Well the argument has now surpassed farce and entered a realm so surreal we’ll need poets to make sense of it all for us. In a nation built on two important premises—1) that all people are created equal and 2) that all people share the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—it’s now become acceptable to say that our government (one of, for, and by these same equal people) should give advance warning of a terrorist strike to our wealthy citizens before our other citizens. Wealth is now openly discussed as a justifiable criteria for putting citizens at head of the queue for the lifeboats. Wealth alone.
This my friends is FUBAR.
Media Matters reprints the text of a program by right-wing radio host Neal Boortz. Here is the bulk of it:
OK, I’ve got an insensitive thought, folks. There’s a news story out there — there’s a news story out there that rich people got some sort of an email notification of the terrorist threat against the New York subway before poor people did. OK? They’re making a big deal out of it….here’s the story. … "The Homeland Security Department launched internal probes yesterday into whether its officials tipped off friends and relatives to a possible subway terror plot days before average New Yorkers were alerted." So the real gripe here is that it seems that some wealthy people got notified of the terror plot before the great unwashed, before the others. Now, the Daily News in New York has a headline: "Rich got terror tip." Rich got terror tip. OK, let’s get logical about this, folks. Let’s play logic with this. This is as it should be. OK? If we are faced with disaster in this country — let me ask you this, OK? You just be logical. Get all of the emotion out of this. Get all of the emotion out of this. But if we are faced with a disaster in this country, which group do we want to save? The rich or the poor? Now, if you have time, save as many people as you can. But if you have to set some priorities, where do you go? The rich or the poor? OK? Who is a drag on society? The rich or the poor? Who provide the jobs out there? The rich or the poor? Who fuels — you know, which group fuels our economy? Drives industry? The rich or the poor? Now if you — all of a sudden, somebody walks up to you and says, "Hey, Boortz listener. You’re gonna have a — you have to make a choice. You’re going to — we’re gonna move you to another country. And you’re just gonna have to make your way in this other country. We have a choice of two countries for you. In this country, people achieve a lot and they are wealthy because of their hard work. In this country, people don’t achieve squat. They sit around all the time waiting for somebody else to take care of them. They have children they can’t afford. They’re uneducated. They can barely read. And the high point of their day is Entertainment Tonight on TV. Which country do you want to live in? The country of the high achievers, or the country of sheep, the country of followers?" You know what you’re gonna do. I don’t see what the big problem is. I just don’t. I mean, if you — who do I want to save first? The rich. Save the poor first. Then, when everything’s over, where are you gonna go for a job? OK, hey, if I get a tin cup, can I sit next to you and sell pencils too?
[…]
I’m serious about that, folks. You see, that’s the kind of thing that’s going to end up in news stories: "Neal Boortz said that in times of disaster we should save the rich people first." Well, hell, yes, we should save the rich people first. You know, they’re the ones that are responsible for this prosperity. I mean, you go out there and you look at this vast sea of evacuees, OK? You want to get an economy going in some city? Well, who you gonna take back? The people who own businesses? Or the people that sit around waiting to get their minimum wage job, work ’til Friday, get a paycheck and then not show up again until the following Wednesday? Come on. Just put a little logical thought into this, folks.
OK, Mr. Boortz, do let us put a little logical thought into it.
What does a radio personality makes a year? More importantly, how many people can a radio personality employ after he’s returned to a devastated city? By your own criteria, what are the odds that you, sir, would make the cut? You may be wealthier than many people around you where your live, but in New York City, sir, I highly doubt your name would make the list.
More than that though, let’s say you do make the cut in your region, but upon your return you find that your comfortable home was destroyed by this terrorist act. Now you need to hire qualified carpenters and plumbers and electricians to rebuild your home. Before that, though, you need to hire qualified demolition workers to remove the debris and such. More than that though, you need a virtual army of people to retore the phone lines, water supply, electricity, etc. before you can call the carpenters or plumbers or electricians. But all of these local people are dead now Mr. Boortz, so their replacements will have to be imported.
This will take a while, so you’ll have to live in a hotel until then. Of course it won’t be like the ones you’re used to, as all the local bell-hops, maids, receptionists, and cooks will be dead too. But there will be other rich people like you there, waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. You can develop a pecking order among yourselves to see who takes whose baggage up to the rooms.
During all this time, though, you’re essentially unemployed yourself, Mr. Boortz. The terrorist act destroyed your broadcasting studio. I’m sure you’re able to broadcast from elsewhere, but that’s not what you’re arguing here is it? You’re not arguing that the rich should be saved because they can, like any of the poor people, move away and start their lives again. You’re arguing that they, and they alone, can get the economy going again in this region. That would, of course, require that they stay there and spend their money there, rebuilding their homes and businesses, no?
But, wait, there’s more. While you’re unemployed and arguing that it’s not your turn to change the sheets in the hotel, another problem arises. No one who’s poor wants to move there from elsewhere and take over those jobs in your region. Everyone who’s poor knows that they’d likely be left for dead if the terrorists attack there again. So you and your wealth haven’t really served any purpose at all, have they? You’re not able yourself to rebuild the region because you don’t have the skills, and the folks who do have the skills won’t risk being pushed out of the lifeboats should the terrorists come back. So essentially, through your cowardice, you’ve doomed this region to ruin. The rich will have to move away, and the poor will stay where they get reassurances from their elected officials that they are indeed considered equal in the eyes of the law.
Your cowardice is outdone only by your lack of foresight Mr. Boortz. All in all, I’d say you’re better off letting all citizens have an equal chance of escape. That way there will be a mix of citizens returning to claim their homes, representing a variety of the skills needed to rebuild and restore needed services. Further, that way, no one will be left with the impossible task of repairing your humanity.
alls i know is that i’m going start keeping a notarized copy of my latest bank statement with me at all times. no way i wanna end up being unable to prove that i’m worth more than the people around me, if there’s ever a line for lifeboats.
death to the poor, life for the rich: it’s the Fairest Tax of all!
abhorrent sentiments expressed by boortz, but it’s just an example of the libertarian “utopia” of social darwinism taken to an extreme.
I’ve had libertarians tell me the poor are also less deserving of such things as EMT services because they pay less taxes (or contribute less to society or some other b.s.). Just another example of the morally bankrupt Randian philosophy.
What worries me most is that this seems shocking and surprising to some Democrats. Where have you all been for the last five years? This strikes me as a fairly typical Red claim. Usually it’s buttressed by adolescent murmurings about Ayn Rand, but it’s fairly typical.
It seems one thing to hear such nonsense in theory, SCMTim, but another altogether in response to an actualy situation. It drives it home somehow.
JFTR, Rand wasn’t a libertarian. She was an Objectivist. She hated libertarians.
I can also say quite confidently that the people Bobzilla is encountering aren’t libertarians either, althought they may call themselves such. They’re Republicans.
Shorter Boortz: “Hey lookit me! I’m edgy!”
He’s probably right now writing a screenplay for a Titanic remake, where the wealthy socialite gets screwed out of his lifeboat seat by a good-for-nothing immigrant kid.
I live in Georgia and stopped listening to Boortz a long time ago. He says things like this just to get people incensed enough to call into his show. Ratings, ratings, ratings. The guys is a first class idiot. Of course, my mom quotes him endlessly, but she’s kind of an idiot too. Can’t pick your family and all that….
It appears that Boortz is just ripping off some old speeches from the first half of the 20th century, substituting rich for Aryan and poor for Jewish.
I wonder if we can get Scotty to endorse Boortz’s comments.
I’m going to treat this as an isolated case of nuttiness and hence uninteresting, given that I don’t know who the hell he is, unless there’s some outpouring of support for his position.
I’m going to treat this as an isolated case of nuttiness and hence uninteresting, given that I don’t know who the hell he is, unless there’s some outpouring of support for his position.
I can see that, but if, as SCMTim suggests, this is a widely held belief, then I’d rather not find that out the day an evacuation is needed.
Not to play devil’s advocate or anything but since when haven’t the rich been given preferential treatment? Particularly w/in the legal system. Disgusting as it is to hear the ‘idea” articulated and advocated out loud, it doesn’t really change, as they say, ‘the facts on the ground.’ In short, the only real surprise is that someone would be dumb enough to actually broadcast it.
Well, he has the #79 book in the Amazon sales rankings AOTW. And the subject of the book is how to make taxes fairer. Knowing that his view of fairness is that the rich should live and the poor should die is a good data point in judging that book by its cover.
Also, one of the more idiotic part about Boortz’s argument is that he’s suggesting that for some reason the number of people who got e-mail warnings had to be limited, when in fact the cost per e-mail sent is, in many cases, actually zero.
Also note the truly bizarre assumption that rich people are rich because of their effort. This is false for people with inherited wealth, and for people who cash in on their connections rather than earning their money the old-fashioned way. Since I don’t imagine that those who received advance warning were actually chosen based on their net worth, but heard because they knew someone, those who got rich despite not being connected would be underrepresented, while those (like GWB before he entered politics) who were rich, well-conected, and incapable of actually earning money on his own steam would have found out.
Not to play devil’s advocate or anything but since when haven’t the rich been given preferential treatment?
Diligence.
What’s seen as right or wrong is a matter of diligence. The more someone shouts “the rich are more deserving” and no one counters it, the more that will come to be accepted as true.
As far as the actual event in question, based on the news article, it seems that some people who were related to or otherwise knew officials at DHS received early warning, not that there was some concerted effort to notify the wealthy in general. More of a case of “who you know” rather than “how much you make.” Reprehensible, yes, but not class-ism.
As for Boortz, I’ve heard the name but never listened to him (talk radio in general bores me). He sounds like an ass.
What’s seen as right or wrong is a matter of diligence. The more someone shouts “the rich are more deserving” and no one counters it, the more that will come to be accepted as true.
Agreed, Edward. I stand upbraided.
