Glad you found the book. Good library. Enjoy.

Dudes, do not charge the red flag, ignore the man behind the curtain. Repeat after me “the … 2000 … election … is … over … and … the … 2000 … election … is … boring.”

Delete comments by these provacateurs! Do not be drawn in!

Seriously and honestly, no idea. I don’t know what the pattern of this is, or where to find the data.

See below:Over – is a sports bet in which the bettor guesses that the combined point total of two teams will be above a specified total.
Under – is a wager in which the bettor guesses that the total points scored by two teams will be under a certain figure.

In the case of the ballots, it would be a bet that compared the last presidential election undervote ballots (the 1.6 mil) with this years, basically stating that it will be “over” the 1.6 or “under” the 1.6 Hey, it’s nap time, got to go.

Popular vote = (all votes cast) = (counted votes) + (uncounted votes).

(counted votes) includes invalidated (blank/void) votes.

Clear enough for you ? So you may win the counted votes by, say, 100,000 but if the uncounted votes number 1 million, how can you claim you won the popular vote ? The margin of error is 10 times larger than your alleged margin of victory !!

It is a lie to claim that Gore won the popular vote. It is also a lie to claim he didn’t. What is true is that we don’t know. And never will.

Your question about under or overvoting is irrelevant to this particular issue. And in the absence of evidence – since, according to you, some results were not reported – how do you know these particular instances favored Bush ? Why ? Where ? Are you naive enough to believe or simply assume that all or most electoral fraud is Republican ?

“like every other presidential election since, 1824″Where is the evidence that in every election since 1824, the winner’s margin of victory is superior to the number of uncounted ballots ? Maybe it is a common outcome, maybe it isn’t. Maybe most Presidents do win the popular vote by a wide-enough margin to be certain, maybe most don’t. I honestly don’t know but that’s not relevant here either since a) we are talking about the 2000 election and b) the President has never been elected by direct popular vote anyway.

But if one does consider the popular vote as the most important yardstick in judging the fairness of an election’s outcome, that judgment must be made on the basis of all the votes that were cast, not just the subset that conveniently favors your bias. Sometimes, we know a candidate did win the popular vote. Sometimes we don’t. For 2000, we don’t. I honestly don’t care whether you like it or not. It’s a fact.

Let me ask you a rhetorical question to nail this one down : if 1 million votes out of 100 million that were cast had been counted and Gore had won these by 50,000 votes, would you claim he “won the popular vote” ? Hey, after all, he won a majority of the counted votes so that would be OK right ?

What’s the over / under on this year’s undervote? uh ? Over/Undervoting has nothing to do with this issue. You are confusing topics.

1. In most states, absentee ballots are not required to be counted if the winner’s margin of victory is larger than the number of absentee ballots in this state;

2. Which means it is perfectly possible for the total number of uncounted absentee ballots nationwide to exceed the number of counted votes won by a given candidate above and beyond his opponent’s.

3. Since the popular vote includes all vote that were cast, counted and uncounted, a candidate needs, in order to credibly claim a popular vote victory, a margin of victory larger than the number of uncounted votes.

Forget Bush and Gore. There is nothing to research here. It’s Math 101.

What you are missing is very simple and fundamental : the total number of votes cast across the nation – a.k.a the popular vote – is not the same as the number of votes that are in fact counted for the purpose of choosing the Electors. The latter – the counted votes – can be smaller than the former – the popular vote – by a significant margin. And if a candidate’s margin of victory is smaller than this difference, he cannot claim he won the popular vote. No one can claim he didn’t either. It’s effectively an unknown, but it’s not relevant because the popular vote does not choose the President. The Electors do.

Yet another way to put it is that Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes with a margin of error of at least 1.6 million votes.

Some victory…

The popular vote is composed of all the ballots that were cast by all the registered voters who voted in a given election, absentee or not. What apples and oranges are there to see ? They’re all votes.

But since a) not all ballots were counted and b) the number of those that were not counted is larger than Gore’s margin of victory then c) we cannot conclude that Gore won the popular vote.

Let me give you a simple example. Let’s say you and I are running for mayor in a small town with 1,000 voters. Let’s assume a 100% turnout. As we count the 920th vote, I am 25 votes ahead of you. Can we stop the count here and claim that I won ? Hell no, there are 80 votes left to count and I’m only 25 ahead ! How fair or logical would that be ? Yet, that is precisely what you and many others do when they claim Gore won.

How can someone be said to have won the popular vote with a half a million votes when 1+ million votes remain uncounted throughout the country ? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Moreover, in order to be truly honest and to assess whether Gore has indeed won the popular vote, one should ask how many ballots were cast, how many were counted, do the difference and ensure that this difference is smaller than Gore’s margin of victory. If people were at all interested in the truth, that is.

It is a perfectly rational conclusion. Unpopular and uncommon maybe. But certainly not illogical.

Now, you ask for links and data. Unfortunately, federal agencies like the FEC or the Census Bureau do not, to my knowledge, tally absentee ballots at the national level. States are not required to break them down either. But the GAO did issue a report titled ‘Statistical Analysis of Factors That Affected Uncounted Votes in the 2000 Presidential Election’. It is interesting in that it attempts to measure the total number of uncounted votes throughout the country, absentee and all the rest.

And what is rather interesting to our discussion here is on top of page 9 : “In the November 2000 presidential election, there were over 85 million votes cast in the 2,455 counties in our analysis and, of those, 1.6 million votes for President were not counted”.

