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Patience

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 10:09 UTC (Wed) by pharm (guest, #22305)
In reply to: Patience by jonth
Parent article: Back door in Diebold voting systems?

Interestingly (and not reported very much) their count revealed that the election result stood.

ISTR that it was slightly more nuanced than that. The result went something like: If only the votes in those few counties where Gore had specifically requested a recount were counted correctly, then the result (ie, a Bush win) stood. However, if all the votes were recounted, then Gore won.

Of course, once you've open this particular can of worms, you start looking at other states with very close margins & things start looking dicey all over the place for both candidates


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Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 11:53 UTC (Wed) by aotheoverlord (guest, #3993) [Link] (8 responses)

Actually not true, because "all the votes" didn't include the absentee ballots... and we all know who would have won if they'd counted those...

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 13:05 UTC (Wed) by tymiles (guest, #16469) [Link] (7 responses)

None of it matters because in the US the President is not elected by the popular vote (Which by the way Final numbers showed Gore with 50,996,116 votes and Bush with 50,456,169. Bush won the White House by capturing 271 electoral votes, one more than the Constitution requires. The popular vote total included all absentee ballots that were counted in the weeks following the Nov. 7 election.)

The election is won by getting the most electoral votes from the Electoral College (Which are delegates from each state whom "normally" vote based on how the popular vote is trending. The silly rule is that if you have a state with 10 electoral votes (The amount of electoral votes each state has is based on population of each state at the time of the election Each state has the same number of electoral college members as the total of its senators and representatives.) and 6 go to Bush, 4 go to Gore then all 10 in the end go to Bush instead of splitting up the votes.

Anyway we all know that by redistricting you can sway votes because people assume that a district that is heavily pro one party will all most always give their electoral votes to the party they support. This is what they recently did in TX. They redistricted so the Republican Party could merge large clumps of Republican voters into blocks and get more voting power and more electoral votes in those areas of that state. Even with a paper trail you could tamper with the voting in borderline areas (Or Swing states) to make one party or the others look like a bigger block in areas where the dominant party has the base and most people would not notice. (This has never been proven to have happened. But no one knows if it has happened)

This computer crap just makes it more easy to tamper.

Post note: The winner-take-all system in the US awards all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate receiving the greatest number of statewide popular votes. (This may be a plurality rather than a majority.) Conversely, this means that a candidate who finishes second by a narrow margin gets no electoral votes at all. One effect of this system is to reinforce the established parties' hold on power, because it is more difficult for a third-party upstart to win a majority of electoral votes or even to influence the outcome of a presidential election by winning enough electoral votes to throw an election into the House. Groups that might otherwise have started their own parties have therefore had an incentive to work through the major parties rather than to confront them. Farmers, labor unions, and business groups, as well as ethnic and religious minorities, are thus encouraged by the winner-take-all system to find a home within the two-party system. The winner-take-all system reinforces the existing power structure, and it is no surprise that it has been strongly supported by the two major parties that benefit from it.

The winner-take-all system has been criticized in that it lessens the likelihood of multiparty choices and thereby limits the ability of voters to "let off some steam" by voting for a candidate with a philosophy that might be closer to their own. The fewer candidates in the field, the greater the likelihood that a voter will feel alienated by the lack of a real choice. In some circumstances, it is suggested, the safety valve afforded by alternative party choices could prove useful in maintaining governmental legitimacy.

Another disadvantage of the winner-take-all system, according to its critics, is that it tends to exclude the population of some states from the national political dialogue. In every presidential election, some states are "in play" and others are not, meaning that one political party has effectively conceded the state to its opponent. As a result, neither party tends to spend much money in that state on political advertising or do much campaigning, which would go for naught. If electoral votes were awarded on a district-by-district basis, it has been argued, more advertising and campaigning would occur and therefore more Americans would be included in the national election-year dialogue. Of course, some districts would also not be "in play," but it is likely that candidates would have to campaign in more states, thereby involving more of the population in the election-year dialogue.

(Sorry about the rant)

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 14:23 UTC (Wed) by LogicG8 (guest, #11076) [Link] (2 responses)

None of it matters because in the US the President is not elected by the popular vote

On a national level that is how it works but in some states the electoral votes go to the person who wins the popular vote in that state. Florida happens to be one of those states so it matters very much.

I won't comment on the outcome of the last presidential election except to say I was absolutely mortified. The US could do a lot better.

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 14:31 UTC (Wed) by haydentech (guest, #22504) [Link]

I won't comment on the outcome of the last presidential election except to say I was absolutely mortified. The US could do a lot better.

So much for not commenting...

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 15:44 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Which is why I am for Cthulhu/Voldemort for President! Why choose a lesser evil! http://www.cthulhu.org/

[And yes this basically my opinion on politics in general.]

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 15:40 UTC (Wed) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] (2 responses)

Bush won the White House by capturing 271 electoral votes, one more than the Constitution requires.

No, Bush won the White House by capturing 5 U.S. Supreme Court votes, exactly as many as the Constitution requires. We don't know how many electoral votes he won, because we don't know how many popular votes he won, because the SC told everybody they had to stop counting.

(If I'd meant that to be funny, I'd have put in a smiley.)

Patience

Posted Sep 1, 2004 15:53 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually the problem is that very few of the political voting systems in place deal with statistical error. Too many states were within the statistical error of voting methods. While Florida was in the end (by a total recount) for Gore by a little.. New Mexico and a couple of other Gore states were during academic recounts in the Bush camp. And it took at least a year to figure it out because each state does it slightly different and some even let counties/parishes decide.

The problem is that the system is not meant to deal with elections within statistical error. You can try to lower the statistical error with newer methods.. but in the end, it is a flaw in the system itself.

Patience

Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:33 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

Why the heck does it take a year to manually recount all votes in God's
own Country(tm)? Here in Germany, all votes are counted manually, and
recounting is mandatory. Last time, our two big parties were "too close to
call" in the first count (some votes got lost in the hurried accumulation
at 4am), but the recount fixed that. The recount usually is available 2
weeks after the election. That's all mandatory by law, so there is no
silly dispute over it.

Nationwide elections here are usually quite close, and this seems to be
the same anywhere - two-party systems establish even without winner takes
it all (the other parties are struggling at a low level), and the two
sides take about 50% of the population. The positions of the two big
parties are so close to each other that the voter has no real choice. Or
at least thinks he has no real choice, since the position of a party
before election is not what they do afterwards. Unfortunately, what they
do afterwards depends mostly on lobbyists, and the lobbyists are the same
in any case.

Electoral college system (state by state)

Posted Sep 1, 2004 15:42 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

The winner take all system is decided on a state by state basis. There is at least one state that allocates by percentages of the vote. The main problem with the winner take all versus percentage system is that it leads to a 2 party system with any extra parties becoming 'spoilers' by pulling away votes from one or the other party. A percentage rule of electoral votes allows for multiple parties within reason.. (IE a state with 5 electoral votes would at best allow for 5 parties... )

Actual recount results

Posted Sep 1, 2004 17:04 UTC (Wed) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

USA Today (among others) sponsored the full recount and provided the results that would have followed under different "recount scenarios" -- but the one specified by the overturned Florida Supreme Court would have definitely widened Bush's lead and the election would have stood. In one of those scenarios, one not on the table after the 2000 election and not sought by the Gore camp, Gore could have received a victory with 393 votes over Bush; all other scenarios supported the Bush victory.

See: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html


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