Phil, I know you’re right about the objectivist/libertarian distinction because I’ve heard objectivists say this, and I think libertarians as well, but in as short or as long a description as you care to give, what’s the difference?
Boortz sounds like perfect B-Ark material.
My favourite response to Boortz’s brand of bilge may be found here.
Ayn Rand took Objectivism into a bunch of places which Libertarianism doesn’t even bother thinking about, because of her belief that you could objectively determine things like ‘what tastes good’, ‘what kind of music is good to listen to’, etc. So that’s one substantial difference is that by the end of her life, Rand turned Objectivism into a more totalizing world view, whereas most Libertarians would laugh and point if someone tried to dictate such things. (Indeed, dictating such issues is about as ANTI Libertarian as one can get.)
Libertarianism, on the other hand, is based on the idea that each person is best suited to make their own decisions; it is much more strongly subjective. The maximum freedom of the individual within the minimal limits necessary to maintain order is best. It makes no claims about the nature of science, what people’s aesthetic tastes should be, etc.
Now, both systems do tend to end up basically endorsing laissez-faire capitalism. Objectivists do it because they see it as the objectively best system for rational actors to maximize their wealth. Libertarians like it because it fits their ideal of small government. (and often they like maximizing wealth too, of course…)
Libertarianism can end up seeming pretty lousy to an objectivist because it puts no particular emphasis on reason. A Libertarian is free to be as rational or irrational as he likes and that’s the whole point. To an objectivist, such a view is going to tend to be anathema.
“provide for the common defense”
Nicely and succinctly put, Jonathan!
John — and then there’s always the minor matter of objectivism having turned into, well, almost a cult…
Boortz makes so many inane assumptions it’s hard to know where to begin, but in the spirit of Edward’s point about opposing idiocy, here go a few points:
(1) the assumption that wealth is strongly correlated with hard work or other form of merit is pretty dubious. Counterexamples abound, from Paris Hilton to Andrew Fastow before the fall of Enron.
(2) the assumption that material wealth is in itself the most important thing that must be preserved is just plain dumb. Financial reward as a measure of the merit of a work product is pretty dodgy, too. Would you rather live in a world with no chia pets, or one with no Muddy Waters?
(3) the assumption that the poor are poor because of some character flaw is stupid. If that were true how do we have stories of people overcoming poverty and attaining great wealth? Before they made their first buck they were scum and after they made it big they became good? If anything, the wealth creating characteristics (presumed good in Boortz’ view) must predate the acquisition of wealth – causality demands it. For those of the poor who remain poor throughout their lives, even if it is entirely due to laziness (while many liberals dislike admitting it, there are such people) – so what? They’ve made a choice to value money less than leisure. Why is that choice bad? Only if material wealth is the measure of a person’s value is it bad to be lazy.
(4) The poor and lower middle class provide most of our soldiers, firefighters, police officers and paramedics. Even if their lives have zero value the aristocrats need them.
More of a case of “who you know” rather than “how much you make.” Reprehensible, yes, but not class-ism.
As anyone who’s ever lived in the colonies (or spent time amongst Ivy Leaguers) can attest, that is classism. Genteel, unintentional classism, but classism nonetheless.
And BTW, for those who consider Boortz an isolated nutjob, I’d recommend reading Neiwert et al. to get a sense of how he’s plugged into the “conservative” — irony quotes now more essential than ever! — movement. There are a whole crapload of “isolated nutjobs” out there who are isolated more as a function of people not talking about their connections, which tend to be meaningful-but-ephemeral and therefore hard to describe, than of the absence of connectivity.
Kinda let’s you know where the whole FAIR tax proposal is really coming from.
Donald, John Biles pretty well covered it, I think. If I had to distill it down to an elevator speech, I’d say the while both libertarians and objectivists derive similar principles of individual responsibility, free markets and noninitiation of force from common assumptions, objectivism is more metaphysical (wonkily so) and sees capitalism as an end rather than a means. Also, objectivists see altruistic behavior as per se immoral; libertarians like to be as free to be as altruistic as they want to. There’s a good
I don’t know what happened there. Last sentence, penultimate graf should read: “Not that you’d know it from the nimrods who the media chooses to represent ‘libertarianism’.”
Per the discussion of dirty libertarians, I think you’d have to step back a bit from the question of who should get saved in an emergency. Most libertarians would point out that no one should have the power to make that decision and that maximum dissemination of life-saving information is generally best, in order to allow each individual to act on it as they choose.
The idea that public information has to be state controlled and then doled out according to procedures and a schedule is inherently unlibertarian.
I’m sort of with Rilkefan here, but I would like to make my acquaintance with Boortz, perhaps on a bridge leaving new Orleans during a flood and hurricane.
The logistics of Boortz’s neediness are complicated. For example, the folks in first class on those 4 planes on 9/11. Presumably they received the heads up moments before those in coach, but they died first, being at the front of the plane. We could fly jetliners backwards into buildings, thus giving the wealthier folks a split second or two more time. That seems just, but (hey, flying is little more than magic to me) wouldn’t there be some sort of thrust and lift problem getting off the ground?
Now, what about the folks in the World Trade Center. You could have the richest people congregated on the bottom floors and let them file out first, that is if they didn’t mind giving up their stellar views of Manhatten. But what about the janitors and other poor service folks serving those lower floors?. You’d need to keep the news from them, but that would seem problematical, what with all the whispering and hand signals.
I don’t know what to do about the bird flu. But when it arrives, you know, just as the public health system for the poor is cracking under the Boortzian/Republican ideological weight, I think I’ll seek out Boortz, maybe on an elevator.
I’ll turn and ask him, “hey Neil, can I borrow a few bucks”, and then I’ll sneeze a big sloppy one with lots of aerosol birdy mucilage right into his kisser. Maybe I’ll kiss him right on the lips too, like Daffy Duck, and then bounce around hooting like a loon.
“Neil, does the word “pandemic” mean anything to you?” I’ll hoot. “By the way, is this your wife and all the other heirs to the Boortz fortune? Pleased to meet you. Kaachew!”
That’ll be his heads up.
I’d just like to say, apropos of nothing, that I can’t understand why any reasonably smart conservative would waste his time at Obsidian Wings.
OT, but that interview I did for public radio last month re: the GBBA is going to air tomorrow night. Details are on my bloglet.
Thanks for the heads up, CC 🙂
I’d just like to say, apropos of nothing, that I can’t understand why any reasonably smart conservative would waste his time at Obsidian Wings.
Some smart conservatives like debating with smart liberals. Not being smart myself, I couldn’t say why I come here. 😛
Shop smart. Shop S-Mart!
This, ThirdGorchBro, is my BOOMSTICK!
Thanks, John and Phil. I used to know much of that, but it’s been so long since I’d thought much about it I’d forgotten. Of course, there’s always google, but it was easier to ask.
I’d just like to say, apropos of nothing, that I can’t understand why any reasonably smart conservative would waste his time at Obsidian Wings
Ahem, I think there was a little poll a few months ago about whether you are politically. I think I was the most centrist, with the possible exception of crionna. who shortly thereafter fled the site. I sometimes comment here because if I try to discuss politics with my family, who are liberal, they win the debate by yelling, and/or crying. So Obwi is my substitute outlet.
On yet another persoanl note, how I became “conservative” was that my son’s school social worker wanted us to put him on Ritalin. We had him tested by a REAL psychologist and presented the evidence that although he was very smart, he was within the norm in attention span. But the school argues that because his IQ differed from his attention by 2 standard deviations, we should medicate him. After we put him in a private school, I called up athe Mike Malloy show to support school vouchers. The next caller called me a Nazi, and Mike agreed. So that’s the initial seed for how I changed from a liberal to a Nazi, Zionist, chickenhawk racist.
Now my folks back in Tennessee are very believing Baptists and Methodists, who think I’m going to hell, with my Dad a deacon who by the way did awesome work at a federal facility during the Reagan administration. And here in Illinois, my family is atheist/Unitarian do-gooders – and get this, had copies of “Soviet Life” in the bzasement that I had to clean out when they had to move out because of old age / Alzheimer’s, etc.
Me, I was somewhate accurately described in high school as a “depraved degenerate”, yet I would have voted for Nixon because the whole Eagleton VP affair proved to me that McGovern didn’t have the right stuff to be president. (My friends were shocked and outraged when they found this out.)
So, if y’all thought that I am a typical conservative, sorry, I am actually a pretty wierd guy. (But not as wierd as bob macmanus)
DaveC: so does the fact that we don’t call you names here mean you might switch back? 😉
Bill at 3:02 has my ear. Reminding me of Puddin Head Wilson’s grandstand that he would shoot his half (of the co-owned dog). It wasn’t the impression he was hoping for.
Ever so earnest Edward, can you see it Bill’s way?
Boorzt (did he invent this name or come by it honestly?) may be pointing out facts, laying bare the reality that our constitution is designed to challenge. This may be a service. Regard the fervor of Edward as one instance of resurrecting our faith and need for this constitution.
DaveC: so does the fact that we don’t call you names here mean you might switch back? 😉
I doubt it, especially if Rudy Giuliani or Condi Rice are nominated for Pres. In Illinois, I think Barack Obama is a good guy, and in 2004 I voted for almost as many Dems as Republicans. By the way, I think that Jes has a profound misunderstanding of the US political system. It is in some way undemocratic, in that each state has 2 senators, regardless of the population. So the popular vote has never been the be-all end-all according to the constitution.
Also I vote in national elections fully aware of the fact that my vote may count for nothing, sort of, because of the winner takes all aspect of the electoral college.
To be honest, the reason I voted for Bush in 2000 was for Social Security reform, and Pres Bush has been pretty inept in advancing this. Now I think that Pres Clinton did a pretty good job domesticlly, after the train-wreck of health-care reform. (I work generally in the health care field, and the health care reform stuff actually stopped advances in research and development). And I can forgive Clinton somewhat on national security issues, because at the time, who knew?
