Jeff Mapes confused by Florida's role in 2000 election

clipped from blog.oregonlive.com Yes, Florida, you can do a complete recount Posted by Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian June 27, 2008 15:37PM Categories: Oregon state government, Voters In the span of two weeks, Oregon just completed a manual recount of every ballot to determine if Measure 53 really did pass (the answer: yes). It wasn't that hard. I guess I'll be forever perplexed by what happened in Florida in 2000.

Uh, no, Jeff, the Florida Statutes applicable in 2000 made a manual recount problematic in a number of ways.

First, the Secretary of State is instructed to certify the vote totals in less than the two weeks it took Oregon to count its measly number of votes.

Second, there was no provision in the law for a statewide manual recount. The methods for challenging the vote totals limited appeals to the individual counties, and put discretion in the hands of election officials. That is, the county election commissions under then Secretary of State Katherine Harris. That's why Gore was kind of forced to seek an obviously unfair avenue of challenging the results.
Third, because of the type of ballots Florida used at the time, you would never have been sure who really won after a manual recount. At least machine counts are non-partisan in principle.

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Mapes' tiny column had one comment when I visited. "DanHortsch" offered that the HBO film "Recount" doesn't explain things either. Big surprise, there. I'll have to get around to a review of that one.