Words That Will Live In Infamy Forever!

[Avatar4321]

It's not about letting go of a past election. It is making sure that future elections are not stolen and we have learned from this tragedy. We have empowered ourselves with the evidence, and can do everything within our power to try and stop it from ever occurring again! If the votes were counted, Bush would not be occupying federal land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The sources have all been fact checked for accuracy.

Not sure how you can possibly say an election that was recounted 4 times (with multiple recounts done after the results were official) that all had the same results could possibly be stolen.

However, I can guarentee you that the people with the most votes will continue to occur no matter how much you try to stop it.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

It's not about letting go of a past election. It is making sure that future elections are not stolen and we have learned from this tragedy. We have empowered ourselves with the evidence, and can do everything within our power to try and stop it from ever occurring again! If the votes were counted, Bush would not be occupying federal land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The sources have all been fact checked for accuracy.

What a laugh riot. Fact checked? You mean like those mean police blockading roads and diverting black people from voting? Police that work for a DEMOCRATIC Mayor?

Perhaps you mean that suspicious butterfly ballot? The one DESIGNED and APPROVED by 3 Democrats? The one they had used in the past.

Maybe you mean the refusal of 3 Democratically controlled Election Boards to count ILLEGAL ballots for Gore?

Or maybe you mean the fact that EVERY RECOUNT had Bush win?

Are those the facts you mean?

 

[frazzledgear]

Ok, it's real simple, I am agreeing with Greg on his research into the election. The supreme courts decision was very biased by political lines. Scalia and Clarance Thomas refused to recuse themselves from the case. And Sandra Day O' Connor was heard at a banquet, saying that she would like to retire in Arizona, under a Republican president. And how she couldn't wait another four years for one.

If you believe that the Supreme Court justices are incapable of putting aside their own PERSONAL beliefs and judge cases on their merits and in accordance with how they interpret the Constitution -then whats the point of having one? They each swear an oath to do just that -think they don't take their job seriously knowing their decisions can impact millions of lives? In fact I think they each DO put aside any personal desires, political ideology and take their jobs extremely seriously. There is no grand conspiracy going on there. We have a court populated by judges with different constitutional philosophies and their decisions reflect it. It would be disastrous to have a court with just one philosophy and no one to point out the fallacies or different possible nuances and interpretations in their arguments to each other.

If you have never read the biographies of the men and women who sit on that bench, I suggest you do it. No matter what their own constitutional philosophy is, its actually quite reassuring these are men and women who take their job most seriously. In fact, I just watched a piece on Justice Scalia the other day and because of the part that included interviews with Ruth Bader Ginsberg -the single most leftwinger on that bench, I came to have a newfound respect for her and the way she reaches her decisions. I still disagree with nearly every one of her decisions as much as ever and I still think she's dead wrong most of the time. But I use to be insulting about her work and had no respect for how she reached her decisions. Now I really do have respect for how she goes about her job, I have a better understanding of where she's coming from and the philosophy she uses to reach those decisions. She's just wrong, that's all. But she isn't the devil wearing the robes of a justice who sits on the highest court trying to impose her own agenda on the entire country. None of them are.

Even though they have totally different philosophies about how to interpret the Constitution -it turns out that Scalia and Ginsberg are very close friends who spend a lot of time together even outside of court and have great respect for each other. Scalia does an excellent job of explaining Bush v. Gore so that even those convinced some "conservative" conspiracy with a Supreme Court anxious to try and "select" the next President is provably idiotic and the fantasy of moonbats. As can Ginsberg. No such conspiracy existed. In fact on the MAJOR part of that decision -it was a 7-2 decision that the remedy the FL state supreme court had employed was UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Just what does it take to understand that one? The split decision was about setting aside federal election law in order to allow FL to count ballots in an equal fashion -handcount the entire state although at no time did Gore EVER request that be done. The Supreme Court tries to avoid IMPOSING its own remedy that wasn't even requested by one of the suing parties. Gore's claim was that what the FL state supreme court had done was constitutional -Bush's claim was that it wasn't. The court agreed with Bush that it wasn't -but they could only recommend the correct remedy -not impose it themselves. So the second part was about setting aside federal election law in order to allow Florida to use their recommended remedy.

