November 20, 2000
Monday, October 25, 2004, 10:22 PM
NYT Headline: "Recounts Drag On; Court Battle Lines Are Drawn".

Broward County changed the way it would count votes, so that dimpled or one-corner chads would be counted as votes.

Lieberman (candidate for Veep) said that Florida election officials should reconsider tossing the hundreds of military overseas ballots rejected for various reasons including missing postmarks.

The Bush campaign asked the Florida Supreme Court to let the state reject any manual recounts finished after last Tuesday because that we the deadline in Florida law. That was the main argument in their brief filed with the court.

Vote counters started to go slowly crazy. A research analyst for the Republican National Committee said that on Friday he saw a Democratic counter eating a chad. People started putting votes in the wrong pile, from sheer exhaustion. Right outside the counting room, nonstop press conferences and live broadcasts were taking place, which means that counters were trying to do this excrutiatingly detailed task in the midst of bedlam. The room is almost soundproof but not impervious to the klieg lights used by the press to film the bedlam.

A quote from one of the front page articles, titled "An Evolving Legal Maze", subtitled "Tangled Issues and No Clear Exit":

"For a brief interval late Friday afternoon, it appeared that the electoral stalemate in Florida might finally be headed toward something approaching a definitive judicial resolution in the State Supreme Court.

Not anymore.

As lawsuits over an astonishing variety of election-related disputes proliferated around the stater, with others threatened but not yet filed, the momentary clarity provided by two court orders late Friday, both letting manual counting of ballots proceed, quickly faded.
...
But whether the state courts -- or, in fact, any court -- will have the last word is increasingly an open question. The Florida Supreme Court hearing set for Monday afternoon brings to mind Winston Churchill's assessment of a British victory in North Africa in late 1942: 'This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.' "

Just think, we're still at the *beginning* of the beginning.



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Holy Shit!
Monday, October 25, 2004, 10:01 PM
Excuse me. But that's what I said when I heard the news this morning that Chief Justice Rehnquist was in the hospital with a tracheotomy for thyroid cancer. After all, I am one of those who think that this election will be decided by nother 5 to 4 vote. Or will that be a 4 to 4 vote? Suddenly things have gotten even *more* interesting.

In the meantime, the next lawsuit is almost here, as predicted, and I got a packet from Verified Voting in the mail with glossy handouts describing all of the electroniv voting machiens in use in California.

I tried to track down the details on the counting of paper ballots in California and got partway there after three phone calls (don't call the 1-888 number; you just get a voicemail system which in the end prompts you to leave your snail mail address). I'm still trying to get the rest of the details; more tomorrow if I get them.


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November 19, 2000
Sunday, October 24, 2004, 09:03 PM
NYT Headline: "Bush's Lead Stands at 930 After Overseas Count".

The lead:

"Gov. George W. Bush's lead in Florida more than tripled today as all absentee ballots from overseas were opened and tallied. But his campaign was unable to claim the victory it had expected, as both sides awaited a hearing on Monday in the Florida Supreme Court."

Recounts in two counties yielded small returns, with a net gain of 79 votes in Broward County for Gore, and 12 in Palm Beach County for Bush. A majority of votes in both counties remained uncounted.

"[T]he process, which Republicans have described as chaos, is going painfully slow for the peple watching it around the nation. Republicans say some volunteers are, either by accident or on purpose, dislodging the chads.

Republican monitors actually have gathered some chads off the counting room floor as evidence that the ballots are being mishandled."

While the Bush campaign called in the Governor of Montana to make some press appearances, Florida state lawmakers were also busy planning. The details:

"Ordinarily, presidential electors are chosen through the popular vote and are expected to cast their ballots for the winning candidate. But Republican leaders, who control both houses of the State Legislature, say they are examining a federal law that they believe gives them power to seat electors if the outcome of the popular vote in Florida is unclear.
...
Electors must be seated by Dec. 12. Republicans and Democrats interviewed today said they hoped the matter would be resolved long before then. But if that did not happen, Republican lawmakers said today that they could invoke the federal statute."

An editorial asked what would happen if Bush were elected: "Suppose that George W. Bush pulls it off -- that he gets to the White House on the strength of chads and butterflies. Will he make good on his boast of being a 'uniter, not a divider' ?"



