Study Shows Gore Would Not Have Won Miami Recount
February 26, 2001 5:00 am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An independent study shows former Vice President Al Gore would not have added many new votes in Miami-Dade County and might even have lost ground in that county, if the hand count of presidential ballots he requested had been completed, USA TODAY reported on Monday.

The newspaper said an independent study done for USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder Newspapers concluded the Democratic presidential candidate would have had a net gain of just 49 votes in the county if the most-lenient standard -- of counting even faintly dimpled chads -- had been used.

If a more stringent standard had been applied, Republican George W. Bush probably would have gained votes, according to the paper.

Democrats had widely predicted that Gore would have won the 2000 presidential election if a hand recount had been allowed to proceed. They had predicted a net gain of about 600 additional votes in Miami-Dade County alone. That would have been enough to overcome Bush's 537-vote margin in the whole state of Florida.

The Florida Supreme Court had ordered a hand count of ballots that didn't register a preference when votes were counted by machine. However, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the hand count, making Bush the next president.

The three media organizations hired the national accounting firm of BDO Seidman to examine all 60,000 undervotes in Florida's 67 counties. The results from Miami-Dade are the first released, and complete results are expected within weeks.

USA TODAY said BDO Seidman reported that 4,892 of 10,646 undervote ballots in Miami-Dade had no mark whatsoever. It found that 1,555 ballots had some indication the voter wanted Gore and 1,506 indicated Bush. The rest were either marked, but not on a candidate's name, or were for other candidates.

Dimpled chads accounted for 1,202 of the 1,555 potential Gore votes and 1,092 of the 1,506 potential Bush votes.

If the most-lenient standard had been used to judge votes and dimpled chads had been counted, Gore benefited slightly. When stricter standards applied, Bush won the county, USA TODAY reported.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Answers

" The rest were either marked, but not on a candidate's name, or were for other candidates. "

Recount winner depends on standard The study also showed that Gore might have lost hundreds of votes from misaligned ballots. On the punch card ballots used in Miami- Dade, candidates were assigned numbered chads: No. 4 was for Bush, No. 6 was for Gore. Nos. 5 and 7 weren't assigned to a candidate. Nearly 2,000 voters punched chads that were connected to no candidate.

A Miami-Dade official says that if a voter laid the punch card atop the voter booklet, rather than sliding it into the voting machine, Bush lined up with the No. 5 chad and Gore with the No. 7 chad.

The study found that the No. 5 chad was punched cleanly by 676 voters. The No. 7 chad was punched cleanly by 991 voters.

49undervotes + 315overvotes and Gore gains 319votes in Miami- Dade alone. Who wants to wager what Palm Beach will be?

Now what weight does this USA story hold? little it is bs for Memes. Fact they released Miami first is your clue to what this exercise is all about,,,spreading manure. Why release ANY of their results piecemeal? and why Miami first?

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An independent study shows former Vice President Al Gore would not have added many new votes in Miami-Dade County and might even have lost ground in that county, if the hand count of presidential ballots he requested had been completed, USA TODAY reported on Monday. "

I just showed you it indicates the COMPLETE OPPOSITE.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Ah yes, POPE has all the answers yet again.

You think you stupid fucks would quit whinning now that the facts are EVEN MORE CLEARLY laid out than before.

You are full of CUBED BULLSHIT, meme paulie.

"HAIL POPE PAULIE, FULL OF Piss and vineger!!!"

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Oops-a-Daisy... Miami Herald disputes USA/Reuters Numbers

http://www.miami.com/herald/special/news/flacount/docs/review.htm Other voters punched chads that didn't correspond to a candidate. On the Miami-Dade ballot, 736 voters made marks at hole No. 5, one below Bush's No. 4, and 1,017 voters made marks at hole No. 7, one below Gore's No. 6.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-02-25- recountstandard.htm The study found that the No. 5 chad was punched cleanly by 676 voters. The No. 7 chad was punched cleanly by 991 voters.

....back to square one it would seem.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Sorry, punching 5 or 7 invalidates your ballot. Vote doesn't count.

Next!

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Buddy ya got a statute saying as much do ya?

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Like you said Next!

Here is some suggestions...why not address the problems with the articles themselves? Why not provide documentation saying these "votes" are not really votes? And if such information exists, why then have these recount exercises? Why is this even National News? Why are these two sources using different numbers? Why did Dumbo and company fight what apparently some claim is the obvious (Bush Won)? all the way to the Supreme Court? Why did James "Duke Energy" Baker III waste his breath?

