Re[3]: [at-l] The Government and The Environment - TOTALLYOFF TOPIC

[saunterer@jimbullard.org (saunterer@jimbullard.org)]

At 09:58 AM 2/21/02 -0600, Shane Steinkamp wrote:
>The Washington Post reported in April:
>
>"The $550,000 study was intended to determine who would have won if the Dec.
>8 statewide recount order by the Florida Supreme Court had not been halted
>the next day by the U.S. Supreme Court.
>
>"In trying to answer that question, the newspapers excluded counties that
>had already finished their recounts by the time the U.S. Supreme Court
>stepped in -- leaving the existing counts in place. Under that scenario,
>they said, Bush was the most likely winner -- whether or not counters used a
>permissive standard that included ballots that were merely dimpled or only
>counted as votes those with at least partially detached chads."

The operative phrase there is "Under that scenario...".  I belive the final 
results were different depending on which of several suggested standards 
was applied.  The truth is that under the electoral college system we will 
never know who really won because the process was so flawed that it was 
incapable of determining who really won.  Of course there is the fact that 
Gore had a clear majority of the overall vote but as Shane (along with 
every other defender of the Bush 'victory') pointed out, we are not living 
in a democracy anyway.  Funny how my teachers in school all told me the US 
was a democracy not to mention that we bill ourselves as the world's 
leading democracy.  One wonders whatever happened to the issue of election 
reform.  Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one still talking about it.

sAunTerer