|
No, that’s whitewashing what happened: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa... Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won. > Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties. It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.) |