SCOTUS Will Overturn Obamacare...Bank On It !!

[CuteOldGuy]

TTH, correct me if I'm wrong, but you said the Supreme Court brazenly handed GW Bush the election in 2000, by stopping the vote counting in Florida. Turns out, CNN, not a big fan of GW, said the Court was right. Go figure. TTH distorting facts to make a point. I'm Shocked!

http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/undervotes

[dilbert firestorm]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

TTH, correct me if I'm wrong, but you said the Supreme Court brazenly handed GW Bush the election in 2000, by stopping the vote counting in Florida. Turns out, CNN, not a big fan of GW, said the Court was right. Go figure. TTH distorting facts to make a point. I'm Shocked!

http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/undervotes

CNN never said the court was right.

[Laz]

But they did say that Bush won. No one stole the election.

[dilbert firestorm]

oddly enough, Gore would have won had they adhered to a strict count that would have given him a 3 vote margin.

funny how that turns out.

[CuteOldGuy]

TTH said that the Court stole the election for Bush, I was just quoting a respected liberal source to illustrate that TTH is full of shit, as usual.

I've never seen anything about your 3 vote victory, DF.

[dilbert firestorm]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

TTH said that the Court stole the election for Bush, I was just quoting a respected liberal source to illustrate that TTH is full of shit, as usual.

I've never seen anything about your 3 vote victory, DF.

it was in the article from the link you provided.

[CuteOldGuy]

Do you expect me to read what I post? That would break a longstanding precedent on this board. Geez!

[I B Hankering]

. . . . subsequent media counts confirmed that Bush won anyway, under any uniform standard.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197800446483619.html


USA Today: George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida’s presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the...count-of-2000/

[dilbert firestorm]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Do you expect me to read what I post? That would break a longstanding precedent on this board. Geez!

Yes! you'd be more credible if you actually read what you post and link.

[Munchmasterman]

Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm

Yes! you'd be more credible if you actually read what you post and link.

Hard to argue with that.

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

. . . . subsequent media counts confirmed that Bush won anyway, under any uniform standard.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197800446483619.html


USA Today: George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida’s presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the...count-of-2000/

See Dilbert quote above.

From: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/

None of these findings are certain. County officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to the investigators that news organizations hired to conduct the recount. There were also small but measurable differences in the way that the "neutral" investigators counted certain types of ballots, an indication that different counters might have come up with slightly different numbers. So it is possible that either candidate might have emerged the winner of an official recount, and nobody can say with exact certainty what the "true" Florida vote really was.

And

Although their conclusions were similar, the Miami Herald study and the later and larger study came up with different numbers, evidence of the uncertainties involved. An official recount might well have come up with yet a third set of numbers. The uncertain nature of the later study’s findings, which could well apply to both, was aptly and poetically expressed by Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino:

Cerabino: Like sorting grains of sand on a windy day, getting a definitive recount of Florida’s votes in last year’s presidential election has turned out to be an exercise in frustration.
In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the limitations of the voting machinery – compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human tabulators – make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible.

That all being said, the only certainty in the election was that the loser would say he was robbed and that the winner would say he won fair and square, regardless of which candidate was which.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

Hard to argue with that.




See Dilbert quote above.

From: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/

None of these findings are certain. County officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to the investigators that news organizations hired to conduct the recount. There were also small but measurable differences in the way that the "neutral" investigators counted certain types of ballots, an indication that different counters might have come up with slightly different numbers. So it is possible that either candidate might have emerged the winner of an official recount, and nobody can say with exact certainty what the "true" Florida vote really was.

And

Although their conclusions were similar, the Miami Herald study and the later and larger study came up with different numbers, evidence of the uncertainties involved. An official recount might well have come up with yet a third set of numbers. The uncertain nature of the later study’s findings, which could well apply to both, was aptly and poetically expressed by Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino:

Cerabino: Like sorting grains of sand on a windy day, getting a definitive recount of Florida’s votes in last year’s presidential election has turned out to be an exercise in frustration.
In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the limitations of the voting machinery – compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human tabulators – make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible.

That all being said, the only certainty in the election was that the loser would say he was robbed and that the winner would say he won fair and square, regardless of which candidate was which.

