jerseyhoya wrote:I don't get it. Them correcting the improper initial report?
There's a lot more to the story. I just posted the initial news report. I thought you might already know about Siegelman.
Here is a wikipedia summary:
Riley's victory was controversial, and caused many commentators to recall the Florida election recount of 2000.[11] [12] Initial returns showed Riley narrowly losing to Siegelman. Siegelman gave a victory speech on election night, and the Associated Press initially declared him the winner.[13] However, Republican officials in Baldwin County - one of the few counties where all of the county officers in charge of elections were Republicans - conducted a recount and retabulation of that county's votes after midnight, and after Democratic Party observers had gone home for the night. [14] This violated Alabama law, which requires that counting of ballots take place in the presence of the designated observers of a party or candidate.[15][16] Approximately 6,000 votes initially credited to Siegelman were either removed from the total or reassigned to Riley in the recount, turning the statewide result in Riley's favor. [17] Local Republican officials claimed the earlier returns were the result of a "computer glitch."[18] Democratic requests to repeat the recount with Democratic observers present were rejected by Alabama courts and then-Attorney General William H. Pryor, Jr. Siegelman and his supporters complained that these judges (and Pryor) were either elected as Republicans or appointed by Republican presidents.[19] After over a week of fights in courtrooms and in the media, Siegelman, on November 18, 2002, made a televised address, saying that, "I've decided that a prolonged election controversy would hurt Alabama, would hurt the very people that we worked so hard to help," and abandoned his efforts to secure a recount of the Baldwin County vote, allowing Riley to take office.[20]
In response to the allegation of a "computer glitch," Siegelman later stated: "[N]ow one would expect that if there was some kind of computer glitch or some kind of computer programming error, that it might have affected more than one race, but it further raised suspicions about vote stealing when the votes came back and they were certified, and the only person who lost votes was Don Siegelman, the Democrat, and the only person who gained votes was Bob Riley, the Republican."[21]
A number of analyses of the competing claims were undertaken at the time, with conflicting results. In one such study, Auburn University political scientist James H. Gundlach concluded that a detailed analysis of the returns, compared with 1998 results and returns from undisputed counties, "strongly suggests a systematic manipulation of the voting results."[22] The Gundlach study also suggested a mechanism by which this could have been effected, and proposed a conclusion that Siegelman won. An earlier analysis reported by the Associated Press, using a less sophisticated comparison of gubernatorial and legislative returns, was claimed to indicate that the revised returns were more accurate, and that Riley probably won.[23] The Gundlach paper offers a refutation of the conclusions of the Associated Press study.
