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Almost Everything the NYT Thinks
About the Florida Recount is Wrong!
Turns out the Justices did cast the deciding vote ... |
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Posted Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Just when you thought the Florida recount story was settling down into a familiar bitter partisan dispute, the Orlando Sentinel has changed the story line again. The Sentinel, remember, was the paper that first uncovered the hidden cache of valid, uncounted "overvotes" -- seemingly double-voted ballots that, as the massive media recount of Florida has now confirmed, were the key to a potential Gore victory, if only he had known it. Gore instead focused on "undervotes," ballots that initially registered no vote at all. It has been widely assumed that the real-life, statewide recount of Florida votes that was ordered by the Florida Supreme Court a year a go -- and then abruptly stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court -- was also limited to undervotes. Certainly the Florida court's opinion focuses on undervotes.
But the Sentinel had the wit to call up
Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry
Lewis, who was actually supervising the
real-life recount on Saturday, Dec. 9,
2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped
it. Lewis told the Sentinel that "he would
not have ignored the overvote ballots."
Why is this significant? Because the comforting, widely publicized, Bush-ratifying spin given to the recent media recount by the New York Times (and the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post) has been that -- as the Times' lede confidently put it -- "George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward." [Emphasis added.] (The Times' front-page headline was "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.") We now know, thanks to the Sentinel, that this Times take (and the somewhat more hedged ledes in the Journal and Post) is thoroughly bogus -- unfounded and inaccurate. If the recount had gone forward Judge Lewis might well have counted the overvotes in which case Gore might well have won. Certainly the Times doesn't know otherwise. That Judge Lewis would probably have counted the overvotes at the perverse (in hindsight) urging of the Bush camp (which either wanted to delay the proceedings or erroneously thought the overvotes would boost Bush's total) doesn't alter this conclusion. It looks as if the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who stopped the Florida count cast the deciding vote after all. ... P.S.: Does this mean Gore's undervote-obsessed recount strategy wasn't foolish, as previously charged in this space? Not necessarily. By the time the issue of the overvotes was raised before Judge Lewis, on Dec. 9, it was almost too late to count them before Dec. 12, the date accepted (foolishly!) by Gore's lawyers as the deadline for selecting Florida's electors. Any recount, even if it put Gore ahead, would have been chaotic and disputed, as this Sentinel companion story suggests. Had Gore instead asked for a full statewide recount immediately after the Nov. 7 election, as some of his aides urged, there would have been plenty of time to count both undervotes and overvotes before Dec. 12. P.P.S.: If any paper gets a Pulitzer out of this Florida mess, shouldn't it be the Sentinel? New E-mail service: Sign up, using the button below, and you will be notified by e-mail whenever there's a new item on kausfiles.com. [Note: this service is free. You'll be asked a couple of demographic questions; if you find them annoying just leave them unanswered.] 
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Copyright 2001 Mickey Kaus.
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