Now that Torricelli's out ...

[stefanyb]

When all of the votes in Florida were finally counted, by the team assembled by the Associated Press, and CNN,  the decision was still that Bush had won.

This is information from CNN's own site. And, lest you forget, the governor of Florida was not a disinterested party, ahem.

Limits of the study you cited:

"The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago study was commissioned by eight media companies -- The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post, The Washington Post and the Tribune Co., which includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun, as well as other papers.

A county worker displays a punch-card ballot to a NORC coder.

NORC used experienced staff researchers to supervise and train a larger pool of investigators, who then fanned out across Florida and personally examined 175,010 ballots provided by local election officials. The investigators recorded exactly what they saw on each ballot but made no attempt to determine whether the vote should have been counted.

From there, the media consortium took over, analyzing the raw data produced by NORC and drawing conclusions for various hypothetical scenarios.

As with any large-scale study, the NORC data is subject to some important limitations.

NORC reported serious problems with record keeping at many local election offices. NORC relied on these offices to produce the rejected ballots, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators.

Although trained to produce accurate, impartial reports, the NORC investigators are human and prone to human judgment and error. In particular, NORC discovered that male investigators were more likely to record marks on ballots than women. NORC also found a slight but statistically significant relationship between candidate marks and the investigators' party affiliation.

Most importantly, there is no guarantee that the judgments of the NORC investigators would have matched those of local election boards had the recount been permitted to proceed under any scenario."

UNABLE TO DELIVER AS MANY AS 2200 PROBLEM BALLOTS TO NORC INVESTIGATORS

[hollywood]

Here's a link to the decision. I find this to be the key part of the decision

And the Court having determined that N.J.S.A 19:13-20 does not preclude the possibility of a vacancy occurring within fifty-one days of the general election;

Dems Win

Interestingly, it's a unanimous decision.

The SCNJ always votes unanimously.

The US Supreme Court, on its first day back in biz, declined to review this issue--at least at this point.

[stefanyb]

Dems Win

Interestingly, it's a unanimous decision.

[hollywood]

Dems Win

Interestingly, it's a unanimous decision.

The SCNJ always votes unanimously.

[Suzanne F]

And polls already show Lautenberg ahead.