NYTimes: "How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" "Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.

A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this chapter in the closest presidential election in American history shows that the Republican effort had a decided impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state election laws. "
posted by owillis on Jul 14, 2001 - 71 comments

Counting is profoundly political
The standards used to count (or not to count) Florida ballots is similar to the way the media reports on welfare reform success. It all depends on what you want to consider legitimate. (Happy birthday, Dad!) [PXQTZ.com]
posted by rschram on Jan 18, 2001 - 0 comments

Clinton: "They thought the election was over, the Republicans did. By the time it was over, our candidate had won the popular vote, and the only way they could win the election was to stop the voting in Florida". Give 'em hell Bill!
posted by owillis on Jan 9, 2001 - 16 comments

"the new director of the Environment Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, has proposed that the Florida ballots be sealed for 10 years. " Fuck the Christmas ceasefire. While the Anglo-Saxon world stuffs itself comatose, the forces of conservatism are busy mobilising. Yum.
posted by holgate on Dec 24, 2000 - 15 comments

ELECTION: Dan Bricklin thinks the ballots sucked, too. Remember him? He helped write VisiCalc, and now runs Trellix? I'm still wondering why no one's agitating to invalidate that election in PBC.
posted by baylink on Nov 20, 2000 - 6 comments

"The rules of this game were set by the people, underwritten by the people, financed or not." Yet another opportunity for the British Observer to put the US newspapers to shame, with an closely-argued, even-handed reflection on the fun in Florida. "The system, full of inefficiencies and coagulations, may stink, but it is also a system which belongs to the voters who now complain so shrilly about it."
posted by holgate on Nov 19, 2000 - 2 comments

Porter Glendinning on a weblist noted: "According to http://www.tcpalm.com/_special/pres_returns.shtml, David McReynolds, the Socialist candidate who had the hole beneath Gore's on the ballot, got no more than 36 votes in any county in Florida except Palm Beach, where he got 302. Seems questionable to me." So we've definitely got a problem with the ballot. Is it do over time yet?
posted by mathowie on Nov 9, 2000 - 26 comments

Conspiracy theorists, start your engines. Regardless of the outcome, those "9 missing ballot boxes" are going to figure in conspiracy theories for decades to come -- there are still people talking about how Nixon was robbed by the Daley machine in 1960. (The fact that a Bush is governor in Florida surely won't shut anyone up.)
posted by snarkout on Nov 8, 2000 - 20 comments