Swede Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 The paper is seeking an apology, an explanation of the discrepancy and compensatory damages of one dollar. I'm glad about this... its more about the issue than the money Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueNJ97 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 I did see the movie this past weekend (I used free passes so I wouldn't be giving Moore any $$$). I too had issues with his treatment of the Florida situation, and not just because of the headline. I know someone who worked for the organization that did all the state projections on election night. Actually, he worked for me, and I gave him a few days off to go back and work for them during the election because he had interned for them during grad school. I asked him afterwards what the hell happened in Florida. He gave us a presentation at work (which he probably shouldn't have done) but he explained what went wrong. Basically, they had no business calling it for Gore. They had no business calling it for anyone, it was that close. The truth is, the organization that he was working for had misjudged the design of the sample necessary to project the Florida results. Generally, you can base the sample on the way the counties voted the election before. Strong Republican counties will still be that way 4 years later. Same for Democratic counties. Some will be close. But it didn't happen that way in Florida, and they didn't know that. Several counties that had been solidly Democratic 4 years before had, due to changes in population, had many more Republicans register. Those counties were closer than they thought, and it depended on who showed up to vote which way it was going to go. Additionally, the organization bases some of the projections on exit polling. It just so happens that Democrats are more likely to answer exit polls. So when they saw the early returns on the exit polls and, taking into account they way they THOUGHT the counties were going to go, they called Florida for Gore. It wasn't deliberate. It was bad sample design and overzealousness to call an election. Period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devils731 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 I wish there could be a ban on anyone calling the election but an official. That means no coloring in a state until that state's official certifies their results and declares all the college votes for the state. Not only does it stop screwups but it lessens the chance of someone deciding their vote can't change anything and staying home. I know the news channel would hate having their hands tied like that but they'd get used to it and figure out how to change their coverage. -Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 how bout the government doesn't tell anyone who won the election and let the people guess who got elected... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Leeds Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. It was bad sample design and overzealousness to call an election. Period. It was an attempt by the big media to keep the strongly conservative panhandle voters home during the extra hour for the time zone difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueNJ97 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. It was bad sample design and overzealousness to call an election. Period. It was an attempt by the big media to keep the strongly conservative panhandle voters home during the extra hour for the time zone difference. Jimmy, I think I know the person who gave me the information better than you do. He described how they screwed it up. I also understand sample design. It's part of what I do for a living. You can call it a conspiracy all you want. I was actually calling Moore out for what he did. Won't you ever be fvcking satisfied??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RowdyFan42 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 It was an attempt by the big media to keep the strongly conservative panhandle voters home during the extra hour for the time zone difference. And you get on us about conspiracy theories... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swede Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. It was bad sample design and overzealousness to call an election. Period. It was an attempt by the big media to keep the strongly conservative panhandle voters home during the extra hour for the time zone difference. you are the only one that I have seen that has managed to see this isue as something against the right... well done! the spin stops here, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devils731 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueNJ97 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 (edited) And in any case, they don't LET the media call any state until after the polls have closed. So the time difference (the extra hour that the polls are open in the strongly conservative part of Florida) makes no difference here. The media wouldn't have been allowed to call the result until the polls were closed there, Jimmy. It's part of an agreement the media has made with the government and I believe it may bring on fines of some kind if they violate it - I'm not sure if there is an actual law but the media abide by it. They have been for several years ever since they were calling states while people were still voting and people were saying their votes weren't being counted. Edited August 3, 2004 by SueNJ97 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swede Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 Well Jimmy could use the StarDew defense and say he is just trying to balance out the theories coming from the other side. -Scott true... after all, we need to make sure its "fair and balanced" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJDevs4978 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 I wish there could be a ban on anyone calling the election but an official. That means no coloring in a state until that state's official certifies their results and declares all the college votes for the state. Not only does it stop screwups but it lessens the chance of someone deciding their vote can't change anything and staying home. I know the news channel would hate having their hands tied like that but they'd get used to it and figure out how to change their coverage.