Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted against election results

Re:Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted agai... by acdha on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @11:02AM (#25917334)

I was referring to the full recount[1], and with the larger point being that in 2020 the election didn’t come down to a single state and full hand recounts were actually done. Complaining about a much narrower margin when the single state deciding the election never did a full recount seems far more defensible to me than what we saw this time where the recounts were very similar and the margins in multiple states were at least a full order of magnitude greater, with a backdrop of lying constantly about problems. Hanging chads, over/under-votes, etc. are legitimate concerns – and we can see how many states learned and made them far less common - in a way that fairy tales about mystery ballot drops or dead people voting are not.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20011217183836/http://www.norc.u...

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Re:Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted agai... by rayiner on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @11:34AM (#25917787)

> Hanging chads, over/under-votes, etc.

These were limitations that existed in the equipment in the time. (The uncountable ballot rate in newer optical scanners is vastly lower.) It only became a “concern” because of Gore’s hand recount strategy. (And burning a ton of time pursing the selective recount, which the Florida Supreme Court put a stop to.)

The fact is that with a 1-2% error rate, you can’t reliably “measure” an election result that’s within a tenth of a percent. The whole attempt to recount spoiled ballots was gamesmanship on Gore’s part. (Permissible under Florida law, which was written by idiots, but gamesmanship nonetheless.)

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Re:Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted agai... by acdha on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @11:38AM (#25917837)

Again, I’m not saying the hanging chads weren’t a statistical process which was widely recognized, only that they’re a more plausible argument when the entire election comes down to a hundred votes in one state. A recount shifting less than a couple hundred votes is quite possible and at no point did Gore or his party call for disenfranchising huge numbers of people because of it.

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Re:Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted agai... by rayiner on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @11:45AM (#25917957)

Yes, I agree. Given the closeness of the results, Gore only needed to try and manipulate the vote counts in one state.

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