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Lest
We Forget
May 19, 2001
by Kevin Tavris
The Initial Controversy over the Hand Recounts
- Republican Hypocrisy off the Richter Scale
The debate over the hand recounts in Florida
started almost immediately on the day after the election (Nov.
8th) and provided some of the most disgusting parades of hypocrisy
that I've ever seen, in the form of numerous Republicans making
TV appearances to rant and rave about the gall that Al Gore
had to request a recount. It was bad enough that they invented
every excuse you could imagine to explain why the hand recount
should not be done, despite the fact that it was allowed by
Florida statute.
What made it so much worse is that in addition
to this they tried to cast Gore as a "sore loser" for trying
to obtain the recount. They even began to develop and use
(in protest marches) big signs which read "Sore Loserman",
as a pun on Gore/Lieberman. It still enrages me to even think
about this. Their reasons as to why a recount should not be
done ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, and they are
worth recalling:
One of the most common was several versions
of the allegation that the Gore campaign was trying to obtain
"recount after recount after recount, no matter how many times
Bush won the election". This was the favorite refrain of James
Baker, Bush's primary henchman and campaign chief in the post-election,
who is one of the most pompous assholes in the history of
the world. Of course the phrase "recount after recount after
recount" was meant to convey the impression that Gore was
trying to obtain an infinite number of recounts, until he
won the election. This impression was apparently facilitated
by the fact that the networks had originally called the election
for Bush.
But the fact of the matter is that only one
full recount was ever completed, and that was the recount
that took place automatically, immediately after the initial
election returns put Bush ahead with a margin of less than
a tenth of a percent of the total vote, without the Gore team
having to request it. The hand recount that Gore requested,
on the other hand, was never completed.
In the same vein, Baker, and Bush too, as well
as a number of others, frequently noted that Bush won the
election after each recount. I guess that what they meant
by this was that every time a county stopped counting and
a new vote total was announced, with Bush still ahead, that
was considered to be another election that he won. As time
went on, this line of attack became less and less frequent,
as it became obvious that not enough people were buying it.
Another line, which I associate with Mary Matelin,
was that "These votes weren't meant to be counted by hand,
they were meant to be counted by machine because machines
are much more accurate," (why didn't someone ask her how she
knew this?) After a parade of voting experts made the point
that nothing could be further from the truth, this line of
attack also slowed to a crawl. The fact of the matter was,
as the experts explained it, that in voting areas where punch
card ballots are used, the penetration of the stylus through
the ballot sometimes fails to dislodge little pieces of cardboard
known as "chads". When this happens, the voting machines will
fail to count the ballot as a vote if the hanging chad obscures
the hole in the ballot. This fact explains why Gore picked
up so many additional votes on the machine recount: Many of
the hanging chads fell off when they ran through the counting
machine the first time, and so they were counted the second
time.
But that was not the end of it. An unknown number
of ballots that were not counted in the second machine count
(i.e., the automatic recount) may still have had hanging chads
or have been partially punched through, indicating the intent
of the voter to vote for a given candidate. In order to get
a better look at what the voter intended, the best way to
do this is to look at the ballots with the human eye. This
was in fact what Florida law allowed for, as did the law of
many other states. The Bush henchmen tried to give the impression
that the request for the recount was some sort of radical
request, despite the fact that Florida law allowed for it.
When it was pointed out that Bush himself had
signed into law in Texas a similar statute, which in fact
clearly stated that hand recounts are preferable to machine
counts because they are more accurate, this contention was
made less often. But it didn't stop completely, because the
Bush henchmen and henchwomen were still able to think of all
sorts of implausible explanations as to why what the Texas
law required was different from what was being requested in
Florida.
Then there was the contention that repeated
handling of the ballots changed their nature, therefore magically
producing additional votes for Gore. To "prove" this point,
the Republican "observers" in counties where the votes were
being counted actually photographed chads that had fallen
onto the floor during the process. I think that they believed
that since they actually had photographic evidence of this,
a certain number of incredibly stupid people would believe
that this was important. But it seems to me that anyone whose
IQ is greater than 70 or so should have been able to question
what the ballots looked like before the chads fell onto the
floor. And I suppose that a certain number of intelligent
people who feel that the use of their brain is a great hardship
may also have automatically concluded that if a chad falls
off of a ballot and onto the floor, that must mean that the
chad originated spontaneously from the ballot rather than
was created by the voter.
Well, who knows what the Republicans were thinking?
