-Caveat Lector-
Winning fair or winning ugly?
Bush shouldn’t fear hand-count of Florida’s disputed votes
By Eric Alterman MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Nov. 15 — Al Gore has made George W. Bush an offer the Texan should
grab with both hands: a peace meeting between the two candidates and a
hand count of the entire Florida vote. Given his now continuous court filings
to prevent full ballot counts, coupled with the partisan behavior of Florida
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Bush is looking more and more like a
man afraid of an honest vote count. Should his minuscule advantage hold
owing to the forced exclusion of any number of recount totals, Bush’s best
hope would be a presidency tarnished beyond repair before he even takes
the oath of office. For beginning last weekend, Bush campaign has
appeared ready to sacrifice every pretense of principle to try to make off
with the main prize.
George Bush should take Al Gore up on his offer. He’ll look like a wimp if
he doesn’t.
TALK ABOUT getting snippy and winning ugly: First the Bush team attacks
Gore and Democrats for considering a move to court on behalf of misled
Palm Beach voters, the next day it jumps into court itself to try to prevent an
honest hand-count of the votes already cast. One day Bush campaigns as
the champion of state’ rights and local control over the power of
dangerously power-hungry federal government, the next day it is seeking to
have a federal court overturn the state of Florida’s constitutional right to
monitor its elections as it sees fit. One day Bush, Baker and company are
demanding a non-partisan solution to the election crisis. The next day,
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Bush delegate to the GOP
convention, fundraiser and campaign co-chair (and close political ally of the
candidate’s brother, Governor Jeb), is seeking to discount locally ordered
manual recounts in order to sneak the new president into office while the
numbers are still being tallied. The court tells her this is unnecessary, so
she fiddles with the deadline a bit, before deciding the entire matter should
go before the state Supreme Court. NOBODY KNOWS
Bush’s strategy is dependent on sowing confusion in the minds of ordinary
Americans. In this regard, it is almost certain to be a success, as the
election count in Florida has become impossible to understand. No one —
and I mean no one — fully understands just how the election of our next
president is being decided. Is Broward County going to recount manually or
not? Is Katherine Harris going to accept the new vote count if they do? Who
won Tuesday’s court decision on this point? What’s going on in Dade
county? Who stands to benefit from a recount in Palm Beach? How do you
count a ballot with two punches? How do you count a ballot that has a
mistaken half-punch and another full-punch. What about the “butterfly ballot”
and the “will of the people” clause in Florida election law? Aren’t they in
conflict, and if so, what is to be done? Which are really more accurate,
machine counts or hand-counts? Didn’t actual hands design the machines?
Which court gets to decide these questions? Nobody knows. MEDIA
INTERFERENCE In every poll so far, the American people have clearly
stated a preference for a fair and clear result, rather than a speedy
questionable one.
A second ally of the Bush efforts to make off with an election they appear to
have lost has been a clear bias on the part of the media. The network pooh-
bahs mistakenly called the election for Bush early Wednesday morning and
ever since, they have been trying to vindicate themselves. The fact that the
first of these calls came from W’s cousin, John Ellis, whom the Fox network
apparently hired in order to help them slant their coverage even more
favorably toward Bush hardly seems to embarrass them. (“I am loyal to my
cousin,” he has written. “I put that loyalty ahead of my loyalty to anyone else
outside my immediate family.”) The Wall Street Journal has gone
predictably ballistic warning of a Gore “coup d’etat” and a “Democratic
legal hurricane ravaging across Florida.” But how to explain the oddly anti-
democratic bias of such nominally good citizens of the New York Times
and the Washington Post? Why have both sides ruled out any legal
remedies for the discounted voters of Palm Beach County, whose true
intentions and legal rights could clearly put Gore in the winner’s circle?
Why, in the words of the Washington Post editorial page, was it “a
poisonous thing to say in these extraordinary and unsettling circumstances”
for William Daley to suggest that Al Gore was the rightful winner of Florida
and the election, when the Bush team has been claiming the same thing
from minute one? And what of the weird coverage in the news stories too?
Why did the Post headline a front-page story on Sunday, “Both Sides
Increase Legal Wrangling As Florida Begins Slow Hand Recount,” when in
fact, only the Bush side had gone to court at that point? (The point was
crucial because all pundits were insisting, at the time, that the worst offense
either side could commit would be to try to win this election through legal,
rather than political means. They were expecting it to be Gore, however, not
Bush.) A TERRIBLE MISTAKE
Again, even without the consistent journalistic malfeasance in the service of
the Bush campaign, it would be impossible for any lay person to
understand by what criteria the selection of our next president will be
determined. Bush is making a terrible mistake by trying to grab the prize
now and worry about his legitimacy later, as his administration will be
crippled by its perceived political weakness from the proverbial git-go.
There is only one simple solution to this crisis, and that is a hand recount of
the entire state of Florida. Former Republican Sen. Connie Mack won his
seat this way in 1988, thereby setting a precedent. It is simple to
understand and will favor neither of the candidates by overcounting one
county against another. It will answer the Bush/Baker complaint about
uniform standards and it will speak to the American people’s clearly stated
preference in every published opinion poll for a fair and clear result, rather
than a speedy questionable one. TIME IS ON OUR SIDE There is only one
simple solution to this crisis, and that is a hand recount of the entire state of
Florida.
Time is not a problem. On Tuesday morning, knowing he was likely to fail in
court, James Baker insisted that the Bush campaign was trying to end the
hand-recounts because of his concern about international financial
markets. As he was speaking, The Dow and NASDAQ averages were up
a combined 240 points. They ended the day up more than 300. That hardly
looks like a panic to me. If the Bush forces feel they deserve a recount in
Iowa, Wisconsin or New Mexico, well then, they can have them, done
simultaneously with Florida’s. The process can be easily observed by both
sides as well as the media in all of these places, and the whole mess will
be over in a week The Gore campaign has been reluctant to call for this
solution, perhaps because they are still hoping that the law suits of angry
Palm Beach County voters who mistakenly cast ballots for Pat Buchanan
will bear fruit. Perhaps they will, but there is nothing to stop these citizens
from pursuing their rights without the help of the Democrats. To call for a full
hand-count of Florida and any other state where the vote difference is less
than say, two percent of voters, would send a signal to Americans that Al
Gore wants to solve this crisis in a simple, fair and relatively speedy
fashion. It would be an offer anyone seeking legitimacy in the American
presidency could hardly refuse.
Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and a regular contributor to
MSNBC on the Internet.
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