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

I don't need a statute to know that a hole punched in a space which doesn't correspond to a candidate is a wasted vote. If hole #5 had had a candidate attached to it, the vote would have counted for that candidate and would not have been rejected as invalid.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Florida Election Law section 101.011 paragraph 4:

(4) If the elector marks more names than there are persons to be elected to an office, or if it is impossible to determine the elector's choice, his or her ballot shall not be counted for the office; but this shall not vitiate the ballot as to those names which are properly marked, and nothing in this code shall be construed to prevent any elector, at any general election, from voting for any qualified candidate other than one whose name is printed on the ballot.

--------

Clearly it is impossible to determine the elector's choice if they punched a hole which doesn't correspond to a candidate. It may seem logical to assume that a 5 should be a 4 and that a 7 should be a 6, but that is impossible to determine as fact.

Part of the problem here is that there has been much speculation and assumption flying around in the media that would not pass muster in a court of law.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Good try Buddy, but that statute applies to pen and paper ballots not votematic punch cards. http://floridaelec tionlaw.com/chapter101.cfm

Must leave for the afternoon now so understand if I do not reply till later this evening. What I hope most reading this will understand is this little thread is probably the only place around which is at least trying to un-Spin the crap which even GW himself is now pushing as "it is over".

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Nope, sorry. All rules for paper ballots apply as well to other ballots unless specifically stated otherwise.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

It should be absolutely obvious to you meme-infested cretins that only a vote FOR a candidate counts for that candidate. Duh! Votes *right next to* those locations, not being FOR that candidate, are just as obviously votes AGAINST that candidate. Understand?

By these clear and simple rules, more people voted against Gore than against Bush. So Bush wins BIG. The only possible problems with my approach are:

1)The law says a nonvote is invalid, and invalid votes don't count. My answer is, the law doesn't apply to punchcard ballots. These can mean anything I choose, and anyone who says otherwise lies. *Including* the law itself!

2) My approach is stupid. My answer to this is, it only looks stupid to everyone but me, and everyone but me is a victim of memes and has bought into spin being spun by the forces of evil. Only *I* can see through this smokescreen to the TRUTH, which was so obvious I already knew it before any facts got in the way anyway, because it's so obvious.

And furthermore, you are all a bunch of meme-infested cretins who can't see the obvious *no matter how much* evidence points in the other direction, and furthermore anyone who disagrees with the TRUTH is stupid. Can't you idiots understand anything?

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Well, I waited. Nobody pointed out that this story is bogus, in exactly the same way the election night returns were bogus, call the results in a limited area and claim they represent everywhere.

Actual count as of today.

---------------------------------------------

As of today, Gore leads Bush in Florida by 1,017. This tally includes recounts conducted by the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune, the Naples Daily News, and Democrats.com. It includes a gain of 682 votes for Gore in Palm Beach - which was more than enough to erase the 537 Bush lead certified by Katherine Harris. It also includes unexpected gains for Gore in Republican counties like Lake (130) Hillsborough (120), and Gadsden (40).

--------------------------------

As if it matters.

Anyone here who has ever studied programming knows you cannot tamper with a process in action to force it to give a desired result. Which is what was done in this election. Which invalidates the result.

Therefore, the results in Florida, and, for that matter, the entire nation, are utterly irrelevant to my feelings about the matter.

Therefore, it would not matter to me, and does not matter, if he was Republican or Democrat or Libertarian, it does not matter if Jesus Christ descends from heaven and anoints him, it does not matter if the very rocks bow before him and the winds whisper his name. His people damaged the process, and, therefore, he cannot be a president in the sense that all but one before him were, unless and until he wins a fair election for the office.

I'm annoyed with the story, not because it is pro Bush, but because it is bogus, in exactly the same way the election night results were bogus - call the numbers before they are counted, and to hell with the votes.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Paul:

Where is your information coming from? Surely if all these newspapers were finding all these Gore votes, someone would have, like, published this in their newspapers. But nobody has posted this information. Coincidence?

I did read the Orlando Sentinel. They cherry-picked counties, did a partial count of certain uncounted votes, admitted they counted legally invalid votes because these favored Gore if counted, and then *projected* a Gore win. Is this the "actual count" you're referring to?