Now I think that we need somebody that can be characterized as a “bad man” or a “war criminal” in order to spread what I think of as “freedom” around the world. I have to admit that I think thaat the governments in N Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, Zimbabwe are very very bad, and that we, the USA,should do what we can do to stop these guys. There are so few countries that care about the freedom of individuals that the resonsibility ultimately lands upon the US.
DaveC, if that’s true, then why on earth are you voting for Bush? Irrespective of whether he’s a “bad man” or a “criminal”, he’s done a pretty awful job of promoting meaningful democratization, liberalization or in any way stopping “bad guys” beyond Saddam Hussein and his family (and pretty much ruining Iraq in the process, so it’s at best a mixed result there). I mean, it’s one thing to vote for someone who’s able to get the job done, it’s quite another to vote for someone who’s just an incompetent wannabe-asskicker…
Just to give DaveC a little cover here, there was no way I think anyone could have truely envisioned how bad things (and this admin) could get. (yes, I know that some people will say that they knew, but honestly, did you really think that it would reach this point?)
DaveC: By the way, I think that Jes has a profound misunderstanding of the US political system.
I think you’re wrong about that. Let me outline my understanding of the US political system and see if you still think I’m wrong.
The basic system is as it was set up in the 18th century, and was then considered deeply radical, as all white men had the vote, poor or rich. (In the UK at that time, there still existed “rotten boroughs” where perhaps a couple of dozen men were entitled to vote for a Member of Parliament, and whole cities where no one, no matter what their age or their financial status, had the vote.) If you read contemporary political writings, you see that what the founders feared was that permitting one man, one vote, would lead to mob rule (what we would these days call “representative democracy”) – and they built in any number of checks to make sure that didn’t happen. Fear of a government elected by the will of the majority of voters was standard thinking in the 18th century, nothing out of the ordinary. (Indeed, there are still right-wingers who think like that now: see the fear and contempt expressed for the government of Venezuela, or past fear/contempt for the governments of Nicaruaga and Chile.)
The system is intended to be anti-democratic, because it is very much still an 18th-century system. That the President is elected not by the will of the majority of voters, but by voters appointing an electoral college, so that if 51% of those who vote (and who have their votes counted) vote Republican, all of the electors in the college must cast their votes for a Republican president, is not a democratic system: it’s not meant to be.
Liberal Japonicus: Some folks in 2000 did say that if Bush and his crew got power, they’d use it to widen the class gulf, shift load onto and opportunity away from everyone below the top stratum, lose all fiscal restraint, engage in unnecessary and probably incompetent military adventures, and a bunch else. Molly Ivins’ writings from the time are in print. Avedon Carol has archives of her stuff from then, I believe, along with comments at Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden‘s weblog. There are others, as well.
My policy is very simple at this point. I’m listening to those who were most nearly right, apologizing for not heeding what turned out to be good evidence, and seeing where the same sort of reasoning gets me now.
On elections, my policy is equally simple: conduct them in a way that makes it possible for winners, losers, and bystanders alike to say with confidence “this is what voters voted for”. As it is, we have a high-risk security alert for Diebold from CERT that hasn’t been addressed a year later, just for starters, and a whole lot else. I believe I know (in broad terms) what happened in 2004, but I couldn’t exactly prove it, and the very fact that it’s so hard to prove or disprove a claim is itself a sign of a poorly run election. Certainly the Bush administration and Republican Party cannot demonstrate that they won without the balance being tipped by various forms of fraud and abuse. I’d like to think that all Americans of good will would prefer a much simpler, more open, and more reliable approach.
“indeed, there are still right-wingers who think like that now: see the fear and contempt expressed for the government of Venezuela, or past fear/contempt for the governments of Nicaruaga and Chile.”
Or just go back before the turn of the century, in this country. Remember the anti-Clinton howlers?
Liberal Japonicus: Some folks in 2000 did say that if Bush and his crew got power, they’d use it to widen the class gulf, shift load onto and opportunity away from everyone below the top stratum, lose all fiscal restraint, engage in unnecessary and probably incompetent military adventures, and a bunch else.
Sure, but if one thinks about the position that DaveC is in, it’s a bit, well, unrealistic to have him take note of accounts such as those. And if we think to the situation before the election, it seems a bit righteous to claim that it was obvious that Bush was a total f-up.
My policy is very simple at this point. I’m listening to those who were most nearly right, apologizing for not heeding what turned out to be good evidence, and seeing where the same sort of reasoning gets me now.
An excellent policy. But I don’t think that we can afford to not try and get people like DaveC and others like him that maybe, just maybe, this admin is really screwing the pooch.
It seems Boortz is laboring under an enormous misconception. Perhaps we might want to save the “more productive” members of society first, but at no point in reality are we ever faced with such a choice.
First, the marginal cost of informing one additional person (of any degree of productivity whatsoever) is essentially zero. The news media will run these kinds of stories, everywhere, for free, and if the information is properly disseminated (rather than given secretly to cronies), everyone will be able to act on it as they see fit.
Second, from the standpoint of Austrian economics (also a libertarian theory, though often at odds with Objectivism), there is no one objective standard of who is “worth more” to society: Each person values other people and/or their contributions to varying degrees. To Austrian economists, the reason we have an economy in the first place is because of these great differences in value.
For example, my hair stylist is quite valuable to me, but I wouldn’t trust yours at all. Or maybe you don’t even have one, since you don’t think hair is worth the trouble. How are we to decide between us whether hair stylists are objectively “worth it?” We don’t decide. We buy and sell goods and services in a free market WITHOUT deciding. (And without making the creepy genocidal defenses of favoritism that Boortz has made here.)
That the President is elected not by the will of the majority of voters, but by voters appointing an electoral college, so that if 51% of those who vote (and who have their votes counted) vote Republican, all of the electors in the college must cast their votes for a Republican president, is not a democratic system: it’s not meant to be.
It is incorrect to state that there is any Constitutional requirement whatsoever that the electors from any given state must all vote for the candidate who received 50%+1 of the popular vote in that state. Each state has different rules for how their electors must behave. The fact that party politics decides who gets designated as electors generally results in what you describe, but that’s an argument against either/both of party politics or the method of elector designation, not against the electoral system per se.
It also makes no difference except from a philosophical standpoint. If you eliminated the electoral college tomorrow, a 51% vote, or a 50%+1 vote, in a particular state for a particular candidate would still go down as a win in that state for that candidate. No electors necessary.
Finally, it’s not as if the Prime Minister of the UK is directly elected by the voters of the UK either. Nor, I daresay, is the Monarch.
The basic system is as it was set up in the 18th century, and was then considered deeply radical, as all white men had the vote, poor or rich.
This is also incorrect. There were plenty of both practical and legal blocks preventing non-landowning whites from voting.
Ever so earnest Edward, can you see it Bill’s way?
Of course I can. I see it that way too, but the problem lies in this last note of Bill’s:
Of course, my mom quotes him endlessly,
Assuming Bill’s mom votes as well, I still see this as problematic and worthy of discussion.
PS. Despite the mocking, I love the alliteration!
The US system isn’t a direct democracy, and we don’t have proportional representation for political parties, but in a country as large and diverse as the US it’s necessary to have some mechanisms that encourage stability and unity. The electoral college, the existence of a Senate with equal representation for all states regardless of population, and the “winner-takes-all” two-party system are just some of those mechanisms. Without them, we’d go through governments faster than Italy does. Just because we’re more republican (small “r”) than Europe doesn’t mean we’re not a democracy.
ThirdGorchBro: Just because we’re more republican (small “r”) than Europe doesn’t mean we’re not a democracy.
And yet, in Florida, the electoral college ended up being directed to vote the opposite way from the way the Florida voters had actually appointed them to vote. So even with the 18th-century democracy that the US uses, the system is now officially broken, and worse, there is apparently no rush to get it repaired.
LJ: In 2000 I was a pretty hard-core libertarian who really didn’t see much difference at all between the major party candidates in terms of the issues that mattered to me. I’m not asking for any more of a stretch than I’m making.
You’re going to need to provide something a little more concrete than your say-so, J. Who directed the electors to vote inconsistently with the popular vote, and on what authority?
Slarti: Who directed the electors to vote inconsistently with the popular vote, and on what authority?
The popular vote in Florida was for Al Gore. The electors nevertheless selected George W. Bush. You, as a native of Florida, would know better than me who was empowered to direct that the electors should select George W. Bush without completing the counting of the votes to find out who the voters actually wanted… which turned out to be Al Gore, once all the ballots had finally been counted.
It doesn’t matter what you think the popular vote was, what matters is the certified popular vote. I know you’re having a hard time with this, but a little traipse through Florida statute could probably set you straight. Personally, I think Bush “really” won by a bazillion votes.
Short answer: no one.
Still untrue, J. Maybe if you repeat it a few thousand more times…but again, it doesn’t matter what your favorite newspaper thinks the certified vote ought to have been, what matters is what the certified vote actually was.
DaveC.:
It’s amazing how similar real-life experiences can send people off into completely different orbits.
Although I was already a liberal at the time (this incident confirmed my leanings), a teacher once recommended I be placed on a heavy regimen of Ritalin for disruptive behavior. She ran a very conservative, up-tight, by-the-book classroom and couldn’t abide my fidgeting, gum-chewing, girls’ braid-fondling (I have this thing about braids), and stuff like starting the Wave among the little kids while she was trying to get us to spell “necessary” correctly.
Did I mention that this was my son’s second grade class a few years ago, and I was there on parents day to sit in with a bunch of Moms to watch the kids’ present some sort of project? Well, there you go.
I agree that we liberals tend to shout and cry during political arguments. We’re emotional and the justice we seek is so obvious to all of us that we just can’t get through a sentence like “how would lower capital gains taxes prevent the Biafran debacle?”, without breaking down into our hankies and running from the room.
