Americans want fair count, polls show

By Will Lester

Nov. 11, 2000 | Tallahassee, Fla. (AP) -- Americans by a 3-to-1 margin say it's more important to make certain the vote count in Florida has been fair and accurate than to resolve matters quickly, polls show.

Just over half oppose waiting beyond the wrap-up of the Florida recount, including absentee votes, due by Friday.

A Newsweek poll out Saturday said two-thirds of Americans think Al Gore did the right thing when he withdraw his concession in the very close presidential election that has not yet been decided.

In a CNN-Time poll released Saturday, four in 10 said Gore should wait for any court decisions on contested ballots in Florida. A fourth said Gore should concede immediately, while another fourth thought he should concede if he loses the official vote that wraps up next Friday.

More than half of those surveyed, 54 percent, said in the CNN-Time poll that Bush should not ask for recounts in other states, which the Bush campaign has hinted it will do in Iowa, Wisconsin and New Mexico, where Gore came out ahead. People were evenly split on the question of a new election in Palm Beach County, where there have been widespread complaints about voter confusion over an unorthodox ballot style. But two-thirds were opposed to a new election in Florida and three-fourths opposed to a new election nationwide.

Just over half of Americans in the CNN-Time poll said the Gore campaign is acting responsibly while the votes are being recounted in Florida. A third said his campaign is acting irresponsibly.

Seven in 10 said the delay in knowing who is president and the uncertainty about the vote are a sign of strength in the nation's political system, while 24 percent said it was a sign of weakness.

When people were asked if the electoral college currently used to select a president, six in 10 said it should be replaced by selection with the popular vote. The electoral college gives each state a certain number of votes in line with their congressional representation. Gore currently leads the popular vote nationally, so if Bush wins the election he would have done so without winning the most votes.

The Time-CNN poll was conducted Friday with 1,154 adults and had a 3 percentage point error margin. The Newsweek poll was conducted with 1,000 adults Thursday and Friday and has an error margin of 4 percentage points.

-- Americans Fair (let@it.com), November 11, 2000

Answers

If we recount one county, by democratic principles, we should recount EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNITED STATES!

However, I believe that many Americans suffer from innumeracy.

Do you think mathematically-challenged hand-counters are up to the task?

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 11, 2000.

If we recount one county, by democratic principles, we should recount EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNITED STATES!

But if we do that, then by democratic principles, we should recount EVERY COUNTY IN THE WORLD! And if we do that, then by democratic principles, we should recount EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNIVERSE!! Who's counting the votes in the Crab Nebula???? Anyone??Anyone???

Do you think mathematically-challenged hand-counters are up to the task?

It's not that hard to hand-count, you know. Watch this:

I have two hands.

There, all done. See, no big deal.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), November 11, 2000.

dinosaur,

Your exaggerations damage whatever credibility you might have.

>If we recount one county, by democratic principles, we should recount EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNITED STATES!

No. The reason to have any recount is that there is a chance that a more accurate count might change the determination of who won the election.

In states where the margin of victory for either Bush or Gore is so large that there is no reasonable chance that a recount would change the winner, it is not reasonable to have a recount (for that purpose, anyway).

Only because the statewide total for Florida is so close that only a few hundred votes' difference could change the determination of the winner is there reason to have county recounts in Florida.

BTW, the Bush camp is free to ask for recounts in other Florida counties besides the 4 in which the Gore camp has asked for recounts.

-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), November 11, 2000.

No Spam:

We have already had recounts in all Florida counties, as required by Florida law. The issue now involves RE recounts. There are two issues here -- the legal issue of whether law provides for this (it does, so go ahead and do it), and the political issue of whether the Gore campaign comes across as sore losers, saying "keep counting until we win".

Somehow, I think the general sense emerging from all this is that recounts in close elections are a bad idea, unless someone can demonstrate some reason to suspect fraud or bad faith. People are starting to feel that *who* wins is less important than *how* he wins. We already have some wildly different results between the first count and the second. What if the hand count produces wildly different results again, and even swings the election? Now we have a legitimate question as to which of these three counts is "right", or at least closest.

So do we take the last count as best? Do we take best two out of three? Do we take it to court and let a judge decide? Do we count a fourth time? If YOUR side won two out of three and somehow the decision was made to accept ONLY the count you lost, what would you do? Bad precedents are being set here.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 11, 2000.

Flint,

In the last sentence of my preceding post, I should have written "manual recounts" instead of simply "recounts".

>We have already had recounts in all Florida counties, as required by Florida law.

In the first level of Florida recounts, counting was done by mahine again, according to my understanding.

>The issue now involves RE recounts.

The manual recounts are a next step, to correct errors due to limitations or fallibilities of the counting machines among other things. They are not a simple repetition of the previous recount.

>and the political issue of whether the Gore campaign comes across as sore losers, saying "keep counting until we win".

Or ... "count the votes as accurately as possible within the provisions of Florida law, in order to achieve the best possible determination of who won the extraordinarily close vote in that state."

I think that characterization of the Gore camp as sore losers for requesting these recounts involves either ignorance or conscious misrepresentation by people who know better. And the Bush camp is preparing to request recounts in other states in case they lose in Florida.

