On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Vince Lavieri wrote:
> I can happen, but it
> strains the imagination that people voted for Bush and then turned around and
> voted Democratic for Senator given who the Republican candidate was.
Doesn't strain my imagination at all. People split tickets all the time.
Your analysis works only if you sees a vote for Bush explicitly as a
rejection of Clinton. I don't think most people saw their vote that way,
and I certainly think it plausible that enough people saw their Bush votes
as a rejection of *Gore* or, egads, an endorsement of Bush, to cover the
extremely slim margin of victory.
I still don't understand all the moral indignation over this. Should we
endorse fraud or even irregularities? Of course not. But the one thing
we *do* know is that no matter how you slice it there is NO "rightful"
winner in this case who has the true authority of the people behind him.
It was too damn close. When a necessarily dichotomous outcome is this
close it is random. Period. Ask any statistician.
Kakki's call for thorough reconsideration of our voting procedures is the
right one, and the only one with any moral weight.
--Michael
NP: Michael Jackson, _Off the Wall_ (a righteous album! :-) )