They simply realized that if they could get people to believe
that hand counting of votes was a flawed process, they would
be willing to disgrace themselves by saying anything that
came to mind, no matter how stupid. When they were finally
challenged to explain how it was that these chads that ended
up on the floor originated in the first place, these assholes
claimed that it happened from mere handling of the ballots.
Even the blowhard Chris Matthews of MSNBC wouldn't totally
buy this, and I heard him at least once say in response that
he didn't see how that could happen (and noted that he couldn't
do it himself), and he even asked the asshole to show him.
When a lame excuse was given for not being able to do this,
he quickly dropped the matter, since his main mode of operation
is to stab people in the back (Democrats) when they're not
around and able to defend themselves, rather than confront
them directly.
Another rationale for trying to stop the recount
was that it was requested by the Gore team, and therefore
taking place, only in selected Democratic counties. That might
have been a valid argument, except that on numerous occasions
the Bush team had refused to request such a recount in Republican
counties. He missed the original deadline, which gave him
72 hours to make the request after the initial votes had been
counted. Then, a week or so later, in an attempt to come up
with a reasonable solution to the legal squabbles, Gore, in
a public appearance, offered to have every county in the state
recounted. And Bush refused a third time when the case was
presented before the Florida Supreme Court. The real reason
why Bush did not request that Republican counties perform
hand recounts was - obviously to me - that he felt he had
a better chance of winning the election by stopping the Democratic
County recounts than by allowing a recount of the entire state.
Another excuse was that it would take too long,
so that the recount would not be finished by Inauguration
Day, or by the time that the Electoral College was supposed
to vote. There might have been some believability to this
originally. However, the individual canvassing boards made
it clear that it would not take anywhere near as long as the
Republicans would have us believe, and later events were to
prove this beyond any doubt. So these were some of the most
common and outlandish excuses that the Bush team used for
their efforts to do anything in their power to stop the recount
from proceeding.
There were other excuses as well, and I should
mention a couple of the more plausible, for the sake of completeness.
One was that a hand recount could allow for cheating, whereas
machines don't cheat. That could be theoretically possible,
I suppose, but the fact that "observers" from both sides were
on the scene at all times made that argument considerably
less powerful. (Of course that didn't prevent a flood of allegations
from Republicans that cheating was in fact occurring.)
Another theoretically plausible argument for
not doing the hand count was that there was a big question
as to how to know what standard to use for counting the ballots.
The Florida statute merely said that "the clear intent of
the voter" should be ascertained. Nobody quite knew precisely
how that should be done, and many of the canvassing boards
sought legal input into this question and had a great deal
of trouble in deciding upon the appropriate standard. The
Bush team point of view on this (surprise, surprise!) was
that since there was no well defined standard it would be
unfair to count these votes at all, because that would "dilute"
other votes cast in Florida. I will come back to this all
important point later.
Gore Camp Arguments to the Florida Supreme
Court to Extend the Certification Deadline
The main Gore argument was, as noted earlier,
that the Florida law required that counties be given the opportunity
to hand count votes in a close election. Given that, the part
of the law that specified a deadline for certifying the returns
did not make sense because it did not leave enough time to
count the votes. The Bush team had no real counter argument
to that (in my opinion), other than to reiterate that the
law specified a deadline. The great majority of the bullshit
arguments that they made on TV for public consumption they
omitted from their argument to the Court, since they realized
that each of these Justices had some brains.
They basically had three arguments to make in
addition to the one about the deadline:
1. The count was unfair because only selected
Democratic counties were chosen by the Gore team.
2. The law specified that the count should take
place only when there was a demonstrated problem with the
machine count.
3. The count was unfair because the standards
for counting votes varied between one county and another,
and there were no uniformly agreed upon standards. As such,
it violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution
by applying different standards to different voters.
The Gore team had excellent answers to all
of these:
1. In response to the fact that the Gore team
had requested only that selected counties be counted, the
Court asked the Gore team if they would have any objections
to Republican Counties being counted as well. The answer was
that there would be no objections. The Court then asked the
Bush team if they would like to do that, and the answer was
no, they would not.
2. The Gore team noted that there were in fact
problems with the punch card machines, as demonstrated statistically
that counties that used them had five times the undervote
rate as counties that used other voting methods. Furthermore,
the very fact that the first machine recount resulted in many
additional Gore votes, and that the hand counting so far in
every disputed county resulted in many additional Gore votes
was further indication to this effect (I don't know if the
actual mechanism for this problem came out at this time.)
