So what will we find in those piles of undervotes? The Washington Post leads with its analysis that says Gore stands to come out ahead even in counties that Bush won in the overall vote. An analysis by Knight-Ridder (reported here in the Detroit Free Press), however, comes to the opposite conclusion: that Bush stands to gain.
But the KR analysis is “based on the assumption that undervotes split in the same proportion that each county’s vote for president did” – an assumption almost everyone else disagrees with. There is a broad consensus that undervotes are disproportionately located in poorer and/or more heavily African-American precincts. (The result of some vile conspiracy? No, poorer areas have more of the rickety old ballot machines that churn out more undervotes and the surge in African-American voters brought in many new or occasional voters who had less experience using the voting machines. Thus, apparently, more undervotes.) This AP article argues that this was the case in Duvall county. Congresswoman Corrine Brown told the AP that “Of the county’s 4,967 Duval County undervotes, 1,413 were cast in predominantly black districts that carried Al Gore by more than 90 percent.”
This article in the Philly Inquirer gives a run-down of the contending ‘whose votes are they?’ theories.
P.S. We have a winner in the (admittedly as yet unannounced) One-Time-Respectable- Republican-Turned-Incendiary-Hack contest. The prize goes to Jack Kemp. The following graf from Rick Berke’s article in today’s NYT:
To further that point, the Republican Party hurriedly issued a statement by Jack Kemp, the vice presidential nominee four years ago. “Today, America has witnessed a judicial coup d’etat by the Florida Supreme Court unprecedented in modern history,” he said.
That’s the hack, Jack.
P.P.S. We’ve already seen and noted in earlier posts that the John McCain-Chuck Hagel crew in the Senate has been among the most temperate, and least Bush-shilling, groups of Republicans in their statements about the Florida fracas. Hagel seems to be keeping it up.
Again from Berke’s article in the NYT.
Senator Hagel said he was worried about the tenor of the oratory from his colleagues and advised them not to let it get out of hand. “I think we should be very very careful of what we say and very measured,” he said. But Mr. Hagel said he did not see the matter being resolved soon. “I don’t know what you do to stop it,” he said. “The only thing you could do is one of these guys steps up and says, `I’m not going to put the country through that,’ because Constitutionally both men have every right to go on with this.”
P.P.P.S. Want more info on the doings of Senator McCain? This article of mine in The American Prospect details McCain’s successful efforts on behalf of Republican congressional candidates during the last election, and says what it might mean for McCain in the next congress.