Note that we’re not talking only about absentee ballots here; in other words, those are a subset of those 1.6 million. But also note that blank or null votes are not part of that number; these, by definition, were counted in order to invalidate them.

Now, given a number as large as this, how can anyone claim that Gore won the popular vote when his margin of victory is at best a third of those votes that were cast but not counted ? These 1.6 million uncounted votes are part of the popular vote too. Remember, we can’t stop counting at vote #920 because I’m 25 votes ahead. Dismissing those 1.6 million votes is like dumping the 80 leftover votes in our little imaginary town in the trash bin, as if they didn’t exist.

You may repeat Gore won because everybody else does. You can call things you don’t know about “mystical” so as to dismiss them. But you’re repeating a false statement nonetheless. Gore did not win the popular vote.

And since Presidents are not elected by popular vote anyway, the issue is not so relevant as to justify the huge brouhaha made around it; the level of noise around this mostly reflects the general ignorance of the US electoral system at home and especially abroad.

I strongly suggest you read this book. It’s somewhat obvious that like most of us, your knowledge and understanding of this complex event is somewhat limited to the somewhat hysterical and superficial posturing echoed and amplified by the media. It’s much more fascinating and interesting than that. Warning : you shouldn’t read this if you want to be comforted in your beliefs on this question.

No..you are confused…there were 2 votes on 2 seperate but related issues with the election….the 7-2 vote referred to that vote that was….you guessed it….7-2….

It is evident that Illinois Democrats are not among that half or else they would not exclude President Bush from the ballot this year. I think it interesting that the Democrats would disdain democracy.

Also, the court decision was 5-4, not 7-2 as someone previously wrote.

Brett, the court ruling was not as simplistic as stated in your entry. It involved three major issues, two of which involved the US Constitution and one involving Fla. constitution. It was not a simple “stop counting”.

It is accurate to say Gore won those votes that were counted. But since those that were not are larger than his margin of victory, it is indeed a lie to claim he won the popular vote. With all due respect to yourself and the FEC.

The key word being “supposedly”.

Again,
” The supreme court said no, we declare W the winner. “

Perhaps you ought to cool down, take some time, and actually read the Supreme court decision? The votes had already been counted, two, some of them three, times. All the Supreme court said was, enough recounting already, the existing count stands. But it was the count that made Bush President. Not the Supreme court.

Like it or not, it’s not an election by popular vote. The Electors can in fact choose who they want. Nothing prevents them from voting for the other side. Which is why, if the Electoral College cannot form a majority, the US House of Representatives selects the President. If you’re interested in all the details and what-ifs, I recommend this book. As the title clearly indicates, the President is chosen after the people vote, not by popular vote.

Regarding absentee ballots, you will have to go to the Federal Election Commission web site and/or that of your state’s election commission. Here is how a quick summary of this particular issue.

Those ballots that were cast are counted. If the margin of victory is larger than the number of absentee votes, states are not required to count the latter. Some states do. Most don’t, as far as I know.

The odd consequence of this is that at the national level, the number of uncounted votes could be much larger than the new President’s margin of victory. And this is what could have happened in 2000. Straightforward national tallies are hard to come by but the numbers reported at the time were at least twice as large as Gore’s margin of victory.

In other words, one could win a Presidential election by a margin of 500,000 votes despite one or two million uncounted votes.

Claiming to have won the popular vote in such conditions is simply a lie. Gore won the majority of those votes that were counted.

Why can it work this way ? Precisely because the election is indirect. We do not care about nationwide popular vote. We care about the Electors chosen by each state. Big difference. And quite honestly, you seem to be missing it.

My position on electronic/computerized voting is that of Bruce Schneier. A paper trail must exist. You pick your candidate on the screen and get a paper receipt. You verify it, seal it and drop it in a ballot box. So you get both instant results and recount accountability.

The United States Constitution provides that each state “shall appoint” electors for President and Vice President in the manner directed by its state legislature (Art. II, Sec 1, cl. 2), on the day which may be determined by Congress (Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 3). 

The “appointed electors” are determined by the popular vote in each state.The slate of electoral college “voters” is predetermined by the political parties and submitted to the governor’s office before the election. (At least in the sunshine state). I guess we could say that we elect the president directly in an indirect way!I don’t remember the issue of the uncounted absentee ballots. Where can I read about it? What I find interesting is that no one has touched the so-called bogus disenfranchised voters (see newspaper articles in previous post). The truth aint always pretty. I am curious…what’s your take on electronic voting vs. the way its been done in the past (paper ballots, lever voting machines etc.) What this discussion has brought to my attention is not Repubs. vs. Dems. vs liberals vs. neocons etc…but how do we make sure that the process will be legitimate in all situations.

Maybe you should read what you link to. Or did you fall asleep at the part that says “Meeting of Electors to Cast Votes for President and Vice President” ? What part of that is unclear exactly ?

We do not decide Presidential elections based on the popular vote. Electors are chosen by popular vote. The President and Vice-President are chosen by the Electors.

But if we did elect the President directly, Gore’s election would hardly have been illegitimate since his margin of victory was inferior to the number of uncounted absentee ballots nationwide. Which is a rather major difference between the U.S. and those countries that do elect their President directly, since all votes are counted in those cases.

In fact, I still think all votes should be counted in the U.S.; the 2000 election was simply absurd in that respect…how can someone be said to “win” the popular vote with half a million votes when 1+ million ballots were not counted ? But of course, if the winner is a Democrat, it’s OK for someone to win the Presidency with more uncounted votes than his margin of “victory”…