and so it begins, or continues, or whatever the hell

[waider]

So, ah, Arnie's appointed one of Jeb Bush's crew to handle the CA state audit.

Hasn't anyone told him that Jeb's crew don't have a good historical record on counting correctly?

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Also see this (http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/16/Columns/Red_ink_blues.shtml).

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently neither do USA Today, the New York Times and the Washington Post, all newspapers who went to recount the ballots in Florida themselves, and all of them acknowledged that Bush won the state.

But naturally that must be part of a conservative media bias, what with all our guns here in the states.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

YOUUUUU ARRREE A NEEERRRRRD.

[waider.livejournal.com]

The WashPo article on the "media recount" suggested Gore might have won had a from-scratch statewide recount been done:

At one level, the efforts of a consortium of news organizations to revisit the election controversy yielded a simple, even sensational, revelation: If there had been some way last fall to recount every vote -- undervotes and overvotes alike, in all 67 Florida counties -- former vice president Al Gore likely would be in the White House.

-- John F. Harris, The Washington Post, 11/12/01

Here's the WashPo article in question. It does a better job of reporting than the NY Times did; it goes on to cover what I presume the Times article was reporting, which is that had Gore's legal strategy been successful - a recount in some Democrat-heavy counties - he'd still have lost. Additionally, the people who conducted the recount had this to say in their press release:

NORC reported serious problems with record keeping at many local election offices. NORC relied on these offices to produce the rejected ballots, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators.

And more worryingly, for a supposed impartial investigation:

NORC also found a slight but statistically significant relationship between candidate marks and the investigators' party affiliation.

But, you know, all that aside, what I was suggesting was that the original count was screwed up. Which it was:

The U.S. Supreme Court was disturbed enough by the stark variations among the counties in the standards they used for tallying ballots to nullify the recount.

Tom Fielder, Miami Herald

[waider.livejournal.com]

He may be, but he's also at least some way wrong - see the other post in this thread I've made.