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No News Is Good News
Sunday, October 24, 2004, 08:37 PM
Maybe. The reason that there were no quotes from the Sixth Circuit opinion yesterday in the Ohio provisional ballots case is that no opinion was issued. The only document available is a 2 page order which says that an opinion will be forthcoming.

For those of you who have noticed that Michigan is covered by the Sixth Circuit and are expecting the stay in that provisional balloting case to mean that the lower court decision will be overturned there as well, don't be too sure. The lower court decision there was based on a Michigan statute, not on HAVA, as the Ohio case was. You'll just have to wait and see along with everybody else.

A little over a week away, and the election is still too close to call, both in terms of electoral votes, (today's electoral vote predictor has Kerry with 253 and Bush with 254, according to the most recent polls), but in terms of the popular vote.

Disclaimer: I do not support either Bush or Kerry. The reason I have bizarre pro-Kerry sites listed under the links section is that I have not found any pro-Bush sites that are bizarre enough to include yet. If you find one, please let me know. I reserve the right to decide whether it is truly bizarre enough to make the cut.


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November 18, 2000
Saturday, October 23, 2004, 10:58 PM
NYT Headline: "Florida Court Bars Naming a Winner; Bush Lead Grows With Overseas Tally".

And one of the subheadings: "Manual Count Goes On in a Day of Confusion and Court Rulings".

Hre's the entire text of the Florida Supreme Court's order:

"In order to maintain the status quo, the Court, on its own motion, enjoins the Respondent, Secretary of State and Respondent, the Elections Canvassing Commission from certifying the results of the November 7, 2000, presidential election, until further order of this Court. It is NOT the intent of this Order to stop the counting and conveying to the Secretary of State the results of absentee ballots or any other ballots."

Because of the overseas votes, Bush's lead grew in the last day. The numbers:

Officially certified vote, as of Nov. 14: Bush, 2,910,492 and Gore 2,910,192 with Bush leading by 300 votes. Overseas ballots counted the previous day: Bush, 1,057 and Gore, 597, with a gain of 460 for Bush. Unnoficial hand recounts showed a gain of 48 for Gore, which works out to a net lead of 712 for Bush.

Officials in Miami-Dade Counry voted to conduct a full manual recount after the Florida Supreme Court order came down. They had about half a million votes to examine.

The full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Bush campaign's request to block further hand recounts.

In the meantime, officials in different counties were counting absentee ballots differently. Katherine Harris issued instructions that a ballot, if signed by Election Day but postmarked afterwards, should still be counted. So, some counties counted them if they were postmarked at all, some counted them even without a postmark, and some refused to count them unless the postmark was by Election Day. I guess that about covers all the options, doesn't it? Here's an excerpt from the coverage:

"Counties applied vastly different standards in deciding whether to throw out ballots. A few county officials openly defied the Florida secretary of sate's instructions to accept otherwise valid ballots from overseas that were postmarked after Election Day. Others freely admitted that they did not understand those instructions.
...
'It seems like everybody's been changing the rules to suit their satisfaction,' Fred Galey, the Brevard County supervisor of elections, said dryly. 'This certainly has been educational.' "

Oh, yes, and the same day, Judge Lewis in federal court denied a motion to force Harris to accept the recounted votes tallied after Nov. 14th. Harris argued that only "proof of fraud, noncompliance with election procedures, or a natural disaster could justify accepting the late returns". The Dems argued that this was not an exercise of her discretion but was instead an abuse of that discretion.

You know, I remember when we were living through this that it all sort of made sense to me at the time. That is, I could tell you what lawsuits were going on, in what order, and which ruling depended on which bizarre behavior by which government official(s). But, looking back on this now, I haven't got a f*cking clue.

I'll close with a thought about lawsuits from Judge Burton, talking about the ongoing recount in Palm Beach County:

" 'It's both sides,' said Mr. Burton of the constant challenges that have bogged down the process inside the Palm Beach County Emergency Management Center. 'I'm not blaming anybody. Lately, every time someone coughs or sneezes, it results in another lawsuit.' "


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