Go back and read it again jackass. It says that Gore could only be considered the winner if a more "lenient" interpreting and counting of mis-marked ("overvote") ballots was permitted.

[dilbert firestorm]

from COG's Link
http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/undervotes

http://articles.cnn.com/2001-04-04/p...PM:ALLPOLITICS

Ironically, a tougher standard of counting only cleanly punched ballots advocated by many Republicans would have resulted in a Gore lead of just three votes, the newspaper reported.
The newspapers' review also discovered that canvassing boards in Palm Beach and Broward counties threw out hundreds of ballots that had marks that were no different from ballots deemed to be valid.
The papers concluded that Gore would be in the White House today if those ballots had been counted.
The experts assigned by USA Today and the Herald began counting the undervotes -- ballots without presidential votes detected by counting machines -- on December 18, 2000.

[Munchmasterman]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Go back and read it again jackass. It says that Gore could only be considered the winner if a more "lenient" way of counting mis-marked ("overvote") ballots was permitted.

Using the source you quoted (Factcheck), you chose 1 of 12+ media sponsors responses. Also included was

AP: A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome – by the barest of margins – had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount

The AP statement, which clearly states that using the same standards Bush won by applied to the entire state as opposed to a partial could have made Gore the winner, gives me the added bonus of directly disproving your credibility by showing you are a cherry picker and only see what you want to. You selected info that supported you and ignored info that was contrary to your position....again.

And amazingly enough, you almost manage to make that display of your bias moot.

Because you ignored the portion of Factcheck that I posted. The part that says because of different numbers discovered by the different studies, none of the results are certain. I even included a statement by a member of one of the media sponsors.

Reread the article, your cherry-picked results, my posts, and then finish sucking my dick.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

Using the source you quoted (Factcheck), you chose 1 of 12+ media sponsors responses. Also included was

AP: A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome – by the barest of margins – had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount

The AP statement, which clearly states that using the same standards Bush won by applied to the entire state as opposed to a partial could have made Gore the winner, gives me the added bonus of directly disproving your credibility by showing you are a cherry picker and only see what you want to. You selected info that supported you and ignored info that was contrary to your position....again.

And amazingly enough, you almost manage to make that display of your bias moot.

Because you ignored the portion of Factcheck that I posted. The part that says because of different numbers discovered by the different studies, none of the results are certain. I even included a statement by a member of one of the media sponsors.

Reread the article, your cherry-picked results, my posts, and then finish sucking my dick.

An earlier study by a different media consortium reached similar conclusions. That study was conducted by a group that included the Miami Herald, USA Today and Knight Ridder newspapers [three newspapers - two others with same opinion as USA Today]. As USA Today said of the findings on May 11, 2001:

USA Today: George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida’s presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied.

The newspaper said that Gore might have won narrowly if lenient standards were used that counted every mark on a ballot. "But," it said, "Gore could not have won without a hand count of overvote ballots, something that he did not request."


http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the...count-of-2000/

. . . . subsequent media counts confirmed that Bush won anyway, under any uniform standard.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197800446483619.html


Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast

Under the two most likely scenarios, Bush Wins Florida

Nov. 12, 2001

By Joel Engelhardt, Elliot Jaspin and Christine Stapleton
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

Al Gore was doomed.

He couldn't have caught George W. Bush even if his two best chances for an official recount had played out, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of 175,010 uncounted Florida ballots from last November's chaotic presidential election.

Had every county scrutinized every disputed under-vote by hand, as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, Bush still would have won, the analysis shows.

In the other post-election strategy pursued by Gore, had Miami-Dade County completed its recount altogether and Palm Beach County completed its count on time, that too would not have been enough to overcome Bush's 537-vote lead.

However, a close examination of the disputed Florida ballots reveals some intriguing - if unlikely - scenarios under which Gore could have won. For example, if election officials applied looser standards to determine what constituted a legal ballot, or even if they had adopted the most restrictive standard advocated by Bush, Gore would have won.

But the national election that came down to a tiny fraction of votes in Florida never would have been that close if not for Palm Beach County's infamous butterfly ballot. The confusing ballot led thousands of would-be Gore voters to vote for archconservative Pat Buchanan and many more to cast invalid over-votes, votes for more than one candidate.

