Krugman Beats a Dead Election Horse
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Paul Krugman has a modest proposal:
1. Al Gore was not entitled, under either Florida or federal law, to a "full manual recount."
2. A "full manual recount" had no objective meaning anyway — remember this guy?
What Democrats mean by a "full manual recount" is that every flawed or questionable ballot should have been tallied either for Gore or at least not for Bush.
3. Most importantly, any discrepancies in the final outcome would have been swamped, by orders of magnitude, by the patently illegal phenomenon of "snowbird voting" by dual-state residents — mostly senior citizens and overwhelmingly Democrats — casting fraudulent votes in both New York and Florida.
There is an important difference between "make every vote count" and "make every valid vote count." Regardless of how you feel about hanging chads, or whether you believe the ridiculous "I accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan" laments, or whether you think Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98 (2000) was correctly decided (or should have been decided at all), the only true bottom line or final result is that no one "stole" Florida from Al Gore (except maybe Ralph Nader). At worst, what was "stolen" was Democratic voters' attempt to steal Florida from Bush in the first place.
No apologist for President Bush am I, but he won, truly won, in 2000 and of course also won, truly won, in 2004.
Get over it.
POST SCRIPT #1: And if you're so concerned about the flaws of our presidential election system, then how about jumping on the bandwagon for universal adoption of the District Method for allocating Electoral College votes?
POST SCRIPT #2: The "judicious" book Krugman refers to is --
UPDATE: Apparently many people must have, like me, called "shenanigans" on Krugman, because he issued a retraction (cloaked, of course, in "fake but accurate" style so-what-isms). Again, nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does Krugman acknowledge the existence, let alone the dispositive implications, of "snowbird voter" fraud on the Florida outcome in 2000. The man has no intellectual honesty whatsoever.
Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.His bases this obsolete whine on a "judicious" book by a British reporter:
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.Besides the fact that every objective review of the balloting says otherwise, even if this outcome were true, it would be utterly irrelevant for three reasons:
1. Al Gore was not entitled, under either Florida or federal law, to a "full manual recount."
2. A "full manual recount" had no objective meaning anyway — remember this guy?
What Democrats mean by a "full manual recount" is that every flawed or questionable ballot should have been tallied either for Gore or at least not for Bush.
3. Most importantly, any discrepancies in the final outcome would have been swamped, by orders of magnitude, by the patently illegal phenomenon of "snowbird voting" by dual-state residents — mostly senior citizens and overwhelmingly Democrats — casting fraudulent votes in both New York and Florida.
There is an important difference between "make every vote count" and "make every valid vote count." Regardless of how you feel about hanging chads, or whether you believe the ridiculous "I accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan" laments, or whether you think Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98 (2000) was correctly decided (or should have been decided at all), the only true bottom line or final result is that no one "stole" Florida from Al Gore (except maybe Ralph Nader). At worst, what was "stolen" was Democratic voters' attempt to steal Florida from Bush in the first place.
No apologist for President Bush am I, but he won, truly won, in 2000 and of course also won, truly won, in 2004.
Get over it.
POST SCRIPT #1: And if you're so concerned about the flaws of our presidential election system, then how about jumping on the bandwagon for universal adoption of the District Method for allocating Electoral College votes?
POST SCRIPT #2: The "judicious" book Krugman refers to is --
UPDATE: Apparently many people must have, like me, called "shenanigans" on Krugman, because he issued a retraction (cloaked, of course, in "fake but accurate" style so-what-isms). Again, nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does Krugman acknowledge the existence, let alone the dispositive implications, of "snowbird voter" fraud on the Florida outcome in 2000. The man has no intellectual honesty whatsoever.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- On the District Method and Past Elections
- District Method Initiative May Reach California Voters
- States Chase Primary Calendar Rather Than Electoral Votes...
- Krugman Apologizes for His Florida 2000 Apology
- Krugman Beats a Dead Election Horse
- Dual Voting: Two Down, Tens of Thousands to Go...
- Electoral College: Bush Seeks to Split Maine Vote
- Electoral College: Thoughts from Alan Simpson
- Electing an Electoral Alternative
Posted by KipEsquire on
19 August 2005
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