Many of us were involved and distressed by what happened to the vote count in Florida in 2000. Today’s On the Media retells the story of the Brooks Brothers riot. This may seem like the distant past but it set the stage for Jan 6. Of interest is that a study of the race a few months later found that hand counting undervotes and overvotes would have narrowly given the election to Gore.
Four members of the current US Supreme Court were involved in the effort to stop the recount in Florida. Justice Clarence Thomas voted to suspend the vote count in Florida. Three other justices worked on the Bush team including John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett. All three were later appointed to the Supreme Court. https://thedemlabs.org/2022/07/08/supreme-political-payback/
In New York, in some races there have been sufficient undervotes to raise questions about whether the right candidate was declared the winner. Undervotes are when someone casts a ballot but doesn’t vote a race or two. Voters rarely omit to vote the top of the ballot, for example, President or Congress. In 2022, there were enough undervotes in the CD17 congressional race Maloney (D) v Lawler ( R ) such that if a large majority of the undervotes were actually votes for the losing candidate (Maloney), he could have actually won. Unfortunately, New York law does not require hand counts for anomalous undervotes, or other reasons, unless the margin of victory is very small -- a little smaller than Lawler's was.
In NY, overvotes are called "void" votes and are not counted for anyone. What could go wrong? If the Dominion ICE machines now in service in many counties add marks to ballots with valid votes because of machine error, malfunction, or hacking, those valid votes would become "void" votes. Or, marks made by the machines could be counted for a candidate for whom the voter did not even vote. These are called "phantom votes”.
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On this week’s On the Media we revisit another fraught moment in American democracy: the contested election between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. Hear about the extraordinary legal battle that ensued, and what it can teach us about partisan politics today.
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Leon Neyfakh, host of the podcast Fiasco, takes us back in time to witness how the Gore and Bush campaigns fought for recounts; how “chads” and “military ballots” became central to the contest; and the role of the so-called Brooks Brothers riot.