So Gore Really Won?
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/040601a.html>
April 6, 2001
One day after the Miami Herald published a story that prompted national
headlines about George W. Bush being the real winner in Florida,
the newspaper effectively recanted.
In a new story in Thursday’s editions, the Herald acknowledged what we
also pointed out: that a careful examination of the Herald’s own data
would have led to a conclusion that Al Gore was the choice of Florida
voters under a reasonable standard judging the “clear intent of the
voters.”
The Herald’s data revealed that by looking at the so-called “undervotes”
in all 67 counties and counting various markings for president, Gore
would have won Florida and thus the presidency.
The Herald’s second-day story said Gore would have achieved net gains of
1,475 votes in Palm Beach County and 1,081 votes in Broward County if the
various marks for president recorded on the ballots were counted.
“Broward and Palm Beach canvassing boards … could have credited hundreds
more ballots to the Democrat if they had counted every dimple, pinprick
and hanging chad as a vote,” the Herald reported.
Even with a more conservative standard, Gore could have erased Bush’s
certified statewide victory of 537 votes, meaning that Gore could be
president today if a full, statewide recount had been permitted.
Yet, Wednesday’s misleading “Bush Won” story, pushed by the Herald and
its recount partner USA Todaywas widely embraced by the national press
corps and applauded by Bush partisans in the White House. The new Herald
story, entitled “Recounts Could Have Given Gore the Edge,” received only
a fraction of the national attention.
Strange Logic
The earlier story reached its “Bush Won” conclusion by subtracting Gore’s
gains in Palm Beach, Broward, Volusia and part of Miami-Dade County. That
subtraction was based on the questionable logic that those votes would
not have been included in the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme
Court on Dec. 8, even if the recount had not been stopped by five
Republican justices of the U.S. Supreme Court a day later.
[For more details about the Herald’s odd rationale, see “W’s Latest
Unjust Reward.”]
After helping to establish the bogus conventional wisdom of Bush as the
legitimate winner, the Herald reversed itself with the second-day story
that reached what seems to be a contradictory conclusion.
“Had the Broward and Palm Beach canvassing boards used the loosest
standard in judging ballots … Gore almost certainly would have won,” the
Herald reported. “He might have gained 2,022 votes in the two counties.
…
“And that tally may be conservative because it excludes the cleanly
punched ballots in Broward, 252 Bush votes and 786 Gore votes. Broward
election officials say they cannot be certain that cleanly punched
ballots weren’t also read during the machine count.”
The newspaper then quoted Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fla., who followed the
Broward recount as saying that these marks on the ballots represented the
clear intent of voters.
“The reality is that the canvassing board did not use a liberal standard
and did not use the correct standard,” Deutsch said. “Had they used the
correct standard, Al Gore would be president.”
Deep inside the Wednesday “Bush Won” story, the Herald reported that Gore
would have carried Florida by 299 votes even with a more conservative
standard counting undervotes that had been partially punched
through and ballots that had indentations in more than one race,
indicating a voter trying to cast a vote on a malfunctioning voting
machine.
As we pointed out, that information about Gore’s apparent victory was
buried in the 44th paragraph of the
Herald’s initial story.
Missing Votes
In a related Florida-election development on Thursday, The New York Times
reported that hundreds of undervote ballots in Florida apparently
disappeared before the unofficial newspaper recounts could be conducted,
adding more confusion to the outcome.
“In Orange County, for example, officials reported in November that they
had found 966 ballots with no discernible vote for president,” the Times
said. “But when the newspapers went back to recount those undervotes, the
county could only produce 639 such ballots. In Miami-Dade County, the
discrepancy was 106 ballots; in Pasco 64.” [NYT, April 5, 2001]
The Times is part of a different group of newspapers conducting their own
recount in Florida, a tally that is expected to be finished in about a
month.
Unlike the Miami Herald/USA Today tally, the other newspapers are
counting both undervotes those lacking a machine-read vote for
president and overvotes where voters may have punched a
ballot and then written in the name of the candidate of their
choice.
Still, the Miami Herald’s first misleading story reaffirming Bush’s
victory is the one that has gotten virtually all the media play and
become the news media’s conventional wisdom. The newspaper’s reversal a
day later has been almost totally ignored.
Nevertheless, in contradiction of that conventional wisdom, the evidence
continues to build that Gore was not only the favorite of Florida’s
voters if there had not been irregularities with the “butterfly
ballot” and the purging of voters incorrectly identified as felons
but it appears that Gore also would have been elected president if a fair
statewide recount had been permitted.
Thanks to the determined efforts of George W. Bush and his lawyers, that
opportunity was never permitted.