3. With regard to standards, the Florida statute
said plainly that the ballots shall be evaluated to determine
the clear intent of the voter. True, that statement could
and was in fact interpreted in different ways. But that is
what the statute said, and it was up to the individual counties
to decide how to interpret it. With regard to the issue of
equal protection - how could that even be an issue? It was
obvious that different voting methods were used in different
counties. So how could different ways of evaluating the votes
make protection less equal? (I don't know if the Gore team
said this, but in fact, although there was no way to make
this protection absolutely equal, due to the different voting
methods, at least hand counting the undercounted ballots made
the protection more equal than it would be without the hand
counting.)
What Should Be the Standard for Hand Counting
the Ballots?
At this point, so as to make clear why I felt
that the Leon County trial should have made the case for the
Gore team, even though this point seems to have been totally
lost in the shuffle, I will include below a copy of part of
the letter that I sent to all the Democratic Congressmen and
Al Gore:
"The primary question that needed to
be answered (and still should be) was: What do the undercounted
ballots mean with respect to voter intention? If this question
could be fully answered, that would provide the rationale
for what the appropriate standard should be. A large part
of the answer to this question was provided in the data presented
at the Leon County trial by the Gore team statistician.
I believe that a good starting point for
understanding this issue is consideration of a frequent Republican
criticism of the vote counting process that was underway in
mid-November: That only selected strongly Democratic counties
were hand counting votes (Let's ignore for the moment the
fact that the Bush team repeatedly refused to request that
the same be done in Republican counties.) The Bush team and
other Republicans were perfectly correct in assuming that
counties with a high percentage of Gore votes in the counted
ballots were likely to likewise turn up a comparatively high
percentage of votes for Gore in the undercounted ballots.
But nobody ever seems to have asked why this was so.
These same Republicans repeatedly attempted
to lead people to believe that various degrees of indentation
on the ballots that did not register as votes on the machine
count did not mean anything. These Republicans and numerous
TV commentators repeatedly ridiculed the idea of counting
these ballots as votes. What they tried to make us believe
was that these indentations were merely accidental markings
(with numerous implausable explanations as to how such accidental
markings could have occurred). But if it was true that these
markings were accidental, then the place on the ballot where
they occurred would have been random, and there would have
been likely to be just as many Bush as Gore votes on these
ballots. Furthermore, there would have been no relationship
between the percentage of undervotes going to a given candidate
and the percentage of votes that that candidate received from
the machine count."
In fact, the Bush team's fears that reviewing
undercounted votes in heavily Democratic counties would lead
to gains for Gore were borne out by results in the three counties
where this occurred. But not only that: as presented at the
Leon County trial, the undercounted votes in the two counties
where the count was complete (Palm Beach and Broward) went
for Gore and Bush in almost the exact same proportion as the
machine counted votes -- thus refuting the Bush team claim
that the identations on the ballots represented mere accidents,
rather than voter intent.
But this conclusion was not clearly and correctly
stated at the trial. Following a long and intense cross-examination,
when the Gore statistician was asked if the undercount could
represent simply voters who had no intention to vote for president,
he replied that, although he believed that not to be the case,
he could not support that belief from the data that he had.
That was the wrong answer. In fact, the data that he himself
had presented clearly and strongly implied that the undercount
did not represent merely accidental marks on the ballot.
If that were the case, there would be no plausible way to
explain why the percentage of undercount and machine counted
votes for both candidates was so similar.
Next, let's consider the question of what the
precise standard for counting the votes should be. Not having
seen all of the relevant data, I can't answer that question
with certainty. But the fact that two counties using very
different standards for counting the ballots both came up
with results that very closely resembled the machine counted
votes should tell us something: It may very well be that any
observable indentation on the ballot in a place where a presidential
candidate is indicated, if that is the only mark on that ballot
for a presidential candidate, indicates the intention of the
voter to vote for that candidate.
If that was the case, then any standard which
involves a mark of some sort over a presidential candidate
would help to garner additional votes for president, in proportion
to the number of voters who intended to vote for the respective
candidates. The more liberal the standard, the more such ballots
would be counted as votes, and therefore the closer the final
count would come to the true intent of the voters. The more
narrow the standard, the less such ballots would be counted,
and therefore the final count would come further away from
the true intent of the voters.
But even this standard would come closer to
demonstrating the true intent of the voters than if no hand
count was done at all. In view of this, I don't see how any
possible reading of the equal protection clause of our Constitution
could have been violated by such a standard.
So how do we know precisely what standard should
have been (or should be) used? I don't precisely know the
answer to that question, but it seems obvious to me, based
upon the above explanation, that both Palm Beach County and
Broward County were using appropriate standards (in that they
both resulted in a vote count closer to the voters' intent
than would be the case if no hand recount were performed).
