Bush’s Mandate

* Your April 5 editorial, “Cause for Compromise,” misses the point. Forget the dimpled chads and discarded ballots, and focus just on the 6 million official votes. Any time you count that many items by any means, errors will creep in. The margin for George W. Bush was 1,784 (out of around 6 million votes) in the first machine count. His official margin of 537 votes was far smaller. Any reputable statistician will tell you that the accuracy of a margin so small is 50-50.

Thus, we still do not know with any confidence who actually won the 2000 Florida election. And that means that all of the jury-rigged methods Bush used, from his brother’s threat to name his own slate of electors to his “appointment” as president by his father’s appointee, Justice Clarence Thomas, strongly do undermine the legitimacy of the most fraudulent White House occupant since Rutherford B. Hayes.

THOMAS E. BRAUN

Palmdale

*

Let me see if I can parse the logic of The Times’ editorial. Bush garners 48% of the popular vote in 2000, yet he has “no mandate,” right? By that logic, Bill Clinton, who garnered only 43% of the popular vote in 1992, must have had much less of a mandate, right?

Sounds like fuzzy math to me.

ERIC PETERKOFSKY

Sherman Oaks