Way out here in Hawai’i, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback as Florida struggles to wrap up its contentious part of the national election and determine who the next president will be. But the political, constitutional and legal debates
Way out here in Hawai’i, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback as Florida
struggles to wrap up its contentious part of the national election and
determine who the next president will be. But the political, constitutional and
legal debates are at once riveting, nerve-wracking and absolutely essential, so
let the second-guessing flow.
To that end, every stop should be pulled to
ensure that Florida’s election was fair. There is no evidence of willful
tampering with the process, but there is plenty to indicate the state’s voting
process was virtually set up for failure. Ballots used in the Sunshine State
were confusing, causing some voters to make their presidential choice
incorrectly and making others wonder after leaving the polls if they’d really
voted for their favorite candidate. As a result, thousands of ballots are in
question. That’s a monumental concern in a race of such importance, with
Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore separated by a handful of votes
and the eventual winner of Florida gaining the necessary electoral votes to win
the presidency.
Voters should not be subjected to a ballot, like the one in
Florida, that tricks the unwary. The state’s citizens and the entire nation
deserve better. It would be wrong for Americans to always wonder if the gaffes
of election officials and voters in one state tilted the selection of the most
powerful officeholder in the world, and for either Bush or Gore to take office
under a cloud of doubt.
A fair resolution would be a revote by voters
whose ballots were invalidated because they stumbled over the poor design of
Florida’s ballot. Only the voters who were wronged should have a second chance.
Reopening the election to all Floridians would heap more controversy on the
process, since voters who had initially chosen Ralph Nader – for example – as a
protest of the two major candidates might switch to Gore or Bush in hope of
preventing one or the other from taking the White House.
Talk of lawsuits
challenging Florida’s vote has led to the Bush campaign threatening court
injunctions and all but accusing Gore of being a poor sport. Both sides are
entitled to such maneuvering. Imagine, though, the rhetorical chest-thumping if
Bush was the one barely on the outside looking in and the conspiracy theorists
residing in the dark right-wing recesses of the Republican Party were clamoring
over the injustice of it all.
But this is not a question of partisanship.
The issue is fairness and the fundamental principles of democracy. Upholding
both is more important than who wins and who loses.
