The Purdue Exponent


Wednesday 11/8/2000	5 day quick link 11/1 \| 11/2 \| 11/3 \| 11/6 \| 11/7

Presidential race remains undecided

From Staff and Wire Reports

The last time the Republicans held the House, Senate and presidency was after the 1952 election. As of early this morning, that was a possibility but not definite.

In the end, after 4:15 a.m. EST, it all came down to Florida. The networks said the state was Bush’s and it would put him over the top. AP’s analysis showed the narrowest of margins with final votes still being tallied.

Bush was poised to claim his prize, but reports showing a 1,200-vote margin with 99.9 percent of precincts reporting stalled the announcement. By 4 a.m., neither candidate had made a public announcement about the outcome.

Florida had been the epicenter of the campaign and Tuesday night was chaotic. At one point news organizations said Gore was the winner, but they backtracked as more votes were counted and Bush eased ahead.

Deeply divided voters were keeping Congress under GOP control, by a razor-thin margin.

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Republican incumbent wins 26th District race

With 9,086 votes, or 63.66 percent, Sue Scholer won the race for State Representative for District 26 Tuesday night.

Scholer, a Republican from West Lafayette, will return to the senate for her 10th year in a row after defeating Democratic candidate Brad Windler, who got 5,186 votes.

Scholer said she will focus on implementing the plans outlined by the Educational Roundtable, which aim to increase the academic standards for Hoosier students in grades K-12. She also plans to bring more computers and technology into classrooms throughout the state.

"This is a budget session, and that is always important for those of us representatives of communities with institutions of higher education as far as getting programs funded," Scholer said. "The budget affects students ... it determines whether or not they raise tuition and what kind of staff and resources is available to you."

Scholer spent Election Day at home paying bills and then went out to lunch with her husband, saying that as an incumbent she had a sizeable advantage in terms of name recognition.

Windler spent the day visiting polling places in the district, hoping to sway undecided voters on their way in.

"I had one guy come up to me and just say, 'You know why? Because you're here.' So I think that counts for something," Windler said.

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Purdue declines review of surveillance program

When the federal government asked Purdue’s computer department to help debug an Internet surveillance program, Purdue declined.

Purdue was one of nearly a half dozen universities that declined when the Justice Department asked if the University would be interested in conducting a test of a controversial computer-monitoring device called Carnivore.

"A number of people who work in security and civil liberties heard about Carnivore … it bothered a lot of people that it was so secretive," said Gene Spafford, a professor of computer science at Purdue.

A contact from the government called Spafford about five weeks ago and asked if Purdue’s computer experts would be interested in participating in the project.

Spafford, after talking to colleagues, turned down the job for a number of reasons. First, he said, computer researchers at Purdue are too busy to have the project finished by the end of next week, which is when the Justice Department wants a report.

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Purdue reschedules women’s game

The start time for the women’s basketball game against Eastern Michigan in the preseason WNIT has been pushed back to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

The game originally had a 2 p.m. tipoff, but after a 1 p.m. kickoff time was set for the football team’s game at Michigan State on Saturday, the women’s game was delayed to let fans watch the football game on television before heading to Mackey Arena.

"I think it will be a fun day for Purdue sports for the simple fact that we can all watch the football game now," said Coach Kristy Curry. "I’m as excited as anybody about that."

It is important for the Boilers to have good attendance at Mackey Arena for the preseason WNIT because attendance plays a role in determining whether Purdue will host the third and fourth rounds of the tournament, should they make it that far.

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