Somehow, I doubt that ANY prior presidents were elected according to a count performed by newspaper reporters and Democrats.com!

So you are laughable, saying the "real count" is this composite, largely secret count by admittedly pro-Gore counters, that count invalid ballots when it suits them, and who just happen to favor the same guy you do. Isn't that amazing? Do you really believe you'll make any converts with this "case"?

Just out of curiosity, if you were to knock yourself out trying to describe the most exaggerated sore loser your imagination could concoct, do you think you could possibly exceed your own example?

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Paul,

I'd like to know where those numbers came from, too. The *editor* of the Miami Herald was on the O'Reilly Factor tonight and said -- quite plainly -- that Bush would have won Florida, even if all of Gore's requested recounts had been done. He then read off some numbers *proving* this, then gave numbers for the Miami Dade recount that sounded about the same as those in the article above (I wasn't actually comparing tit-for-tat at the time, so I'm not going to insist on that).

On election law: Buddy's right, which is why this should never have happened to start with. Any vote which doesn't clearly indicate a candidate should be consider "spoiled" and should NEVER have been counted to start with. I said that the first week after the election and I still say it.

Of course, Flint was the most right: he stated back in November that in a close race like this, there's really no way to clearly determine a winner from the vote count.

At any rate, the whole mess should have gone to the LEGISLATIVE BRANCH as soon as there was a dispute -- in which case, Bush would have won, anyway. Gore's people *knew* that; they at least had a chance with recount after recount after recount, so they chose that route instead. The amazing thing is that so many people agreed with him, probably because Congress (as usual) was too spineless to step in and take the reins.

Of course, this is a dead horse, long since festered and due for burial. I have a suspicion that the main reason why CPR posted it was just to address the satisfying belief on the part of Gore's supporters that he "really won" the election, had the count been "fair."

That has *never* been (and never will be) proven, but if it makes his supporters happy to believe that, by all means; let them do so. In 3.7 more years, they'll have a chance to vote Dubya out of office and I have no doubt that they'll try their best to do that, too. :)

-- Anonymous, February 26, 2001

Buddy try these...101.5614 Canvass of returns

If any paper ballot is damaged or defective so that it cannot be counted properly by the automatic tabulating equipment, the ballot shall be counted manually at the counting center by the canvassing board. The totals for all such ballots or ballot cards counted manually shall be added to the totals for the several precincts or election districts. No vote shall be declared invalid or void if there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter as determined by the canvassing board. After duplicating a ballot, the defective ballot shall be placed in an envelope provided for that purpose, and the duplicate ballot shall be tallied with the other ballots for that precinct.

(6) If an elector marks more names than there are persons to be elected to an office or if it is impossible to determine the elector's choice, the elector's ballot shall not be counted for that office, but the ballot shall not be invalidated as to those names which are properly marked.

(7) Absentee ballots may be counted by automatic tabulating equipment if they have been punched or marked in a manner which will enable them to be properly counted by such equipment.

Now the KEY is this...the votes in question were not MULTIPLE SELECTIONS but votes "misaligned" with the ballot. These fell for nobody but blank spaces. These votes IMHO hold more weight and legitimacy than trying to figure out dimpled chads and the like which rest on logic best left to crystal ball readers.

As to your claim there is no way to logically justify, to assume what the intent was, I would say this is weak reasoning. Not wrong, just weak. Maybe the correct call was to toss these. However with there being strong evidence showing a voter who laid their sample ballot ontop of the actual ballot and assumed the holes matched but didn't, AND having numbers consistent with the vote overall in these blank boxes in sequence, I think it logically sound to consider these votes the way the story above contends and they should have been counted.

My beef with this whole episode is this....Bush and company NEVER wanted a fair and accurate (as humanely possible) count of the vote. Turns out probably they fucked themselves with this decision. They focused on the "chads" the "hanging-dimpled-pregnant". My belief all along was these would be a wash. Seems these independent recounts are showing just this. The Republicans distracted everyone with the Chadology nonsense when the real votes needing counting and the bogus ones tossing As to Paul's information try this link possibly....http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181

I think the MOST important issue here is not the water under the bridge. Ya it is over. ...I think it is important folks understand to the extent our blessed nation has been takeover(for lack of a better term)by some very powerful and extreme powers. The Media is NOT Liberal. The Media is owned by some very rich and smart Capitalists. Ruppert Murdock would head my short list. These folks could give a flying fuck what is in the best interests of the American People or our Constitution. And understand, the Dems are little better in many ways but miles from the extremist freaks hiding as the Republican Party. A party which has been completely taken over.

