Dangling Chads -- Fraud in the 2000 Election

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Trump is leading Hillary in the two latest polls. "President Trump" -- get used to hearing those two words together. It could happen.

I'll give you +225 on Trump.

This actually goes against what I've been saying for years -- that since the television age, the more charismatic candidate has won every time for president. We'll start that with the first election to have televised debates in 1960. I'd have to give charisma to Trump easily.

Quote: Wizard

I'll give you +225 on Trump.

Eight online bookmakers are offering +225, and two are offering +240 (link), so I'm afraid your offer isn't especially attractive compared to what I can get elsewhere.

At this point it still doesn't look like Trump will win, but with odds, the bet looks interesting. And what we've learned in this election cycle is that outcomes are hard to predict. No one seriously thought Trump would get the nomination, then boom! So now I think it would be foolhardy to write him off completely for the general. Anything can happen between now and November.

Quote: Wizard

This actually goes against what I've been saying for years -- that since the television age, the more charismatic candidate has won every time for president. We'll start that with the first election to have televised debates in 1960. I'd have to give charisma to Trump easily.

I'd argue that in 2000, the more charismatic candidate (Bush) didn't actually win; the election was stolen through fraud. (e.g., 1, 2) Even before considering voter suppression, it's indisputable that he got fewer votes than Gore.

About Trump, his charisma is relative. Women are far more likely to find him creepy than charismatic.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

I'd argue that in 2000, the more charismatic candidate (Bush) didn't actually win; the election was stolen through fraud. (e.g., 1, 2) Even before considering voter suppression, it's indisputable that he got fewer votes than Gore.

That is risking getting off topic, but I just said "win." I don't wish to get into it, but I think the Bush camp has their complaints as well, like the Gore side fighting to not count military votes on technicalities in the recount.

Quote: SanchoPanza

"A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Good job on cherry-picking your quote. From the same article: "But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots."

It's not clear whether that even addressed the issue of the illegal military ballots cast for Bush, which was the point that the Wizard and I were discussing.

Quote: SanchoPanza

And that is based on . . .

Wow, a right-winger asking for evidence? Usually the right-wingers on this forum seem to pull random misinformation out of thin air and dismiss any evidence offered to the contrary. This is quite a reversal.

But in any event, Gallup shows that 70% of women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, a figure which includes nearly half of *Republican* women. Now, maybe you'll argue that the poll didn't specifically use the word "creepy", to which I would reply, whatever.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

I'd argue that in 2000, the more charismatic candidate (Bush) didn't actually win; the election was stolen through fraud. (e.g., 1, 2) Even before considering voter suppression, it's indisputable that he got fewer votes than Gore.

It was Gore that tried to steal that election, not Bush. Not sure how you do it, but if I count something three times and get the same result 2 times and a different the third, I am more believing in the result I got the 2 times. Gore did not even want every ballot "recounted." He will go down in history as the sorest loser of all time,

Quote:

About Trump, his charisma is relative. Women are far more likely to find him creepy than charismatic.

The women that do like him are drawn to his alpha-male charisma. Nobody is drawn to Hillary because of her personality. Some women just want a woman, preferably a lefty woman. Some like omega males they can control. Some will just never vote against a Democrat. The fact that Trump gets plenty of support from married women bears all of this out.

Does anyone like listening to Hillary talk? Either totally boring or screaming at you. If not for Bill she would be a low-level associate proofreading contracts for a local Saul Goodman.

All the 2000 stuff is off-topic but, instead of rehashing tired old stuff about the vote count, why not focus on the reason Gore, McCain, and Romney did not win their respective elections...their message did not resonate enough with the people. Perhaps Gore took some blame for Clinton, but Clinton was pretty popular after the impeachment even, and McCain for Bush...but all three of these guys were within striking distance of the Presidency and lost momentum at critical points. They all three lost the election. All of them had a solid chance to win.

