Deliberate ambiguity to provide an opening for further litigation in case things still don’t go their way.
Texas R’s are still shitting themselves over all the complexities they threw into the absentee ballot process – which mostly affected Republican voters (older, whiter, etc.).
I’m just waiting for someone to say that 2022-11-04 is not a standard date.
Nah, just shitty legislative drafting. Happens all the time, at all levels.
In such a rush to address all of Trump’s dumb 2020 electoral theatre grievances that they managed to make it harder for their own people to vote. As someone once said:
I hesitate to argue with you, but I was under the impression that there were still many votes to count (re-count) in Dem-leaning counties but the SC stopped the counting at a moment Bush was ahead, and at a time they decided was approaching “too late” despite being ahead of the statutory end date.
So “Bush continued to win” because the counting was stopped at an advantageous moment.
Or was it different than that?
That’s not only greedy but classless, no better than a Latin American thieving politician…
Trump’s company charged Secret Service five times more than the government rate for agents to stay at Trump hotels while protecting him, his family
Bush won the initial count of the statewide ballots by something like 650 ballots, and SCOTUS stopped the recount so that number would not change. Katherine Harris then certified the election as a Bush victory based on the initial count. So Bush was always ahead.
I still like this, too… 
They call me MISTER Fibbs!
Interesting…
Fire Wray. Fire him NOW!
As I recall, Bush was only ahead because Gore chose to request recounts in only four counties, and chose only to request recounts of undervotes (where the ballot reader detected no vote for president) rather than overvotes (where the ballot reader detected two or more votes for President). The Florida Supreme Court ordered recounts in all counties, and it was that order that the Supreme Court overruled, on the basis that an arbitrary administrative deadline was constitutionally protected, while the right of citizens to have their vote counted was not. Subsequent recounts of 2000 Florida ballots undertaken by newspapers and other interested parties demonstrated that Gore would have won a recount under almost any acceptable ballot counting standard, especially if overvotes were counted.
Bush was ahead because the initial count put him ahead by ~650 votes, and no recount was ever completed before Florida could certify any different result. That’s it. Bush was winning, and SCOTUS let him continue winning. That’s vastly different than the scenarios being proposed these days by the various doomsplainers. The Fascist Five are not gonna toss out Georgia’s electors and declare Trump President for Life.
Weird, since they support the theory that only state legislatures can make changes.
But the stopping of the recount was not done until some had been recounted, and it may have been that the trend was going Gore’s way, which caused the SC to put their whole fist on the scale. So even through Gore was picking up more votes during the recount, which was stopped before it counted legally, Bush was ahead in votes in the final official count, which was the same as the first count.
It rubs me wrong to say that Bush continued to win but he did in fact win in the fixed game so you are right event though it feels wrong. It’s felt wrong for 22 years now and that will never change, I guess.
Unless you’re proposing to select Florida’s electors based on the interim results of an incomplete recount, Bush was at all times winning that election.
It is the grossest of gross abuses. My first reaction, on seeing those headlines, was “who the Hell in USSS approved that?” I mean, those GSA schedules are there for a reason, and they’re not just polite suggestions.
But on further reflection, I realized – the usual response, if someplace is charging way off the scale more than the GSA per diem allows, is to say “well, you’ll just have to stay someplace else that is within the limits, and if that means you need to travel an extra hour each day to and from the conference you’re attending, that’s just too damn bad; that’s Government service for ya!”
But the USSS doesn’t get to pick and choose that way. They have to stay close to the individuals they’re protecting. So maybe they really did have to just buck up and swallow whatever shit sandwich that greedy unprincipled bastard wanted to serve up. I dunno.
(In which case, only 5x may have actually seemed restrained.)
I despise that man so very much.
That’s my recollection, too–that the trend was that Gore was gaining on Bush and there were enough ballots to look that (in Dem-leaning counties) that it was possible, if not likely, Gore’d go ahead–and THAT was when the SCOTUS demanded the counting stop, w/ the results that @txlawyer accurately cites.
The County of Santa Cruz Elections Department sends me a notification via email to let me know that my ballot paperwork is on the way. They’ll also send a notification when my ballot has been received and counted.
Just another example of the nightmarish existence that we’re all suffering through here in this hellhole of a state that Newsom is running into the ground.
I think I’ll step outside now for a breath of fresh air and a mugging.
To paraphrase Rafael Nadal, “If, if, if: “if” does not exist, no?”
Oh, please: wait until they start challenging the kerning on the envelopes.
Computer programmers worldwide:
