You may now remove your tinfoil hats: (Official Recount Thread)

[Donegeal]

at thread.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by civman2000

The problem is, I (and most educated Democrats I know) think the 2000 election and the entire Electoral College is flawed and illegitimate. From our perspective, then, trying to win the Electoral College against the will of the popular vote is hypocritical and generally just plain wrong.

So you'd rather let Bush win than do the same thing he did to us in 2000? Thats fine, but I disagree. This is how the system works. The electoral college is there for a reason, and that reason is to prevent certain majority groups from deciding the outcome of every election. The aim of US elections is not to win the most popular votes, its to win the most electoral votes. Thats just how it works.

We can try to change the system all we want, but taking the moral highground while costing yourself a victory is just plain stupid. Did Bush do that in 2000, no. Did he win, yes.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
What it means, Kuci, is that alot of people voted for Kerry, regardless of the population. Thats the only point.

So? To compare the total number of voters for Kerry to previous elections is meaningless.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


So? To compare the total number of voters for Kerry to previous elections is meaningless.

You really must enjoy splitting hairs for no reason, don't you?

I'll recap the context of my statement for you, since you clearly didn't read it. MrMitchel and I were discussing whether or not Kerry would fair well in a 2008 primary. I said he would and cited the fact that his record number of votes (2nd highest in American history), as well as record proportions of the American population turning out to vote for him are a couple of reasons to believe that people just might vote for him again. This isn't and has never been an arithematical argument.

Is there a problem?

[Ming]

Originally posted by civman2000
The problem is, I (and most educated Democrats I know) think the 2000 election and the entire Electoral College is flawed and illegitimate.

You might not like the system... but Illegitimate...



Nahhh... IT'S THE LAW. That is the rules we play by, so to call it Illegitimate is kind of silly and just plain incorrect, and doesn't say much for "educated" Democrats

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Ming


You might not like the system... but Illegitimate...



Nahhh... IT'S THE LAW. That is the rules we play by, so to call it Illegitimate is kind of silly and just plain incorrect, and doesn't say much for "educated" Democrats

Ming speaks the truth.

And keep in mind folks, I'm not even calling voter fraud. My argument is that Ohio was won by 136,000 votes, yet 250,000 have yet to be counted. This is an irreconcilable mathematical argument. It might not change the outcome, but still, let every vote count.

[Ming]

JimmyCracksCorn... you can't count "spoiled" ballots.
That's the law as well. There are NOT 250,000 votes in Ohio still to be counted

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by dv8ed

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/1754249&tid=226&tid=126&tid=103

Yeah, I know, wrong state, but I still found it interesting (their methods seem a bit shaky, but there does seem to be some curious data there.)

And Ohio was another big e-voting state, wasn't it?

Here´s the link to the research paper itself,
along with the data used in Excel and SPSS-Format

http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index.html

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Ming
JimmyCracksCorn... you can't count "spoiled" ballots.
That's the law as well. There are NOT 250,000 votes in Ohio still to be counted

You're right. What I meant was that there's 93,000 undervotes.

So, 250,000 it is

[JimmyCracksCorn]

A bit on undervotes:

Ohio, whose 20 electoral votes were based on a margin of 2 percent in the vote, has other problems tonight. The state reports 92,000 presidential votes did not count. Ranging from votes improperly cast to votes improperly counted. And in Cuyahoga County, that is greater Cleveland, the official records of 29 different voting precincts show more votes than registered voters to a total of 93,000 extra votes in that county alone.

As an example, in Fairview Park, 12 miles west of Cleveland, 13,342 voters were registered. 18,472 votes were cast. None of this even addresses the story we told you about last week in the town of Gahanna outside Columbus, Ohio. There in a district with just 800 voters, a voting machine added 3,893 votes to Mr. Bush‘s total.

http://reprints.msnbc.com/id/6442857/

Edit: And this is MSNBC people, not moveon.org or anything like that.

Edit: This is why a recount is so important. These voting irregularities will only be rectified in an official recount.

Edit: Huge "swaths of red" my ass. This is a more accurate representation. We are a purple nation, truly divided.



source

[Kuciwalker]

We are a purple nation, truly divided.

Don't try to infect us with your gayness!

[JimmyCracksCorn]

A new (video) message from John Kerry!!

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/everychild.php (the video is at the top)

Some commentary on it from Keith Olbermann (MSNBC):

But the video is just plain weird. The phrasing of the start of the relevant passage—“Regardless of the outcome of this election”— is open to the same kind of parsing and confusion usually reserved for the latest release from Osama Bin Laden. Those seven words are extra-temporal; they are tense-free. In them he could be describing an election long-since decided, or one whose outcome is still in doubt.

It has the vague feel of deliberate ambiguity, as if Kerry is saying to those who are plagued by doubts about the vote just seventeen days ago, that he agrees with them, but they shouldn’t tell anybody.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/%3Cbr%20/%3E

Keith's Blog (The only mainstream journalist to actually pay attention to this recount and the possibility of an election turnover)

[Shi Huangdi]

First off, undervoted ballots don't count, and there aren't enough provisional ballots to likely make a difference.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
First off, undervoted ballots don't count, and there aren't enough provisional ballots to likely make a difference.

Undervotes are votes that didn't get counted, or that went to the wrong person. Hence what a recount sets out to resolve.

And that makes 250,000 votes up in the air. That could certainly make a difference.

[Lincoln]

At the risk of infringing on a slogan that may be copywrited I should say that Bush has the moral authority to insist on a recount because he won the popular vote...