Interesting to see the strong trend during the recount in Florida, for many
more Gore votes than Bush votes to be validated out of those that had
presumably previously been excluded.
This is presumably an automated recount, as the Democrats are now calling
for manual recounts, but perhaps with discussion about which papers
rejected by the counting machines, should go in a second time. The details
of the methodology may be important. Are these machines optical readers?
It suggests that modern automated vote counting is biased against the
demographic groups that tended to vote for Gore.
What can this be? Does it imply that Gore's vote on a national basis was
probably higher than it was?
Presumably he has gained from ballot papers being included in the recount,
that had some blemish on them from the point of view of the impartial rules
of the computer, a tick instead of a cross, or whatever.
Gore's supporters presumably had a tendency to lack assertive "middle
class" social skills, may not have negotiated the ballot paper so
effectively, may not have had the confidence to have asked for a
replacement, if they had made a mistake on the first one, may have got
flustered etc.
May not have insisted that the polls were still open 3 minutes before the
closing time, when the officials were clearing up and did not want to be
bothered with a couple of old black people, who were late because one of
them had just come from their unsocial cleaning job, or because they had
arthritis and could not afford pain killers that do not cause gastric erosion.
The 19,000 disfranchised votes in Palm Beach are also part of the same
social problem.
So this is an example of the principle that a bourgeois right, a narrow,
mechanical right, exercised in disregard of the fact that everyone is
different, is in fact a right that is inferior by comparison with the
rights of people as organic members of a social network.
The closer the microscope is applied to what actually happened in Florida,
even if fraud is not proved, the more detail there is likely to be, showing
the inherent class bias of a system based on bourgeois right.
Liberals contesting the electoral result may not draw attention to the
class implications. Marxist-leaning politically-concerned individuals
should use opportunities to expand this debate, and shift the focus of this
whole ridiculous embarrassment for the competence of the USA (I am writing
from outside, you appreciate) on to the social implications of how the
democratic system works as a whole, how efficient it is in really
representing peoples views, who benefits.
Even "For whom?" as Lenin suggested always asking. But not so stridently
that other people are repelled. The art is to find ways of connecting the
general to the particular, not only philosophically but in terms of
effective political contributions. Dogmatic marxism is useless in a modern
bourgeois democracy.
Certainly a system based on narrow fragmented bourgeois right, lubricated
by billions of dollars of corporate donations, is not self-evidently
democratic from all points of view, despite the assertion of one of the
members of the Florida recount invigilatory panel, that 90 miles south of
them, in Cuba, people do not have elections at all (!) Perhaps he could be
invited to go on a free fact-finding holiday to help build friendship
between the US and Cuban peoples.
Presumably a hand count, with a discussion over contested votes, might well
favour working people still further.
The electoral system is an economic question, a class question, but it can
only be exposed by applying the marxist distinction between bourgeois
democratic rights and social rights in a way that brings it out in
understandable terms.
Chris Burford
London