-Scott Basically elections wouldn't be decided till 3 in the morning if you did that. Bad for television and bad in terms of people want to find out the election results while they're watching not in the morning paper the next day. If you were extremely cautious with the results like that you'd essentially have to have everyone vote Tuesday than announce the results Wednesday, state-by-state, make it a one or two-hour prime time show or something I do think the networks will be more cautious this time around after the Florida fiasco in 2000 though, even with the omnipresent need to be 'first' in calling a state (I'm not sure that exists anymore seems all the networks do it at the same time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueNJ97 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 I do think the networks will be more cautious this time around after the Florida fiasco in 2000 though, even with the omnipresent need to be 'first' in calling a state (I'm not sure that exists anymore seems all the networks do it at the same time). Has, they all call them at the same time because they all get the projections from the same place, the "consortium" that my friend was working for. After they had to agree not to call states until after polls had closed, they agreed to use the one source for projections. Unfortunately, that source was not a good one this time. Now the interesting thing was that Fox News Channel chose not to go with the consortium's original call, and called it for Bush later on in the evening. What I don't remember is whether this was their own projection, or whether the consortium switched their projection later in the night. This was a while ago. But I do remember Ryan telling me that after they called it for Gore they saw the full returns in some of the counties they had projected as going for Gore NOT going for Gore...and so I think the consortium may have switched their projection and that may be what Fox reported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJDevs4978 Posted August 3, 2004 Share Posted August 3, 2004 I do think the networks will be more cautious this time around after the Florida fiasco in 2000 though, even with the omnipresent need to be 'first' in calling a state (I'm not sure that exists anymore seems all the networks do it at the same time). Has, they all call them at the same time because they all get the projections from the same place, the "consortium" that my friend was working for. After they had to agree not to call states until after polls had closed, they agreed to use the one source for projections. Yeah I kinda thought they were doing something like that. That at least eliminated one potential source of error, the premature call cause you wanna get a scoop call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StarDew Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devils731 Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 It wasn't deliberate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Leeds Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 And in any case, they don't LET the media call any state until after the polls have closed. So the time difference (the extra hour that the polls are open in the strongly conservative part of Florida) makes no difference here. The media wouldn't have been allowed to call the result until the polls were closed there, Jimmy. It's part of an agreement the media has made with the government and I believe it may bring on fines of some kind if they violate it - I'm not sure if there is an actual law but the media abide by it. They have been for several years ever since they were calling states while people were still voting and people were saying their votes weren't being counted. Unfortunatley Sue, in all the years you've been posting, I have to correct you. The call for Gore happened at least an hour before the polls closed in Florida, i the panhandle. DON'T FORGET THE EARLY MEDIA CALL Florida polls were open until 8 P.M. on election night. The problem was that Florida's ten heavily Republican western-panhandle counties are on Central, not Eastern, time. When polls closed at 8 P.M. EST in most of the state, the western-panhandle polling places were still open for another hour. Yet, at 8 Eastern, all the networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and NBC) incorrectly announced many times over the next hour that the polls were closed in the entire state. CBS national news made 18 direct statements that the polls had closed. Polling conducted after the election indicates that the media had an impact on voter behavior, and that the perception of Democratic wins discouraged Republican voters. Democratic strategist Bob Beckel concluded Mr. Bush suffered a net loss of up to 8,000 votes in the panhandle after Florida was called early for Gore. Another survey of western-panhandle voters conducted by John McLaughlin & Associates, a Republican polling company, immediately after the election estimated that the early call cost Bush approximately 10,000 votes. Using voting data for presidential elections from 1976 to 2000, my own own empirical estimates that attempted to control for a variety of factors affecting turnout imply that Bush received as many as 7,500 to 10,000 fewer votes than he would normally have expected. Little change appears to have occurred in the rate that non-Republicans