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In last week’s Rappahannock News there were two letters answering my opinion piece of Feb. 7 in which I described some of the most egregious deficiencies of the recent election in Florida. I’m sure I left out some facts, as noted by the Pendergasts, but even though I was selective, I was told by the Editor that the piece was “entirely too long.”
Edith Pond stated her opinion that “nothing” was wrong with the voting system in Florida, since it kept the Democrats from winning. She offered to “throw her hat in the air to say thanks” for that result. Her letter speaks for itself and needs no comment from me.
The Pendergasts, on the other hand, dealt with the substance of the Florida election by adducing several facts and a number of factoids in an attempt to justify the result. There are countervailing facts and factoids on the other side as well.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, both Edith Pond and the Pendergasts overlooked the one overarching and ineluctable fact that is so distressing about the election, not only to me but also to scholars, law professors, and commentators of all kinds.
The fact in question is that, in an election in which more than six million votes were cast, the margin of victory for the “winner” was less than 1/100 of one percent (the multiplier is .0001), and yet no recount was permitted to be completed.
There were some 110,000 ballots with overvotes, some of which have subsequently been proved to have shown a clear intention on the part of the voter to vote for one of the two candidates, and at least 40,000 undervoted ballots,
96.6%