h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's not like President Bush caused these failures in the Florida election system. It all looks like faily typical government in action stuff to me.

It's not like they found anything to substaniate the roadblocks or other nonsesne they were talking about right after the election. The commision was down there trying to dig up information days after the election. I recall one meeting they had shortly after the election where they tried to solicit infomation about voters being prenvented from vioting. They basically had a bunch of people who said that they didn't like the outcome of the election.

Big deal. The person I voted for didn't get in either.

"It's not like President Bush caused these failures in the Florida Election System" - no, it's like his brother and his campaign co-chairperson did.

"It all looks like fairly typical government in action stuff to me." Oh, TBTPM I truly hope that isn't true. Tens of thousands of people are denied their democratic and constitutional right to vote and you just shrug your shoulders and say "typical"? Surely not. Surely you're not that jaded and cynical about your own country. What happened to the land of the free?

I went to the site you mentioned, but didn't establish which of the articles thereon you were talking about.

???

would the link not pass mod muster?

I don't see a conspiracy here to throw the election. It was the status quo. When this election highlighted serious problems, they were addressed.

It is the land of the free, but it's still a land with a government. Governments aren't all that efficient. Our voting system is shot through with fraud, errors and problems.

The first time I voted in Georgia, it took me a couple of hours, and I had to visit several different places before I figured out where I was supposed to go. My voter registration card listed a school that I was supposed to vote at. Then the school moved. There was still a school there, but it was named something else. I drove on. Figured it out, and I voted. Although, I think I was the last one who voted in the precinct.

The real problem here is that the popular vote in the state of Florida fell within the margin of error.

Spiff,
From the front page of the website, click on their report into the 2000 presidential election. Read the Executive Summary if you've not much time.

TBTPM,
If the result was within the margin for error, then the correct course of action is surely either to eliminate the errors or declare a draw? After all, you're electing a President so it's important to get it right. In a nation of 200m voters, 154m didn't vote for George W Bush. How wide was the margin of error?

It's not just the disenfranchisement instigated by Katherine Harris. How about the treatment of overseas military ballots? Of nearly 2500 such votes, several hundred were not valid under Florida law (eg almost 200 were postmarked WITHIN the US). And who was it who relaxed those regulations? Katherine Harris. The New York Times ran a series of articles about the way the Bush Team cornered the overseas ballots. I've only been able to read a summary of them, but it's intriguing stuff.

Back to the disenfranchisement:- almost 8000 voters were erroneously removed from the electoral roll because an incorrect list of voters was supplied by the State of Texas. Remind me again, who governed Texas?

Regarding the Supreme Court decision that effectively appointed Mr Bush... Justice Clarence Thomas's wife works for George W Bush, and Justice Antonin Scalia's son is a lawyer in the firm which represented Mr Bush in the case. Neither Justice saw a conflict of interest, and neither removed themselves from the case. Two other Justices were previously reported to want a Republican President when they retired this term so that their replacements would share their philosophies.

So, to recap... predominantly Democrat voters were disenfranchised by Bush's campaign team, other (predominantly Republican) votes were counted after the rules were waived, Bush's relative called the election on TV before the count was finished, and 2 Justices with an interest in Bush sat on the Supreme Court. Margin for error, my ass. It stinks, and it stinks bad.

I'm English, so from the point of view of my franchise I'm unaffected. So why should a limey show such interest? Because, like it or not, the actions of your unelected president will impact the rest of us.

I'm glad to see there's still an interest in my entry. Geoff Taylor, I'd really appreciate it if you gave me some specific sources about the things you're talking about. Voter disenfranchizement and fraud in Florida were going to be the main points, but I couldn't find any valid information on anything -- just vague reports in the first days after the election. I'd be happy to revise the entry to make it more complete.

-nevermindtheend

Florida just had another election. They screwed that one up too. The same counties were having multiple problems. The county election officials are responsible for this stuff, but they can't seem to handle it.

I find the Supreme Court thing to be sort of funny. The US Supreme Court reveresed a blatantly partisan decsion by the Florida Supreme Court. I don't think you can really score any points on that one.

"...Florida just had another election. They screwed that one up too"...

Precincts opened a couple of hours late; Gov. Bush authorised an extension. Union county had a problem that will result in 2300 votes being hand-counted. Orange county plans to manually count almost half of its ballots. There are numerous reports of poll-workers not turning up, arriving late and/or leaving early. Some voting districts' boundaries have been redrawn, causing confusion.

As TBTPM has pointed out before, there is a margin of error in all elections, and the latest Florida elections have had their share. But I'll say it again; Sixty-Four Thousand voters were systematically disenfranchised during the 2000 election. That is an order of magnitude away from any of this week's errors, and I'd wager that it's more than all this week's problems combined.

Re The Supreme Court... one blatantly partisan decision corrects another? Two wrongs, and all that.

>Re The Supreme Court... one blatantly partisan decision corrects another? Two wrongs, and all that.

I agree with you on that. The Florida Supreme Court decsion left the whole mess in a clearly corrupt situation. As a proponent of states' rights, the US Supreme Court's decision made me uncomfortable, but I can see where they were coming from.

A few more dirty tricks have come to light...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/080502a.html

Geoff

The article points at a whole lot of nothing. It's just plane silly.

A riot requires violence. I don't see that here. Yelling arrest him isn't violence. It's being loud and stupid.

These people were sent down to protest. They did things that we generally expect out of leftists. The article doesn't point at anything criminal that left wing protesters routinely engage in. I guess it's acceptable when left wing loons chain themselves across streets, break into office buildings, and have actual riots. IF someone from the right protests, it's a criminal conspiracy.

Even though Governor Bush did win, President Clinton was still in office when these riots were staged. His attorney general could have dispatched agents to investigate at the time. They didn't do it, because there was nothing there for them to do.