But I see this as only a difference in timing between liberals and conservatives. For example, tough guy Richard Nixon saved his crying jag for the Watergate goodbye press conference, having learned that ruthlessly subverting the institutions of government had suddenly become acutely personal.
I expect George W. Bush, who seems on the verge of tears most of the time, to someday give a crying fit on camera that will be unwatchable by everyone except, perhaps, for hardened people like his mother.
The Eagleton affair was sloppy and naive on McGovern’s part. But at least we found out Eagleton was a crazy alcoholic going in, whereas with Nixon we didn’t find out until the damage had been done.
I was going to do a blogpost on this, but I can’t seem to stay focused.
Seriously. As in, I’m starting to suspect that I may have been suffering from something like this for quite some time.
what matters is the certified popular vote
Ah. So, in your view, it doesn’t matter how many people actually voted for Gore, and how large a margin he actually won by: what matters is the official result.
Well, declaring that who the voters actually vote for is unimportant compared to the official result is another way of saying “democracy is broken where I live and I don’t care”, I suppose. Which is pretty much what I was saying: democracy is broken, and no one seems to care enough to call for repair.
Still untrue, J.
What, you think you can change how many people voted for Gore by closing your eyes and saying it’s not true?
More Florida voters tried to vote for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. Count the votes using rules aimed at recording the intentions of the voters, and Gore wins. (Eliminate all the chicanry Florida Republicans used to stop Democratic voters getting to vote, or having their votes counted once they voted, and Gore wins by a larger margin – how large depends how much chicanry you’re prepared to acknowledge.) cite
You may be happy that the official result declared Bush the winner. This does not change the fact that the democratic result – how many people in Florida voted for Gore versus how many voted for Bush – was the opposite of the official result. When the official result is the opposite of the will of the electorate expressed by how they voted, we generally call that a broken democracy.
No, J. Here, I’ll type slowly: what matters as far as the electors is concerned is the certified vote. You can argue all you want about this and that recount of the vote, but that’s quite beside the point as far as the electors are concerned.
Did you get it that time?
Interesting piece, that Guardian cite. First sentence: George Bush would probably still have won the disputed presidential election vote in Florida if the US supreme court had allowed a recount, a comprehensive study of disputed ballot papers has found. This doesn’t exactly bolster your point, but again, it’s not relevant to the question of electors.
calmo asks: Ever so earnest Edward, can you see it Bill’s way?
to which Edward replys, only somewhat less earnestly: Of course I can.
And I wonder if you do. (Not a frivolous check, but not as earnest as your post I’m afraid.) [The voting on whether this mocking or not, is close.]
Could be Bill’s mom, a real sweetheart notwithstanding, is not worth the trouble.
[Park your crusading heart in some other quarter. Bill, wise beyond his years, lives with this. So should you –the moms are not worth straightening out.]
Could be Boortz has read Puddin Head, thinks he is a better hitter than Wilson and can get on base. Your pitch is such a soft lob, I’d say this is a homer for Boorzt. I know –your best pitch that ordinarily stuns and permanently disables, but not here in this instance.
Could be Twain’s delicious look at Puddin Head is worth a 2nd look, but maybe not for Boorzt.
I bloviate.
Slarti: what matters as far as the electors is concerned is the certified vote. You can argue all you want about this and that recount of the vote, but that’s quite beside the point as far as the electors are concerned.
And at no point have I disagreed with that.
Let me type slowly so you understand.
-The Florida electors were handed a certified vote count that told them to vote for George W. Bush.
-This certified vote count is supposed to be based on who voted for which candidate: that is, when more people vote for Al Gore than vote for George W. Bush, the electors should be told to vote for Al Gore.
-Yet although more people voted for Al Gore than for George W. Bush in Florida in 2000, the electors were directed to vote for George W. Bush.
That’s what I originally said: you have merely pinned down how they were “directed” to vote the opposite of the democratic result to the “certified vote count”.
In short, democracy is broken: the voters of Florida did not get to direct the electoral college to cast their votes for the candidate that a majority of them voted for.
Again, I ask for a cite. Is a cite too much to ask?
Let’s look at this a different way. Say you’re an elector from the state of Florida. Do you base your vote on:
A) A newspaper article written one year in the future, or
B) The opinions of a pseudonymous blog-commenter from the U.K., or
C) The certified vote.
I pick C.
As for your assertion that democracy is broken because the vote tally isn’t perfect, well, we’ll take that under advisement. It’s not as if we didn’t do anything about it.
calmo,
Didn’t you get the recycling memo? Surrealistic comments belong in the Fafblog bin. Clear, concise arguments go in the ObWi bin.
(and yes, I know that’s a big-*ss bullseye painted on my forehead, but…)
Your pitch is such a soft lob, I’d say this is a homer for Boorzt.
Really? How so? He may have razzle-dazzled his base (who rich or not still expect one day to be), but when they really were putting folks on the lifeboat don’t you think Bill’s mom would have an epiphany?
Alas, what we did included eliminating auditability (I refer to paperless electronic voting machines). This always seemed like a step backwards to me.
Who’s “we” in this statement? I’ve still got optical-scan ballot.
Presumably relevant:
All emphases mine. Now we can all commence arguing about whether the strict standard is too strict, whether the lenient standard is too lenient, and how, in a set of eight recount scenarios, Gore winning 3/8 of them is reduced by Jesurgislac to a factual statement, “Gore got more votes.”
Slarti, you wrote “[i]t’s not as if we didn’t do anything about it.” I was just using your pronoun.
I’m talking about the effects that flowed from the Help America Vote Act, including the (now rescinded) support by the League of Women Voters for paperless machines.
I live in the SF Bay Area, we still have optical scan too. That has always seemed a good system to me, though there’s the objection that visually impaired people might need a different mechanism. But if so, why not a few touch screens printing out — optical scan forms?
Sensible, ral.
I’ve read a little on balloting, and IIRC optical-scan ballots are just about the most accurate. Why we’re all not using the most accurate, foolproof and verifiable voting scheme we can get our mitts on has always been a source of head-scratching for me.
Why anyone would invest a pile of money in a new, untried, highly criticised voting technology is an even bigger head-scratcher. Why people sat still for it is a bigger one yet.
Not to question the link or anything, and I really shouldn’t be arguing about this because my take on the Florida 2000 was that the number of Gore/Buchanan votes in Palm Springs, even under the assumption that the confusing ballot was pure accident, meant that absolutely any ambiguity smaller than that several thousand vote margin should have been resolved in Gore’s favor (not trying to convince anyone, just stating my position here) but the recount link above is surprising me.
I remember an interactive Washington Post thingie based on the NORC recount (is that the same as the media recount?), and I remember it showing Gore winning under the vast majority of possible recount standards, possibly winning all possible recounts so long as a uniform standard was applied accross the state. It is perfectly possible my memory is screwed up and I’m indulging in wish fulfillment here, but wasn’t there some recount that tilted Gore more unambiguously?
(Not trying to start a fight about the rights and wrongs of this all. I’m just trying to check my memory.)
Troublemaker.
Anything resembling a recount of the 2000 Florida ballots needs to be defined precisely. Not only what are the standards, but what is the scope? Gore only challenged a couple of counties, so I’d imagine that anything discussing a statewide recount would be dealing in a scenario that wasn’t even on the table.
I’ve read through the statute quite a bit, and it didn’t give clear direction on recounts in presidential elections. I think that part has been revised since then, but that didn’t help 2000 any. I believe Gore could have asked for a statewide recount, but chose not to (Or possibly it didn’t occur to his legal staff, or even possibly that it did, but they thought their margin might be diluted in a statewide recount. I think the number of people who actually know is probably rather small.), which in hindsight may have been a mistake.
Gore only challenged a couple of counties, so I’d imagine that anything discussing a statewide recount would be dealing in a scenario that wasn’t even on the table.
Well, is the question: what would have happend if various things had gone differently in the legal battle or is it: who, based on a review of the ballots, got more votes in Florida? While I can see that the first is a reasonable question to ask, the second is also a reasonable question.
I got unlazy, and googled up the following, which is what I was remembering. If you read past the headline, which addresses a partial recount, this Washington Post article reports the results I remember — that under any standard for a statewide recount, NORC’s study showed Gore in the lead.
I don’t mean to argue about the legal wrangling, or about this at all — I just thought it was odd that the NORC study wasn’t on the wikipedia page.
LB, I think Jesurgislac was simply arguing that more people in Florida voted for Gore, irrespective of context. That, and something about electors being instructed on how to vote.
LB, I think Jesurgislac was simply arguing that more people in Florida voted for Gore, irrespective of context.
Well, yeah. That’s what the NORC study supports. And of course it is on the wikipedia page, just not on the bit that was quoted; I knew it would have been too strange for it not to have been mentioned at all.
Gore only challenged a couple of counties
True. But it was Bush who went to the US Supreme Court to prevent a statewide recount.
My point is, naturally, that the NORC study is a bit of hindsight that’s immaterial to the official election results. NORC didn’t even begin their work until Jan 10, 2001.
Sure. The official election results are what they are, you can figure out what they were by looking at who got inaugurated January 2001. No argument there.
I was just puzzled by the NORCless link — I’d seen some other recount controversy lately, although I can’t remember what, that omitted the NORC study, and I was starting to think I’d imagined it.
I think you’re oversimplifying a bit.
And, IIRC, there was no provision in Florida statute to recount ONLY the ballots that were under dispute. I’d have to go back and check on that, though.
Wait a minute, Slart: that’s not an oversimplification in the least. Who went to the Supreme Court? Candidate Bush. What relief did he seek? Cessation of the statewide recount.
I said nothing about his theories, nor was anything at all implied.
