The Wall Street Journal of January 15, 2009, has this op-ed by Law Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen. It argues that the recent U.S. Senate recount in Minnesota suffered from disparate standards in various counties. That may be an accurate observation, but the op-ed misinforms its readers when it refers back to the 2000 Florida presidential recount.
The op-ed says, “Subsequent media counts (of all the Florida 2000 presidential votes) confirmed that Bush won anyway, under any uniform standard.”
The 2000 Florida ballots were recounted by a consortium of news organizations. That work was not completed until late in 2001. The New York Times of November 12, 2001, and other participating news organizations, explained that if only the four counties in which Gore had requested a recount had been counted, Bush would have won. But if all the votes from the entire state had been recounted, Gore would have won. The New York Times said on page one, Nov. 12, 2001, “Ballot standards under which all disqualified ballots statewide would have been reexamined; Gore would have received the most votes.” Specifically, the count would have been Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588.
Florida in 2000 had NO definition of a LEGAL vote with the various election systems — especially the infamous and now dead punch card ballots — result — the Bush v. Gore mess in the party hack Supremes.
See the section in the Fed HAVA law requiring the MORON State regimes to have such definitions of LEGAL votes.
If anything NO body got any LEGAL FL Prez Electoral College votes in 2000.
I.E. one more giant subversion of the Constitution by the party hack Supremes.
For the last four decades I have heard such wonderful things bout the WSJ! For the last four decades I have not seen it in their writing! Mediocre, mediocre, mediocre!
The Wall Street Journal is the best major paper in America today.
Of course, nobody is as good as our own Richard Winger.
The Florida recount never happened. Any idea about the outcome is pure guessing. Justice Scalia made sure that a Democratic President would not be elected. Scalia issued an order preventing the recount from continuing and Gore’s camp decided that they would abide by it.
First, Scalia should have been impeached for issuing such an order since it is totally outside the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to become involved in elections second, Gore was and still is a gentleman and would rather lose than have had a protracted struggle for the Presidency. Something like that could never have happened if the shoe was on the other foot. Could you imagine the RNC and Bush going away quietly? NOT…..
Gore was and is a gentleman, for sure. I think he conceded because if the court hadn’t intervened, the election would have gone into the House, which the Repukes controlled. So his goose was cooked, either way.
Yes, but at least the Constitution would have been deciding the election on not judges. The House would have been held accountable by the people as well. Furthermore, I believe the Senate was about 50-50 that year. Which means the Vice-President may have been someone other than Cheney. In fact, if it was 50-50, Gore would have been the deciding vote and would have cast it for the Democrat. However, Congress would have had to declare the EC votes from Florida invalid, far shot for that. Furthermore, the whole thing was a mess. I don’t feel anyone stole the election, but I am hesitant to believe that the SCOTUS had jurisdiction on the matter. It is the job of Congress to be judge over elections. If Congress had been forced to do their duty, the people would have held them accountable later.
That’s why its important to let the Constitution do its job. The bogus argument that it was a Constitutional crisis was a farse.
I agree with you that the House would have been a better “decider” than the Court, even though the result would have been the same. The real problem is allowing national elections to be decided by partisan state and local officials. Even if they act honestly and fairly they will always be seen as partisan. The US should strongly consider a body like Canada has (Elections Canada), made up of career civil servants, to run all elections for President and Congress. They do a good job, are universally respected and Canadian elections almost never end up in court.
What makes it even better is that [even] Wikipedia knows the WSJ was part of the media consortium that sponsored the review. The review, titled the “Florida Ballots Project” was done by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. NORC still has the project up on its Website:
http://www2.norc.org/fl/
And the WSJ is listed as a sponsor there, too. So they *KNOW* better. . . .
I have heard that ‘the WSJ is the finest major paper …’ literally for decades……….
Hey ‘Back To’: Why?
In almost fifty years even die hard WSJ subscribers and even folks pressuring me to take out a subscription mumble and stumble when pressed for the [positive] details!
That is of course, assuming that you throw out all the absentee ballots from Military voters overseas in Florida.
And, if you discount the fact that voters in Western Florida, heavily Military Pensacola, were not disenfranchised by the media calling the election for Gore at 7 pm, so as to keep these conservative voters from the Florida polls.
Wow, what a surprise Richard Winger.
You mean the Pro-Communist, Hard Left, Republican-hating New York Times found that Gore “actually won the election” when all the votes were counted?
Next time we ought to just let HBO, Time, and CNN do the vote counting. Fair and balanced and all.
Why do we have to choose between votes counted by the media and votes counted by state officials under the control of one candidate’s brother? If votes in Nigeria or Pakistan were counted by the President’s brother, the world would laugh, and rightly so.
HMMM. iT JUST GOES TO SHOW YOU THAT A LOT OF REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS, LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, REALLY DO NO WANT FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS.
Where did all my gay lovers go???