Making Democracy Count

Abstract

18. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, quoted in Danner, op. cit. note 11, 48. 19. The ascription of incompetence to 'naive' and minority voters (presumed to be aligned with the Democrats) was confounded when a number of news organizations began to report results of their reviews of disputed ballots in Florida. In early April 2001, the national newspaper USA Today summarized the reviews of 61,195 'undervotes' by a national accounting firm BDO Seidman, hired by The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder Newspapers. USA Today presented four different tallies based on standards of what to count, ranging from 'lenient' (count any ballot with a mark on or near the box for a specific candidate) to 'strict' (only count completely punched ballots that, for some reason, eluded machine counts). The results were contrary to presumptions by both parties that Gore would benefit from a more 'lenient' standard for counting votes, whereas Bush would benefit from a strict standard. The tallies showed Gore ahead by a bare three votes for the strictest standard, and Bush gaining increased margins of victory when the standards were relaxed. See Dennis Cauchon, 'Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed in Florida Vote', USA Today (4 April 2001), 1A, 8A-9A. 20. See Lucy Suchman, Plans and SituatedActions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 163-70 (a more specific reference will appear in the forthcoming 2nd edn of this book). 21. The argument presumes that machine counts are definitive and begs the question of why Florida's election code includes provisions for hand recounts. A discrepancy of several hundred votes between the machine count and recount in Florida, and the fact that some punch-card ballots in the 'undervote' pile had fully detached chads, indicate that machines may have missed 'legal' votes as Rehnquist defines them. This is to leave aside the fact that there is more than one way to mark a ballot in accordance with the instructions Rehnquist quotes.