[lbo-talk] Re: What's at stake?

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Mon Nov 24 21:56:04 PST 2003


Michael Pollak quotes:
>[A picture then comes on screen of a Washington Post Headline that says
>"Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush." The much smaller subhead says
>"But State Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted
>Ballots." I emphasize: Might]
>
>Voice Over: It is only when the state's *undervotes* were counted that
>George Bush would have retained his lead.
>
><end quote>
>
>That's the end of the factual argument. (After that we get general
>reflections.) And that last sentence left me completely baffled. Afaics,
>there was nothing in this film that ever suggested that undervotes were
>invalid. Aren't undervotes dimpled and hanging chads, which the film was
>in favor of counting? So if George Bush won counting all the votes in
>including those, doesn't that mean he would he would have won a careful
>statewide recount -- the most legitimate of all recounts?

Hi Michael,

I'm not sure what point they're making there in the film, I assume they mean that crediting questionable undervotes (much more questionable than a ballot where someone votes for Gore and then additionally writes in "Gore") would have resulted in a lead for Bush. But I can answer the part about the headlines. I was following the Florida media consortium vote count quite closely as a good friend writes for one of the papers and was a 'counter' on the story for several grueling months.

The headlines completely distorted what the count actually found, which was that in the statewide recount, Gore won. Of course, it would not do to make that the headline. What the papers emphasized in their headlines was that if the four counties--was it?--had been recounted, as the Gore camp wanted, Bush still would've been reckoned to have had more votes, using the counting standards used during the (halted) recount. Hence the "Recounts would have favored Bush." Much later in their articles the newspapers let slip the little bit of data that well, Gore did get more votes, although it was still unbelievably close.

This might not make sense on the face of it, weren't those the disputed counties? But the discrepancy is partly due to much higher counts for Gore in several central Florida counties which were not recounted until the newspapers did the count.

The film-makers are critical of the Gore strategy, and that's the point they're driving at--that his opportunist 'just recount four counties' made him not only vulnerable legally, it was a losing strategy practically, and bankrupt ethically. (The demonstrations I went to were not unified on the question, although the poignant, 'this is America, count every vote' was predominant.)

Jenny Brown



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