One could same the same about your true statement that Candidate Gore only challenged some counties. As Florida law at the time provided. That he did so is factual, and your statement didn’t say anything more about his motives or theories than mine did.
In the immediate aftermath of the election, one candidate called for an agreed-upon statewide recount, and the other refused to agree (sure he’d won). The guy who couldn’t get the statewide count by agreement then had to petition in counties where his petitions would be granted by the local election board. You had to do it on a county-by-county basis, and filing a petition in a county that was going to deny it, either on a partisan basis or because you couldn’t make any kind of showing in that county that you’d lost votes, would be a waste of time.
Unless the other candidate had agreed to a voluntary statewide recount.
Ok, I’m with you.
Ok, now I’m confused. You’re going to have to put names by each of these positions, and the (sure he’d won) bit is, unless substantiated by public statement, mind-reading.
In any case, I don’t see anything in Florida statute that permits the sort of recount you’re describing here. Recourse is obtained by filing with the canvassing boards; I see no recourse that leads to statewide recount, even if both parties agree.
Although this seems to indicate that a recount ought to have been automatic:
Insert boilerplate IANAL disclaimer here. It could be that this really means that if a given canvassing board shows a tie to within half a percentage point, that board must recount, but that would tend to lead us away from any statewide recounts.
I love the little “meme” going around which says the poor don’t employ anyone, the rich do.
Yes in a feudal society. In the society I live in the poor buy food and all kinds of things, they “employ” very complex capitalist enterprises. This is what rather rightwing Henry Ford knew when he started to pay his workers five bucks a day, enough to buy a car.
So we save the rich and then their spa workers and gardeners? The rightwing machine doesn’t realize how deeply it’s alienating many of the capitalist entrepeneurs with it’s feudal conception of wealth. Bush is a “success” because he got a city to condemn land (according to court rulings at one third the value) give some to him and his partners, and build a baseball park on the rest. Rumsfeld and Cheney are the equivalent of a Steve Jobs or bill gates because after they left government they traded their connections for nice jobs.
The “American Conservative” has this vision in pure form and it’s what they tried and are still trying to pull with Katrina:
http://amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html
Slart, as I said, it’s a county-by-county process. The only way you could get a statewide recount is (a) the candidates agree and county boards implement the agreement (which would have happened, if the candidates wanted it) or (b) it’s ordered by a court.
Gore sought (a) a day or two after the election, but Bush (through employees) said no. And Bush had and continued to claim that he had won. Is it mindreading to find a relationship? Hardly. More like taking the Plainspoken One at his word. Option (b) ended up happening, but too late in the day, apparently.
The decision of the Supreme Court in the case is a huge embarrassment, and in ages to come it will live in infamy. What was the evidence that the single judge who was ordered to supervise the statewide recount either could not or would not impose a consistent standard? What was the evidence that the supposed equal protection violation was intentional, and designed to harm Bush, a requirement in every other EP case? I think the SC thought they would be greeted as liberators, stepping in to resolve the constitutional crisis. History will judge.
I’m not one of those people who rehashes this thing over and over. I’ve moved on. And the record will show that I’ve sat quietly during months of Jes/Slart exchanges on the subject, and mostly will do so hereinafter. But really now, knocking Gore for not asking county boards for what he could not get, that’s uncalled for.
I live in the SF Bay Area, we still have optical scan too.
Depends on where in the Bay Area you are. Alameda County’s gone fully electronic, while Contra Costa (at least as of last year) was still using optical scan.
CC, since YAAL, do you happen to know if Bush v. Gore is indeed unique amongst Supreme Court decisions in that it explicitly denies its own utility as precedent? If so, is it unique (to your knowledge) among federal decisions in this way? I’ve heard this cited many times — and repeated it many times myself, though always with disclaimers — but I thought I’d check with someone who might have a chance at knowing the truth of it.
[And any other lawyers should feel free to play here too.]
IAAL, although IANCC, and while stating a negative with confidence is always difficult, I’ve argued this point with other L’s, and have never been faced with a convincing counterexample. So, while I would say ‘highly unusual’ rather than ‘unique’ just because I’m paranoid, I wouldn’t fear embarrassment if you call it unique.
I’m not aware of any examples. It’s sort of contrary to the whole enterprise: the EP clause is supposed to mean the same thing in the same factual circumstances every time.
On the other hand, it’s uncommon but not unheard of for a court to say ‘we think the law here is X, but because this is something new, we’re going to let the decision stand as not-X just for this once. It’ll be X hereafter.’
I don’t think this decribes BvG, because it’s more like the law was X before, it’ll be X after, but this time it’s not-X.
You be right Ed. Boorzt (the writer not the soup) is worth every ounce of attention you can devote to making sure this offering is celebrated as unfit for human consumption.
I pray to God that you find nothing surreal or unconcise in that statment. I can assure you I have no fondness for archery, no matter the size or nature of bullseyes painted anywhere.
And thankyou for your administrative tips in sorting out my correspondence.
Excuse me while I bloviate again.
I am still wondering what was surreal. Was the leap to Puddin Head Wilson an unfamiliar landing? (The allusion to baseball I think went ok, thanks be to Jesus.) [calmo is stunned, like Puddin Head, that his performance did not fly as intended. No, he has touched some bloody nerve and brought out a raging personal counter attack.]
Crap.
I’m going to plead for Bill’s mom’s condolences. She’ll understand me. She will.
[calmo is stunned, like Puddin Head, that his performance did not fly as intended. No, he has touched some bloody nerve and brought out a raging personal counter attack.]
No rage, just perhaps misunderstanding.
Provide a few more keys in the legend…links help.
I like Calmo.
I got off to a bad start with Calmo…I’ll get over it.
Not only do I agree, I’ve never thought otherwise. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
This is the part I’m having trouble with. I don’t see anywhere in the statute that this is required, or even suggested as a possibility.
Not saying this isn’t so, but could you toss me a link? I don’t recall this ever happening.
And given that this isn’t my point of disagreement with Jesurgislac, I’m going to bow out. The statement that set me off was: And yet, in Florida, the electoral college ended up being directed to vote the opposite way from the way the Florida voters had actually appointed them to vote, which to me is inaccurate in a number of different ways.
Slart, I’m lost as to what you are lost about. Looking back at the 2000 Florida code, I see that the recount provision is as I remembered:
You want a recount, you ask a county. We’re clearly in agreement about that.
The county doesn’t have to give it to you. If you want a recount of a county where the board is controlled by the other party, and in which you lost, I suppose you can ask. They’ll say no. Unless you get the opposing candidate to join you in asking. Then the chances that the county board will say yes go from 5% to 95%. If you wanted a statewide recount, this is what you’d have had to do.
As for what happened, this is the first item I found in a Yahoo search that turned up 87,000 results. Not all on point, I’d bet, but good enough for now.
I don’t agree with Jes about electors being instructed one way or the other, as it is the identity of the electors, not their instructions, that is at issue in a US presidential election.
OK, one last thing, and then maybe I’ll go another 5 years without saying anything about this. Saw a nice little table about the NORC study:
——————————————————————————–
This doesn’t take ballot confusion, and time zone problems into account.
What I’m lost about, CC, is the statewide recount. As far as I can tell, there IS no statewide recount provision. As you’ve noted, and as I’ve agreed, one can request a county-by-county recount. However, the statewide recount as the result of a request by both parties…not seeing it.
Not wanting to belabor this already highly belabored point, but…not seeing it. If Gore wanted a statewide recount, he was free to ask for it at any time. On a county-by-county basis, that is.
If Gore wanted a statewide recount, he was free to ask for it at any time. On a county-by-county basis, that is.
As the headline CC linked showed, Gore did ask for Bush to agree to a statewide recount. Bush didn’t agree. Had Bush agreed, they would have together approached each county board, and presumably each county would have agreed to the recount, because both candidates wanted it. A recount of each county = a statewide recount.
Ok, I’m still confused. Why does a request by both candidates result in a recount where a request from just one wouldn’t? Hell, anyone from either campaign could have requested a county-by-county statewide recall. The DNC could have requested it. Am I dense, or am I simply reading the wrong section of the statute? Or, possibly, both?
Seriously, Slart, are you trying to use the Socratic method here? Because I find it hard to believe that anyone of your demonstrated intellect and political engagement is actually confused. But to answer your question:
Here in America, we have a two party system, and elected officials tend to be members of one party or the other (occasionally, their practical allegiance will differ from their nominal allegiance: e.g., Zell Miller). As party members, they will tend to perform their duties, when given discretion, in the manner that will be of the greatest political service to their parties. (Not always, of course, but more so in expressly political contexts.)
The county boards that were formally empowered to authorize a manual recount for each county were made up of party members — some Democrats, some Republicans. It can safely be presumed that those county boards that were controlled by Republicans (either nominally or practically) would not have agreed to recount their counties if the request came only from the Democratic candidate. (If you like, you can say that this is absolutely unknowable, and there is no reason to have believed that it was true. Certainly, you may believe that if you wish. I am taking it as obviously true. If this is our main point of disagreement, there is no need for you to be confused the next time this comes up — you should be able to safely assume that pretty much anyone you’re arguing this point with will be working from the same premises I am.) If the request had come from both candidates, however, the county boards would have had no political reason not to comply, and would presumably have done so. The agreement of both candidates would have sufficed to make the county boards engage in a statewide, county-by-county, recount.
Therefore, by asking the Bush campaign for its agreement to a statewide recount, Gore was asking the entity that had the practical, if not the formal, power to cause such a recount to happen. Making a formal request of each county board was pointless in the absence of agreement from the Bush campaign, and would have been a formality if that agreement had been forthcoming. Gore requested a statewide recount, and requested it of the entity (the Bush campaign) that had the power to agree to it.
(I’m out, now. I used up all of my energy for arguing about the 2000 election sometime in 2002. We can agree to disagree.)
