All Bets Are Off
Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 09:07 PM
I was going to write something today about the provisional ballot mess. but that wil lhave to wait until tomorrow because hell just froze over.

And for those who care, I am a Yankees fan. Expletive deleted!

[ add comment ] §
November 14, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 02:06 PM
NYT headline: "A Vote Deadline in Florida is Set for Today".

What happened? Florida's Sec. of State said she would enforce a legal Tuesday evening deadline for certifying the statewide vote. In the meantime, a federal judge in Miami refused to block the hand recounts.

In state court, the Gore campaign and two counties fought to get the Tuesday deadline extended but the judge did not immediately rule on the matter.

As we all recall, Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State in question, was also co-chair of Bush's presidential campaign in Florida. She was also a delegate at the Republican National Convention in 2000.

Unfortunately, most secretaries of state are partisans, and most play roles during election years that are as crucial as hers was.

Fox News got some spotlight shone on it as well:

"Senior executives for the Fox News Channel acknowledged last night that John Ellis, an executive who played a central role in the first decision on election night to project that George W. Bush had won the presidency, and who is a first cousin of Mr. Bush, spent much of the night in communication with the candidate.

The Fox executives said they had been unaware of the contact and said Mr. Ellis had misused his role with the network, perhaps damaging its reputation."

Here's the popular vote as it looked that day: Al Gore, 49,260,111, and George W. Bush, 49,043,820. Gore lead by 216,291 votes. The elctoral vote count was: Al Gore, 255, George W. Bush, 246, and undecided, 37 (Florida, New Mexico, Oregon).

Here's a quote from Ms. Harris on the recounts:

"Because there are no uniform standards governing this manual recount in four heavily Democratic areas, the votes in these four selective counties are not being counted accurately or fairly. They are being counted subjectively and selectively."

How close are we to uniform standards today? Get real!

[ add comment ] §
Betting Pool now open!
Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 02:05 PM
On what day will we learn who won the presidential elections of Nov. 2, 2004?

a) Nov. 2, at 11:00 pm PST
b) Nov 3, at 12 noon PST
c) Nov 28, after a Florida Supreme Court decision
d) Dec 13, when an elector defects during the electoral college meeting
e) We know the final tally already (see 5-4 vote from Bush v. Gore)

My vote: Dec 16. Random? Yes. You heard it here first.


[ add comment ] §
November 13 , 2000
Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 12:17 AM
NYT headline: "Recount Fight Widens as Court Case Begins".

And the subtitle: "As Bush Camp Looks to Federal Court, Gore Supporters Embrace States' Rights".

The recount itself widened too; "a divided election board in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County announced that a marathon recount, including a hand count of four sample precincts there, had produced enough discrepancies to warrant an extraordinary manual recount of all 425,000 votes cast in the county."

Volusia County workers began their own recount of 184,019 ballots, starting Nov. 12, a day behind schedule.

Sandra Guard, an election official in Seminole County, was alleged to have allowed Republican Party workers to set up shop in her office for several days and correct errors on thousands of applications for absentee ballots.

And, for an update on hanging chads: Palm Beach used the following standard to decide which chads counted and which didn't. If it was a "hanging chad" (one cornet attached to the ballot), a "swinging chad" (two corners attached), or a "tri-chad" (three corners attached), it would be counted, but if if was a "pregnant chad" (rectangle is punched or dimpled but all corners are attached), it would not be counted.

Problems with the ballots (besides the notorious butterfly ballot) started surfacing today in the news. From Fort Lauderdale:

"A funny thing happened at the polls here and in many other sites in Broward County last week. After waiting in long lines caused by heavy turnout, thousands of people stepped into the voting booths and then, if the results are to be believed, did not vote for president."

Total number of ballots: 558,007. Total ballots with no vote for president counted: 6,686.

Many people voted for Buchanan because of the poor design of the butterfly ballot. We don't have good stats on how many people punched the wrong chad, but "some county officials had heard that voters who made mistakes and asked for a second ballot were being denied them. Under Florida law they are entitled to even a third one if they mess up on the first two."


[ add comment ] §
Florida, the Sequel
Monday, October 18, 2004, 11:36 PM
As anyone who doesn't live on Mars knows by now, early voting started today in Florida, and with it, a host of problems with voting. Who knew?

Here's a survey of some of the problems:

At 9 of 14 sites in Broward County, election workers had to call in voters' names to the main office in Fort Lauderdale, where people would look the name up on the computer there. Why? Because the database connection was down.

In Duval County, the most populous county in Florida, the Supervisor of Elections, John Stafford, resigned suddenly after coming under fire for having only one site open for early voting. By way of comparison, Orange County, with nearly the same population, had 9 sites.

In Orange County, voting stopped a few minutes after it started because (no joke!) of a "faulty internet connection". Who has those computers on the Internet, anyways?! They might as well paint a large bullseye on the side of the box saying "Hack Me Now"!

Statewide, about 80,000 of the folks who were wrongly included on the felons list of ineligible voters from 2000 are probably still on that list.

Statewide, people who show up at the wrong precint and are given a provisional ballot will not have their votes counted, according to a ruling today by the Florida Supreme Court. Unfortunately, some may not get their voter registration cards telling them where to vote, until after Nov. 2; some folks have been relocated because of hurricanes and won't know where to go, and some polling places have been destroyed by storms leaving election supervisors scrambling to find new locations.

Well, that about wraps up day one in Florida. Only 15 to go!


[ add comment ] §

Back Next