Did anyone tape election night 2000 - in whole or in part?

[seaclyr]

jbond56 and I have analyzed the 2004 popular vote numbers as they came in over time on election night. The patterns we discovered look very odd - I would say suspiciously so - but we need to compare them with 2000 to be sure. If anyone happened to tape some of 2000 and would share the tape or simply provide us with the popular vote numbers as they were updated through the night that would be wonderful (and save me the hundreds of dollars it would take to get them from Federal Document Clearing House!). Thanks!

[jbond56]

1. kick

[seaclyr]

4. thanks for kicking!

[m.standridge]

2. lost Gore concession video to virus; wish I'd taped 11/2/04, too--

here in AR, at the local coverage, before the network coverage started, a really interesting thing came on:
on CBS TV affiliate KTHV here in Little Rock, news anchor Anne Jansen said that the latest polling (circa about 1 to 3 pm) on election day, were then showing the race between Kerry and Bush had "tightened considerably" and was now "as close as 48% to 48%".
I've tried to find out the source of this, but basically KTHV uses SurveyUSA polling, and their latest 11/01 poll HAD shown a possibly tightening race:

Bush at 50.7% on a slightly declining curve
Kerry at 46.4%, on a rapidly ascending curve

Among "probable" voters, overall over the state, Kerry had a LEAD, 51 to 40-percentile, on 11/01/04.
The pollster said in its introductory remarks that, although the "race had tightened" late-arriving interviews indicated it had fallen back into the usual pre-election pattern with Bush at, slightly below, or slightly above 50% and leading Kerry by a little less than 5%.

The reason this stuff was interesting in AR this time, was the last-minute impact Clinton was having here.

Clinton started campaigning actively for Kerry nationwide during the last about 72 hours of the campaign. But his most dramatic impact was in the last 12-24 hours, when he was here in AR.

The pollster indicated that the race had tightened, and other, non-written data I have, indicated that Kerry started picking up ground, especially, with one particular group after Clinton started to work for him: women.

Women seemed to have viewed Kerry's record on Vietnam with some ambivalance. Based on my own recollections from some years ago, I recall that opposition to the Vietnam war was considered a core feminist issue by many or most women of that generation.

According to what I've been able to put together, here's what was going on here:

1. Women who'd been saying they were "unlikely" to vote, had changed to "likely" voters, and were going to vote for Kerry, after Clinton began to campaign for him here. This is where Kerry was picking up most of his support here in AR. I recognize that Clinton is not Superman elsewhere nationally. But here in AR, Clinton is Superman, politically.

2. The effect of Clinton's support for Kerry, nationally, also probably had some impact. It bridged a gap that I'd been picking up from the polls: women had been almost appallingly unenthusiastic about Kerry. I think, again, that this was the Vietnam thing, and that this gap began to close right toward the end of the election. Now, nationally, this might not have been more than a fraction of a percent in the short time we had, but here in AR, I believe it was just "interesting" enough, that one might wonder how this particular state ended up voting.

3. Arkansas was the only Southern state--and one of only a relative handful of states, really--in which Kerry held a LEAD over Bush at times. Most of the time, in Bush was at 50% or below in AR, too, even when he held a lead, and didn't trail Kerry or was at a tie.

4. Arkansas resembled Wisconsin in pre-election poll patterns. The percentages were almost identical, and the patterns were, too.

