On today’s BradCast, oil prices crash, Sanders surges in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the GOP tries to find an alternative to Trump, we’re joined by the mathematician who says that the George W. Bush “Presidency” was his fault…sort of — and we discuss why it all still matters today.
First up, Desi Doyen joins us to discuss the importance of and reasons for the plunging price of oil, which fell below $30/barrel today for the first time since 2003.
Next, new polling out of both Iowa and New Hampshire suggest the potential for very closes races, on both the D and R side of the aisle, this year. Bernie Sanders, who had been trailing Hillary Clinton in IA for months, has now overtaken her there, according to new numbers, and has increased his lead in NH over the woman still described by corporate media as “the Democratic front-runner”. On the GOP side of the aisle, Trump retains his lead in NH, while IA tightens and the search for an “establishment” alternative takes a few surprising turns.
Then, speaking of close elections, we’re joined by Dr. John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University to discuss the mother of all close elections, and why he believes his November 22, 2000 NYTimes op-ed helped lead directly to the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the ballot count in the Sunshine State, resulting in their (s)election of George W. Bush.
After I recount (pardon the pun), just some of the chicanery and still-unexplained anomalies that resulted in the exceedingly close tallies reported by Florida in 2000, Paulos, author of the New York Times best-seller, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
(For the record, yes, had Florida counted all of the ballots in the state at the time, as the Times reported on November 12, 2001 — so you are forgiven, if you didn’t notice — Gore would likely have won the state, “no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.”)
“People talk about the ‘Butterfly Effect‘ in dynamical systems [ed note: as opposed to the Butterflly Ballots in Palm Beach County, FL!], where tiny little initial differences lead to huge disparities down the road. This was, in a sense, a case where I was the little butterfly flapping its wings in South America leading, after many intermediate events, to a hurricane in New Orleans.”
“In retrospect, obviously, I wish I hadn’t done that,” Paulos tells me about his op-ed, published 15 years ago last month, adding: “As a moral tiebreaker, Gore won almost half a million more votes nationwide. At the very least, they should have flipped a coin” and “Oh, yeah, they should have counted the ballots. That’s what should have happened.”
Finally, speaking of the consequences of elections and actually counting votes to determine the intent of voters, we conclude today’s show by discussing how the George W. Bush administration allowed North Korea to obtain the atomic bombs that the rogue nation is once again using to threaten the world. Yes, more fallout from the disastrous Bush Administration, still affecting us today because we failed to count the voters’ ballots.
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_JohnAllenPaulosBushGore2000_NewPollsOilCrash_011216.mp3]
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Paulos has still not done his homework. Gore won nationally by much more than 540,000 votes. And there is a 97.5% probability that he won Florida by over 200,000 votes (see below).
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/unadjusted-state-exit-polls-indicate-that-al-gore-won-a-mini-landslide-in-2000/
First there was the 2000 Judicial Coup and then the long-running media con that Bush really did win. Let’s take another look. Al Gore won the unadjusted state exit polls (58,000 respondents) by 50.8-44.4%, a 6 MILLION VOTE MARGIN compared to the 540,000 recorded. There were nearly 6 MILLION UNCOUNTED votes – the great majority were Gore votes.
Twelve states flipped from Gore in the exit poll to Bush in the recorded vote: AL AR AZ CO FL GA MO NC NV TN TX VA. Gore would have won the election if he captured just one of the states. Democracy died in 2000.
Officially, Bush won Florida by 537 recorded votes. But it was not even close. Gore won the unadjusted Florida exit poll (1816 respondents) by 53.4-43.6%. Given the 3.0% exit poll margin of error (including a 30% cluster effect), there is a 97.5% probability that Gore won by at least 200,000 votes.
There were 185,000 uncounted ballots: 110,000 over-punched and 75,000 under-punched. In addition, thousands of “butterfly†ballots meant for Gore were marked for Buchanan in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County. The recount was aborted by 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court. But Florida was not unique. The 9.8% margin discrepancy was exceeded in 10 states: TX AL NC TN GA AR ID MD SC FL
The True Vote Model is based on 1996 and 2000 votes cast. It was a close match to Gore’s exit poll share. He won the True Vote by 50.9-45.3% assuming he had 75% of 8 million returning 1996 voters whose ballots were uncounted and 75% of 6 million uncounted votes in 2000.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast: Here’s how to estimate the effect of spoilage on the election outcome. For fun, let’s take Florida 2000. We know from comparison of census tracts to precincts that 54% of the 179,855 ballots spoiled were cast by African-American voters, that is, 97,000 of the total.
Every poll put the Black vote in Florida for Al Gore at over 90%. Reasonably assuming “spoiled†ballots matched the typical racial preferences, Gore lost more than 87,000 votes in the spoilage pile. Less than 10% of the African-American population voted for Mr. Bush, i.e. Bush lost no more than 10,000 votes to spoilage. The net effect: Gore had a plurality of at least 77,000 within the uncounted ballots cast by Black citizens.
Note that Palast’s estimate of spoiled ballots does not include thousands of absentee, provisional or stuffed ballots. Or the unknown number of Gore votes dropped or switched to Bush in Cyberspace.
The 2000 election theft was a prologue of what was to come.
Richard Charnin:
I think it was Mark Crispin Miller who said it would be much easier to prove the election had been stolen to prove it hadn’t been stolen.
Even if I’m wrong about Miller, it’s the truth. It just is.
This BradCast gave what I would call a Bill Moyers grade compilation of the facts we know.
That’s why I follow and give.
I meant to say this instead of what I said about the quote I wasn’t even sure Mark Crispin Miller made:
it would be much easier to prove the election had been stolen then to prove it hadn’t been stolen.
Never post a comment on this blog without proofreading twice.