Subject: Re: TAN: Holy Fucking Shit From: jsn@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) Organization: Cynics Central Reply-To: jsn@concentric.net Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan NNTP-Posting-Host: ts028d07.chi-il.concentric.net (206.173.190.115) On Fri, 10 Nov 2000 14:20:55 -0500, Jamie Bowden wrote: >The whole thing is a nightmare, and neither of these candidates are worth >tearing our country apart over. Oh, please. This is addressed to you, but you're just a convenient target for me to release all the ire I've accumulated on this subject over the last 24 hours or so. Last night, I was beginning to exercise myself into this position, too, this odd conception that a contested election is somehow tearing our country apart, doing some damage to the electoral process, or in some way having a significant and negative effect. By the time I woke up, and increasingly through today, I realized that all this histrionic posturing is just that-- histrionic posturing. Get over it, already. You're right. These two aren't worth tearing the country apart, but that's not by any stretch of the imagination what we're doing. What the hell do you think this is, anyway? Some third rate banana republic where any hint of problems is cause for people to start sewing up new flags and stocking up on canned goods? No, by God, it is not. This is the United States of America, goddammit. We do not crumble or shred ourselves over minor little procedural squabbles like this. We have a body of law. We have a court system, ostensibly packed with the best and the brightest legal minds in the world, to interpret the best legal system in the world. We have the collective wisdom to realize that extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary scrutiny, and _may_ require extraordinary solutions. Right now, there has been very little legislation of any significance. The vote recounts and scrutiny being given to those close states is Right And Proper. It is right and proper because it is mandated in the constitutions of those states for elections counted in a given margin. Hand counts are right and proper because the punch card ballots have a known mechanical problem, detectable by human eyes but not optical card scanner. In a normal election, the error is negligible, but in a close election, they may become significant. Hence, the recounts. The election results in Florida are being held because in an election this close, that is the law. The margin of victory is slim enough for the absentee ballots to tip the scales. Of course the results will not be certified until the 17th of November. And if Gore continues to press a claim past that point, he risks not the social or political fabric of the United States of America, but mostly his own reputation for elections future. He's already shown the ability to beat a Republican in a popular election. He's shown that, but for a bad ballot design, he can beat a Republican in an Electoral College election. He'll be back in 2004, or 2008, I suspect, if he doesn't piss too many people off right now. But I'm going to say that again-- Gore is not risking the social or political fabric of the United States. If Gore and Bush are not worth tearing the nation apart, then by the same token, they are not important enough to tear it apart. We _have_ had contested elections before, dammit, and we'll have them again. Andrew Jackson threw a hissy fit when he lost with a popular victory. He came back. The Hayes-Tilden election was so rife with corruption and partisanship we'll probably never know what the hell really happened, and it was decided in Hayes' favor only because his party had more people on the decision committee than Tilden's. And this was in the aftermath of the Civil Goddam War, during the Fucking Reconstruction Era-- a fairly touchy time in American politics. You know what? At no point did the Union start to shred or crumble under the terrible strain of an electoral squabble. And you know what else? This sort of thing is hardly foreign to Florida, either. Florida appears to have a long history of court-contested elections. Miami mayor. Volusia County Sheriff. There are dueling precedents, of course. One Florida ruling gives a judge the right to do damn well whatever he pleases (up to and including a re-vote, according to a former Florida Supreme Court justice) in order to make sure that the election results adequately and correctly reflect "the will of the people." Another decision says that confusion in the polling booth does not outweigh the responsibility of the voter to educate himself. But the mere fact that we even have dueling precedents means that the situation of court-contested elections comes up frequently enough that we actually _have_ not only a legal process to determine the remedy, but a body of legal _expertise_ on the subject! We may not have a decision tomorrow, or even on November 18th. But by January 20th, we'll have an inauguration, and whichever candidate is president at that point, he will have become president in full compliance with the law, even if it takes a little creativity, ingenuity, and off-the-cuff thinking by the Florida court system. If it takes a few days or weeks extra to determine what is the right thing to do in this situation, then by all means let us take those extra days or weeks. Let us not shirk from an inquiry into the will of the people, for fear that the inquiry itself will shred a nation _built_ on he will of the people. The supposition is absurd at the core. And on January 21st, we will wake up, and find ourselves still the first among nations in the free world; still the world's sole remaining super power; still the dominating factor on the global markets; still the largest industrial nation; still the world's most striking engineering and scientific innovators. "Tear our country apart," my ass. -- John S. Novak, III jsn@concentric.net The Humblest Man on the Net