Word: explainers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same time, we've learned that close elections do strange things to ostensibly reputable intellects. How else to explain the ludicrous petition that appeared in The New York Times last Friday, urging a "re-vote" in Palm Beach County, among other inanities, on the grounds that Gore won a "constitutional majority of the popular and the electoral vote"? Granted, the signatories included such predictable figures as Bianca Jagger and Rosie O'Donnell, but the arguably distinguished names of NYU Professor of Law Ronald L. Dworkin and Princeton Professor of Law Sean Wilentz were also attached. Perhaps these eminent figures...
...disputed counties. The machines that tabulate the punch cards often invalidate ballots in which voters have not cleanly broken through the perforated hole. A bit of cardboard chaff clinging to the puncture, officially known as a "hanging chad," is enough to confuse the counting machine, which helps explain how thousands of ballots can register a vote for some offices but not others. Of the more than 600,000 votes cast in Broward County, the machines found no vote for president on 6,686 ballots in a place that gave Gore 68 percent of the vote. In counties in which ballots...
...reason to get snippy," Gore said. He had to repeat himself - it's too close to concede - a couple of times. Bush was confident that this time the networks were right. Brother Jeb was right there, crunching the numbers for himself from the Florida website. "Let me explain it to you," Gore said. "Your younger brother is not the ultimate authority on this." The call ended abruptly. "Well, Mr. Vice President," Bush said, "you need to do what you have...
...electoral college, a last-minute addition to the Constitution, distorts the popular vote. It is impossible to explain to foreigners. Even most Americans don't understand it. It produced its first election crisis in our very third presidential election 200 years ago. As originally formulated, the electors were not to vote separately for president and vice president. The presidency went to the electoral-vote winner, the vice presidency to the runner-up. It was thus conceivable that a vice-presidential nominee could be elected president...
...spirit both journalistic and masochistic, I listened as the radio savants tried to make sense of the Floridation of presidential politics. I share the general puzzlement about the electoral college and the origami ballot in Palm Beach County. But I have two other questions. Will someone please explain how the members of the Radio Right can be so sure that they really are right? And why is political talk radio - in a country that has just voted for two middle-of-the-road presidential candidates - almost monopolistically conservative...