Gore really did win Florida in 2000

It's been a long time, many people have decided that it doesn't matter, that it's just sour grapes - and that it does us no good to dwell on the past, but a new book which reexamines the overvotes from the Florida recount indicates that Michael Moore may have been more correct than even he knew - 30,000 votes.

From dailykos...

Lance Dehaven-Smith is a professor in the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. He has long been deeply immersed in the politics of Florida, and has just published a book through University Press of Florida entitled "The Battle for Florida:An Annotated Compendium Of Materials From The 2000 Presidential Election." (Amazon link)

He has an interview on the book in Florida State's Research in Review Magazine that you really have got to read. It's all about the disaster of 2000, and the man is full of insights and wise words (and by the way, terrified that we are in the late stages of losing our democracy).

From the interview with...

Research in Review caught up with the professor while he was waiting for people to check out his book—and simultaneously sighing in relief that it’s hardly garnered any attention, yet.

“I think if it would have come out a year earlier, it would have,” he says. “I’m kind of glad it didn’t, though, because of all the right-wing critics.” —J.P.

RinR: One of the most interesting points you make in the book is that the focus on undervotes (ballots containing no vote for president)—the hanging, dimpled and otherwise pregnant chads—was misplaced. Instead, you explain that a study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which looked at all the ballots that were initially rejected on election night 2000, revealed a surprise: most of these uncounted votes were in fact discarded because they were over-votes, instances of two votes for president on one ballot. What do you think the NORC study tells us about the election?

LdHS: It’s an embarrassing outcome for George Bush because it showed that Gore had gotten more votes. Everybody had thought that the chads were where all the bad ballots were, but it turned out that the ones that were the most decisive were write-in ballots where people would check Gore and write Gore in, and the machine kicked those out. There were 175,000 votes overall that were so-called “spoiled ballots.” About two-thirds of the spoiled ballots were over-votes; many or most of them would have been write-in over-votes, where people had punched and written in a candidate’s name. And nobody looked at this, not even the Florida Supreme Court in the last decision it made requiring a statewide recount. Nobody had thought about it except Judge Terry Lewis, who was overseeing the statewide recount when it was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The write-in over-votes have really not gotten much attention. Those votes are not ambiguous. When you see Gore picked and then Gore written in, there’s not a question in your mind who this person was voting for. When you go through those, they’re unambiguous: Bush got some of those votes, but they were overwhelmingly for Gore. For example, in an analysis of the 2.7 million votes that had been cast in Florida’s eight largest counties, The Washington Post found that Gore’s name was punched on 46,000 of the over-vote ballots it, while Bush’s name was marked on only 17,000.

RinR: For your research, you merged this set of data with detailed profiles of Florida’s electoral precincts. What did you find?

LdHS: One of the things I found that hadn’t been reported anywhere is, if you look at where those votes occurred, they were in predominantly black precincts. And (when you look at) the history of black voting in Florida, these are people that have been disenfranchised, intimidated. In the history of the early 20th century, black votes would be thrown out on technicalities, like they would use an X instead of a check mark.

So you can understand why African Americans would be so careful, checking off Gore’s name on the list of candidates and also writing Gore’s name in the space for write-in votes. But because of the way the vote-counting machines work, this had the opposite effect: the machines threw out their ballots.

So the sad tragedy may in fact have been that African-American voters, who were trying to makes sure there vote was counted -- may have in fact invalidated their own vote.

The important thing to remember here isn't really to wallow in past sins, but to focus on the fact that we all got it so wrong. And the real danger is that exactly what happened in Florida, or other even more eggregious mistakes may just happen again and again. It may have very well happened in 2004 - it could happen in 2006, and not neccesarily to the benefit of Republicans, it could help Democrats as well. Those people who truly believe in the value of a Democracy, the importance of the one person/one vote is truly sacred -- need to pay attention to this issue and look out how our elections have been and can be manipulated.

There is no more important issue facing us at this time.

Vyan