Wasn't even close...
Friends and readers of this blog know about my everlasting obsession with the 2000 US election -- with how badly the news coverage conformed to what polls said about the national sentiment, what it (and the 2004 election) say about demographic, ideological and partisan trends, and how Bush, the most noxious major political candidate in recent times (in a way I thought he really wasn't in 2004 however scary and ideologically wrong he was), got close enough to technically win it. As my Dad put it in wonder as we watched Journeys with George, the 1999-2000 Bush really had no redeeming merits at all.
Anyway, while at home over Christmas I was obsessing with some family friends about that question: "How the hell did Bush win"? And got the reply: "Well he didn't". Everyone sort of laughed ruefully at those screwed-up Americans with their screwed-up voting system. But you hear that so much, you just brush it off. "But he still got so many votes. Even if Gore had won Florida, it doesn't explain how it could have been close." Why would people who wouldn't vote for Dole agree to vote for Bush, apparently with some enthusiasm?
Well, actually it wasn't that close.
It was, however, enormously sad. I used to joke about how the recount was a consequence of Gore voters not being quite enthusiastic enough to punch the chad all the way through. In fact, it was exactly the opposite: thousands and thousands of Democrats, mainly African Americans, being too meticulous in casting their presidential vote for Gore. (Something, by the way, that anybody could have done faced with a write-in option.) Among people who "overvoted" in Florida's eight largest counties, there was a margin of about 30,000 discounted double-votes for Gore over Bush. Florida wasn't close. And nobody, not in that bevy of lawyers, watchdogs, media experts, judges, anyone except apparently Judge Terry Lewis, who was overseeing the aborted recount (and who might have made things turn out different despite Tom Delay), even thought to re-examine those votes during that whole drawn-out process. It's incredible.
If you link through to Andrew Tobias' (DNC treasurer) site or go to Research in Review and read the interview with deHaven-Smith, the academic who just pusblished this new book on Florida, the whole thing is even better. deHaven-Smith talks about all the Big Issues out there in the story of American politics: the elite and the masses, the nature of partisanship, the difference between Republicans and Democrats, the conditions under which functional democracy is possible, and the problems with voting "reforms" to date. It's just yummy, tragic stuff.
Anyway, while at home over Christmas I was obsessing with some family friends about that question: "How the hell did Bush win"? And got the reply: "Well he didn't". Everyone sort of laughed ruefully at those screwed-up Americans with their screwed-up voting system. But you hear that so much, you just brush it off. "But he still got so many votes. Even if Gore had won Florida, it doesn't explain how it could have been close." Why would people who wouldn't vote for Dole agree to vote for Bush, apparently with some enthusiasm?
Well, actually it wasn't that close.
It was, however, enormously sad. I used to joke about how the recount was a consequence of Gore voters not being quite enthusiastic enough to punch the chad all the way through. In fact, it was exactly the opposite: thousands and thousands of Democrats, mainly African Americans, being too meticulous in casting their presidential vote for Gore. (Something, by the way, that anybody could have done faced with a write-in option.) Among people who "overvoted" in Florida's eight largest counties, there was a margin of about 30,000 discounted double-votes for Gore over Bush. Florida wasn't close. And nobody, not in that bevy of lawyers, watchdogs, media experts, judges, anyone except apparently Judge Terry Lewis, who was overseeing the aborted recount (and who might have made things turn out different despite Tom Delay), even thought to re-examine those votes during that whole drawn-out process. It's incredible.
If you link through to Andrew Tobias' (DNC treasurer) site or go to Research in Review and read the interview with deHaven-Smith, the academic who just pusblished this new book on Florida, the whole thing is even better. deHaven-Smith talks about all the Big Issues out there in the story of American politics: the elite and the masses, the nature of partisanship, the difference between Republicans and Democrats, the conditions under which functional democracy is possible, and the problems with voting "reforms" to date. It's just yummy, tragic stuff.
1 Comments:
Those overvotes were reported at the time. Nobody seemed to care much, but it was mentioned.
That election was stolen using legal technicalities and the complicity of most Americans, who were too embarrassed to think they might not have such a model democracy after all.
Then the same thing happened in a different key in 2004. I shall watch our future progress in 2008 with considerable interest. :-(
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