Ties and tiebreakers really stink and get 50% of the people upset no matter how it goes.
Or maybe 49.9999%
Or 50.5%, depending.
I feel the need to add something here that my friend in statistics and quality control engineering and such all agree on:
When you’re looking at just under six million ballots, numbers like 171 and 455 are, quite literally, meaningless. There is precisely no reason to expect, under any honest circumstances, that a separate crew applying the same standards would get the same results. The margin of error is a very important thing. We can’t get perfect precision, and we can’t even get very close sometimes. County and state recounts wouldn’t produce the numbers claimed. They’d get something fairly close, and that’s all.
Michael Flynn, who teaches statistical theory and methods to corporate quality evaluators, arms control inspectors, and people like that, says that the standard for his field would be to declare the outcome “cannot be certified to required precision” and do it again. But obviously a revote isn’t politically feasible most of the time.
LB said it niicely, Slart. I’ll say it not quite so nicely: some people (you too?) have argued for years that Gore should’ve done something time-consuming, expensive, and futile (if not counter-productive), for no reason other than to demonstrate good faith. Given that his request to Bush ought to be more than adequate to do so, and that people making this argument would impose no similar obligation on Bush, the assertion is quite tiresome. Especially considering the efforts that the Bush campaign (including it’s co-chair the Sec of State) went to prior to the election to suppress turnout.
I’m not saying that Gore is either perfect, or rightfully the president. I’m saying that smearing him over the 2000 Florida election is grossly unfair, especially when his conduct throughout is compared with that of the winner.
No, just trying to understand your point. It seems as if you’re just now making it. I disagree with it, but it’s (as you say) now unknowable, because no one did, in fact, make the request. I also disagree with the conclusion that if both candidates had asked, that all reasons for not complying would have been removed. Furthermore, I think that any canvassing board that’s partisan enough to deny a request based on political leanings is also partisan enough to screw with the results of a recount. In any event, it is true that Bush did not agree to a statewide recount. It’s also true that Gore could have asked for that from the start (instead of waiting nearly a week to do so), and petitioned SCOFL for same if denied. What he did actually petition for was, among other things, That only the ballots Contested in the complaint be examined and counted.
I agree with everything Bruce Baugh said: a margin that small is far too small to determine the real victor. What ought to have happened was a total revote, using a ballot having only the two candidates on it, or some arbitrary tiebreaker.
Hmmm…I think the worst thing I’ve said about Gore in this regard was that perhaps he made a mistake. Hopefully my pointing-out of your error won’t be seen as a personal attack on you, CC.
(as you say) now unknowable
This is nitpicking, but I’m feeling testy. I didn’t say that the outcome of a unilateral request from the Gore campaign for recounts from each county was unknowable, I surmised that you might believe it was unknowable. Apparently you do. Me? I consider it eminently knowable.
Just correcting a minor error.
If it’s knowable, there surely must be something to substantiate. Maybe standards for “knowable” vary, though.
Correction acknowledged.
I also disagree with the conclusion that if both candidates had asked, that all reasons for not complying would have been removed.
“All reasons”, perhaps not. Are you seriously arguing that had both Bush and Gore requested a recount, some county would have (metaphorically) given them the finger and said “Hell no”?
Furthermore, I think that any canvassing board that’s partisan enough to deny a request based on political leanings is also partisan enough to screw with the results of a recount.
What? Again, are you seriously saying that there’s no distinction between exercising one’s legal rights, albeit potentially unethically, and deliberately falsifying the outcome of an election?
No, I’m not seriously saying that. I am seriously saying that whether or not the request would have been honored (either politely or impolitely) is something that’s in the unknowable basket, unless you have access to a parallel universe where such a request did occur.
No, looking back, I don’t believe I said anything of the sort. Maybe your parser is broken.
When trying to figure out something like “Did these folks’ organization likely cheat on this occasion?”, I like to look at what they do other times. This is, actually, one of the reasons I give a lot of credence to charges of vote fraud on the part of the Republican Party. The president and his administration always try to lie and cheat when it’s important to them. They fake figures, manipulate definitions, outright lie, trample on procedure, bully dissenters, and so forth and so on. I can’t, right now, think of a single major initiative of theirs conducted in a substantially open, above-board, and verifiably so manner. If there’s been any of that sort, there’s still been many more of the other sort.
So I look at that, and I look at the elections, and I think, “Of course they’d try everything they thought they could get away with. That’s how they work. They do it whenever they feel their power or prestige is at stake, and elections are the key to it all.” The question for me would be, “To what degree can we establish honest elections despite their best efforts?” Right now the answer is “Not much at all”, and I hate that.
That’d be a swell point, if the president and his administration had anything to do with vote-counting in Florida.
People who’ve lived here a while are well-acquainted with past elections-tampering, which sport was vigorously indulged in by many a Miami-Dade Democrat. So if you’re using history as a guide, be sure to use some relevant history as well. Not saying Republicans have never cheated during elections, but the idea that Democrats are anything resembling innocent in this regard is pure fantasy.
Oh, I look for corruption on all sides. It’s why I favor the simplest, most reliable means of ballot counting possible. But I also note that the folks around Bush are unusually dedicated to the art of the dirty trick, and willing to work with outside forces. Witness, for instance, their covert pay-offs to sympathetic editorialists. I can’t see how it would be sensible to expect anything but the worst from them – quite a bit worse than the usual, which is bad enough.
It can’t ever be much fun to be an honest party official at any level below the national when the national folks take an interest. But all the available evidence suggests that it’d be a lot worse to be such in the Republican Party right now.
I am seriously saying that whether or not the request would have been honored (either politely or impolitely) is something that’s in the unknowable basket, unless you have access to a parallel universe where such a request did occur.
In the sense that any counterfactual is unknowable, sure — but that’s a complete and trivial reductio ad absurdem since nothing meets the criterion you’re talking about. To counter-reductio your reductio: by your standard, it’s currently unknowable whether the sun will rise tomorrow, which is a pretty useless definition of “knowable” and “unknowable”.
To the matter at hand: if you have a specific reason to believe that a particular county would have refused a joint request from both Bush and Gore to undertake a recount, well, that’s a whole other ballgame. As it is, this seems to be skepticism for the sake of skepticism, independent of any concerns about understanding the situation.
No, looking back, I don’t believe I said anything of the sort. Maybe your parser is broken.
Actually, you did say something of the sort; the question is what sort of thing you meant to say. Specifically, you asserted that partisanship extreme enough to exert one’s legal rights (by refusing to recount) was sufficient to commit a (federal?) felony (by falsifying the recount). The only way that statement can be true without further justification* is for the two positions — that of refusing a recount and that of falsifying the recount — to be equivalent, which is (a particular instantiation of) the principle I just asked you about. If you hold that they aren’t equivalent, which you understandably seem to be doing, then your claim is false on its face absent further comment and I’d ask you to expand upon and hopefully refine what it was you meant to say.
* Beyond arguing things like, for example, quanta of partisanship which… well, I suppose you could try, but I have more respect for you than that.
Hopefully my pointing-out of your error won’t be seen as a personal attack on you, CC.
Don’t worry about that. I had used the “some people (you too?)” formulation in my post to avoid making a direct accusation wrt your conduct that I wasn’t prepared to back up, and am in no way offended to find that you are not in the ‘too’ category.
I have to say, though, that your willingness to entertain the thought that a Republican dominated county board would have agreed to a Gore request for a manual recount in 2000, if the request was resisted by Bush, strikes me as the thirteenth chime of the clock with regard to your familiarity with Florida politics as it actually exists. Farbeit for me to criticize naive utopians, as I fall into that category myself in some ways, but really now: can you honestly say you think it would actually have happened?
Anarch, the whole reason this discussion got to this point was because LB expressed doubt that some county or other might refuse a request if it was made only by Gore. If you’re concerned by this kind of argument, best address it to him/her.
So the answer is: yes, my parser is broken. It’s fine with me if you insist on attributing positions to me that I haven’t taken; it’s more of a felixrayman thing to do, but that’s your choice.
Oh. I’d thought that since you mentioned this kind of thing twice to me, that you were talking to me. Thanks for clarifying.
Could you rephrase this? I’m having trouble extracting meaning from it. Are you suggesting that a well-substantiated request for recount might be denied by a county canvassing board for reasons of politics? Are you also thinking that Gore had no recourse through the state courts? By that time, Gore had already resorted to recourse via the court system, so if that’s your position, I’m mystified.
I can see that Bush asking for a recount in Leon and Dade counties may have made some difference; there’s a Republican majority in Leon County and Dade has only a fourteen percent Democrat majority. But I imagine that Bush was as disinterested in an honest count at the time as Gore was, and just as interested in victory. Gore did, after all, not ask for recounts that he thought might do him no good or even harm, only recounts that might give him advantage.
Gore did, after all, not ask for recounts that he thought might do him no good or even harm, only recounts that might give him advantage.
But I thought that Gore went to the Supreme Court to ask that the Florida decision to order a state-wide recount of the undervote (see the brief filed by Gore here, p. 39) was at issue. I realize that this was in a land far away and long ago, but wasn’t the whole point that Gore wanted a state-wide recount and Bush filed to stop it? To take the initial steps that were taken as completely indicative of final intention seems a bit much.
Sorry, parentheses always screw up my syntax. Gore was asking that the court ordered state wide recount be accepted. I think.
We’re not discussing selective recounts, LJ. Sure, Bush filed to stop a selective recount.
If (on the other hand) I’m the only one not discussing selective recounts, then I’m in the wrong discussion.
Slart:
I’m saying exactly that absent evidence of ballot-box stuffing, or some kind of overt fraud, a county board is going to vote on partisan lines on a recount request. I’m not sure a candidate even has standing to ask a court to order the recount of a county if his evidence shows that the county likely undercounted the votes against him, and even if he does, I don’t think that a county that declines the request from a loser who cannot show that the recount in that county would benefit him in any possible way would be found to have acted in an arbitrary and capricious way. You acknowledge this by using the qualifier “well supported” — what support could Gore have presented in strongly Republican counties that more votes for him had been missed than votes for the other guy?
