Topic: CNSNews.com
From an Aug. 13 CNSNews.com article by Patrick Goodenough:
The claim that Bush won unfairly still has its supporters despite the fact that a comprehensive review carried out by a consortium of eight news organizations concluded the following year that Bush would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had not ruled as it did.
“Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore,” the New York Times reported in November 2001.
“A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.”
That's an incomplete reading of the Times article, which went on to state:
But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots. This also assumes that county canvassing boards would have reached the same conclusions about the disputed ballots that the consortium's independent observers did. The findings indicate that Mr. Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to "count all the votes."
For Goodenough to complain that the idea that "Bush won unfairly still has its supporters" overlooks not only that there were scenarios in which Gore could have won in Florida but also the fact that the Supreme Court halted a recount that would have helped to put the idea to rest.
