re: It's 2000; What are you arguing here regarding who won Florida?

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Actually, Bush really did win and by quite a bit more than originally thought.

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If by 537 out of 6 million cast is quite a bit, then you're correct.

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Bush won in every way possible and would have been declared the winner even if the Supreme Court had not stepped in.

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Not entirely true:

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The media reported the results of the study during the week after November 12, 2001. The results of the study showed that had the limited county by county recounts requested by the Gore team been completed, Bush would still have been the winner of the election. However, the study also showed that the result of a statewide recount of all disputed ballots could have been different.

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So you're correct in saying had the S.Ct. Not stepped in Bush would have won but only because Gore screwed up in only asking for limited counties in the recount. Had they recounted every county, Gore could have won. The word could is used because there is still the issue of how the votes should be counted.

And even counting limited counties Gore could have won but for this:

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The media recount study found that under the system of limited recounts in selected counties as was requested by the Gore campaign, the only way that Gore would have won was by using counting methods that were never requested by any party, including "overvotes" — ballots containing more than one vote for an office. While some of these ballots recorded votes for two separate candidates, a significant number (20 percent in Lake County, for example) were cases of a voter voting for a candidate and then also writing in that same candidate's name on the write-in line.

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And then there's the issue of the butterfly ballot in Broward County in heavily Jewish elderly precincts where Buchanan got a huge number of votes as compared to his votes in other counties with the same demographic but different voting machine. Buchanan's name was on the opposite page as gore's and their punch holes were one on top of the other.

In the end, had the roles been reversed and if Gore's brother were governor of Florida, and his campaign leader was Secretary of State of Florida who stopped the counting and his father had appointees on the Supreme Court who stopped the counting, conservatives on this board would still be starting threads claiming the election was stolen.