1) Three priests and a nun would never swear.
2) You're right. During an election, one is supposed to count who voted.
Also, one is
supposed to be able to vote and not be so confused by the process that they
were
unable to accurately record their vote. Both of these were problematic in
Florida
(as they were in other states) but even more so in Florida. Last I checked,
the rules
said nothing about denying whole groups of people the right to vote by
either preventing
them from getting to the voting booth, denying them their ability to vote
after they got
there, or making the ballots difficult to parse.

Squirm as you like, the facts are that Bush is the only president to have
been elected
by the Supreme Court. I believe there was one other that was elected via a
backroom
deal, but that was in the 1800s as I recall.

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:49:20 -0500, "Jeff Morris"
said:

Your source says: "The study provides evidence that more Florida voters
attempted to vote for Gore than for Bush"

Two points.

First, you have to read these things a bit more closely. The term
"provides
evidence" is very different from "concluded." If I get up and swear in
court
on a stack of Bibles that the sky was green, I've "provided evidence" that
the sky is green. If three priests and a nun swear that the sky was blue
as
could be, chances are pretty good the person evaluating the evidence will
"conclude" that the sky was blue. Given the LA Times's notorious point of
view, I suspect they stretched about as far as they could to convey the
impression you got.

Second, even if the study had shown conclusively that more people
"attempted
to vote" for Gore than for Bush, the election is decided based on who
voted,
not who "attempted to vote." The rules about how to decide what was a vote
and what was an ineffective "attempt to vote" were set in advance and had
been used for some time, and nobody objected until after the fact, when
the
Gore folks and the FL Supremes unsuccessfully tried every way to Sunday to
change the rules.


Dave
S/V Good Fortune
CS27