voted. Terry McAuliffe clearly stated his strategy "to use the anger and resentment that will come out of that 2000 election, put it in a positive way to energize the Democratic base." Democrats have used the notion that Bush is an illegitimate president to justify everything from their harsh campaign rhetoric to their filibusters against his judicial appointments. This sure came true More could be said about these myths, but most of them hardly merit discussion. Unfortunately, as Terry McAuliffe implies, these falsehoods will continue to be trumpeted frequently over the next year; thankfully, a few facts can help dispel them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueNJ97 Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 In that case, Jimmy, I apologize, and ALL of the networks (cable and network) ought to be completely ashamed of themselves. They violated their own agreement NOT to call a state before the polls had closed. For some reason I remember the call as being later in the evening - I thought it was after 9pm Eastern time. And I was recently talking to my friend again about this whole thing, he has come back to work for us this summer before he starts his permanent job after finishing his Masters. I asked him how he felt about what had happened in Florida. He said that although he hadn't voted for Bush, he felt horrible about what happened because they had failed to do their job correctly. No presidential candidate should have to go through what either one of them would have had to go through to win that race in Florida after the mess the Consortium made of the projection. Whichever one of them was eventually declared the winner was going to be accused of stealing the election by at least part of the other side, and nobody should start a Presidency with that hanging over their head. It isn't fair to the person, it isn't fair to the office of the Presidency and most of all, it isn't fair to the country. Maybe I'm just basing my opinion on what Ryan is telling me, but when someone says that to me, I become convinced that the original sampling screw-up was just that - a screw-up. What the media did with it later...that's another thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Leeds Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 Sue, we are going to see this from now on, from both sides I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJD Jester Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 Whichever one of them was eventually declared the winner was going to be accused of stealing the election by at least part of the other side, and nobody should start a Presidency with that hanging over their head. It isn't fair to the person, it isn't fair to the office of the Presidency and most of all, it isn't fair to the country. And, of course, it isn't fair to the thousands of "criminals" that were purged from the rolls by the brother and state re-election committee chairwoman of one of the candidates. <JESTER> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Leeds Posted August 4, 2004 Share Posted August 4, 2004 Whichever one of them was eventually declared the winner was going to be accused of stealing the election by at least part of the other side, and nobody should start a Presidency with that hanging over their head. It isn't fair to the person, it isn't fair to the office of the Presidency and most of all, it isn't fair to the country. And, of course, it isn't fair to the thousands of "criminals" that were purged from the rolls by the brother and state re-election committee chairwoman of one of the candidates. <JESTER> The new Demencrat voting block......criminals. Lest we forget the Demoncrats attempt to disqualify the military vote. Sleazy Dem Trick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeps Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 Eh. All that article shows me is that both parties will fight tooth and nail to win an election. Really, you think that if it was originally given to Gore that the Republicans wouldn't demand a recount as fervently as the Democrats did? Come on, you could reverse the party names and I could still seeing it play out exactly as it did... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek21 Posted July 16, 2005 Share Posted July 16, 2005 I think it's time to recall this thread. Finally watched it on Showtime. Uh... wow. I am so confused. The only conclusion I can draw is when you see a parent crying her eyes out because her son is gone and the reason isn't really known why he was kept there, that causes nothing but grief. Why did he die? Was it really a JUST cause? How about some of the sick footage they showed of innocent civilians who were killed or lost arms, legs, etc? We're talking about kids in some cases . Just gross. Of course, I know what the right will say. In any war, innocent people die. And angry soldiers who can't understand why they were kept there. Can you really fault them? They were doing their job following orders. Obviously, some of this movie was a little crazy. But what to make of the Bush's relationship with Bin Laden and the involvement of big businesses? Maybe I need to read thru this thread again to see what others thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek21 Posted July 17, 2005 Share Posted July 17, 2005 Well, glad my comments didn't heat things up again. LOL In any event, I thought the documentary was well done. Did anyone laugh when Moore went to The White House and tried to get Senators to recruit their sons for the Army to go to Iraq and most just ignored him? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperJoni Posted July 27, 2005 Share Posted July 27, 2005 This movie was just amazing. I must have seen it at least 5 times in theatres and then I bought the DVD. 'Nuff said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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