November 9, 2000
Thursday, October 14, 2004, 10:54 PM
It was like having an upchuck-in-your-bed-cause-you-can't-make-it-to-the-toilet hangover for the second day in a row. We woke up to the unbelievable: no one knew who won. Here's the headline of the day: "Bush Barely Ahead of Gore in Florida as Recount Holds Key to the Election".

Best phone conversation excerpt:

"Mr. Bush told Mr. Gore that his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, had just assured him that FLorida was his, according to Gore aides.

'Let me explain something,' Mr. Gore said. 'Your younger brother is not the ultimate authority on this.' "

This year, it seems that the CEO of Diebold is the ultimate authority.

An editorial by Akhil Reed Amar called for the abolition of the electoral college. Here we are, four years later, with the same bad system, oh, except that now we have deployed many more electronic voting machines where a recount becomes nigh on impossible.

It had been over a century since the last time that no one knew who one for over a day after the polls closed. Perhaps this will become the new trend: election by lawsuit, to be determined sometime in late December. It could be worse. It could be election at gunpoint...


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Poll watching
Thursday, October 14, 2004, 10:19 PM
Yesterday I signed up to do poll watching. Or perhaps I'll be taking hotline calls, or be part of some mobile response team. These are some of the many options at the "Voter Protection Center"; see voteprotect.org for more information and to sign up yourself. The software lets you look at your task list, see who else is going out in your area, and all kinds of other goodies. Unfortunately, the only three tasks I seem to have are to fill out the three skillset questionnaires, and I did that already. I should enjoy my boredom; it'll probably get plenty exciting in a couple of weeks.

And speaking of polls, this year the Voter News Service is out of business. Instead, the AP will be the only source for vote counts. Don't f*ck it up, guys! (The full story is here.)


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Nov 8, 2000 -- the Day After
Wednesday, October 13, 2004, 09:39 PM
The NYTimes front page headline: "Bush Appears to Defeat Gore; Hairbreadth Electoral Vote; Hilary Clinton Goes to Senate".

The subtitle to that article: "Florida is decisive". How true that was, we would only learn later.

A poll conducted by the Voter News Service showed that about a fourth of the voters "rated honesty a more important consideration than experience or an understanding of the complex issues of the day... those people tended to vote for Mr. Bush".

What will this year's exit polls show?

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A walk down Memory Lane
Wednesday, October 13, 2004, 03:05 PM
A little over four years ago, on my 40th birthday, I was sitting in front of the TV watching election returns. It was pretty late at night and they had just called Florida for Gore. But I was sticking around for the concession speeches. I'm a masochist that way.

Anyways, I must have falled asleep, because the next thing I remember hearing was that the networks were taking back their call. I sat up groggily and fumbled around for the remote to switch channels; they were all saying the same thing, but I couldn't figure out whether I was still asleep or not.

Several months of legal hijinx ensued, leading us to the infamous 5-4 vote, and thus to our current predicament (*cough* Diebold *cough*).

I saved NYT articles from that crazy period. If I can dig 'em out from my pile of junk in the basement, I'll start posting excerpts here. If we are going to be doomed to repeat history, we might as well have good soundbytes from the last time through!

Other election news will be posted here; the more useless and bizarre, the better.


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