from him, and the media is wrong in reporting otherwise. Here's how Bush lost Florida.

First, it is an established fact that Gore beat Bush in the national popular vote by over a half million votes. Secondly, Consortium interpretations of the voting data conclude that thousands more people voted for Gore in Florida than Bush. The problem for Gore is that many more votes in his favor, such as the Palm Beach butterfly votes, were declared invalid than similar votes for Bush. Third, discounting such unretrievable invalid votes, Consortium interpretations, which allow only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scaned ballots, conclude that Gore still beat Bush in a statewide recount in Florida by a thin margin of over 100 votes. Which brings us back to the Supreme Court decision.

In its Dec. 12 decision the Supreme Court indicated that its conclusions were based upon equal protection law, and decided that in order to have equal voter protection in Florida the entire state should be recounted. However, even though there were weeks left for such a recount prior to the formal reception of the states' electoral college votes in Congress, the court decided that there wasn't enough time for such a recount, so five of nine members of the court decided, along party lines, to select Bush as the winner in Florida. The Consortium data indicates that they were wrong to think that Bush had won the popular vote in Florida. At any rate, in its Dec. 12 decision the Court made clear that if it hadn't selected Bush, its fallback decision would have been to call for a statewide election, since it considered the case to be a matter of equal rights. It further indicated that not taking a position on the matter was not an option.

Strangely, not one media member of the Consortium has reached the conclusion that if the Supreme Court had not selected Bush, Gore would have won the election by a Florida recount. Instead, in every instance of Consortium reporting, the big headlines say the data shows Bush won with more "valid votes," that he won because of the partial recount mandated by the Florida Supreme Court, or that he won because he would have had more votes than Gore under Gore's recount request. Buried in some of the stories are the six ways that Gore could have won. However, all of these suppositions are moot.

The unvarnished fact is that the U.S. Supreme Court had the final say on the election, not the Consortium voting data, and, left with the choice of giving the election back to the people of Florida through a statewide recount or selecting Bush, they selected Bush. That's what makes the New York Times headline for the Consortium story particularly egregious: "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast The Deciding Vote." While the headline represents a badly needed attempt to restore credibility to the U.S. Supreme Court, it fails on the facts and it fails because the media cannot do what the Court, itself, has failed to do since its politicized decision in the case of Bush vs. Gore.

(c) copyright 2001. May be reprinted with attribution and link to www.bushwatch.com

 

[Avatar4321]

hun, those are electorial votes. not popular votes

 

[Annie]

hun, those are electorial votes. not popular votes

No. Those are popular votes. Read.

 

[Avatar4321]

Just wanted to add, the popular vote was never fully counted, because honestly it didnt matter. There were more than enough votes uncounted in California alone that could have changed the popular vote count that werent counted just because it wouldnt have changed the California electorial counts.

Just be grateful we have the electorial system. If we didn't Democrats would have been challenging every single state election in 2000 and instead of just having recounts in Florida, we would have had recounts in every state. It would have been alot easier for them to steal the election that way. Heck i still cant believe they so blatantly tried to steal it in Florida.

 

[Avatar4321]

No. Those are popular votes. Read.

I did. In fact, the second of the articles you quoted specifically disagrees with you.

First, it is an established fact that Gore beat Bush in the national popular vote by over a half million votes

Which of course is completely irrelevant.

 

[Annie]

I did. In fact, the second of the articles you quoted specifically disagrees with you.



Which of course is completely irrelevant.

Ok, I'll agree with that. However, every recount, every one; gave the popular vote to Bush. Anywhere from less than 500-3k votes. Way too close to be sure, but in no way does it say that one should concede that GW lost popular vote to Gore.

 

[Avatar4321]

Ok, I'll agree with that. However, every recount, every one; gave the popular vote to Bush. Anywhere from less than 500-3k votes. Way too close to be sure, but in no way does it say that one should concede that GW lost popular vote to Gore.

no we really shouldnt concede it. but you know it doesnt matter, it was 6 years ago and if libs wants it so bad they can have it. we still got the vote that counts.

 

[BATMAN]

Maybe off topic, but this is a great book that details the extents Gore went to. You probably know of it:

http://www.regnery.com/regnery/010403_atanycost.html

 

[CrimsonWhite]

Why do we have to revisit this again? President Bush has won not one, but two elections. I bet there are Democrats that are so pissed off about this, thay will vote against him in 2008. They'll write it in or something.

 

[Rico]

Looking back over the last five and a half years of history I find it personally frightening that Gore could have been President. Imagine a liberal President Gore reacting to 9/11. No invasion of Afghanistan and hence no removal of the Taliban and it's Al Queda buddies. Certainly, without question, no invasion of Iraq. It would have been a United Nations free for all with nothing much being done. Economic sanctions perhaps against the Taliban but little else. Imagine it. Further attacks domestically and overseas against the United States.

Of course our economy would be at a depression state as Gore halted any industry that might possibly influence his pet "scientific" position on global warming. We would all have been in very bad times. The Horror, the horror!! Doubt old screeching maniacal Al would have been reelected no matter how many times he "counted all the votes".

 

[Bonnie]

Looking back over the last five and a half years of history I find it personally frightening that Gore could have been President. Imagine a liberal President Gore reacting to 9/11. No invasion of Afghanistan and hence no removal of the Taliban and it's Al Queda buddies. Certainly, without question, no invasion of Iraq. It would have been a United Nations free for all with nothing much being done. Economic sanctions perhaps against the Taliban but little else. Imagine it. Further attacks domestically and overseas against the United States.

Of course our economy would be at a depression state as Gore halted any industry that might possibly influence his pet "scientific" position on global warming. We would all have been in very bad times. The Horror, the horror!! Doubt old screeching maniacal Al would have been reelected no matter how many times he "counted all the votes".

LOL I'd wager many Christians and others were on their knees during that time praying for a Bush win, more so after 9/11.