Talk:United States presidential election in Florida, 2000

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Politics This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, an attempt to improve, organise and standardise Wikipedia's articles in the area of politics. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Article Grading: The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article..
Florida Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Florida; If you would like to join us, please visit the project page; if you have any questions, please consult the FAQ.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
??? This article has not yet been prioritized.

Contents

[edit] Canvassing board paragraph

I could be wrong here but I'm questioning the validity of this statement.

"If the board discovered an error, they were then authorized to recount the ballots. [3]

The canvassing board did not discover any errors in the tabulation process in the initial mandated recount."

First of all, which canvassing board are we reffering to? One can't just say "the canvasing board." Obviously some of the canvassing boards thought a recount was in order. It is worth checking if Florida law allowed for recounts in any other circumstances other than error. This issue has been contested in the past, I'm not sure of the correct answer. Finally the second external link on the 2000 election page is "Full Video of how the 2000 Elections Were Stolen." This is very partisan to be listed as the #2 external link. Efficiency84 05:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Topics Not Covered

This article covers many of the events during and after the election, and their impact, but it does not cover factors that occurred before the election that specifically impacted Florida voters, such as:

Republican Operatives Fake "protests" were held by Republican party operatives in order to put pressure on county election boards. Nicholastarwin (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Voters Purges The state hired a company to purge voter lists of people who had been convicted of felonies. However, not only were convicted felons purged--people with similar names were purged as well--especially among minority communities. Additionally, people convicted out-of-state for felonies were purged as well (contrary to Florida law). Nicholastarwin (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Monica Lewinsky The obvious negative impact on the Al Gore campaign has been covered in general, but not in this article.

USS Cole A lack of response to an attack on the Cole could be one factor.

Elian Gonzalez Pre-Election discussion of Elian impact. 400,000 voters, 14 % shift, is 56,000 additional votes for Bush and against Gore. http://www.sptimes.com/News/110500/Worldandnation/Elian_swings_Cuban_vo.shtml Another pre-election discussion of the Elian impact. http://www.fairvote.org/op_eds/elian.htm FIU report of the Elian impact on the 2000 Election and on Gore not campaigning in the Cuban-American community. http://metropolitan.fiu.edu/downloads/battleground_20florida.pdf Textbook excerpt about the Elian impact. "However, in 2000, in the wake of Elián's forcible return to Cuba, more than 80 percent of Miami Cubans voted for Bush, who won Florida, and thus the presidency, by only a few hundred votes." http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9742/9742.ch01.html

Janet Reno Miami and Florida resident that as Attorney General sent armed units into Florida, and Waco.

negative campaigning Negative ads were heavily weighted to one side, giving the Bush team another advantage in a close contest.

Third party candidates If any ONE of the candidates had their votes instead go to Gore, he would have won. the comments about Ralph Nader's impact have been noticed, but it is true of any of the third through seventh place candidates.

I do not feel that these should be added to the timeline, which would by it's location put them at the top of the article, but a section for Other Influences in the Results could be added. I will leave this here to see other's viewpoints before making any addition to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CodeCarpenter (talk • contribs)

Hi there! The only suggestion I would make is to make sure that anything added is sourced by a quality secondary source (as some of what you said above is). As is a standard in many articles, if it isn't sourced, it's original research and will likely be removed. The Eliahn sources look fair. On the other hand, the USS Cole point may or may not be true, but isn't justified specific to Florida with a source so it's pretty much speculation. (To say what you have, you need a source that says, basically, 'The lack of response to the USS Cole caused change X in polls between times X and Y, and those polls are sourced here.') Good luck! Skybunny 15:50, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that Elian Gonzales is the only of those that is really Florida specific. Of course the election was so close that probably even completely trivial things could have made the difference. Blah42 08:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Image:nytimes.svg

I removed Image:nytimes.svg from the article, on several grounds. The first is that it's somewhat POV, since it only shows scenarios where Gore won the election, while there are other reasonable scenarios where Bush won. More importantly, it's a bit confusing, since it's not totally clear what the bars mean. Finally, the report that the image is based on doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article text. — PyTom 21:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Parent Article?

What was the parent article for this article?
~ender 2007-06-17 10:57:AM MST

[edit] Roadblocks Suppressing Black Votes

At the time, there was plenty of talk of this allegation, but where did it start? It really needs a better source. Reference note 5 leads to a January 5, 2001 BBC article by Malcolm Brabant, and it certainly is not BBC's best stuff.

The article reports Jeb Bush being served a subpoena to testify before a civil rights commission, but the commission itself is not even named. There are no direct quotes. There is one reference to a claim by Florida State Senator Daryll Jones that Florida highway patrols had been ordered to set up roadblocks in black precincts. There is no information regarding when or where Senator Jones made his claim, where the roadblocks occurred, or who gave the order. This reads like village gossip.--Geometricks 06:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Factual error in the section 'Controversial issues in Florida'

The following paragraph:

"Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state - Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, contracted with a new company (DBT Online Inc.), at an increase of $4.294 million to have the "scrub list"'s re-worked. Nearly 1 percent of Florida's electorate and nearly 3 percent of its African-American voters - 96,000 citizens were listed as felons and removed from the voting rolls. (For instance, many had names similar to actual felons, some listed "felonies" were dated years in the future, and some apparently were random.) In some cases, those on the scrub list were given several months to appeal, and many successfully reregistered and were allowed to vote. However, most were not told that they weren't allowed to vote until they were turned away at the polls. The company was directed not to use cross-checks or its sophisticated verification plan (used by the FBI). [9]"

contains a factual error.

The number of citizens listed as felons and removed from the voting rolls was 57,746, NOT 96,000. Even 96,000 people were only .6% of the Florida population at the time, hardly "nearly 1 percent" claimed in the paragraph. The actual 57,746 were less than .4% of the Florida population.

The correct number is listed in the article about ChoicePoint ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint ) and is confirmed by the United States Civil Rights Commission in its official report on the 2000 Presidential Elections ( http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/ch5.htm ), which this article references. This report also gives a different number for the contract with DBT - $3.1 million instead of $4.294 million in the paragraph.

Furthermore, the paragraph in question references the article by Gregory Palast in Salon magazine ( http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html ) as source. (Palast's name is misspelled as 'Palas' in the list of references, by the way.) The article, however, does not contain the 96,000 number. It also does not contain anything about DBT 'being directed' not to use its verification plan.

69.227.2.211 (talk) 05:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recount section bias?

I just wonder why one study (which has Gore winning total recounts) has a huge, authoritative table while the two other studies, with mixed results, don't? We should delete the large table and incorporate it into the article, or make a table for each of the three studies.LedRush (talk) 17:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)