8/24/2005

Florida

A friend has pointed out the two columns by Krugman on the 2000 Florida recount, See Comment 1)

This is a set of links to the various sites that might be useful in discussing this.

1 comment:

Mike Liveright said...

Nice work Paul

Krugman on August 19th:
"Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters."

Krugman on August 22nd:
This reaction seems to confuse three questions. One is what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't intervened; the answer is that unless the judge overseeing the recount had revised his order (which is a possibility), George W. Bush would still have been declared the winner. The second is what would have happened if there had been a full, statewide manual recount - as there should have been. The probable answer is that Al Gore would have won, by a tiny margin. The third is what would have happened if the intentions of the voters hadn't been frustrated by butterfly ballots, felon purges and more; the answer is that Mr. Gore would have won by a much larger margin.


Krugman has the gall to complain about confusion while spreading liberal doses of same. He never mentioned the most likely scenarios that gave the election to Bush regardless of what decision the Supreme Court made. The full manual recount meme assumes that's what courts ruled on or that the Supreme Court was asked to approve that. Florida's Supreme Court didn't approve that plan and Gore didn't want it. Krugman complains about the felon voter purge and the exclusion of people who shouldn't have been excluded. He neglects to mention that it was illegal for felons to vote and conveniently avoids noticing that many times more illegal felon votes got through. He's complaint about butterfly ballots pales in comparison to broadcast networks falsely telling voters that the polls were closed and then calling the Florida vote for Gore. Nice work Paul.