Britain would be better as a Republic? Yay or Nay

[Nav]

I was under the impression that the scandal in Florida was caused by confusing ballot papers that caused voters to be unsure which box they had to check for which candidate. I also thought that, ultimately, it wouldn't have changed the final result.

[CovenantJr]

So the Bush administration tells us

Nah, now I'm just being gratuitous. I don't know the details, and I can't venture any kind of informed opinion on Bush's election. I just get a strong feeling he's untrustworthy, a feeling a experienced as soon as I first saw him speaking; I usually have good instincts.

[Myste]

No, no, no, I wasn't aiming that specifically at you!

S'okay, I totally understand that feeling!:)

I was under the impression that the scandal in Florida was caused by confusing ballot papers that caused voters to be unsure which box they had to check for which candidate. I also thought that, ultimately, it wouldn't have changed the final result.

The scandal in Florida is that no one knows what the scandal actually is. There were outdated, crappy voting machines; a slightly suspect election commission; recounts galore, only a couple of which actually recounted the same set of votes (as I understand it); and a supreme court. It was just a wreck all round, with absolutely no good way out of it. Talk about a quagmire.

As for whether or not the final result would have been different, I don't actually know; anything's possible. At any rate, I'm just glad I live in a place where, if I don't like the country's leader, I can a) say so and b) vote him out of office in 4 years. Democracy is great.

[Tranquil Hegemony]

There was also the matter of the felon lists. Felons can't vote in the U.S., but the method involved in screening felons at some polling places in Florida basically amounted to "does your name resemble any names I have in this list". Most of the names were those of ethnic minorities, due to our racist drug control policy among other things. And minorities tend to vote Democrat. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy here or anything, just that a lot of Democrats were denied their right to vote simply because they had the same name as a felon.

If it hadn't been for this, and all those elderly Jews accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan, Bush would have lost Florida.

<sarcasm>
Hopefully we won't have to worry about that stuff this year, because now we have those shiny new voting machines with proprietary source code written by a company run by a Republican who vows to do whatever it takes to keep Bush in the White House. And we know that's not a problem because the Republican-controlled House says it's okay. Yay!
</sarcasm>