The story of today is utter Bush spin, baloney. Like Paul has said, from the start the Florida story has been one-sided spoon-feed bs almost entirely. You question why "the media" has not pounced upon what Paul claims? Easy answer once you understand the Media is NOT Liberal or close to anything resembling balanced. It is not even Conservative, it is Extreme is what it is.

I think some here need to open their eyeballs. You think I am loud Flint? obnoxious? Well ya I am. Try sitting where I am looking at the BS you think represents some honest playing field. Go read democrats.com and other alternatives to the non-stop highly financed crud you people feed on. Hate to pop your bubble but most of what you think is honest journalism is pr-spin by the best money can buy. These folks use everything available to sell their product upto and including memetic agents.

The non-stop badgering of Clinton alone would hopefully be ones clue to what is going on, but is it? The clues are all in-your-face frankly and reading the crud coming in posts on these boards has driven all but the Doc's away by now. Who with any sense wants to debate with raving lunatics with bs feed them by Fox or the zillion talkshow parrots around? The media is probably now 90% BS verses anything resembling balanced reporting.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

correcting links from above...

h ttp://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/12/05/election.seminole.pol.reut/

http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181

sorry bout that

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

What also should be pointed out is this article was released and written to do basically one thing....help GW with his State of the Union Address.

This is a canned release to hit the "airwaves" first out of the box. Most of the references do not include anything beyond "Bush won Gore dimples never showed". One has to go beyond to even find the issue of the misaligned votes. This was no accident.

Not that this matters to some here who think all is on the up-and-up but I needed to say it :)

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

I'm not joining this debate because I have enough on my plate elsewhere. But I have to comment on a remark by Doc Paulie, about "the non-stop badgering of Clinton alone would hopefully be one clue to what is going on." In other words, the latest scandal is just being over-hyped for political purposes.

I regard Clinton's behavior, during his last days in office, as blatant outrage which we as a people have to scream bloody murder about, to preserve our political self respect. I wish the scandal were not there, I think it is taking attention away from important matters. But it is there, and it has to be dealt with, noisily.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

Peter, you'd have to be specific about which of the non scandals you are appalled about. The seven or eight proven to be false scandals that were the first try at running down Clinton as he left office? The Rich pardon, which seems to have a little bit of legs? Or the Hugh Rodham manufactured scandal, which requires me to assume that connected lawyers never take money to lobby for clients?

Or do you believe Bush was lying when he said Air Force One was not "stripped"?

Or do you believe it was an accident that the fact that the original press release from Clinton about the splitting of his office costs with his foundation was left off the first press report by chance?

And surely the WH transition team allows hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to be tracked in one staffers head.

And on and on and on.

Peter, if this sort of 'hunt' for a story to damage Reagan went on over a period of two or three months, you'd be passing blood. Now the press seems to be giving up on Clinton, and starting to focus on Bush. When they wring him out, will you be this happy / disappointed in him?

Hellfire man, the way this thing has spun out, I expect someone has focus groups studying exactly how to 'get' Clinton. "Would you change you opinion of Clinton if it was reported that he took more gifts than anyone else?" "Would you change your opinion if it was reported that Hillary registered for gifts?"

Wake up, people. Else we will enter an era when NOBODY will take the job.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

As to where I get information, the consortiumm that maintains the statewide counting that is going on now keeps websites.

This tally includes recounts conducted by the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune, the Naples Daily News, and Democrats.com.

You could go to Democrats.com if you don't mind their slightly frothing-at-the-mouth commentary.

http://www.gorewonflorida.org

Or you can go here to get the results of a 15 county recount.

http://orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-aseccounty012801.graphic

Or any of a dozen other places.

Or just wait until the consortiumm puts out their final result for the whole state next month. This story was an attempt to deflect attention from that expected event.

And an attempt to claim the original request by Gore to recount in three counties only would have failed to produce a win for him. Possibly true, though irrelevant, as the FL SC decided the entire state had to be recounted, before the SCOTUS stepped in and stopped everything before allowing a recount that would have to be completed in two hours. Anyhow, as I said before, the whole business is irrelevant.