The Post's statewide analysis and its own review of Palm Beach County ballots back in March both show that the butterfly ballot cost Gore more than 6,000 votes, essentially denying him the presidency.

It was the the butterfly crisis, of course, that drew the nation's attention to Florida to begin with. As word spread and people across America realized that something had gone horribly wrong, Palm Beach County quickly became ground zero for an election too close to call.

Angry protestors surged through West Palm Beach, forcing the Rev. Jesse Jackson to flee a downtown stage. Crowds of placard-bearers thronged each day to the Emergency Operations Center where the ballots were counted anew. And for 37 days, America had no idea who its next president would be. Not until the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in was Bush sure that he had won.

And now, the most exhaustive and precise media recount to date confirms it.

The Post's analysis was based on a statewide review of under-votes and over-votes by a consortium of media organizations from New York to Los Angeles. The media review, which cost about $900,000, aimed to produce the most definitive, scientific public archive of what was on those ballots.

Reporters didn't see the ballots. Instead, the consortium hired an independent survey research firm, the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago, to train and supervise teams of independent observers.

The observers didn't award votes. They recorded every mark they saw in the presidential and Senate columns. The information was entered into a computer database and the consortium newspapers tallied the results. The analysis shows that even Gore's most stirring court victory, the decision by the Florida Supreme Court to order a statewide hand recount of under-votes on Dec. 9, couldn't have helped him.

Applying standards the counties themselves say they would have used, consortium found Gore would have gained just 44 votes more than Bush. That would have left Bush the victor by 493.

In this scenario, the consortium tried to pick up where the counties left off at 2:39 p.m. that Saturday, when the U.S. Supreme Court dashed Gore's slim hopes by ordering all counting to stop.

Reporters interviewed nearly 200 election officials — at least two officials in all but four of the state's 67 counties — to try to determine for the first time in the course of all the media reviews what the counties' own standards would have been Dec. 9. They studied letters that 53 counties sent to the Leon County Circuit Court outlining the standards they planned to use.

Then they applied those standards to the ballots and Bush's 537-vote lead. Further, the review sought to scrupulously reflect the reality of that day:

• Four counties — Escambia, Liberty, Madison and Manatee — finished their counts that day, and the consortium applied those counties' own results to its review. Add 8 votes for Gore.

• Four other counties — Gadsden, Hamilton, Lafayette and Union — refused to count, so the consortium made no changes to their official vote totals.

• Three counties — Broward, Volusia and Palm Beach — were not required to count. They already had completed a hand recount of all their ballots. The court ordered the Broward and Volusia recounts to stand and the Palm Beach recount, which had been completed after a 5 p.m. Nov. 26 deadline, to be added to the state's certified vote total. Gore picks up 174.

• Leon County judges were ordered to count under-votes in the 475 Miami-Dade precincts that had not been counted during the county's aborted hand recount. But the 139 precincts completed before the canvassing board stopped its recount would stand. Add 168 to Gore.

• That left 55 counties plus the rest of Miami-Dade. The consortium review reflects the standards those counties would have used, except in three counties where officials could not specify a standard. For those counties — Martin, Indian River and Sarasota — the consortium applied the standard found most often in other counties. Result: Bush gains 306.

In all, the consortium found 3,813 more votes for Gore and 3,769 for Bush. That's a net gain of 44 for Gore but not nearly enough to hand him the presidency.

Gore also would have been disappointed if his other post-election strategy had played out. Soon after the Nov. 7 election, he sought hand recounts in the populous and predominantly Democratic counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia. Had Miami-Dade finished altogether and Palm Beach County on time, Bush's margin of victory would simply have shrunk to 225.

To arrive at that number, the consortium again added the actual Miami-Dade partial count and the Palm Beach late count to the the state's certified number. Then it added its own review of just the uncounted Miami-Dade precincts.

Gore gained 873 votes, but Bush added 561 to his 537-vote lead. While Gore saw a net gain of 312, it was a Bush victory by 225 nonetheless. Whether the fault lies with Gore's four-county strategy or with the performance of his lawyers in carrying it out is hard to know.

