Buried in a long article on another thread was this key paragraph:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004DaN

No matter the outcome in court, Democrats pointed out that under Florida's Sunshine Law, journalists and researchers eventually would examine the challenged ballots and make public their findings, possibly undermining the future president. They said this argument refuted the view of Justice Antonin Scalia that Mr. Bush and the country might be harmed by allowing the counting of "questionable" ballots.

This is a serious point that deserves its own thread. What happens if, nine months into Bush's term, we found out it was really Gore who won the election?

-- Statewide manual recount (of@the.vote), December 10, 2000

Answers

You won't have to wait nine months.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), December 10, 2000.

Now that's a thought. Can you imagine Bush assuming office in January and then Gore taking his place in March?

-- (one@scena.rio), December 10, 2000.

journalists and researchers eventually would examine the challenged ballots and make public their findings, possibly undermining the future president

President Bush could easily deny the validity of any results obtained by "journalists and researchers". There are no quantifiable criteria for re-counting these non-votes now so any results obtained by Democrat researchers in the future could be plausibly denied.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 10, 2000.

Lars:

Yeah, but imagine the administration getting anything through the Senate, let alone, the House. They may not even get approval of cabinet positions. Hence, no government.

I can see it now. "The first President appointed by the Supreme Court, rather than elected by the people." I can already write the articles.

It will be one mess.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), December 10, 2000.

Z,

How about

"The 2000 Presidential election was decided by a divided Supreme Court's 5-4 decision."

-- (future@quote.s), December 10, 2000.

Like I've said before, hold a run-off election. We need some closure here. We need someone to win by a significant margin.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 10, 2000.

But the key issue now revolves around interpreting those ballots. I think by now, even the dumbest Joe Sixpack understands that if a Democrat counts undervotes they will find more Gore votes, and if it's a Republican doing the counting, they will find more Bush votes. NOT that these counters are necessarily dishonest at all. It's just that undervotes are inherently ambiguous, and the "intent of the voter" is therefore in the eye of the beholder, and NOT in the eye of the voter anymore.

Gore's constant claim that the intent of a dimple can be unambiguously determined to everyone's satisfaction, and that therefore these are "legal votes", is the very claim being doubted here. We can never "find out" who "won" the election, we can only recount ambiguous ballots according to interpretations favorable to one party or the other. And the counts are close enough that these interpretations ALONE determine the "winner".

So we can have a battle over who interprets, and the party that gets to interpret will win. Or we can battle over who gets to *decide* who gets to interpret, and whoever decides wins. Finally, we can battle over who properly should determine who gets to decide who counts. And these are all partisan political decisions *whether or not* they are made by courts. Meanwhile the "real" will of the people can NEVER be determined, because we simply have no valid way of doing so. We really could get better accuracy flipping a coin. At least the coin has no preferences.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 10, 2000.