[Lula-chat] Witness to vote-flipping

[Christopher Smith]

Peter Benjamin wrote:
> At 02:23 AM 9/13/2006, Christopher Smith wrote:
>   
>> My point was that the
>> political consequences tend not to be as severe as people suggest.
>>     
>
> Never in the history of this country has any election
> resulted in so much money spent and so many deaths.
>   
Hmm... I seem to remember an election in 1860..., and of course a LOT of
lives hung in the balance of what went on in the oval office in 1962.

Seriously, it's hard to attribute that much to the election outcome.
Keep in mind spending is basically a matter for congress, and control
there wasn't in much doubt. Keep in mind that in our two most recent
elections the first loser advocated more aggressive use of our military
than the winner and the second effectively advocated a plan that
resembles what we're doing now.
> 400 billion dollars spent in a war in a foreign country.
>   
If you check the polls at various points in time, the majority of the
American public was behind the idea of that war (not so much now ;-).
>>> We have now had 7 states have irregularities in two
>>> presidential elections, where the "wrong" person won.
>>>   
>>>       
>> Well, we've had irregularities in pretty much all 50 states in pretty
>> much every Presidential election as far back as I've checked, and we've
>> had ethically questionable stuff going on on a much grander scale. In
>> most cases there is little evidence to suggest that they tipped the
>>     
>
> The 2000 and 2004 elections changed that perception for most everyone.
>   
Yes, perceptions changed, particularly because 2000 was challenged.
Reality is another matter. ;-)
>> In the
>> 2000 election, it looks like any fair count of the votes in Florida
>> wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome 
>>     
> I'll disagree.  Tens of thousands of votes from counties
> with Democratic leanings were not counted at all.  And
> the judge did not permit them to be counted, which is
> real disenfranchising of the voter.
>   
They were counted after the fact by several independent groups.
Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Presidential_Election#Media_post-electoral_studies.2Frecounts

The bottom line is that while one could contrive to find a way to count
the votes such that Gore one, the voting favored Bush, and Gore would
have lost if his legal team would have gotten exactly what they asked for.

>> an asterix are 1960 and 2004, and the case for the 2004 one still seems
>> pretty weak. Even if there was some criminal activity going on with the
>> Ohio elections that actually tipped the balance, it is clear that our
>> President handily won the popular vote, 
>>     
>
> What I read in major newspapers was the opposite.
> That the current president would not have won if
> fraud in at least 3 of 5 of these states did not occur.
>   
This assumes that allegations of fraud in those states are accurate and
they are accurate as to the impact on the vote. As we saw in the 2000
election, this is probably not the case. Furthermore, in several of
those states there are separate allegations of fraud by other parties.
None of the allegations seem likely to have an impact on the outcome of
the popular vote, so it's hard to say that the public's will was
subjugated regardless, and given that the public voted in support of the
outcome in 2000, I think the overall direction of the country over the
past six years was basically where we've gone. Hard to accept, I know,
but that's what the data seems to point to.

--Chris
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