The problem with doing that is the Constitution specifically forbids setting aside federal election for ANY state for ANY reason. It specifically states there are NO exceptions of any kind for any state to be allowed to turn in its electoral votes after the deadline. Ginsberg and her buddies didn't mind overturning that anyway on the grounds surely the founders didn't mean when it was THIS kind of situation. But the majority had no problem with seeing the language used made it quite clear those who wrote and passed that law clearly understood that there may come a time when the election in one state might be contested and the results convoluted and dragged out -and still said there were NO exceptions to that federal deadline. One state was not going to hold the rest of the nation hostage to their own screwed up mess. (And in fact, the longer a state was allowed to do so while parties wrangled and connived only called into question the legitimacy of that result anyway.) The Supreme Court did not ORDER Florida to stop counting -it merely said that the Constitution allowed for no exceptions for any reason for any state to turn in their electoral count after the deadline. That's it.

Time to get real here. Florida was not going to handcount every single ballot in the state in time to get that result certified even though the entire court worked as quickly as possible to get their decision out -and Florida risked having their electoral votes thrown out entirely -which would still have resulted in a Bush win. The Supreme Court didn't ORDER Florida to stop counting -all they ruled was that there were no constitutional exceptions or grounds allowed to let a state turn in its electoral votes after the deadline -and it was Florida that realized there was no way they could get it done in time and stopped.

The state legislature had the power to decide which candidate those electoral votes were to go and had already said they would make that decision themselves before allowing Florida's electoral votes to be thrown out. And had said they intended to make that decision based on the most reliable and unbiased method of counting -the first and second machine counts. (Does anyone seriously believe that inserting human beings into the process makes it more accurate? Its the reason states went to machine counts in the first place.)

No matter how you want to dice this one up -the fact is that Gore never won that state, he couldn't win no matter how he tried to impose selective handcounts, no matter how many spoiled ballots he went trolling through looking for more, no matter how hard his own attorneys argued for allowing dimpled but unpunched ballots which are accepted in NO state with multiple races on the ballot. And he still didn't win even when the most partisan groups in Gore's favor went and counted those ballots themselves afterwards. And maybe its time to deal with another reality. When a candidate asks for a recount after an election, further recounts only result in overturning the original one less than 1% of the time. And when it does, there has always been less than 0.03% difference in votes between the candidates in the original count. Which never existed here anyway.

My state had much more specific election law than Florida (which they have since corrected -a candidate can't get away with trying to do what Gore tried to do) -which thought it had it covered pretty well. In my state, if a candidate requests a recount, then EVERY county that participated in that election is recounted -not just some. No such thing as recounting only some while ignoring the others. And NO county may EVER count by hand unless the machine is provably defective and not working properly -and the first remedy for that is to get another certified machine -not have people do it. Their intention is to keep HUMANS and human bias and the ability of humans to manipulate results -out of it as much as possible.

Now you want to talk conspiracy here -perhaps you have a good explanation for the fact the results in each recount defied the statistical odds that the recounts were legitimate. In any legitimate recount, a candidate may pick up an additional vote here and there while also losing one here and there. And its true for BOTH candidates. But during the Florida recounts ONLY Bush lost votes and he lost a massive number between the first and second count alone. Gore never EVER lost votes -he only gained a few while Bush lost massive numbers. And Bush NEVER gained any -he only lost more and more. When using punch ballots -its actually pretty easy to spoil entire stacks of ballots for one candidate by simply punching an additional hole through the entire stack. No ballot is ever accepted with more than one hole punched for a Presidentical candidate -which also explains the incredible volume of new "chads" showing up on the floor. Bush clearly had entire stacks of his votes spoiled during the recounts and I have no doubt that Gore would have demanded more and more recounts until enough had been destroyed that he could falsely claim to be the "real" winner. After all, the expert on how to steal an election was on his payroll. Not Bush's. It truly was a spectacle only worthy of a third world banana republic.