Overlooking The Obvious
by Linda A. Prussen-Razzano

After more political parsing than one person should be forced to endure in their lifetime, I no longer have any patience for it whatsoever. Forget the parsing. Forget the spin. Forget all the superfluous nonsense meant to obscure the reality of a given situation, instead of bringing the particulars into clear focus.

Let us be blunt, shall we?

The media committed a grievous faux pas by announcing Gore's victory in Florida prematurely. How prematurely? Based purely on subjective exit-polling numbers provided by the Viewer News Service, they trumpeted Gore as the presumptive winner before some of the polls had closed in Florida and before the majority of the country had finished voting. Apparently, news analysts learned nothing from George Pataki's 11th hour victory over incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo in 1994.

The media compounded this error by reversing their decision and delegating Florida to Bush. As close as the numbers were, and in consideration of absentee ballots, news hounds should have left the state firmly where it deserved to be - in the undecided column.

Governor Jeb Bush wisely recused himself from the process. His family ties and potential conflicts of interest, not his political affiliation, were enough to warrant his withdrawal.

Conversely, Secretary of State Harris and Attorney General Butterworth wisely refused to recuse themselves from the process. Despite both actively supporting opposing candidates, they were still elected officials with an intensive and sensitive duty to fulfill. If everyone with any kind of interest in the election were asked to recuse him or herself from the process, no one would be left to make decisions.

Vice President Gore astutely exercised his right to request a recount. In truth, the recount process was automatically triggered by the acute margin of "victory." After having received his recount, he should have exited gracefully and waited patiently for the absentee votes to be counted.

Vice President Gore grossly miscalculated in selectively choosing heavily favored Democrat counties as his stomping ground for "fair voting." If he really wanted to be fair and have "every vote count," it wouldn't matter if the votes were Republican or Democrat. Because he chose only those counties where additional potential Gore votes could be gleaned, he revealed his true intent - not to be fair, but to win. He's wrong to presume the majority of Americans don't understand this.

Vice President Gore's team committed an egregious error by issuing the notorious 5-page memorandum, detailing methods for disqualifying absentee military ballots. This was a public relations nightmare, undermining the already flimsy substance of his claim that "every vote" should count. Every vote should count except, it seems, those that might favor Bush.

Governor Bush's team correctly drew a line in the sand. Their decision to accept only machine-counts was risky, but not without benefits. By not demanding a recount, the desired public perception of "staying above the fray" solidified.

Governor Bush's team foolishly initiated their legal wrangles in federal court. This fruitless exercise gained no ground whatsoever, serving only to reinforce state's rights in determining the guidelines for local voting. Governor Bush's team wastefully argued for bending the rules governing the overseas / absentee ballots. If the letter of the law was good enough for the punch ballots, it should be good enough for the overseas/absentee ballots.

Despite intense public pressure to allow the hand-count results, Secretary of State Harris justifiably certified the counties' results by the prescribed, statutory November 14, 2000 deadline.

According to the Democrat legislator who wrote manual recount law, the manual recount option was crafted only for situations where machine failures - not human error - considerably tainted the results. Secretary Harris' decision not to extend the deadline was upheld by the local Democrat district court judge.

The voters of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward Counties vainly presume their votes are more important than other voting citizens in the United States. They naively assume the rest of the country wants to wait while they "discern" the will of the voters by any means possible - up to, but not including, consulting a Ouija board. Outrageous, is it not?

The Supreme Court of Florida arrogantly burst into the process without provocation. By not adhering to established deadlines, they are subverting the rule of law and our respect for the process (sloppy though it may be). By allowing counties to continue under constantly fluctuating guidelines, they fail to protect the rights of "disenfranchised" voters by disenfranchising voters who correctly cast their ballots.

I'm tired of waiting for someone to embellish the key, critical point in this whole, pathetic saga - why we even have deadlines in the first place. The answer is, in truth, quite obvious. Deadlines do not exist for the sake of closure or convenience; deadlines exist because the longer ballots float around in public hands, the greater the potential for abuse, misuse, and fraud. Once the ballots are certified and removed from circulation, their numbers are affixed - they will not change.

This whole situation is no different than a game of poker where the cards are called, parties show their hand, and then the last person wants to rifle through the deck before flipping his cards over. Does anyone doubt they won't find a card or two to help their game?

Dangling chads. Pregnant chads. Dimpled chads. Edible chads. Bouncing chads performing a pantomime of confetti, only to be collected by law enforcement officers as "evidence." Evidence of what? The wasted days of a misspent vote or convenient fraud?

The stage has been set, ladies and gentlemen. After the overseas / absentee ballots were tallied giving Bush a 930 vote lead, pundits advised that the Gore / Lieberman team estimated "picking up" at least 1,000 votes in the DNC's new reliquary. This would be just enough to win the state, and the Presidency.

How utterly convenient. How bloody unlikely. How obvious can you get?

© 2000 Linda Prussen-Razzano