However, Broward County's standards were more appropriate
than Palm Beach County's, since their standard added a greater
percentage of valid votes to the total.
Further analysis could shed a great deal more
light on this subject, thereby either confirming or contradicting
my above noted opinions. In particular, results from other
counties could be analyzed, to see whether or not the undercounts
from those counties went for the respective presidential candidates
in the same proportion as the machine counted votes, as they
did in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. And the same analysis
could be done at the precinct level.
Furthermore, results could be analyzed utilizing
different standards for counting the votes. If all standards
resulted in similar percentages for the undercounts as for
the machine counts, that would provide further powerful evidence
that any of these standards are appropriate, but that the
most liberal standard used in the analysis is the most appropriate.
And finally, I should note that it is possible
that the issue is more complex than it would seem from the
above discussion. It may be, for example, that even if the
indentations represent the intent of the voter, the proportions
of votes for the various candidates may nevertheless not be
the same as those found in the machine counts. This could
occur if some portions of the ballot were more likely than
others to present a problem in punching the stylus through
the card. I am not familiar enough with the mechanics of the
voting procedure to know how likely this possibility is. However,
this hypothesis could certainly be tested if need be.
Thoughts on the Hijacking of the Presidential
Election by the Five U.S. Supreme Scumbuckets
The dissents of the other four justices by and
large reflected my views. In the first place, it was said
that it did not make sense to say that differences in standards
for counting ballots meant unequal protection under the amendment.
By this reasoning, the whole election, in all 50 states would
have to be ruled unconstitutional, since there were a myriad
of voting methods in all states. Furthermore, given the differences
in voting methods in Florida, and that the purpose of hand
counting the ballots was to remedy the unfairness that resulted
from this, how could the U.S. Court decide that this was unconstitutional?
This reasoning made perfect sense, and as far
as I (and millions of other Americans) was concerned, this
in itself is demonstrative logical proof that the five Supreme
Court Justices who came up with this ruling did so only because
of their own personal preference. In my mind this is one of
the worst abuses of power in American history, probably the
worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott decision
almost a century and a half ago.
Enough said about that. Another issue with regard
to this decision is that the Justices took it upon themselves
to decide what the deadline date for counting the ballots
would be. There was no reason that they couldn't have allowed
it to go until the 18th, as provided for in our constitution.
The only problem would have been that if the electors were
not chosen before the 12th, that meant that they could be
challenged by Congress. It seems to me that that would be
a decision that the Florida Supreme Court should rightfully
make. But no, these scumbags knew whom they wanted to win
this election, and they weren't going to allow for any loopholes.
Then, to pile hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, they
said that they wanted to make it clear that this decision
of theirs applied only to this one very specific case and
should not be taken to set a precedent. Justice Paul Stevens
said it all (almost) in his dissent. He said:
"We will never know for sure who really won
this election. But it is evident who the losers are - the
American people, who have thus been given reason to lose all
confidence in the judge as the arbiter of justice in our system
of government."
Of course my statement would have been far less
polite and civil. I would have added that they should be tried
for treason, or at the very least impeached. But just think
of what Justice Stevens was saying to his fellow colleagues,
whom he will be confined to spending the rest of his life
working with: essentially he was telling them and the whole
country that their decision was not just wrong but morally
corrupt.
Some Final Words on Hypocrisy
I will now finish this with a word on hypocrisy.
Not having lived through Hitler's time nor Stalin's time,
I think that I am on safe ground in saying that I have never
seen so much hypocrisy in my life as I saw in the two months
before and the several weeks after the election, on the part
of Republicans in this country. It is truly a sad state of
affairs. And to make matters worse, they frequently accused
Gore of hypocrisy. The fact of the matter, however, is that
they truly don't even know what the word means.
Just as an evil person in incapable of ascertaining
the fact that he or she is evil, the same can be said about
hypocrisy. The proof that Republicans don't know the meaning
of the word can be found in their repeated pre-election accusations
against Gore to the effect that he was a hypocrite. These
accusations were based on the fact that he criticized the
entertainment industry while still accepting campaign contributions
from them. Presumably they felt that their candidate, George
W. Bush, who received much larger contributions from big moneyed
interests than Gore or any of the other candidates, was not
acting hypocritically in doing so. And presumably their reasoning
was that Bush, rather than criticizing his contributors, planned
to reward them using his power of the Presidency if he was
elected.
That would not be hypocritical, whereas if campaign
contributions are accepted without the promise of favors in
return, that is hypocritical. Enough said. I can't explain
it any more than that. If you don't understand what I'm trying
to say, my guess is that you're a Republican - or some other
kind of hypocrite.
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