Posted on 11/29/2015 7:09:17 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
An example of an extremely significant, decidedly unintended result of a relatively tiny event can be nightmarish. This one is, at least for me. It concerns the role I played in getting George W. Bush elected president in 2000. That I was the butterfly whose fluttering cascaded into Bush's election still pains me. I had written an op-ed for the New York Times titled "We're Measuring Bacteria with a Yardstick" in which I argued that the vote in Florida had been so close that the gross apparatus of the state's electoral system was incapable of discerning the difference between the candidates' vote totals. Given the problems with the hanging chads, the misleading ballots (in retrospect, aptly termed "butterfly ballots"), the missing and military ballots, a variety of other serious flaws and the six million votes cast, there really was no objective reality of the matter.
Later when the Florida Supreme Court weighed in, Chief Justice Charles T. Wells cited me in his dissent from the majority decision of the rest of his court to allow for a manual recount of the undervote in Florida. Summarizing the legal maneuverings, I simply note that in part because of Wells's dissent the ongoing recount was discontinued, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and George Bush was (s)elected president.
Specifically, Judge Wells wrote, "I agree with a quote by John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, when he wrote that, 'the margin of error in this election is far greater than the margin of victory, no matter who wins.' Further judicial process will not change this self-evident fact and will only result in confusion and disorder." (Incidentally, the CNN senior political analyst at the time, Jeff Greenfield, cited the quote in his book on the 2000 presidential election, "Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow!," and wrote, "The single wisest word about Florida was delivered not by a pundit but by mathematician John Allen Paulos." I doubt, however, that Greenfield thought it was reason to stop the recount.)
I was surprised and flattered, I admit, by the judge but also very distressed that my words were used to support a position with which I disagreed. Vituperative e-mails I received didn't help. Many were angry that I would support Bush. Some were clearly demented. With all due respect to these correspondents and the esteemed judge, I believed and still believe that the statistical tie in the Florida election supported a conclusion opposite to the one Wells drew. The tie seemed to lend greater weight to the fact that Al Gore received almost half a million more popular votes nationally than did Bush. If anything, the dead heat in Florida could be seen as giving Gore's national plurality the status of a moral tiebreaker. At the very least the decision of the rest of the court to allow for a manual recount should have been honored since Florida's vote was pivotal in the Electoral College. Even flipping a commemorative Gore-Bush coin in the capitol in Tallahassee would have been justified since the vote totals were essentially indistinguishable.
Historical counterfactuals are always dubious undertakings, but I doubt very much that the United States would have gone to war in Iraq had Gore been president. I also think strong environmental legislation would have been pursued and implemented under him. Was I responsible for Bush's presidency? No, of course not; butterflies can't be held responsible for the unpredictable tsunamis that in retrospect can be traced to their fluttering and to a myriad of other intermediate events. Still, every once in a while, the guiltifying thought that the unwarranted Iraq War was my fault does occur to me.
The President is not a Representative, and the process for choosing a President is totally and completely up to the State Legislatures.
A uniform national system would a) be unconstitutional; and b) further the idea of "democracy", an evil from the pits of hell rightly feared by our founders.
Only liberals have the moral courage and divine wisdom to count votes and to discern between good cheating and bad cheating.
Cleveland won games two, four, and six by 5, 7, and 3 points respectively. Florida won games one, three, five, and seven by 3, 3, 1, and 1 points respectively. Florida appropriately won the World Series because they won more games than Cleveland, even though Cleveland outscored Florida by 44 to 37 overall.
Games and elections have rules, and no sensible person would argue with an outcome that follows the rules. Only liberals whine after the fact that the rules should be changed to give them the win after it's over. All big government liberals are irrational, and most are parasitic or evil.
15 years later he writes this?
This would not have occurred but for the networks announcing an hour before the fact that the polls in Florida were “closed” when they were in fact still open in the panhandle (one of the most conservative parts of the state) and even called the state before the polls were closed, costing Bush a net of several thousand votes as people thought they were too late to vote who had not already voted because all of the media said the polls were closed and then declared the state while the polls were, in fact, still open. Had that not occurred, Bush would have carried the state by several thousand votes and this whole fiasco would never have materialized. And / or Gore could have just carried his home state instead of losing it to Bush.
That was such a long time ago. It doesn't even show up in a FreeRepublic article search, but I remembered the title and found it through a regular Google search.
Rumour always was as kids they stayed high and screwed like rabbits
Then he dumped her
And the rumours about his girls in Carthage
Can I have the dark meat please....
And I guess John C. Breckenridge is sorry things played out like they did in 1860.
No word yet from Perot and Nader.
The official margin of 537 votes in Bush's favor was after Democrat election officials declared many very doubtful ballots as Gore votes. There were also the efforts by Gore operatives to prevent military ballots from being counted. I recall a report that some soldiers were called up for exercises on election day with no advance warning so they could not vote, and when it was too late to request an absentee ballot.
Someone on FR theorized that knowledge of the DUI came from G.H.W. Bush's FBI file (remember Hillary borrowing hundreds of FBI files of Republicans who were supposedly being considered for appointments in the Clinton administration?)--the file could have included something about his son. The incident was so old that someone moseying around the courthouse in Maine would not have found it unless they knew about it ahead of time. It's a plausible scenario...but I don't know if we know that Bush 41's file was among the purloined FBI files.
Someone on FR theorized that knowledge of the DUI came from G.H.W. Bush's FBI file (remember Hillary borrowing hundreds of FBI files of Republicans who were supposedly being considered for appointments in the Clinton administration?)--the file could have included something about his son. The incident was so old that someone moseying around the courthouse in Maine would not have found it unless they knew about it ahead of time. It's a plausible scenario...but I don't know if we know that Bush 41's file was among the purloined FBI files.
It’s all Bush’s fault!!!!!!! OMG I’m so sorry!!!!!
Typical LIB asshat professor. The sad thing is that taxpayers pay his salary.
Bush would have still won if the stupid recount had continued.
Trouble is, you have no effective Opposition. He wouldn’t have lasted ONE TERM under a Westminster System.
Wow - somebody has a pretty high opinion of himself.....
In the latter scenario, the Senate would have elected Joe Lieberman as VP.
Ironically, there was NO WAY for Gore to become President if correct procedures had been followed. Only SCOTUS could have made Gore President.
Studies have shown Bush would have come out ahead in the recount, gaining votes under the counting standards Gore wanted.
The operative fact in the Florida recount was that the more times you run punch cards thru the counting machine, the more hanging chads are knocked loose.
As a consequence, both sides gain votes in proportion to their actual vote count. If the first count was, say, 51-49, then the second and third counts will be 51-49 -- but, with each counting, both sides will gain votes...and the raw number of votes between them will grow larger!
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