 |
THE OBSERVATORY Fuzzy Vote Count November 9, 2000 |
| We already know that George W. Bush - who promises the same trillion dollars twice - has trouble with non-fuzzy math. The question now, though, is not trillions but as few as a couple of hundred votes in Florida ... |
 |
 |
Something smells in Florida, and not
like orange blossoms. By now you probably know the undisputed key facts - that in this incredibly close election, the outcome in the Electoral College hangs on a few hundred votes in the state of Florida, whose 25 electoral votes would put either candidate over the top. A couple of things are not in question: One is that if George W. Bush had won the state of Florida clear and clean - even by one vote - he would be the next President of the United States. The other is that he did not do so. The election in Florida was certainly not clear, and possibly not clean. Now, there is probably no such thing as an election without irregularities, often innocent, sometimes less so. Ballots get mislaid, or "eaten" by counting machines. Incorrect voter lists are sent to precincts, and voters thereby denied their right to vote. These things, note, happen in the most honest of elections. Usually, if innocent (or even if not) the irregularities do not matter - indeed, often they are never discovered - because the winner's margin of victory is so so large that no plausible error, or even plausible election fraud, could change the outcome. 362 votes (as of the incomplete re-convassing on Thursday afternoon - on edit, by latest report 215 or 229) out of six million, however, is no such an error-safe margin. It is less than 0.0005 percent of the Florida vote - not the legendary one vote per precinct that elected JFK, but more on the order of one vote per 100 precincts. A few misplaced ballot boxes ... or a couple of thousand confusing, mismarked ballots ... would be more than enough to change the outcome, in Florida and nationally. No need to kid ourselves: Bush's supposed margin of victory is vastly fewer than the 3,400 votes for Pat Buchanan, cast using oddly laid-out "butterfly" ballots in heavily Jewish Palm Beach County - when no other county in Florida cast more than a few hundred Buchanan votes. This is, to say the least, anomalous. Even Pitchfork Pat (who may dislike the Bushes even more than he dislikes liberal Jews) has stated plainly that those weren't his votes and he neither wants them nor should get them. To these recorded Buchanan votes we may add an extraordinary 19,000 ballots voided for double-punching, mostly Buchanan and Gore, almost all surely due to the confusing design of the ballot. We will hear from the likes of Bill "call me God" Bennett that voters have to take personal responsibility for how they vote even on a confusing ballot. But sorry, Bill - this is not just about a few thousand Florida voters' rights: it is about all our rights. And, election "irregularities" are not always innocent. Again, even in elections that are clean overall there can be and generally are instances of small-scale fraud - and even small-scale fraud can make a big difference in an election hanging on a few hundred votes out of thousands. So far, the stories of outright misconduct in Florida - whether ballot fraud or voter intimidation - remain murky. Some may have been cleared up. Others, such as the report that one rural panhandle county had a 90 percent turnout - remarkable anywhere, and astonishing in a region socially a part of the rural South - remain unconfirmed. Meanwhile, the initial quick machine re-canvassing itself shows a curious pattern. When the re-canvassing was first ordered (it is automatic under Florida law for a close margin, and not a true ballot-by-ballot hand recount), the experts assured us that recounts rarely change the result in any significant way. But this first re-canvassing has already reduced Bush's margin from some 1785 votes to 362 votes. [On edit, 215 or 229 votes as of latest report.] Still to be counted are ballots from Floridians living overseas. But a tale hangs on absentee ballots in Florida - the most massive ballot fraud of recent times, in 1997, involved absentee ballots in a Miami mayoral election. The absentee ballots this time will deserve more than casual scrutiny. The reaction of the Bush campaign to all this has (rather understandably) been "Move along folks, nothing to see! Move on along! Nothing to see, folks, nothing to see!" But the spin isn't washing, and the Bushters are visibly queasier today. Yesterday they hoped that, with help from Beltway pundits, a conventional wisdom would sink in that doubts should be ignored and the matter settled in Bush's favor. Television news dynamics, however, are working against them. Given a choice between showing a car chase and pundits talking about a car chase, TV news will always go with the live footage - and the live footage today is of demonstrators, sidewalk press conferences, and the recount number moving steadily toward Gore. And the public is identifying not with the Beltway pundits but with their fellow voters. "Move along, folks - nothing to see." So say the Republicans - the same Republicans who spent seven years and over $50 million investigating Whitewater (and came up with nothing), and who held an impeachment over a blow job. Measured by that standard, a presidential election might just be worth a few days' closer inquiry.
-- Rick Robinson
|
||
Return to Politics
Back to Top
|
|