Word: counted
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Texas Gov. George W. Bush's injunction to prevent the hand count in Palm Beach County, Fla. is undemocratic and unwise. By legally pursuing an end to the hand counting, Bush endorses the unfair moral pressure on Vice President Al Gore '69 to concede the election...
...Hand counting is generally a good means of ensuring a proper tally of votes, as humans should have the ultimate say over an election. Despite gradual trends toward mechanization, in the case of a very close election, a hand count returns the power of the election to a human authority. The punch-ballots used in Florida are particularly prone to computer error as ballots cannot be counted unless the paper covering a hole is completely removed. It is possible that the computers did not count ballots clearly demarcated for a particular candidate that did not have fully punched holes...
Bush's injunction against the hand count is particularly difficult to understand, as he signed into Texas law a measure that retains recourse to a hand count over a machine recount during close elections. Bush should recognize the fairness of a hand count, and he should stand firmly behind this aspect of the democratic process, which he himself had previously recognized...
...hand count could swing the final vote in favor of Vice President Al Gore '69. But Texas Gov. George W. Bush cannot try to block the hand recount and expect to emerge from this campaign as a man of integrity--whether or not he becomes our next president. As much as the arguments for advocating or dismissing the hand count are colored by partisan interests, the fair administration of elections is not a partisan issue...
...right after Gore phoned Bush to retract his concession, Volusia County judge Michael McDermott ordered the building that houses the election supervisors, as well as the Dumpsters outside, sealed. At one point during election night, hundreds of votes for Gore had disappeared from the computer count, though they reappeared later. There is a history of election disputes in Volusia, among them the 1996 reelection of sheriff Bob Vogel, when a controversial count of absentee ballots put Vogel ahead of an opponent he had trailed on election night. That led two years later to a Florida Supreme Court decision that said...