Gore won in 2000...

[Keystone Phil]

Forget the popular vote, that really doesn't matter. What does matter is that thousands of people who intended to vote for Al Gore were tricked into voting for Pat Buchanon

Will the Dems ever stop whinning about losing? I mean cmon now! Tricked into voting for Buchanan? Yeah maybe if they could follow an arrow they would have been able to vote for the candidate they actually supported. Don't blame a ballot because some voters couldn't follow directions. AND if you think this ballot was so terrible, maybe you should discuss it with the DEMOCRAT that designed the ballot AND explain why the Gore campaign approved of the ballot before votes were even cast. Do me a favor please...GET OVER THE 2000 ELECTION. AL GORE LOST.

[ATFFL]

Al Gore has only slightly less trouble accepting his loss to George Bush as Saddam Hussein is having.

[Akno21]

Al Gore has only slightly less trouble accepting his loss to George Bush as Saddam Hussein is having.

It is not Al Gore who is having trouble accepting his "loss". In fact, looking back on it, I'm really mad at Al Gore for NOT fighting harder in those 36 days following the election.

I find Saddam's comments laughable.

[PrisonerOfHope]

The following quote is demonstrably false.  Try actually reading the article you conveniently don't site or refernce, Dick.

I find it ironic that people say that Gore won even though a study conducted by the New York Times and Gore himself concluded that had a full recount been conducted, Bush would have won the state by a wider margin then he did on Nov 2.

The NY Times article actually said if a state-wide recount was done Gore would have won by a wide margin under any scenario.  Only if the 3 county recount limited to under votes (hanging chads) was done would Bush win.  There were some 40,000 legal irrefutable recoverable over votes with matching write-in candidate that were specifically addressed and required to be counted by Fla. law.   Gore would have won by tens of thousands of votes, not the ficticious razor thin margin conviently certified by Bush's own campaing manager.   The gap for Gore widens under every category of the 180,000 uncounted votes considered.  The raw data of the joint media sponsored investigation is available online, or you can just read the conclusions of the sponsoring papers.

This doesn't even consider the outright illegal acts and dirty tactics, or the other voting mishaps.

It really angers me that reactionary right-wing fanatics continue to spout this lie as if it were gospel.

[zorkpolitics]

The following quote is demonstrably false.  Try actually reading the article you conveniently don't site or refernce, Dick.

I find it ironic that people say that Gore won even though a study conducted by the New York Times and Gore himself concluded that had a full recount been conducted, Bush would have won the state by a wider margin then he did on Nov 2.

The NY Times article actually said if a state-wide recount was done Gore would have won by a wide margin under any scenario.  Only if the 3 county recount limited to under votes (hanging chads) was done would Bush win.  There were some 40,000 legal irrefutable recoverable over votes with matching write-in candidate that were specifically addressed and required to be counted by Fla. law.   Gore would have won by tens of thousands of votes, not the ficticious razor thin margin conviently certified by Bush's own campaing manager.   The gap for Gore widens under every category of the 180,000 uncounted votes considered.  The raw data of the joint media sponsored investigation is available online, or you can just read the conclusions of the sponsoring papers.

This doesn't even consider the outright illegal acts and dirty tactics, or the other voting mishaps.

It really angers me that reactionary right-wing fanatics continue to spout this lie as if it were gospel.

There was no clear winner from FL because it all depends on how you would evaluate the ballots that voters failed to complete properly.

Do not equate all overvotes to countable votes.  >95% of the overvotes had 2 to 10 candidates selected.   As you may remember, the NY Times was part of a consortium of newspapers that reanalyzed every overvote and undervote ballot and you can download the data on the web.
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp
Each ballot was viewed by at least 2 observes, they only agreed on what they saw 60% of the time!

The Miami Herald did an independent analysis and you can download data from their web site as well.


It is quite clear there were only a few thousand ballots where the "clear intent of the voter" was apparent among the more than 170,000 ballots analyzed.  

I down loaded both data sets and analyzed them.   The most amazing thing in reviewing the ballots is how many ways voters failed to follow directions and therefore wasted their own vote.  After seeing how many wacky ways voters filled in the optical scan ballots, there is no way to be sure  if dimples and pinpricks mean anything.   Excluding pinpricks and dimples, there were anywhere from 5000-7000 recoverable votes (again depends on how you want to count them.  For example when a voter put an X over Gore's name on the optical scan ballot, did this mean he wanted to vote for Gore or he intensely disliked Gore?  The additional votes slightly favored Gore.  By my analysis these would have reduced Bush’s lead from 537 to about 200.

But don't tak emy word for it (or the NY Times for that matter) down load the data and do your own analysis

[CARLHAYDEN]

Isn't it odd how so many say, Gore won, when he won so many less counties, and Bush won over 30 states! Bush won in what WAS a very Close Race.

Most whites voted for Bush. Hispanics were even I think. Blacks were 90% for Gore, I believe. Women also were for Gore. Other minorities such as Asian and Native people I don't know about.
Mainly the point is 'black vs. white'. That is the reason the map looks as it does.

Actually 50% of all elligible didn't vote and for African Americans it was lower, I believe. So less than 45% of blacks voted for Gore if you include nonvoters. Voter turnout could well be the critical factor in '04.

Sorry, but you're wrong about the black turnout in 2000.

The Gore campaign did a magnificent job in activating the black vote, which is why he did as well as he did.

However, you are probably correct in stating the turnout may be a critical issue in 2004, where Bush now has his own activation effort (didn't really have one on 2000).

[m3talsmith]

On the wasted vote theory here are figures from FEC and my analysis on it: http://unstableman.blogspot.com/2004/07/finger-on-pulse-part-i-rough-draft-1.html

[machiavellean]

Recommendation: Read Florida's election statutes (as they existed in November 2000) before coming to any conclusions about the Florida vote in 2000.

I've seen no media recounts that showed Gore-Lieberman receiving more of the legal votes cast in Florida than Bush-Cheney -- and only legal votes count. Speculation about overvotes and undervotes -- neither is a legal vote -- is just that: speculation.

It's obvious enough that voters in Palm Beach County mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan -- and that had they not done so Al Gore would now be President. My speculation has long been that those mistaken votes were cast incorrectly because some precinct worker told voters to "Mark the second box on the ballot" without first examining the "butterfly ballot" used in Palm Beach County. That ballot (designed by Democrats) met the legal requirements of the Florida Statutes, but it was not what one would have been expecting.

Look before your leap? You betcha'. And look before you mark your ballot, too.

[© tweed]

machiavellan,

I too support Machiavelli.  Too bad you're a Republican