From: ThosStew@aol.com
Date: Wed Nov 29 2000 - 06:10:07 PST
In a message dated 11/28/2000 10:38:20 PM, Grlygrl201@aol.com writes:
>
><< and we still don't have manual recounts of the areas with the worst
>
>machines, so
> the ballots have not been counted and recounted. >>
>
>machines haven't yet been evaluated for "worseness."
yes they have: per this morning's NY Times, machines using punch-card
ballots, vs optical machines, had a rejection rate of about 4% vs 1%. By
coincidence, those older punch-card machines happen to be disproportionately
in poorer counties, which happen to have populations which are
disproportionately black, which happen to be disproportionately likely to
have [wanted to] vote for Gore.
Look, give it up. EVERYONE knows this is in the margin of error. EVERYONE
knows that, if there had been NO margin of error, Gore would have won.
EVERYONE knows that the machines are imperfect. EVERYONE knows that people
can correct machines--we do it all the time. EVERYONE knows that the next
president whoever he will be, will be elected by a margin that's not just
razor thin, not just Sensor thin, but is Mach III thin. EVERYONE knows that
the purpose of this ongoing exercise is to see which recounts stand. EVERYONE
knows that it's impractical to recount every ballot everywhere. EVERYONE
knows that it was scandalous that the Republican elections supervisor in
Seminole County allowed Republicans to hole up unsupervised in her office and
fix absentee ballots so they'd be counted, but EVERYONE knows that most of
those are legitimate voters who voted for Bush, just as EVERYONE knows that
some 3000 people in Palm Beach didnt' really vote for Buchanan. EVERYONE
knows that if Bush had been quicker he'd have requested a manual recount in
high-Bush counties. EVERYONE knows that we live with this kind of
imperfection all the time--because 99.99999% of the time it doesn't matter.
This time it does. So our next president will be tainted by semi-legitimacy
regardless of how the counting (or courting or legislating or logrolling)
goes. (One guy who's relishing this has got to be Saddam Hussein; I can hear
him rehearsing his big number, to be sung on January 19: "Tomorrow night!")
And so, while the fighting and punching and counterpunching goes on, it
absolutely behooves (1)Bore and Gush and (2) Gaker and Goys (3) Lamey and
Chiderman and (4) everyone on FoRK and around this great land (with the
exception of Cuban immigrants, who are released from all obligation to the
polity save the public display of rancorous and impotent Id), to keep sweet
reason to the foreground, stop talk of stealing, and remember that whoever
puts his thieving right hand on the Bible on January 20 will be the next
President of the United States really and truly, until the other guy comes
back in four years and crushes his incumbency with a Callaway Clobberer. So
there.
Tom
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