Originally posted by KathyM: Ann, my leanings are definitely liberal rather than conservative, but I have to say that you might be beating a dead horse with this 2000 election stuff. Tempting as it is to point a finger at Jeb Bush and say that he gave the election to his brother, he does not appear to have had any influence at all.
Since I'm not a US citizen I have never had a chance to fill out a ballot here, but based on the picture that you posted I see no problems with the way the names are placed. Somebody has to be listed first, and if state law requires that it is the candidate of the same party as the current governor, then obviously Republican had to be at the top. To me, at least, it seems very clear which was the proper place to punch for the candidates.
And whether or not people like it, right now the system in the US is that the electoral vote takes precedence over the popular one. Many people are unhappy with this, many others see no problem with it at all. If this is the way the system is designed, then there is no fraud involved. The rules are clearly laid out, it's just that most people before 2000 probably weren't aware of it, because I don't think such an occasion had ever arisen before.
So I can understand how suspicious it all looks to people "looking in", but I do believe that the legal issues were in fact on the up-and-up, and the same would have held true if Bush and Gore's positions had been reversed.
Kathy
Kathy, such a thing as the loser of the popular vote winning the White House had happened three times previously to 2000 (with # of presidency in parens): John Quincy Adams (#6), Rutherford B. Hayes (#19), and Benjamin Harrison (#23).
Funny thing about Florida was that before election day, George Bush had been in the lead in the polls all the way to the end. The speculation in the press was what would happen if Bush won the popular vote but Gore won the electoral college vote since the polls were so close with Bush leading by roughly 1-3% in all major polls but Zogby International which had them in a dead heat. Nobody in their wildest dreams thought it would happen the other way around since Gore had never led in any poll up to election day after they had settled after the conventions.
If it had happened the other way around and Bush had challenged the election in the way Gore had, I would have lost a great deal of respect for him. While I didn't like Gore, he was no Clinton and would likely have done a much better job than Clinton up to the point where he turned into Enviro-man, going off the deep end.
-- Roger
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -- Benjamin Franklin