On to this election...Hillary is dull and has not really excited her party. Bernie would be close under different rules, but he has no chance at the nomination...but he does excite a large group of people. If Hillary can bring those people to her instead of having them sit out the vote, she has a fantastic chance of winning the election. To do that, she may have to shift further left. That becomes a potentially dangerous maneuver because she could alienate some more moderate independents. She is hard for me to listen to and it isn't just that I don't like her--I did not like her husband, but he could give a speech (though he is not nearly as good now from what I have seen).

A lot of the same type of factors on the other side...Trump is more exciting, of course, but he has turned off the establishment. Mittens was out trying to bring in a third party but that appears to have died out. Trump is not hard to listen to, but he turns off a lot of people.

It may come down to which one turns off the least potential voters from their side and the middle instead of which one excites people the most...the people Trump has excited can't win the election for him; Hillary excites very few and needs to excite the Bernie people...she can't win without some of them...

Quote: RonC

All the 2000 stuff is off-topic but, instead of rehashing tired old stuff about the vote count, why not focus on the reason Gore, McCain, and Romney did not win their respective elections...their message did not resonate enough with the people. Perhaps Gore took some blame for Clinton, but Clinton was pretty popular after the impeachment even, and McCain for Bush...but all three of these guys were within striking distance of the Presidency and lost momentum at critical points. They all three lost the election. All of them had a solid chance to win.

Bush had Gore in charisma, but he did not have the personality to put the guy away early. That election became a total love-in, with both sides refusing to land a strong punch. It was a sign that both guys were afraid to take the slightest risk of "offending" any one person lest things be just that close. Gore kept making a jackass out of himself with claims of inventing the internet and people taking dog medicine because it was cheaper. Bush never took real advantage, and as such when the DUI non-issue broke late he lost almost all of the undecideds.

McCain was sent out to lose. Like Steve Lombardi or some scrub Division-1 school who plays the powerhouse in early September, when you watch you have to think he was just put out to allow Obama to get over with the population. (for those of you who do not know what that means, look up the wrestling term "over.") Whether the GOP figured it was a lost cause (maybe) to the Trilateral Commission telling them they had to lose (maybe again!) I cannot imaging a worse candidate.

Romney could have won. High and persistent unemployment 2008-2012 alone should have gotten him near the finish line. Two things killed him. He allowed the Democrats to control the message over and over. From the silly "war on women" to claims of not paying his taxes. He did not attack and with it still close near the end, the images of Obama handling Sandy probably tipped it.

This is a big appeal of Trump. The Democrat attack machine, to paraphrase Hillary, will use the same tricks until they no longer work, Just like a football team keeping the same offense until it no longer scores. Trump, however, attacks first. He knows that if he talks about Bill's harassment of women then Hillary cannot ask about say his casinos failing. Every day he keeps her off-message is a day he wins the news cycle. That is a huge name of the game.

Quote:

It may come down to which one turns off the least potential voters from their side and the middle instead of which one excites people the most...the people Trump has excited can't win the election for him; Hillary excites very few and needs to excite the Bernie people...she can't win without some of them...

I will take excitement over least offending any day of the week. GM used to focus-group car designs to death to be sure they did not offend people. Other makers were too small to pay for all that. Look what happened,

Quote: AZDuffman

It was Gore that tried to steal that election, not Bush.

Didn't read either source I provided, did you? Not surprised.

BTW, Wizard, the problems in the 2000 election that I mentioned, and that I linked to, had *nothing* to do with dangling chads. Those issues are more jarring, and should have gotten more attention.

I'm still pissed about Adams - Jackson in '24.

Quote: Calder

I'm still pissed about Adams - Jackson in '24.

I'm still upset about it too. At least we still got 8 years of Old Hickory. Take that Indians and the national bank!

Quote: MichaelBluejay

BTW, Wizard, the problems in the 2000 election that I mentioned, and that I linked to, had *nothing* to do with dangling chads.

I just like to say "dangling chads."

