By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, www.originalsources.com)
November 17, 2000
If there is one principle left in our culture which most Americans can agree with, regardless of their religion or lack of religion, it's the importance of fairplay. A nation that spends billions of dollars playing one game or another had nothing but contempt generally for the sore loser.
That is a factor all sides would do well to remember in this new climate of pregnant, dimpled and swinging door chads which may select the next president of the United States.
The Supreme Court of Florida yesterday issued an "interim order in this matter" which states:
"We have considered the Petition and it appears that the relif sought on the question of whether the Canvassing Board may conduct a manual recount of the votes cast for President and Vice President has been answered in the affirmative by the Circuit Courts of Leon and Palm Beach County. At present, this is binding legal authority on this issue and there is no legal impediment to the recounts continuing. Thus, Petitioners are authorized to proceed with the manual recount.
What this one paragraph order does not deal with is the fairness issue. Are we really going to allow the next president of the United States to be selected by a process in which the Democrats are allowed to count ballots one way in their predominately Democrat counties, while not permitting the Republicans to go out and do likewise?
Although Al Gore "offered" to allow the Republicans to manually count the entire state, the law does not provide for such an event. After t he first three precincts manually recounted, it is the canvassing board, not the opposing candidate that has to request additional manual counting. So, at best, what is happening is that the manner of votes verified in Florida is different in different counties.
Can a president chosen in such an unfair manner govern? Yesterday the networks reported that 78 "chads" were found on the flour after the last "counting" episode.
Manufacturers of the equipment used in the stylus punched ballots uniformly warn that the ballots deteriorate with each handling. Yes-trday, after the manual recounters had finished, 78 of the chad were picked up and saved as evidence in the inevitable lawsuits that will occur if this election is decided through such blatant ballot tampering.
At this writing no one seems to know how many ballots will have come in from overseas by midnight, Friday. Rep. Joe Scarborough, a conservative Republican from Florida's first district said on Fox news the other day that the majority of those absentee vote would be coming from his district and would be overwhelmingly republican.
If Rep. Scarborough is right, George W. Bush could pick up enough votes to overcome the Gore votes created by Democrats' manually counting the fragile ballots.
The reason why Florida and other states went to the machine counted, hole punch system was to improve the accuracy and speed of the ballot counting. The ballots are not designed to be hand counted - and consequently often the decisions are arbitrary.
The Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" notes today: "The squads of trial lawyers that American Trial Lawyers Association called forth are smothering the state's vote in litigation. This has the advantage of giving the operation a patina of legitimacy, looking like you are operating inside the system of laws when in fact Florida's procedures are being exploited with the least admirable tactics of the trial lawyer bar: venue shopping for favorable Democratic counties, court shopping for favorable judicial decisions, and relentless spinning of a press hungry to fill its 24-hour cycle."
Until this week-end most Americans, while disturbed by the events in Florida, have patiently waited for those overseas ballots which probably will definitively decide the issue one way or the other.
While the American people have tolerated oral sex in the Oval Office, spin doctors on the public payroll that "solved" the president's PR problem by destroying women - Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, Kathleen Willey, etc., somehow I doubt they will let Al Gore get away with being a poor loser.
I suspect we are going to find out between now and Thanksgiving just how far Al Gore is willing to go with Saul Alinsky tactics to occupy the White House. A lot is riding on the Absentee Ballots of the military people in Florida.
To Comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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