[Brandonmark]

When will this nonsense end!

[Brandonmark]

Wonder if this will end it.....or will they find yet another way to question the fact that George W. Bush IS the President of the United States?

[dawn53]

"Think of it this way: 175,000 ballots in Florida were tossed out in a controversial election decided by a razor-thin margin," said Neil Brown, managing editor of the St. Petersburg Times. "If we (the press) don't look at the ballots, who will?"

If the discarded ballots are so important why didn't they count the ballots that were tossed in the 49 other states.

By the way, the St. Pete Times is a liberal, leftist rag.

[reformed_democrat]

When will this nonsense end!

When the ivory-tower-dwelling media goons finally succeed in driving away the last of their readers by attacking the President during wartime.

Get set for a huge influx of newbies :)

[shortstop]

If you will notice, all the sponsors of this witch hunt are the left-leaning towers of journalism, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal (Editorial Page only). I'll believe the results of this study only when George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Free Republic and my barber tells me it's true.

[SamAdams76]

When will this nonsense end!

It ended for me on January 20, 2001, when the new president of the United States was sworn in.

[Nora]

Good article. You might want to take a look at the poynter lead in stuff, too:

• Ethical Catch-22
• Recounting the Election

[jwalsh07]

Personally, I think that Veterans Day in the midst of a war is a perfect opportunity to remind America how the democrats tries to disenfranchise military voters.

[wildwood]

"(.But) I think we all felt we had a duty to go back and find out what the ballots say."

In the end, NORC would review 175,010 ballots, obtaining nine fewer undervoted ballots than counties reported Nov. 8, and 1,427 fewer overvotes -- a difference of 1.25 percent.

WELL, it seems to ME that these organizations did not do their DUTY, after all.it seems to ME that they did the same thing the original election officials did...compensated for a flawed system the best way they knew how.

[alnick]

So the consortium consists of eight participants, seven of which are left leaning. Reminds me of the earlier recounts where the rats outnumbered the Republicans by a huge percentage.

[Zoey]

Late last week, the St. Petersburg Times received more than 3,000 protest e-mails in a coordinated campaign by people suggesting the media was sitting on the results of the review.

300 democraps with 10 different emails or Al Gore with 3,000.

[Republic of Texas]

Didn't read the article, 'cause I just don't care.

[Fearless Flyers]

The only thing this story will prove is that liberals still believe that minorities and the elderly are stupid to vote. I don't care what results they claim this is the only fact that will come out.
That they spent a year evaluating spoiled ballots (nonvotes) also proves how serious they are in degrading minorities and the elderly.

[Congressman Billybob]

Phil,

The base story, who won Florida, is deader'n a doornail. On the other hand, the story about the story may be of great interest to our "Red Zone" audience if, for instance, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, use the same data about these 171.000 "examined ballots" and reach opposite concusions about the result.

I know enough about election analysis that as soon as I can read one of the detailed articles on this, I can dope out what the assumptions are that the editors / reporters in that article used to reach their conclusions. I can then "reverse engineer" the article to reach the core data, and give an honest appraisal of what happened.

For example, the Consortium looked at "overvotes." These are ballots on which the voter made two or more choices for President. Both the ballots themselves AND the instructions posted on the walls, clearly said that for President, voters should "Vote for one." Never in the history of the United States has a ballot cast for two different candidates (in a one-person race) been counted as a single vote for either of those candidates.

Not only should every adult American understand that this is not a valid vote, every third grade student in the nation understands the point. You sit there at your little desk, with a handful of well-sharpened Eberhard-Faber # 2 pencils, and blacken little ovals on a computer-readable sheet. Every teacher in every classroom where the standardized tests are given, tells the students, "If you change your answer, be sure to erase your first mark completely."

Why is this done? To make it clear to nine-year-olds that there is only one answer per question permitted, and that two answers to a question is ALWAYS scored as a wrong answer. Bottom line -- if any of the Consortium members publish or broadcast "Gore won" articles using any "overvotes," they are saying that in counting ballots, voters who are dumber than nine-year-olds should "have their ballots counted, too." And that, my friend, is a steaming pile of "horse hockey," in Col. Potter's memorable phrase.

I am anticipating what the Times is going to publish, with my last comment. But if they print what I expect, the conclusion will be that their editors and reporters are blue bottle flies, swarming over that pile of "horse hockey" for reasons known only to themselves.

Congressman Billybob

[Allegra]

When will they get over it? They botched it from the beginning with mainstream media collusion. (Read Bill Sammons' "At Any Cost.") It's so simple. Gore and his minions (including the impeached x-42 and assorted DNC vermin) tried to steal the election. They failed. End of story.

[dalebert]

I am sure this will be an unbiased report. Sure it will.Ha! The right man won no matter what sorelosermen say. Just remember it was the Bush team that insisted on things going by the letter of the law and the Gore team fighting to go against the law. Attacking the presidents legitimacy at a time like this is just dumb and destructive. And who do we have to thank? The Dem press.

[Major Matt Mason]

Another problem: Palm Beach Shores' Aaron M. Cohen, who said he worked as a coder for about two weeks analyzing ballots for NORC, wrote commentaries on the ballot recount for the Web site Democrats.com. A former trainer for the U.S. Census in Palm Beach County, he said his decision to speak out now shouldn't cast doubts on his coding work.

Why on earth would they use ANYONE from FL, let alone Palm Beach County, as one of these coders? The fact that Mr. Cohen felt the need to blab to various DEMOCRAT web sites only puts his inclusion further into question.

It's fairly clear to me that the results of this study should not be taken seriously, as they will almost certainly be tainted with liberal bias. I think these news organizations should have saved the $ they spent on this re-count fiasco, and instead put that $ into hiring unbiased editors and reporters.

BTW, when will the media do a comprehensive recount of IL and TX ballots from the 1960 election? Since they seem to think it is their sworn duty to delve deeper into finding the true winner of a close election, you would think they would have a little curiosity regarding the winner of the '60 election. Oh yeah, I forgot, it was a DemocRat that won that election, so there was no need for the media to look into that one.