5. At the last minute, I believe Clinton's active campaigning here helped overcome the "Bible belt gap"--the difference between WI and AR, which is the stronger Evangelical vote. It's true the churches were beating the drum to get them out, and got them out. They wre telling them, though, to vote AGAINST Gay marriage, not how to vote in any other race. Nevertheless, it is VERY true that there was a "and while I'm at it" vote that went very much for Bush. It wasn't as pronounced as the vote against gay marriage, but it did give Bush a bump up. But, right at the last, here in the state itself, Clinton's appeal--in just the right areas of the state, too--would have helped.
Clinton is from the western part of the state: his two home towns are Hot Springs, in Garland County, and Hope. Both are western, which is precisely where the Demos are weakest against the GOP most of the time, and especially against Bush, who, claiming to be from Texas (he was born in Connecticut), pulled stronger in the west. (See the 2000 election results for more of this.) So, there again, there's this powerful quality to this Clinton campaigning here.
6. Pollsters here were saying, in those very last 12 hours, that it might be that, with Clinton's help, "Kerry might finally break 48% here." In pre-election polls, Kerry had never gotten above 47%, even when he'd led Bush.
I'm sorry to be so long-winded, but AR doesn't get mentioned much. I don't usually expect this, but this time it's different. Even before Clinton started actively campaigning here, AR was the "brightest pink" of the pink states in cartograms.
Usually, I blow off AR. But this time, I could sense something here. The exit polls missed something here, in Kerry's favor. And the SOS is having to be slow tabulating and certifying. We had a major electrical power failure here in LR on election day, and they also found some 50,000 votes or more were in error across the state in a statewide race. And that was with just two of the largest counties reporting--Pulaski, LR's county--and Saline county. There were still 75 more counties to hear from, and the SOS is a Demo here. But we had largely gone electronic in many precincts, and the urban vote was strongly favoring Kerry, except in the NW as expected. Clinton's last-minute support probably whittled away at Bush quite a bit in the Fayetteville area, which is NW.

Anyway, this thing got really close here, maybe into the hundreds of votes. AR plus NV and NM = 18 Electoral votes, which could put Kerry into the White House. I notice they're going to recount NM and are still talking about trying to do something in NV, too.

[m.standridge]

3. Sorry--I do have something thread-relevant to say

Here in AR in Garland County, I had state tabulations that changed dramatically on the night after the election. I was online, and looking at the Garland County figures. There was an "Unopposed" vote figure of "0" for a period of time. While I watched, that changed to some tens of thousands of votes.
I'd been watching Garland and four other counties pretty closely because they were part of Arkansas Senate District 10, and there was a controversial double race there that undoubtedly affected the status of up to thousands of votes in-state. Oscar Stilley was running for the state senate for that district, while simultaneously supporting an Amendment Four, to abolish the state's "used goods tax." The latter measure was very popular among Democrats and Libertarians. And Stilley's support of the Amendment had made him popular among Dems and Liberts.
Garland county is probably the strongest Libertarian county in the state, and I'd expected to see Harry Browne, the then-Libertarian candiate for President, do relatively well there, as Libertarians do.
But he didn't. Some counties even in rural areas were stronger for Browne than Garland. This was unusual enough to make one raise one's eyebrow.
It also makes me think that the effect of a last-minute State Supreme Court ruling regarding Stilley DID have an effect on the Presidential vote: the Court ruled that Stilley had an ethical conflict--a conflict of interest--in running two campaigns simultaneously and soliciting funds for both his race and Amendment Four. It said no ballots in AR Senate District 10 which had, on them, votes for BOTH Oscar Stilley AND Amendment Four, COULD BE COUNTED.
Now, Senate District 10 includes not only Hot Springs, a relatively sizable town for AR, but also Fort Smith and Van Buren, our third largest metropolitan area. I'm relatively sure that this affected enough votes in the Presidential election here--given this "tip of the iceberg" about Browne's poor showing in Garland County--to have brought it close to a percentage point closer. I believe this state was more like 50.5% for Bush in 2000, rather than 51.3% as officially listed, due to these uncounted ballots.
And, the way this was handled, can also be viewed in the way that "Unopposed" vote was handled. In some precincts, with no funds to "hold" ballots with, ballots simply had to be discared, or listed ONLY in the "Unopposed" column. There simply were TOO MANY Unopposed votes in the District per the number of votes cast in all races, district-wide. This indicated the destruction of ballots. Since it was illegal to count a ballot which had a simultanous Stilley and Amendment Four vote, the clerks in some precincts had simply counted only the "Unopposed" vote, since the Court left it unclear whether ANY votes appearing on such ballots could be counted, since it suggested in its ruling that Stilley may have "unduly influenced election patterns" with his actions.
So, one stat I CAN give you, is that the Garland County "Unopposed" vote changed rapidly, and to a somewhat "suspicious" number. Yet, the clerks who were doing this, were doing it to COMPLY with the law (the last-minute Court ruling), not to defy it. So one can't really say it was "illegal." The Court's vagueness as to "undue influence" and how many races that was considered to have affected, makes it impossible to say the clerks were doing anything illegal.

[jbond56]

5. kick

[senegal1]

6. pretty interesting kick n/t