All Going to Come To Florida - Absentee Ballots

Once again, this election will be in the hands of Florida. While all other states are getting their votes in, Florida will not have their 250,000 projected absentee ballots counted until possibly Thursday. In 2000, all absentee ballots were counted the night of the election. This year because of poor planning they will not be able to do so. All votes must be in by law Thurday, this has always been the case, but should change with a new law. Ridiculous to make everyone wait. The rest of the states are going as planned. We shall see what happens in Ohio, but it may all come down to Florida once again.

[edit on 11/2/2004 by infinite8]

I am confused. Not all the ballots in Florida were counted yet but yet Florida is given to Bush? Something doesn't sit right with me on how quick Florida was given to Bush, but whatever is done is done. So are they really going to even still count these absentee ballots? what difference will it make?

all I have to say is Jeb Bush and Katherine Harriss all over again

Are you people even watching the news or are you making it up the way you want as you go?

its not down to florida, it Ohio and Bush Is going to win. America decided that Bush is the man for them. If bush would have had a small popular vote lead then maybe florida would have played a part, but its close to a million votes.

Now all we can do is sit and hold tight, it might be a rough ride.



[edit on 3-11-2004 by SpittinCobra]

I am confused. Not all the ballots in Florida were counted yet but yet Florida is given to Bush?

I don't know the numbers so I'll use hypothetical ones. If 5 million votes were counted and Bush has a 700,000 vote lead and there are only 500,000 uncounted votes it would be impossible for Kerry to win even if he received 100% of the uncounted votes.

That is how they can call a state before all votes are counted.

Jemison

No it won't.

FL is a done deal, it'll be Bush. Even if the majority of absentee ballots went to Kerry (which they won't), he'd still have it.

Ohio will be this year's FL. Thank goodness it isn't us this time again, hehe... OH will be Bush though too, sadly, as Puritanical Christians seemed to flock to the polls in droves...

I think some people are trying to grab at straws. Bush has to much of a lead in Fla for absentee's to change it. Big ups to JEB for Florida. I would love to see what the ethnic make-up of this election.

from what I understand, Kerry won Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties (the usual democratic counties) but the panhandle is what sealed the deal for Bush.

and I think the absentee ballots has to be counted to determine the Senate race between Castor and Martinez, so even if it doesn't affect the outcome of the presidency, it will decide the senate seat.

WorldWatcher got it right. The absentee ballots are for their Senate seats, not the President. Bush's margin of victory outweighs any outstanding absentee ballots. Ohio (My home state) is pretty much the same. Kerry doesn't want to concede until the Provisional Ballots are counted, but that's just silly. There are only 140,000 Provisional Ballots cast in Ohio and Bush's margin of victory is 140,000. The thinking goes that about half of the provisional ballots will be rejected, which is why they were provisional to begin with. Even if 100% of the remaining provsional ballets were cast for Kerry, Which is pretty much a statistical impossibility, he still comes up 70,000 votes shy of winning Ohio.

The reality... Bush wins and this election cycle is over.

Originally posted by infinite8
The rest of the states are going as planned. We shall see what happens in Ohio, but it may all come down to Florida once again.

[edit on 11/2/2004 by infinite8]

That's right, according to Ohio's plan they will not start counting provisional ballots until next Thursday, 11/11/04. So, what's the problem here?

www.azcentral.com...

The provisional votes cannot be counted for 11 days, and state officials said Tuesday night they would not declare a winner if the margin between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry was narrower than the number of provisional ballots.

BTW, both Florida and OH state law prohibits counting of provisional ballots filed in the the wrong district.

Finally, the ACLU is suing to extend Florida's deadline to count absentee ballots.

www.guardian.co.uk...

The Florida suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, asked that absentee ballots mailed within the United States be subject to the same deadline, Nov. 12. as overseas ballots.

I have heard that results of the electronic voting machines differ among those with a paper trail versus those without. The odd favoring is in Bushes favor of +5% when there is NO paper trail. I'd be interested to see if someone could get into the code in one of those machines or in the tabulators themselves.

Originally posted by worldwatcher
from what I understand, Kerry won Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties (the usual democratic counties) but the panhandle is what sealed the deal for Bush.

Exactly, and if we remember, the panhandle was the fly in the ointment for the media that prematurely counted Fla. for Gore in 2000. They forgot that the panhandle was in a different timezone than the peninsula, and jumped the gun.

Election Results
In the November 2000 US Presidential Election, voters on the Florida panhandle, who live in the central time zone, were improperly told by television broadcasters that the voting centers had closed.

Fla-time