Nearly 1/4 Million More Votes In Florida Than Voters

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Better picture of the Butterfly Ballot: http://shd.ton.tut.fi/pics/florida-voting/link.butterfly.ballot.ap.jpg

And why is the ballot in a single county such a big deal, anyway? Why would someone go out of their way to try to deceive a single county? If they wanted to make a confusing ballot to rig the election, they would make it more confusing, and put it statewide.

Again with 2 - The commission wouldn't have had any effect if the House at large hadn't voted for the suggestions of it. There would have been another commission, and another, until a similar decision was reached. Either way, it would have been a compromise mandating some action or other from the president in order for him to take office. So everyone won, basically. Except the guy who lost.

 

The Butterfly Ballot:
The point of my picture was to demonstrate the view that the voter got in 2000. That nice overhead view means little. Actually, the ballot was designed by a registered democrat, but the point is that the Bush team fought the butterfly ballot even when Pat Buchanan admitted that those votes from Jewish Democratic retirees couldn't possibly be for him. In an election "decided" by 537 votes, this descrepancy means a lot.

#2)Remember, the house at large was still dominated by republicans. The south was only just getting on its feet. There actually had to be a filibuster in the senate by the Democrats to prevent the comission from reporting its results.

 

I have one reason for the difference, Absentee balots. It may be that the Voter turn out number does not include those who voted by mail but the total number of votes does.
Ok, who wants to put a big hole in that theory.

 

The butterfly ballot was not just in one county but many counties. The reason that Palm Beach County gets so much ink is because of the people who live there. There is a large Jewish retirement community there, and certainly wouldn't be voting for Pat Buchannan, who is essentially one step away from being a Nazi. As an aside, in a state decided by 537, Palm Beach County alone may have been enough to swing Florida, and thus the entire election in Gore's favor.

You see, that's what I don't get. There were still butterfly ballots being used in 2004 as well. After the snafu of 2000, you would think that they would have been replaced. The fact that this inaccurate reporting comes from Florida yet again shows that Florida still doesn't have it's act together. And inaccurate results will eventually come back to bite both parties on their respective asses eventually, so both parties should be in favor of using more accurate voting machines.

 

I wonder why everyone is only pouncing on the number of votes - and not on the fact 67% of the excess votes were given on December 24th, 2005 ...

Seriously - it's a marvel indeed -- the country that sent a man on the moon is seemingly unable to hold clean elections. Every state has it's own electoral rules -- reportedly Texas alone has 5 different counting methods - that is complicated, and errors are guaranteed - while abuse is invited. But nevermind, Americans love their anachronisms. Just think about the difficulties off a common sense approach to gun ownership ...

Republican politicians in republican controlled states go as far as they can get away with in trying to ensure a "proper outcome" - that is without *technically* violating the law (as for circumventing it, or contradicting the spirit, that's another thing). All that while preaching democracy overseas. Ridiculous.

 

Just to follow up here....

Rechecking the links at the top of the page you'll find the numbers are a lot closer and well within the victory margin (it looks as if some of the votes at the polls were not counted -- as there usually are, Chicago politics has taught us a lot about ballot stuffing and how to catch it).

I think the absentee vote may have been the discrepancy. Once again, statistics can lie in the hands of the deceitful....

 

Okay, that's news to me, and I live in Florida. So, my first reaction is that it's not credible.

Now, there were some serious snafu's in voter registration in Florida before the election, and I'm sure that did cause discrepancies. Due to those discrepancies, some Florida counties still have not certified their election results because they're having to authenticate provisional ballots. If for any reason you did not show up on the voter rolls at your polling station, you could ask for a provisional ballot. Unlike other ballots, you had to put your name, address, Social Security number, etc, on the ballot. Those ballots were then checked against the master voter rolls, and if the person was a registered voter anywhere in Florida, the vote was then tallied and certified.

As for butterfly ballots, I've never seen one of the things. My county ditched them for scantron style ballots due to the inaccuracies inherint in the butterfly ballots.