It's going to get nasty. The Curmudgeon has an excellent plot of the polling data from Florida. It shows exactly how bogus the votes for Buchanan were in Palm Beach County. If the recount shows Bush winning Florida by less than 3,800 votes or so, the Democrats are going to scream holy hell. Rightfully so, the Presidency of the United States of America may very well hinge on a poorly designed ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida. That one county, with 7% of the vote in Florida, accounted for 20% of Buchanan's total for the entire state! In a county that's two-thirds Democrat? I don't think so, in fact, I know it's not so, the only fair thing to do is to have a re-vote in that county.
It's going to get very very ugly in the next week, this election is going to be tainted if Bush wins. People will point to a Gore victory in the popular vote, and allegations of fraud in Florida. These are the type of things that start civil wars in other countries...
Time to get rid of the electoral college? That's what Bill Press says in his column today. I think that we should do away with it, but I somehow suspect that how John Q. Public feels about this will be closely tied to who he or she voted for...
So what did Nader accomplish for all his efforts? He didn’t get his 5 percent. He didn't qualify the Green Party for federal funding. He didn't succeed in building the Green Party. He only succeeded in destroying the Democratic Party and, perhaps, denying Al Gore the White House. And, of course, if that happens, everything that Nader supposedly supports -- environmental protection, worker safety, consumer protection, a woman's right to choose -- would be systematically destroyed by a Bush administration.
Welcome to all of you finding my site via BirdBrain's Nest. Don't you just love referer logs?
Ever wonder how Apple lost the education market? Here at "UNI" Gateway still has the majority, but the smart folks are buying Dell boxes now. In another year or two, Dell should have the majority. Mac support is weak to non-existant. The central computer folks don't support them, and the only places they're used are the Education and Arts colleges.
No matter who wins this race, The Onion has certainly called it correctly.
I don't know if my heart can take another night of drama. First the Vikings - Packers game, and now the election!
I was up until 2:30 Central Time, watching the results come in. I went to bed after the election was called for Bush, but I was thinking about how close the votes were coming in, that it could really still go either way. Imagine my surprise when I woke up at six this morning to find that it still can...
I said yesterday that it would all depend on Florida. I guess I was right, but I didn't think it would turn out like this. I didn't really think Gore would win the popular vote, but it looks like he has, by 233,000 at the time I write this.
So what's going to happen? The Bush people are claiming that the absentee ballots in Florida are going to favor them enough to ensure a Bush victory, but CNN was reporting that there are still uncounted votes in Broward County, Florida, a county where Al Gore has been getting 60% of the votes. Conclusion? It's anybody's ball game.
If Bush does win Florida, and the electoral vote, with Gore winning the popular vote, Bush is going to face serious legitimacy issues. Democrats will call for the abolition of the electoral college, and the Republicans probably won't pass it through Congress. This is exactly what happened in 1876 and 1888, the Republicans were in power, and they blocked attempts to change the Constitution.
It could get even more wild. Imagine a scenario with Bush winning Florida, and Gore winning Oregon, that puts the electoral vote at 271 for Bush, 267 for Gore. Those votes aren't actually cast until December, intense lobbying of the electors could conceivably sway things to Gore. If Gore has won the popular vote, pressure could be brought to bear on Republican party electors to switch sides. It's unlikely, but it'd only take two of them to do so to force an election by the House. It'd only take three electors to switch their votes to make Gore our next President.
I've got to wonder how this plays to people in other countries. Take a step back from the election and look at it as you would if it were happening in some other democracy. We've got one candidate who has (apparently) won the majority of the votes, but he may not be the President, because the son of a former President is ahead by a few hundred votes in a province where his brother is Governor. If this were another country, the American press would lament the archaic electoral college system as being bogus, as distorting the will of the masses. We'd also start wondering about fraud. I don't think there was any fraud here, but it's bizarre that the election hinges on Florida, where Bush's brother is Governor, but Gore's campaign manager for the state is the Attorney General...
Can I go home and get some more sleep?
