Volume 3, number 6, June 2001 Another Last Word on the Election: It Was Rigged Now that the dust has settled, perhaps it is time to take a cold, rational look at what really happened in the election last fall. Some of us, like Scott Allen, may have felt that the media went overboard with "the near-hysterical hype from the Floridian Hogwash Holocaust," (Ester Republic, January 2001, p. 3), but we should not let this obscure the fact that the election in Florida was essentially rigged, and that is a very serious thing for a democracy. A number of predominately Democratic counties in Florida were equipped with older punch card voting machines which produced a significantly higher percentage of unreadable ballots than the more modern optical scanner machines used in predominately Republican counties (a difference of 1.53 % vs. 0.3% was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer). This was one of a number of irregularities in the Florida elections. It may not seem like much, but this is precisely the kind of subtle manipulation that can change the result of a very close election, decided by a few hundred votes. As Chuck Davis pointed out (Ester Republic, December 2000, p. 3), the only fair solution, the one adopted in nearly every other democratic country in the world, is a meticulous, court-supervised hand recount of all the disputed ballots. This is precisely what the Florida Supreme Court ordered, and it is also the solution that has consistently been adopted here in Alaska, where we have had a number of very close elections. Nor was time really a problem; in the 1960 elections, for example, Hawaii’s electoral votes were changed as late as January as a result of such a recount. In Florida, however, Bush was able to block the hand recount with a series of court maneuvers and challenges. Why else than because if all the votes were fairly counted, he would have lost the election? Five U.S. Supreme Court justices went along with Bush and voted to override the Florida Supreme Court and stop the recount. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who disagreed with this decision, points out in her dissent that throughout its history the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld the principle of federal non-intervention in state law, deferring to state courts in questions of interpretation of state law except where it conflicted with a federal right or a federal law. The five conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to stop the recount all had a particularly strong, life-long commitment to states’ rights and to federal non-intervention in state law. Nevertheless, they hypocritically sacrificed that commitment and voted to override a state Supreme Court that was interpreting state law and regulating its own state’s election, because that is what it took to get Bush the presidency. By doing so, these five U.S. Supreme Court justices proved themselves to be nothing more than political hacks who were willing to sacrifice their principles in order to win an election. Justice Ginsburg’s stinging dissent pointedly omits the customary expression of respect for the court at the end of her opinion. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stevens, who also dissented, says that, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Even the conservative Justice Souter, who was actually appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by George Bush, Sr., refused to go along with the travesty of justice and voted against the decision to stop the recount, calling the decision "erroneous," saying that the issues were "straightforward," and stating that "there is no justification for denying the State the opportunity to try to count all disputed ballots...." As a result of this mess we have a so-called President of the United States who lost the popular vote, who would probably have lost the electoral college as well if all the votes had been fairly counted, who only won because his brother Jeb was able to rig the election for him in Florida, and because five political hacks on a partisan Supreme Court were willing to vote hypocritically against the legal principles they had supported all their lives in order to get him elected. Nevertheless, in a democracy, as in baseball, you don’t argue with the umpire in the middle of the game. The process, the game, is just too important. I’ve traveled a bit on six continents, enough to realize that the stability we enjoy in this country is a result of the national respect that we have for that process. That is why this country accepted the Supreme Court decision. In much of the rest of the world, people are shooting each other over issues like this, and make no mistake, it’s little folks like us, the ones without a lot of power, who suffer when things fall apart. Hans Mölders may celebrate the overthrow of Roman politicians by the mob (Ester Republic, May/June 2001, p. 5), but in the centuries which followed the fall of Rome, appropriately called the Dark Ages, it was the little folks who suffered the most, under the unlimited power of whichever local tyrant had the biggest club. The building of a stable democratic consensus is a painstakingly slow process by which little folks gradually establish norms and limits on the powerful, on the guys with the big clubs, taking back power and control over their own lives. We should have no illusions about the fact that George Bush represents the guys with the big clubs. He is a puppet for some of the most ruthlessly rich and powerful people in the country. His cabinet is collectively the wealthiest in U.S. history, a cabinet of multi-millionaires, and no matter what sops he may throw to normal people like us, 42.5% of his "tax cut" will go to the richest 1% of Americans, crippling social services, education, public universities, and basic scientific research for years to come in this country. Bush represents a very hard-core, old-fashioned, authoritarian vision of America, a society that is much more tightly and rigidly controlled, in which lower-income people like myself will be much more seriously limited, working harder and harder just to make ends meet, for the benefit of the rich and powerful. The Democrats, on the other hand, at least tried to offer some kind of self-realization to everyone in society with an economy which, to some extent, was working for everyone, with increased minimum wages, student loans, earned income benefits and job training, with increased funding for public education which attempted to give a good education to everyone in society and not just to a select few, with support for unions, by trying to save Social Security and to expand health care benefits to cover things like vaccines for children and prescription drugs for the elderly. These are the kinds of things that help all of us: me, you, my mom, your dad, everyone.... A majority of Americans voted against George Bush. This so-called President of the United States will never be respected any more than a so-called world champion baseball team would be if it won the World Series in a rigged game with a crooked umpire. Nevertheless, if we, the majority of Americans, are to successfully oppose this ruthless new administration of the rich and powerful that threatens us all, we must learn that electing a president is not about voting one’s conscience, it is about building a majority consensus. Our actions have consequences. Bush could not have won without Nader. None of us can afford to sit like a spoiled child in the corner and say, "the game is going to be played my way or I won’t play." The stakes are too important. We must each have our say in an open process, but when all is said and done, we must come together on the common ground that unites us, the majority of Americans who oppose and voted against Bush and who were disenfranchised by the manipulations of this rigged election. | ||
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