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Didn't read either source I provided, did you? Not surprised.

No need to read another liberal source on the thing. I lived the times and saw it happening. Saw Gore trying to steal an election even as his side said the opposite was what was happening. Saw a FL Supreme Court make up law as they went along. All ballots were counted TWICE the first 24 hours. The rest was an attempt at theft on the part of Gore.

MjB, you must have missed the liberalized science thread where Az made it known that he doesn't like to learn about things because he believes he will lose his common sense if he does.

Quote: AZDuffman

...Saw a FL Supreme Court make up law as they went along...

The U.S. Supreme Court did the same thing with BinLadenCare.

I'm still trying to figure out how the government can force me to purchase a private product (health care) against my will but can't force a casino to deal me a hand of blackjack (another private product).

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Good job on cherry-picking your quote. From the same article: "But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots."

The Florida Supreme Court was found to have contorted itself and acted illegitimately to revise its decision on the recount. As for cherrypicking, the cited Harvard Consortium performs quite an exercise in that field. After wading through six pages of Bayesian calculations and inferential conclusions like this:

“Ecological Inference for Flawed Ballots
Table 3 presents our notation. For each county i ~i 1 , . . . , 67!, we denote the proportion of invalid ballots among all overseas absentee ballots as Xi and the total number of over- seas absentee ballots which were counted as Ni . We let Gore’s proportion of the vote be Ti. To simplify presentation, we combine the votes for Bush and the other minor candidates as Bush votes.10 While each of these quantities is observed, we denote unobserved quantities with Greek letters: bibad and bigood represent the proportions of invalid and valid ballots, respectively, cast for Gore.
Although bibad and bigood are used for estimation, our ulti- mate quantity of interest is Bush’s margin after dropping the invalid absentee ballots. To define this quantity, first define the statewide fraction of bad ballots that went to Gore ( b bad ) as the weighted average of the individual county quantities:11”

we come to this fatal caveat:

“Counterfactual analysis is difficult, especially when the subject of the inference is far from the factual evidence. When the counterfactual is very close to the data, however, we stand a good chance of making valid inferences.33 In the case of the presidential elections in Florida, the counterfactuals are especially clear and could easily have happened, which makes the results of this particular study somewhat more certain than usual. If the problem of the overseas absentee ballots had been litigated and the law applied equally in every county (as Bush v. Gore required of the votes cast on election day), the bad ballots might very well have been dis- qualified. ALTHOUGH GORE PROBABLY STILL WOULD HAVE LOST THE FLORIDA VOTE, we conclude that no one will ever be able to say with certainty who would have won the American presidential election.

Quote:

Wow, a right-winger asking for evidence? Usually the right-wingers on this forum seem to pull random misinformation out of thin air and dismiss any evidence offered to the contrary. This is quite a reversal.

But in any event, Gallup shows that 70% of women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, a figure which includes nearly half of *Republican* women. Now, maybe you'll argue that the poll didn't specifically use the word "creepy", to which I would reply, whatever.

As for women’s reactions to Trump, here is what was posted but naturally enough NOT reposted:

“Women are far more likely to find him creepy than charismatic.”

The change to the cited Gallup study changes the term to “favorable” and “unfavorable,” a far from insignificant change, even for people who vary fundamental precepts like language and history at their

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Good job on cherry-picking your quote. From the same article: "But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots."

The Florida Supreme Court was found to have contorted itself and acted illegitimately to revise its decision on the recount. As for cherrypicking, the cited Harvard Consortium performs quite an exercise in that field. After wading through six pages of Bayesian calculations and inferential conclusions like this:

