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August 19, 2005
Reliable Ol' Krugman
Mark Coffey at Decision '08 dismantles yet another Paul Krugman column. Really, Kruggie is so lacking in intellectual honesty that Mark had it easy--he was probably writing two other posts at the same time he was writing this one.
There's something pathetic about a person who would continue to harp about settled election results--from two elections ago. Yet the New York Times columnist and professor of economics does exactly that. Krugman:
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.
Mark responds with his version of the facts--and provides real sources for his claims. Pity the Ph.D. economist didn't do the same.
That’s not what the media consortiums found, anyway; Krugman is just flat lying.
What are the facts?
(1). In the first full study of Florida’s ballots [after the 2000 election] ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.
(2). A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.
The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.
So when Krugman tells you a new book says Gore won, keep the above FACTS in mind (and note my citations are from PBS and CNN, not exactly the most friendly venues for Republicans).
I've copied the links into my quotation from Mark's site--and they are still worth following after four years, just to see it in writing.
Citing sources is so pesky; things flow so much easier when one is unencumbered by backing up one's argument.
UDATE: Ouch! Evan Coyne Maloney at Brain Terminal wonders what the Times' editors are doing to earn their paycheck. Certainly not performing rudimentary fact-checking:
The Times should know better than to print Krugman's blatant misrepresentation. After all, the paper is listed as the first sponsor of the NORC study [that concluded that GWB would have won a statewide recount--Jeff]:
Included in the group are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Tribune Publishing (which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and a number of other newspapers), CNN, the Associated Press, the St. Petersburg Times and the Palm Beach Post.
Of course, because Krugman doesn't actually name the studies he's apparently citing, he might not be talking about these two, which were widely regarded as the most thorough, comprehensive and credible. Maybe the consortium of Mad Magazine, Cracked and Comedy Central came to different conclusions.
Two studies on Ohio 2004 that Krugman does cite were performed by (...drum roll...): the Democratic National Committee; and John Conyers Jr.
Laughable.
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Comments
You really need to read the Gore v Bush Supreme Court decision. Read what Gore was advocting. It will prove my point that Democrats want to get into office, and don't care how wide a trail of damage they create along the way. When the only goal is power, though, I guess damage is not really a major concern.
Posted by: Jim Voigt at August 19, 2005 12:03 PM
Here is the official summary of the case provided by Lexis-Nexis, a legal research system. Notice the violation of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause that Gore was advocating. How many times have liberals used the Equal Protection Clause to fight for the rights of the under-represented? Now, they actually fight to defeat that clause. Perhaps only Democrats are deserving of equal protection.
Background: Granting a writ of certiorari means that the Court accepted the case. The Supreme Court does not take every case put before it. When they choose to take a case, they issue a 'writ of certiorari' to announce that they have done so.
Here's the quote:
"OVERVIEW: The lower court had ordered a manual recount of votes cast in one county and had ordered that the votes for respondent presidential candidate identified in two other counties be included in the certified vote totals. The Court granted the writ of certiorari to determine whether the recount procedures adopted by the lower court were consistent with its obligation to avoid arbitrary and disparate treatment of the members of its electorate. In a per curiam opinion, the Court concluded that the lower court's decision violated the equal protection clause of U.S. Const. amend. XIV because the lower court failed to identify and require standards for accepting or rejecting contested ballots. Moreover, the decision to include a partial total from one county gave no assurance that the recounts included in the final certification were required to be complete. Thus, the recount procedures were inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter in the special instance of a statewide recount under the authority of a single state judicial officer. The Court reversed the judgment of the lower court and remanded for further proceedings.
OUTCOME: Judgment reversed and case remanded for further proceedings because recount procedures adopted by lower court were inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter in the special instance of a statewide recount under the authority of a single state judicial officer.
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (U.S. 2000)"
From the actual opinion itself, the majority described the way that counting procedures not only varied from county to county, but that individual counters did so differently even within one precint. The following quote describes the way that Palm Beach County actually changes the rules of counting ballots several times along the way without ever going back to recount after they changed the rules. This is the system that Gore was advocating. This was the system that he argued preserved the vote and equally protected every voter in Florida.
Here is the quote:
"The record provides some examples. A monitor in Miami-Dade County testified at trial that he observed that three members of the county canvassing board applied different standards in defining a legal vote. 3 Tr. 497, 499 (Dec. 3, 2000). And testimony at trial also revealed that at least one county changed its evaluative standards during the counting process. Palm Beach County, for example, began the process with a 1990 guideline which precluded counting completely attached [***400] chads, switched to a rule that considered [*107] a vote to be legal if any light could be seen through a chad, changed back to the 1990 rule, and then abandoned any pretense of a per se rule, only to have a court order that the county consider dimpled chads legal. This is not a process with sufficient guarantees of equal treatment."
If this process had been used to put blacks or hispanics at a disadvantage, the ACLU would have been all over it, as would the media. But Gore was never called out for advocating the tossing aside of the Equal Protection Clause. After all, what good is a Constitutional Amendment if it keeps a Democrat out of office? The Democrats act as though the Constitution was written solely for their benefit, which may explain why their justices are so willing to rewrite as often as they like.
In case you couldn't tell, this one really got my goat. Sorry for the novel-length comment.
Posted by: Jim Voigt at August 19, 2005 12:34 PM
Thank you Jim, for taking the time to post this...it's a great reference to have at hand (I have a suspicion I'll make use of it in the future).
Posted by: Jeff at August 19, 2005 10:53 PM