The request is a loser, and the lawsuit is a loser. As a practical matter, you can only go where the votes are. This is the consequence of the Balkinized system: you can’t get a statewide recount without consent from the other side.
Sure, Bush filed to stop a selective recount.
The recount that Bush went to the Supreme Court to stop was a statewide recount. Quote from Bush v. Gore:
If the FSC’s order had been carried out, all counties would have been manually recounted. (If you want to characterize the fact that some counties were recounted already, and only the remaining counties were to be recounted after the order as a “selective recount”, be my guest, but it’s an unusual usage.)
Slart, are you saying that the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was a selective recount?
Jinx!
How, then, was Gore able to convince the courts to support him on exactly this point? What am I missing, here?
Fine. The recount that Gore asked for was a selective one. The recount that SCOFL directed was also a selective one; it directed merely a recount of undervotes, IIRC. Could be wrong on that, though; please share. I’m looking at the SCOFL decision right now, and it clearly orders a recount of only undervotes. A non-selective recount would recount everything, not just undervotes. If you want to call recount of just undervotes “non-selective”, be my guest, but it’s an unusual usage.
Slart, when you talk about selective at first, I thought you were talking about counties, but now, it seems you are talking about undervotes.
A full recount, which would presumably recount every vote, was never asked for. Overvotes (which I would guess are votes where two chad were missing) would not have been counted because there was no way to determine the will of the voter (ahh, memories) What other votes were there that should have been recounted other than the undervotes? The issue (excluding butterfly ballots and such) was that the design of the machines caused undervotes because the chad could not be punched out. That’s the way I remember things.
If by ‘selective’ you mean ‘undervotes only’; that was a fact error that everyone, including the courts, was under at that time because the issue hadn’t yet been considered clearly. Everyone thought that an ‘overvote’ was a vote for two candidates, and in that case there was no way, absent mindreading, to determine the will of the voter. No one had yet realized (or possibly, a few people were in the process of realizing, but it wasn’t yet common knowledge that had made it to the FSC) that there were significant numbers of ‘overvotes’ in the form of a punch for a candidate and a write-in for the same candidate.
‘Undervotes only’ was intended to limit the recount to votes where there was some possibility of determining the intent of the voter, not to eliminate any category of possibly recoverable votes.
If you want to call recount of just undervotes “non-selective”, be my guest, but it’s an unusual usage.
In November 2001? For the reasons I gave above, not really unusual.
How, then, was Gore able to convince the courts to support him on exactly this point? What am I missing, here?
What you are missing is that the court ordered a remedy that Gore did not and could not seek. It can do that. IIRC Gore’s lawyer was asked about it at oral argument and said something like ‘that’s not what we’re seeking but we can live with it.’
As for the selective nature of the FSC thing, I think it’s now you who is calling for an unattainable level of perfection. There are obvious reasons why one would not ask a county to recount overvotes — and I think the Gore campaign had no idea when it made the requests it did, on a very short timeline, that so many people voted the Gore box, and then in the write-in box wrote Gore and voted that. If lacking omniscience is a mistake, then a mistake was made.
Of course the consensual statewide recount proposed by Gore would have been better than what happened, regardless of the result. I proposed a revote at 10pm on election night — with no idea what the result would be — when it was revealed that the media in the Panhandle had announced that the polls were closed before they were. (No one heeded my call. It’s what I get for yelling at the TV). This too you could do if both candidates agreed, but without agreement, would be basically impossible.
I swear, LB and I are different people, and have never met.
Dude, I’m sitting here re-evaluating my future at my firm. Clearly I think just like a big-firm partner — I’m in excellent shape for future promotion!
(Then I remember how much time I waste during the day. I must go back to the brief I’m writing.)
Ok, I’m back to being confused again. What has this got to do with anything other than hindsight? Florida statute has a procedure defined for recounts, and recounting ONLY a specified subset of the ballots and adding the additional votes to the total isn’t in there, anywhere, as far as I can see. Overvotes, undervotes, butterfly ballots only, take your pick: I would define any recount that changes the initial tally that’s NOT a full recount as “selective”, and believe that things of that nature were not provided for by Florida law.
Hey, I’m not claiming that Gore should have done otherwise, knowing only what he did. Just that what he did turned out to be a mistake.
You have to keep in mind that IANAL (as if I have to keep reminding). Could not…why? It seems that you’re suggesting that while Gore could not have petitioned the courts to instruct the county canvassing boards to recount according to the law, it’s perfectly all right for the courts to order the canvassing boards to recount in a way that’s NOT provided for by law, even if not petitioned to do so. If this is what practicing law is all about, I am more glad than ever that I’m an engineer.
So you should keep in mind that not only am I ignorant, I’m fully aware of my ignorance and am trying to do something about it. Think of this as a way for me to pick the collective legal brains here without having to leave a credit card number.
So you should keep in mind that not only am I ignorant, I’m fully aware of my ignorance and am trying to do something about it. Think of this as a way for me to pick the collective legal brains here without having to leave a credit card number.
The deal is that the answers aren’t very interesting. Sure, when it says manual recount, the Florida law doesn’t specify that you only have to manually recount the ballots that the machines couldn’t read — if you took that absolutely literally, you would have to manually recount every single ballot. When actually doing a recount, you are allowed to be sane, rather than robotically literal, and only look at the ballots that the machines couldn’t understand. (This whole ‘you don’t need to be robotically literal’ thing can be thought of as a general rule of law.) This is a good thing, because recounting every single ballot is orders of magnitude more timeconsuming than just looking at the ones that were uncountable. The ‘just the undervotes’ recount was an erroneously phrased way of saying ‘just count the ones that we need to recount, rather than the ones where the machines told us what they say.”
Gore could have petitioned all the county boards for a recount. It would have been pointless (yes, I know that you disagree that it’s pointlessness is knowable, but you want an explanation from the lawyers of what happened. Accept this as a fact in the service of that explanation.) because they wouldn’t have done it. Because it was pointless without Bush’s agreement, he didn’t do it.
That did put him in an awkward position before the Florida courts — he had only asked for recounts from the counties that would give them to him, and so he couldn’t ask for more from the courts than he had asked for from the counties. The courts, though, have the option of doing what is just and reasonable in a given situation rather than limiting themselves to the remedies the parties have asked for (another general rule of law), and so the Florida Supreme Court decided that a statewide recount served the public policy of having a fair election better than simply giving either party the relief requested.
Now, if I were NAL, the point at which I would find the above explanation dissatisfying is this: “The courts, though, have the option of doing what is just and reasonable in a given situation rather than limiting themselves to the remedies the parties have asked for.”
I might, under those circumstances, say something like the following: ‘But that allows the judge to do whatever they want! Aren’t they bound by the law!?! Surely, if a party isn’t entitled to ask for something, it’s the height of bias for a judge to give it to them anyway!’
If you have objections along those lines, I don’t have anything to point to that answers them, other than my experience as a practitioner that tells me that the system works this way. I wouldn’t normally ask you to trust me like this but you’ve said that you’re seeking education, rather than arguing from a position where you feel that you know what you’re talking about. If you don’t want to take my word for it, of course, there’s no reason that you should.
If the written law was sufficient to produce clear-cut, unambiguous answers in every situation, we wouldn’t need judges, or at least we wouldn’t need them to be intelligent, and honest, and capable of weighing the equities of a situation. We’d need a set of clerks to look things up in the rulebooks. Procedural defaults, like Gore’s failure to petition each county, get forgiven all the time. It’s not an unconventional stretching of the rules to forgive something like that — it would be far more unusual to hold a party to the letter of the rules under similar circumstances. (For example, I’m now working on a case where we answered the complaint six months late. (There was an office move, and some papers got lost). The Rules say that missing that deadline means that we defaulted, and that we’ve lost the case — the other side can get a judgment. The judge said that we should file our answer and get on with it, and there wasn’t much risk (some, but not much) that he was going to decide differently.)
If this is what practicing law is all about, I am more glad than ever that I’m an engineer.
Well, you do have to be able to tolerate a fair amount of ambiguity. You get used to it, though.
Shorter LB: Welcome to legal realism.
Sure, when it says manual recount, the Florida law doesn’t specify that you only have to manually recount the ballots that the machines couldn’t read — if you took that absolutely literally, you would have to manually recount every single ballot.
Sorry about that — I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course the law does say just what I said it didn’t — that you recount the votes that the machines couldn’t read. While I messed that up (I haven’t looked at these statutes for a few years) my larger point about not being robotically literal stands — the court was ordering a recount of what it understood to be all the ballots from which valid votes could be recovered, and that sort of order, not precisely reflecting a robotically literal reading of the relevant statute, is perfectly normal.
Thanks for the long version, LB. I guess I’m going to have to just remain at a disagreement with you on certain points, which you can think of as victory given that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Whoops, you just lost me again. The law says recount ALL ballots. You wouldn’t expect to get a different count on the machine count, but you wouldn’t expect a whole bunch of people to screw up their own ballot, either. The law didn’t, apparently, anticipate either of these things.
Check your link from your 5:31 pm Tuesday post, which is what I’m working from because I’ve forgotten all the details of the statutes over the last couple of years. Here’s the quote:
But if I’m misreading it somehow, it doesn’t matter to my larger argument.
I should expect that the reason for the specification of undervotes only is the Palm Beach thing. The court was aware that there was a whole bunch of two-candidate overvotes out there — the Gore/Buchanan overvotes — and while that issue was not explicitly before it, wanted to make certain that if there was anything similiar in an unrecounted county no one in the recount process got uppity and tried to claim such votes for one candidate or another. Add that to not realizing that unambiguous one-candidate undervotes existed, and there’s where the order came from. But that’s mindreading, and again unimportant to any of the larger issues.