>Somehow, I think the general sense emerging from all this is that recounts in close elections are a bad idea, unless someone can demonstrate some reason to suspect fraud or bad faith.

That's sloppy thinking. Recounts are expecially important in close elections. There are other types of errors besides fraud and bad faith.

>People are starting to feel that *who* wins is less important than *how* he wins.

Well, folks are entitled to their opinions. But I'd ask them, "If how someone wins is important, isn't it necessary to first determine who won so that you can then judge how that person won? If candidate A won, you don't ask *how* losing candidate B won, because candidate B didn't win! If you don't know _who_ won, then you don't know _how_ the winner won, either."

>We already have some wildly different results between the first count and the second.

"Wildly different"? What's your standard for "wildly"?

If the first count had shown that Bush had won Florida by two million votes, would the folks labelling the current counting differences as "wild" be using that term anyway?

>What if the hand count produces wildly different results again, and even swings the election?

Since the manual recount procedure is designed to be more accurate than the preceding counts, its swinging the election will only be a consequence of the extraordinary closeness of the election.

Too bad (for the sake of ease and simplicity) that the election result in Florida was so close -- things would be a lot simpler and easier if it weren't. But it is close, and we (well, some people) have to deal with it.

>Now we have a legitimate question as to which of these three counts is "right", or at least closest.

The recount procedures are designed to make each round more accurate that the preceding ones, so the simple answer is that the third count is the most accurate, if all counting is conducted properly.

The Bush camp's implication or outright statements that any round is as accurate as any other is false and misleading -- they know better. But this is _very_ high-stakes politics.

>So do we take the last count as best?

Yes, because it's designed to be the best, assuming that count was properly conducted. But we want all counts to be properly conducted, so the simple answer is: Yes.

>Do we take best two out of three?

No. The rounds of counting are not simple repetitions of each other. Each round is designed to be more accurate than its predecessors.

>Do we take it to court and let a judge decide?

We follow the proper legal procedure that has been previously set up by the state of Florida. That procedure involves the courts in some steps.

>Do we count a fourth time?

If that's part of the legal procedure, then maybe so. It's not arbitrary, contrary to some statements from the Bush camp. I expect that such a fourth round, if one exists, would be designed to be more accurate than the third round.

>If YOUR side won two out of three and somehow the decision was made to accept ONLY the count you lost, what would you do?

That would depend on whether the legal procedure had been properly followed up to that point and what the legal procedure provided for my side's possible actions at that point.

>Bad precedents are being set here.

Yes, but the bad precedents are in the false and misleading statements and actions of those who should know better. Characterization of recount rounds as being equally likely to be accurate when in fact they aren't, for instance, is a bad precedent. Going to federal court to stop a state's legitimate recount procedures is a bad precedent.

-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), November 11, 2000.

LATE BREAKING NEWS!!!

Transmission just received from the Crab Nebula:

GRT&EKWE** has received 593,453,968,438,721 votes.

THS%RHE8*^ has received 593,453,968,438,722 votes.

THS%RHE8*^ is the victor and will now eat GRT&EKWE**.

Bon appetit!

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 12, 2000.

No Spam:

I agree that going to Federal court is a bad precedent. But it's clear from what I've read that when a ballot was not readable by machine, there is usually some genuine ambiguity as to the voter's intent. Of the few thousand such ballots looked at so far, neither party is happy with the process, the parties disagree as to the intent of the voter, rules are changed in mid-count, counts are restarted with different rules, and so on.

Now, you might argue that this process is somehow "more accurate" than the machine count. The machine counts are different each time because there are so many "close call" ballots as to just what constitutes a vote. The machine might decide a given vote is valid or invalid less than 100% of the time it looks at it.

But it's become clear that people aren't doing any better, and at least the machine isn't more eager to see one candidate win than the other one. As I've said before, two people equally determined to be as objective as possible can come up with counts sufficiently different to select different winners. By now, it should be fairly evident that the winner, *whoever* it is, had the good fortune (or ability?) to select more "capable" (or persuasive?) vote interpreters.

Given the willingness of both sides to litigate, the closeness of the vote and the unquestionable ambiguity of so many ballots, the will of the people will be decided by a judge, one way or another. Fortunately, the two candidates are nearly alike in most important respects, and either one will have a balky, balanced legislative branch to work with. A good thing that not all that much hangs in the balance here.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 12, 2000.

"But it's clear from what I've read that when a ballot was not readable by machine, there is usually some genuine ambiguity as to the voter's intent."

Bullshit. Usually the hanging chad is covering the punch hole and the machine can't read it.

-- Stop whining! (let@themcount.com), November 12, 2000.

There is no evidence that a manual recount in the presence of qualified observers is more prone to either error or corruption. To the contrary: The punch-card ballot system in Florida and Texas is vulnerable to all sorts of mechanical error owing to the limitations of punch-card readers and minor mistakes by voters.

-- Stop whining! (GOP's@losing.it), November 12, 2000.

whining:

I'm merely repeating what observers of both parties have reported. Are you seriously claiming that Democratic observers are being objective and Republican observers are whining? They raise the same complaints.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 12, 2000.