Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Hooey Beats Dewey

Wednesday November 8, 2000

From Austin, Texas
9:45 am
For the earlier,errant, Mullings go here .

All righty, then. First things first. Stop e-mailing me to tell me Florida is undergoing a recount. I didn't send out Mullings at three this morning and then hop the first spaceship to Mars. I KNOW Florida is going to be recounted!

Second. I could have avoided this if I would have left in the first four words of that original Mullings: "Assuming Florida holds up." I had them in and then took them out with Bush leading by a hundred and some thousand votes.

Third. This thing is so close even the weather gods are splitting their votes: The weather is cold and drizzly here in Austin as it is in Nashville, if you can believe the Weather Channel's web site.

Fourth. Now you know why I spend most of my television time watching old Hopalong Cassidy movies. The good guys ALWAYS win, the bad guys ALWAYS lose, it's all done in about an hour-twenty, and no one ever comes on to say that Hoppy might not have freed the ranchers from the clutches of the railroad baron after all.

Fifth. Automatic Recounts. I lost my first race for City Council in Marietta, Ohio, 45750 by two votes: 902 to 900. In those days there was no automatic recount rule as there is now, and the loser had to pay - I think it was ten bucks per precinct - to have a recount done.

There were 26 precincts in Marietta City which meant an outlay of $260. I had only spent about a hundred bucks on the whole campaign before that and, not being related to anyone named Corzine, I declined the investment.

Since those days I have been involved in many a recount and many a contest. They are not the same thing.

In the current situation AS I AM WRITING THIS Bush leads by about 1,700 votes in Florida and there are about 2,300 votes outstanding. For Gore to win outright he would have to be named on about 75 percent of those outstanding ballots which is not likely.

If they are largely overseas military and civilian absentee ballots it is likely Bush will end up with a slightly higher margin than he has AS I AM WRITING THIS.

A recount (and let me say here (a) I am not from Florida so I don't know Florida law, (b) I am not a lawyer in any event, and (c) I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night) is more or less an exercise in pretending the polls have just closed, and going through the counting procedures again.

In my experience recounts rarely make a difference in the outcome. Very rarely will a recount (or re-canvas as it is sometimes called) discover a number transposed which changes the result. With the advent of automatic voting and counting devices this is even more unlikely.

The rule of thumb in recounts is: You tend to do slightly better in the places you won, and slightly worse in the places you lost (the same, obviously, goes for your opponent). That being the case, if you won slightly more precincts than your opponent you will likely end up with a slightly higher vote total.

Sixth. A contest is a wholly different matter. In a contest every ballot and every voter is under scrutiny. Here are a few things which election judges will, if Florida is contested, be looking for.
-- Is this voter a citizen and permitted to vote in a US election?
-- Does the voter's signature match the voter registration card?
-- Does the voter live in the same place his registration says he does?
-- Is the ballot marked in some way which would allow someone to identify it has having been voted by a specific person (this is a holdover from the days when paper ballots were the norm and you collected your dollar by writing some identifying mark on your ballot so the precinct chief knew that you voted and you voted for the person you were paid to vote for).

Finally, it is likely that everything I wrote at three this morning will turn out, in the end, to be true.

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?