Can I say how much I like the civility rules here? This is the pleasantest BvG argument I’ve ever had. (not that I’m not sick of the subject. I really need to just walk away as I said I was going to days ago.)
I’m sorry, LB, I screwed you up. That link is from the 2005 statute, mention of overvotes and undervotes was not present in the 2000 statute.
Arrgh!
‘unambiguous one-candidate overvotes existed’.
You have no idea what a stupidly large portion of my professional life is devoted to proofreading.
Hey, that, at least, spans professions.
Don’t worry about it, I should have read more carefully. I just realized (after making my long post) that I’d been pontificating about the statute based on my memories from 2000 rather than checking it, and went back to your link to check that my memory was right. When it didn’t match, I rushed to correct without making certain that I’d been looking at the right thing. To quote Emily Litella, “Never mind!”
Slart, this is the point where I usually jump in with a set piece bloviation about Law and Equity, of Henry II and Edward I, and so on. I’m home from work fighting a weak little flu-ish thing, and nobody ever really likes the speech anyway. (I’ll digress slightly, just to link to the opinion in a case I worked on lo those many years ago. Hey, can’t find a link to: Findley v. Falise, 878 F. Supp. 473 (S&EDNY 1996). Two bits of gossip: (1) some lawyers actually argued about how to represent the year in which the reign of Edward II ended, because he was deposed in January 1326 [sic], obviously prior to the Calendar Act of 1750, and (2) an earlier draft of the opinion had ended the history section with a line that was something like ‘and so, the court is imbued with all the powers of the ancient chancellors.’)
You can’t ordinarily ask an appellate court for something you didn’t ask the trial court for (which would apply also if you’re asking the trial court to review the conduct of a county board); but that doesn’t prevent the appellate court from looking at the bigger picture. The Gore case is perfectly illustrative. The FSC thought just recounting a few counties wasn’t really fair to everyone in the state, and so they order all the votes recounted — all that anybody knew at that point were worthy of recount. Nothing in the statute precludes the court from granting this relief.
The world needs good engineers a whole lot more than it needs lawyers.
So the answer probably isn’t all that interesting, but how do you end up in the S&EDNY?
From a standpoint that all that is not expressly forbidden is permissible, I guess so. OTOH since what the court ordered is quite a departure from what the statute requires, I’m now even more confused about what courts may and may not order relative to written law. But not confused enough to risk the Law and Equity bloviation, which I suspect will provide thorough and final vindication for my decision to avoid pre-law as if it were botulism-riddled canned goods.
OTOH it could have helped me in making clear points, etc, without irrevocably dooming me to Law School.
LB:
Not just the Eastern and Southern districts, but also the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern distict at the same time. Judge Weinstein can wear many hats simultaneously.
I think the 1993 2d Cir opinion recites how it all came about (the cite I gave was after trial on remand) although the 2d Cir opinion on our appeal following the cite I gave might do so as well.
Auto-cite the one I gave and you’ll see a long odyssey — that continues, as I plan to file something in the next week or so.
Slart:
The very very short version: back in the mists of time, there were two competing court systems, designed to give different (often but not always) forms of relief, and to hear different (but sometimes overlapping) kinds of claims. In most — but not all* — US jurisdictions (including the federal system), the systems have been merged. However, the claims and forms of relief maintain their distinct character to a very considerable extent.
As one consequence, when you ask for an injunction (relief available in one but not the other system) you are not just putting the conduct of the defendant at issue, but your own as well. And the overall fairness of the remedy you seek. And you are invoking far reaching powers of your judge. And your request is not jury triable (that’s because the Seventh Amendment extends the right of jury trials to claims originating in one system but not the other).
I actually beat Boeing on a key motion, in 1997, that turned on this difference. At issue was whether a US federal court had to, or even could, dismiss a case where the same claim was already pending in a foreign court. The judge agreed with us that ‘international abstention’ applies to claims that arise from one but not the other ancient system. Commentators disagree heartily, but I see that just this year a Maryland federal judge cited our case with approval in allowing Johns Hopkins to go forward with a claim despite a related case already pending in the United Arab Emirates.
That case I cited has a great discussion of how it came about that we had competing court systems (goes back to the Plantagenet kings, if not before) and also on exactly how it came to be that both systems were imported into New York in colonial times. Yes, 10 years ago I could go on at length about the legal significance of the NY constitution of 1821, or maybe of 1846. Fortunately, I don’t have to remember.
I’ll let LB take it from here.
* Delaware isn’t merged; not fully anyway, and neither is Virginia. Without looking, I’m quite sure that Florida has been fully merged since the early 20th century, if not before.
Judge Weinstein can wear many hats simultaneously.
He has powers not granted to lesser mortals. I spent last summer working on a trial before him, and the man is frighteningly intelligent. (And upsettingly whimsical. The things he did to the Rules of Evidence, you don’t want to know about.)
CC, can you supply a link? [trying to further my spotty legal education. Thanks.]
I don’t think it’s on the net. You need Lexis or Westlaw.
RAL: I can’t find a link, so I put a little excerpt on my fake blog.
Anarch, the whole reason this discussion got to this point was because LB expressed doubt that some county or other might refuse a request if it was made only by Gore. If you’re concerned by this kind of argument, best address it to him/her.
The reason I bothered to comment on this topic — and, ergo, the point which the discussion had reached — was because you said “I also disagree with the conclusion that if both candidates had asked, that all reasons for not complying would have been removed”. So no, my concern isn’t with “this kind of argument”, it’s with that particular argument as made by you.
So the answer is: yes, my parser is broken.
Sorry, you’re wrong: I attributed to you what you wrote. [As you can tell by, among other things, the fact that I cited it verbatim.] I’ve also asked if the general principle that underlay the specific instance was one which you held, but that’s not the same thing. If you don’t hold the general position then perhaps you might consider the problem isn’t my parser but your inconsistency — on the page, at least, if not in the mind. Which inconsistency could probably be resolved if, I dunno, you’d bother expanding on your position (as I’ve now requested, what, three times?) but which is currently more a comment on you than on me.
It’s fine with me if you insist on attributing positions to me that I haven’t taken; it’s more of a felixrayman thing to do, but that’s your choice.
I’d have more respect for that remark if you hadn’t just put forth a position that at best requires hefty justification to support, then retreated into snarky denials when you were called on it instead of bolstering your position with something resembling an argument. Conversation’s a two-way street, Slarti.
it’s more of a felixrayman thing to do, but that’s your choice.
Whoa there trigger. I usually only insist that if you claim something equals 2+2, it also equals 4. You have quarrels with that type of logic, I know, but I think it solid.
I know, from your style of argument here, that you think you should be able to make statements with obvious implications and then deny you implied anything. I disagree.
You have quarrels with that type of logic, I know, but I think it solid.
Interestingly, I was at a talk today on logics in which that doesn’t exactly have to be true. But somehow I don’t think that’s helpful here.
Can we stop the snippiness before it gets out of control and hilzoy breaks out the whomping stick with the embedded alligator teeth?
Can we stop the snippiness before it gets out of control
No, apparently not. “Before it gets out of control” means you would have to take Slartibartfast to task for bringing up the name of someone who wasn’t even commenting on the thread, and since no one here is willing to take that step, your answer is no.
frm, just cause I didn’t refer to Slart by name doesn’t mean he’s excluded from “we”, and I tend to think he can take a hint. You want me to say you’re the injured party here? Fine, you’re the injured party.
No, I don’t want you to say I’m the injured party here. I want you to look at a spade and deny, with all your heart, that you are looking at a spade.
Cause that makes me laugh, and it’s good for my blood pressure.
Remember that I don’t believe in spades, or trowels, or spuds, or …
Show me some elementary particles.
Ah, if you’d asked, rather than expressed outraged astonishment…
Short answer: if canvassing boards are partisan enough to refuse a request from ONE candidate for reasons political, they may be partisan enough to refuse a request from BOTH for reasons political. For instance, if a canvassing board has, for instance, communication from its favorite party that the candidate making the request doesn’t really mean it, and is making the request just for the sake of appearance. Just as an example, not that this is my point. And certainly a canvassing board that’s refusing recount request for purely political reasons might tend to bias the judgement-call portion of the recount (which CC and LB above have assured me would be ALL of the recount) in favor of its favorite party. There are no objective standards dictated by statute for determining voter intent, so the notion that the inherent subjectivity of a canvassing board might sway its assessment of intent is hardly novel or farfetched.
So perhaps you can imagine how dim a view I’m taking of the proposal that “if Bush had done X, then Y would result”.
Well, to me it looked as if you were playing chicken. Are you seriously saying that your insertion of yourself into this conversation was not quarrelsome? If not, I’ve completely misinterpreted you, and offer my apologies.
There are no objective standards dictated by statute for determining voter intent, so the notion that the inherent subjectivity of a canvassing board might sway its assessment of intent is hardly novel or farfetched.
This, of course, is the genius of the FSC’s direction that the entire statewide recount be overseen by a single judge. He would have been able — when one side or the other complained about one county or another — to impose a consistent standard.
How so, CC? He might direct a consistent standard, but how to enforce? And given that the standard is, by law, that the canvassing board decides, having the judge pick one is, in my view, legislating from the bench. The whole set of laws on this was, again, horribly insufficient to the task.
Also, I saw the FSC’s ruling as an authorization for the lower court to conduct a statewide recount, not an order. The language appeared to be rather imprecise; this may just be the engineer speaking, though.
Good point, in concept, but I don’t see how it’s going to execute.
rilkefan: Remember that I don’t believe in spades, or trowels, or spuds, or … Show me some elementary particles.
Are notrumps, lacking color, more elementary?
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