No end in sight
As one friend said in a recent e-mail, “The whole affair has rendered the BBC’s News 24 channel into a viable alternative to conventional comedy channels.” I know what he means.
Another commented recently, “So far I think Gore is in the right, but I won’t respect him much if he goes to the courts.” My response to that was to say it would depend on why he went to court. It is moot anyway, since G.W. has been the first to leap for the legal option, to try to stop a hand-counting of the vote in Florida.
In 1997, in the run up to the UK general election, Gore Vidal commented on Tony Blair’s tendency to ask the voters to trust him to the effect that “In America if a politician says ‘Trust me’ we check our wallets”. Having watched James Baker at the weekend, I can see why.
The former Secretary of State was explaining why the Bush campaign wanted to block further recounts in Florida. At one point he said that the vote had been counted, which it has not. Possibly a few thousand votes are still to be considered, postal votes from US citizens living abroad. Since the gap between Gore and Bush is certainly less than a thousand at the moment, it would be foolhardy to predict a result before all the votes are in.
Nevertheless, Bush is determined to claim victory, despite the fact that, leaving Florida and other “too-close to call” states out of the picture, Gore is actually in the lead in terms of both the popular vote and the electoral college (255 to 246).
The Bush camp claims that the Democrats’ call for, inter alia, hand counting of the ballots is “undermining democracy”. Baker claimed that “the manual vote count sought by the Gore campaign would not be more accurate than an automated count,” and suggested that hand counts would be prone to biased counting:
The potential for human error, or the potential for mischief, is so great in these hand counts that it skews the results.
Which is very odd, since G.W. has signed Texas legislation specifying that hand counts should be used to settle disputed elections. (Perhaps there is a clause saying that this should only be done if it would favour the Republicans.)
The contrast between efficient, unbiased machines which do not make mistakes and biased, fallible hand counts is something which sounds good, but is not necessarily true.
As wired.com reports, the technology in use in the controversial Florida ballots is hardly cutting edge and, if the voter is not able to completely punch a hole, can easily lead to votes not being counted. It also seems to me to be a fairly damning comment on America that a former Secretary of State apparently believes that any citizens who would count the vote by hand are likely to be corrupt.
Meanwhile, and less widely reported over here, there are other states in which the result is as yet far from clear, and there are reports that the Republicans may mount legal challenges in some states where Gore has won by a narrow margin.
What a mess! Have you noticed, by the way, that President Clinton has seemed fairly amused in some recent comments on all this? Perhaps he’s thinking that this, at least, is one cock-up that no one can blame on him.
The consolation for those of use who are not Americans is that it might stop, for a little while, US politicians posturing as representatives of the world’s finest democracy. This has always seemed to me a slightly peculiar claim since the very point of having an electoral college is that it isn’t truly democratic; the US’s founding fathers had something of a horror of ‘mob rule’ — in other words, democracy.
If the events of the past week were taking place anywhere other than America, the US would be making loud noises deploring such a shoddily organised election. If it were in certain parts of the world, US gunboats might already be on their way…
Addendum
As I was finishing this off, the news came in that the Bush attempt to stop hand counts has been thrown out by a federal judge; meanwhile, the (Bush-supporting) Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, has ruled that Tuesday’s deadline to finish certifying the votes will stand — but, on the other hand, a federal judge hearing Democrat voters’ complaints about the allegedly confusing ballot papers has already ruled that the state cannot certify the result until the case has been heard. It looks like all we need is popcorn and beer and we’ll be entertained for weeks to come.
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