[EM] Ok, it was Gore, not Kerry in 2000.

[Russ Paielli]

FYI, had the major networks not "called" Florida an hour or so before 
the polls closed, Bush would probably have won handily due to the 
overwhelmingly conservative vote in the Florida panhandle, which happens 
to be in a different time zone than the rest of the state. I believe 
this would have overwhelmed all the other "discrepencies" combined.

You might be interested to know that the networks were explicitly 
requested to delay their projections for Florida to prevent this sort of 
thing from happening. Normally they wait until the polls close in a 
particular state before they "call" the state. But they didn't care in 
this case, probably because it was an opportunity to damage Bush.

I also find it interesting that so many Gore voters couldn't figure out 
how to vote for their candidate. As far as I know, very few if any 
Republicans had any such problem. Does that say something? Oh, and by 
the way, I believe the infamous "buterfly" ballot was designed and 
approved by Democrats in Democrat-controlled counties.

[more below]

James Green-Armytage jarmyta-at-antioch-college.edu |EMlist| wrote:
>>I want to make that correction before someone else does; I´d said that
>>Kerry 
>>nearly lost the presidential election because he nearly lost in Florida. 
>>Actually, of course, it was Gore who barely won the presidency in 2000.
> 
> 
> It depends how you count it, right? As I understand, Gore won if you count
> overvotes, but otherwise Bush was still slightly ahead. Overvotes are when
> a voter fills in the oval for Gore, but then also writes his name where it
> says "write in". Personally, I think that overvotes should count, so I
> think that Gore was the legitimate winner of Florida in 2000.
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html
> 
> Of course, that doesn't take into account the butterfly ballots or the
> GOP-friendly voter roll purges; had these things not occurred, I expect
> Gore would have won by at least a couple thousand votes.
> 
> Anyway, I think that was a rather dark chapter in American history. It's a
> scary time when political candidates openly and aggressively campaign
> against recounting the votes when the original count is suspect; it shows
> a blatant disrespect for the will of the people. Although perhaps openly

I hope you are aware that Gore didn't want a complete recount. I hope 
you are also aware that recounts procedures are prescribed in detail by 
law. The Florida Supreme Court decided to blatantly thumb its nose at 
the law and essentially write their own law after the fact by 
arbitrarily changing deadlines and procedures. The US Supreme Court 
rightly stopped such nonsense.

> campaigning against verifiability for voting machines is scarier still.

I'm all for paper ballots. I even wrote an article about it at 
ElectionMethods.org long before the general public became aware of the 
issue.

--Russ