No, people, I'm not going to get over it. It isn't some kind of major factor in my life, it merely makes me very aware that our freedom in this country is now hanging by a horribly fragile thread.

And when the day comes that I believe that thread has broken, I'm gone. Canada, Costa Rica, Holland - I will not live in a country that breaks its most precious ties to its citizens, and I won't hang around to try to glue the pieces back together.

The glue required for that process is blood, and I need all of mine.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

You would consider the Rich pardon, and the other pardons where input from the prosecutor side was deliberately avoided, as "non-scandals". You are simply beyond rational discourse.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

And I suppose you've been told that is somehow unusual.

Perhaps for Jimmy Carter.

But perhaps you should read the Walsh report, if you want to read the opinion of a prosecutor who was SLAPPED with refusal to consult? That happenned just one president back before Clinton.

Or maybe you'd rather talk to the prosecutor for the Arab drug smuggler that Bush released?

Or would you rather compare Clinton to some other president besides Bush? As long as it isn't Carter, I'll play along.

You claim I am unreasonable, well Peter, you suffer from extreme myopic tunnel vision when it comes to Clinton. You refuse to simply see if his behaviour was UNUSUAL FOR A US PRESIDENT IN THE LAST 25 YEARS. Since I've had fits about the way every one of them left office, I assure you, it isn't.

Even Carter passed a huge bill increasing the subsidy for peanuts - and went straight home to manage a peanut farm.

Sure, I'm disappointed in Clinton. But don't give me the old hack line of "he is worse than anyone else", because it isn't true - as you would know if you bothered to read something besides that far right BS you've been regurgitating.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

From time.

As for a more complete view of the Florida vote, that will have to wait until two separate counts of the whole state are completed. The Herald and its parent, the Knight Ridder chain of newspapers has counted all but two counties. (Officials in upstate Duval and Holmes counties have postponed the recount, fearing further disruption if the ballots were subpoenaed in lawsuits.) Meanwhile, a consortium of news organizations, including the Associated Press, the New York Times and CNN, has hired the National Opinion Research Center, a non- profit firm out of the University of Chicago, to examine nearly 200,000 ballots that did not register any vote at all, including ballots where no vote was clearly marked, and where more than one vote was clearly marked. The NORC report is due out in April.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

To put this another way, Peter, if I believed you were trying to raise the standards we expect from a US president, I'd be right behind you.

I don't for one minute think that is what you want to do.

You want separate standards, a bar flat on the ground for right wingers, and a bar very high for anyone else.

I won't accept that.

Start a bipartisan 'higher standards in office' program, or move congress towards adopting higher standards, and I'll agree with you.

But I know what you'll say when anyone points to conservative malfeasance in office. Or perhaps you can point me to somewhere you didn't support Newt and his book deal? Or claim Flynt was lying, probably even after his 'victims' fessed up? How was Flynt using his own money to get the goods on some Republicans worse than Republicans spending public money in a (pitiful) attempt to get the goods on Clinton?

You are not an unbiased judge here, you are a hanging judge who would tie the noose before the opening arguement was stated. And probably hang the defendants lawyer, too.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

To Paul Davis:

You ASSume I'm a right-winger. I'm not. I not only voted for Gore, but composed strong posts on TB2000 Uncensored urging a vote for Gore. I think Newt eats shit by the bucketful. And I could go on and on.

But the failings of other political figures are no excuse for Clinton being a lying sleazebag whose word is worth absolutely nothing.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2001

Practical Point of the Matter IS:

George W. Bush IS the President of the United States.

Is very likely to stay that way for the next four years, at least.

If anybody has a problem with that incontrovertible FACT, go fight your little fight on Temptation Island. Or some less noticeable blob of ground.

(this is tantamount to idiots arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin)

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

No CL it is called petitioning one's government. See US Consitution for the details.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

add T please(to constitution) and refill Doc's cup-o-joe.

Why do I continually talk about memes? Who thinks CL was able to see what he posted and meant above? I KNOW he doesn't believe what his comments actually mean, so then what is it operating in him? Is he just stupid? no, just infected is all.

Heh I could be wrong. Course odds say that is slim at best, but I could be :)

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Pope Paulie, Could I buy an indulgence into DemocratsPurgatory.com?

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001