“Ecological Inference for Flawed Ballots
Table 3 presents our notation. For each county i ~i 1 , . . . , 67!, we denote the proportion of invalid ballots among all overseas absentee ballots as Xi and the total number of over- seas absentee ballots which were counted as Ni . We let Gore’s proportion of the vote be Ti. To simplify presentation, we combine the votes for Bush and the other minor candidates as Bush votes.10 While each of these quantities is observed, we denote unobserved quantities with Greek letters: bibad and bigood represent the proportions of invalid and valid ballots, respectively, cast for Gore.
Although bibad and bigood are used for estimation, our ulti- mate quantity of interest is Bush’s margin after dropping the invalid absentee ballots. To define this quantity, first define the statewide fraction of bad ballots that went to Gore ( b bad ) as the weighted average of the individual county quantities:11”

we come to this fatal caveat:

“Counterfactual analysis is difficult, especially when the subject of the inference is far from the factual evidence. When the counterfactual is very close to the data, however, we stand a good chance of making valid inferences.33 In the case of the presidential elections in Florida, the counterfactuals are especially clear and could easily have happened, which makes the results of this particular study somewhat more certain than usual. If the problem of the overseas absentee ballots had been litigated and the law applied equally in every county (as Bush v. Gore required of the votes cast on election day), the bad ballots might very well have been dis- qualified. ALTHOUGH GORE PROBABLY STILL WOULD HAVE LOST THE FLORIDA VOTE, we conclude that no one will ever be able to say with certainty who would have won the American presidential election."

Quote:

Wow, a right-winger asking for evidence? Usually the right-wingers on this forum seem to pull random misinformation out of thin air and dismiss any evidence offered to the contrary. This is quite a reversal.

But in any event, Gallup shows that 70% of women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, a figure which includes nearly half of *Republican* women. Now, maybe you'll argue that the poll didn't specifically use the word "creepy", to which I would reply, whatever.

As for women’s reactions to Trump, here is what was posted but naturally enough NOT reposted:

“Women are far more likely to find him creepy than charismatic.”

The change to the cited Gallup study changes the term to “favorable” and “unfavorable,” a far from insignificant change, even for people who vary fundamental precepts like language and history at their beck and call.

Quote: Wizard

I'll give you +225 on Trump.

This actually goes against what I've been saying for years -- that since the television age, the more charismatic candidate has won every time for president. We'll start that with the first election to have televised debates in 1960. I'd have to give charisma to Trump easily.

I got a bite on even money lol. Too bad they didn't have more money.

Quote: AZDuffman

No need to read another liberal source on the thing.

No surprise there. Have fun sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

Quote: mcallister3200

MjB, you must have missed the liberalized science thread where Az made it known that he doesn't like to learn about things because he believes he will lose his common sense if he does.

I did see it, and bingo! You called it.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

No surprise there. Have fun sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

Well, better than saying that just saying I should shut up and listen to someone else, When you are ready to defend your position on your own and not just tell me to go and read something maybe we can converse. But what always happens is I make a series of logical points and you tell me to go and listen to what someone else is saying, never being able to build your own position.

I do not know your age, but I lived that period and remember seeing the news daily both online and cable news. I do not need to read about it again. I really do not want to read about it from some sore loser liberal source upset that Gore got caught trying to steal the thing.

Quote: AZDuffman

When you are ready to defend your position on your own and not just tell me to go and read something maybe we can converse.

Priceless.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Priceless.

Yes, of course...better to make fun of a response than to actually, well, respond.

Quote: RonC

Yes, of course...better to make fun of a response than to actually, well, respond.

As though his comment was actually deserving of something more.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

As though his comment was actually deserving of something more.

Actually, you were pretty rude about it when he made a comment about wanting to debate it with you not with a series of links...

Sometimes your replies make it seem as if you feel that anyone not taking the same stance as you is somehow beneath you. Maybe you don't mean to come off that way...

Quote: RonC

Sometimes your replies make it seem as if you feel that anyone not taking the same stance as you is somehow beneath you.

With anyone? No, not at all. With AZDuffman? Oh, absolutely. And it's not that he has different opinions, it's the *way* he arrives at those opinions. e.g., "The more education you have, the less you know," and "I don't need to read your evidence because I watched the news 16 years ago." I mean, come on.