Bush's lawyers won the battle in the trenches. If Gore's team had persuaded Palm Beach County election officials to consider all the county's thousands of dimpled [improperly marked] ballots in its recount, he would have picked up 870 votes more than Bush would have, enough to overcome Bush's 537-vote lead and win the election.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/...bush_wins.html


Florida voter errors cost Gore the election
By Dennis Cauchon and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

Who won Florida?

Who would have won if Al Gore had gotten the manual counts he requested in four counties?
Answer: George W. Bush.

Who would have won if the U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the hand recount of undervotes, which are ballots that registered no machine-readable vote for president?
Answer: Bush, under 3 of 4 standards.

Who would have won if all disputed ballots - including those rejected by machines because they had more than one vote for president - had been recounted by hand?
Answer: Bush, under the 2 most widely used standards; Gore, under the 2 least used.

Who does it appear most voters intended to vote for?
Answer: Gore.

George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida's presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied, the first comprehensive examination of the ballots shows. However, the review of 171,908 ballots also reveals that voting mistakes by thousands of Democratic voters — errors that legally disqualified their ballots — probably cost former vice president Al Gore 15,000 to 25,000 votes. That's enough to have decisively won Florida and the White House. Gore's best chance to win was lost before the ballots were counted, the study shows. Voters' confusion with ballot instruction and design and voting machines appears to have changed the course of U.S. history.

USA TODAY, The Miami Herald, Knight Ridder newspapers, The Tampa Tribune and five other Florida newspapers spent the past five months examining all disputed ballots in Florida. The study attempted to discover who might have won if all the disputed votes in Florida had been reviewed by hand, and to learn what went wrong to cause so many voters' ballots to be thrown out.

Split decision

Over 170,000 overvotes and undervotes were counted. The margin of victory results are based on the four voting standards:

Lenient:
Gore by 332 votes
Palm Beach:
Gore by 242 votes
2-corner:
Bush by 407 votes
Strict:
Bush by 152 votes

The study found that the former vice president might have won a narrow victory if lenient standards that counted every mark on a ballot had been used. But Gore could not have won without a hand count of overvote ballots, something that he did not request.
The news organizations analyzed 60,647 undervotes — ballots that registered no presidential vote when run through vote-counting machines — and 111,261 overvotes - ballots that were disqualified by the machines because they registered votes for more than one presidential candidate.
In a manual recount of ballots disqualified by machines, election officials often can determine which candidate a voter intended to select. For example, a voter might have selected one candidate and also marked the write-in oval and written the candidate's name on the write-in line of the ballot. The voting machine would read that as a vote for two candidates, but a manual review would show clearly voter intent.
USA TODAY found that up to 18% of the 171,908 disputed ballots could be counted as clear legal votes in a manual recount because the voter's intent could be determined. The rest were irretrievable because the intent could not be determined or the ballot marks violated Florida law. That means at least 141,000 voters, a number about the size of the voting-age population of Orlando, lost their voice in selecting the president.
The study reveals that Democratic voters made far more mistakes, especially when it came to overvotes, than Republican voters. Gore was marked on 84,197 of the 111,261 overvote ballots, compared with 37,731 for Bush.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic...tmain.htm#more

[WTF]

Any sane person knows that the thousands of Pat Buchanan (Whom I would have voted for) votes were meant for Al Gore. On that alone Gore should have won the election . That said, you could not go back and change those votes, even though the ballot was confusing, you just could not do that , so I have said/thought , that Buish won and that is that. He did not even get the majority of votes in the whole USofA. Though I think there is something wrong , it was /is the system we have in place.

And I do not think the SC will overturn...it will rule some nitpicky thing but it will not overturn. From what I have read about Kennedy, he will vote with the liberal side on this issue.



http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html

Pat Buchanan himself has admitted that most of his votes in Palm Beach County were meant for Al Gore, saying he "did not campaign and bought no advertising there" (Nichols, 2001, p. 86). He added, "I would say 95 to 98 percent of [the votes] were for Gore" (id. at p. 89). The day after the election, many people were upset, saying the butterfly ballot was confusing. When the election results were "too close to call," Buchanan worried he would be charged with costing Gore the election. He said he got more media coverage after the election than he did during the campaign (id. at p. 84). The graph to the left showing an abnormally high Buchanan vote in Palm Beach County suggests the butterfly ballot cost Al Gore thousands of votes, more than enough to have won the presidency