Election 2004: Vote Early and OftenNovember 12, 2000
Monday, October 18, 2004, 01:00 AM
NYT front page headline: "Bush Sues to Halt Hand Recount in Florida".
According to the NYT, "the campaign cited the 'potential for mischief' and said the process was inherently less fair and more subjective than counting by machine."
That will be an interesting argument to try to make this time around.
"The announcement, by James A. Baker III, came a day after the Republicans criticized the Democrats for threatening to take the ballot issue to court, a step that the Republicans said would lead to endless wrangling in a number of states."
Palm Beach County was supposed to take 12 hours to conduct a manual recount of 4671 ballots. County Judge Charles Burton oversaw the process, as we all watched on TV.
"What should have been a simple question -- whether or not a vote was cast when a hole was punched in a piece of paper -- was complicated because the hole was not punched through cleanly and left a hanging or torn piece, known as a chad."
On page A32, chads got a whole column of coverage. An excerpt:
"Chads -- the term dates to the late 1950's when punch cards were the standard way of reading data into a computer -- may be unknown to the lay person, but they are so contentious that some election officials will not talk about them on the record."
A number of editorials to date called for a quick resolution and urged the candidates not to resort to the courts. The NYT repeated that sentiment on the front page:
"By next weekend, a group of scholars and senior politicians interviewed this weekend agreed, the presidential race of 2000 must be resolved, without recourse to the courts. With remarkable unanimity, they said that would be in the nation's best interests and, in the last analysis, those of the candidates, Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas." On the inside, though, Larry Tribe wrote an op-ed urging exactly the opposite: "Let the Courts Decide".
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