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It has come to this: In Florida, formerly "The Sunshine State" and henceforth "The Recount State," Republicans are accusing Democrats of actually eating chads. For anyone who has been under a rock since Nov. 8 -- or had the good sense to keep the TV tuned to Gilligan's Island reruns -- a chad is a rectangle that you punch out of a paper ballot to indicate your preference for a candidate.
As Rick Bragg reported in The New York Times on Nov. 18, a Democratic observer in Broward County was allegedly caught stuffing chads down his gullet so that Republicans wouldn't find them on the counting room floor. Apparently, though, not enough ballot consumption was going on: Between Nov. 15-17, Republicans said they had discovered almost 500 chads that had been knocked out of ballots in Broward County.
So if Al Gore does ultimately worm his way into the most powerful post on the planet, he will at least in part owe his exalted position to some ward heeler in flip-flops who bellied up to the ballot box.
SQUEAMISH. Let's be honest: Hasn't the farce in Florida gone on long enough? The recounts -- almost completed in Broward County, proceeding in Palm Beach County, and commencing in Miami-Dade County -- have become too tainted to render a tally in which any right-thinking American can have confidence. While ingesting chads may be on the far end of outrageous behavior by recounters, the rough handling of ballots is reportedly widespread.
And Democratic efforts to micromanage election results don't stop there. Even Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman expressed squeamishness about the disqualification of more than 1,400 absentee ballots -- many of which, it's believed, came from military personnel serving overseas who would've bolstered George W. Bush's numbers.
The partisan recounts should be terminated immediately, and absentee ballots that were disqualified because they lacked a postmark should be reinstated and counted. Whatever rationale for a recount that existed has long since been negated by the partisanship of Democratic election officials and the physical treatment of the ballots themselves.
CORRECT INSTINCT. The villified Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was right to attempt to bring an end to the election bedlam by exercising her discretion and forcing recount results to be reported by Nov. 18. Sure, she's a Bushie, but her instinct to stop the madness was correct -- and her courage in standing up to critics who even attacked her makeup was admirable. And if Florida's Supreme Court Justices -- almost all appointed by former Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles -- overrule her and allows the recounts to proceed, they will share in the taint coloring any Gore victory.
In the end, Al could well squeak past George, and all sides will have to resign themselves to four Gore years. But with the country so evenly divided, provisions should be made in case there are more hair-splitting elections down the road.
A mechanism should be put into place to prevent the Presidency from hanging in the balance while local politicos twist the law and douse each other with mud. One idea: If grounds exist for a recount in a pivotal state, federal marshals should take control of all ballots and voting machines and transport them to military facilities where recounts can be conducted swiftly by men and women trained for just such a situation.
That would help ensure that whoever ultimately wins does so fairly and clearly. Then the new President of the U.S. wouldn't have to scurry into the White House under cover of darkness like a weasel in the night.
Scotti, senior editor for government and sports business, offers his views every week in A Not-So-Neutral Corner, only for BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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