"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything."
- Joseph Stalin
With the Electoral College meeting as this is being written, and
barring the possibility that 3 electors might adopt 'profiles in courage'
and switch their votes over to our popularly elected President Al Gore, it
appears that G.W. Bush is destined to become the new Present Dent of the
United States.
This is a bitter pill to swallow for the majority of Americans still
operating under the illusion that we live in a Democracy, especially
following the aftermath of the 'coup' staged by the United States Supreme
Court.
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Indeed, as comic & social pundit Jon Stewart
noted, "The Black voters in Florida are rightfully filing
lawsuits because their votes were not counted, yet now it turns
out that 100% of the Black vote has been counted, and that is in
the form of Justice Clarence Thomas."
But apart from the U.S. Supreme Court's undoubtedly 'partisan'
decision, it appears G.W. Bush is destined to become our next
President simply because possession is 9/10 of the law, and he has
possessed all along, in shifting
tabulations, a small numerical lead in Florida.
Add to this the masterful way Bush's lawyers stifled the recounts
that would have counted and the troublesome posture of the Florida
legislature
to set aside the vote of its people, and you have in a nutshell a
process that while constitutional, cannot be viewed as anything
but un-democratic. |
This is why I prefer to regard G.W. Bush not as our President-elect but
rather our 'President-appoint'. Ironically, by the time all states have
certified their totals later this month, Gore's plurality in the popular
vote will likely be somewhere between a quarter of a million and 400,000
votes.
Disregarding the unusual phenomenon of 'Jews for Buchanan', there can be no
doubt that more voters in Florida went to the polls intending to vote for
Gore than Bush.
Indeed, in a report published Nov. 19th in the Orlando Sentinel, Sean
Holton and Jeff Kunerth analyzed the voting systems used in Florida and
found that the most dependable - pen-marked, precinct-tabulated ballots, a
system that allows a bad ballot to be kicked back immediately to the voter
so it can be corrected - was used mostly in counties where Bush was strong.
The least dependable system, punch-card ballots, was used in counties where
Gore was strong.
"If all 67 counties had used the same type of system, Holton & Kunerth
conclude, "Gore might have gone ahead of Bush in the totals for Nov. 7 by a
margin of more than 1,700 votes. This scenario emerges whether voters used
the most reliable system or the least reliable - as long as it was used
uniformly statewide."
While Gore's popular vote plurality has no constitutional or legal
significance, in fact it has the most significance of all. Politically and
morally, if not constitutionally, Gore's popular vote plurality makes all
the difference in the world.
As Bush prepares to take office next month he is doing so by virtue of a
series of maneuvers that though legal & constitutional, are nonetheless
contemptible.
The moral & political legitimacy of his victory remains to be earned.
Bush Bi-Partisanship and The Best Congress Money Can Buy
While G. W. Bush has given much lip-service to the notion of creating a
bi-partisan coalition in his new Administration, words recently spoken by
Vice President Dick Cheney are quite disturbing.
The day the Supreme Court handed down its decision Cheney said that he and
Bush had been "successful" because their "agenda of issues" appealed to
"the American people."
Moreover, word circulating that Bush intends to appoint Russell Harding to
the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, if true, would amount to
anything BUT a spirit of bi-partisan cooperation. As Michigan's Director of
Environmental Quality under John Engler, Harding has done more damage in
terms of cutting out public participation and opening Michigan's valuable
resources to corporate plundering than any official in recent memory.
Meanwhile in Congress, prior to their recess for the holidays, some 30
anti-environment riders stud the now-abandoned Labor-Health and Human
Services spending bill, reports the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
These range from a provision that would delay the Environmental Protection
Agency's dioxin reassessment, to one that would provide exemptions for
distilleries from the Clean Air Act, to another that would
undermine Clean Water Act requirements for sewer overflows.
Chemical companies have dumped $7.1 million into candidate and party
coffers thiselection cycle; the beer, wine, and liquor industry has given
$8.4 million; electric utilities, $14.4 million, and oil and gas companies,
$22.8 million.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay
(R-Tex.) blocked the Labor-HHS bill not because of these anti-environment
provisions, but because of another measure that would implement a
long-languishing Labor Department standard meant to reduce cases of
crippling repetitive-stress injuries in the workplace. The Chamber of
Commerce and other business groups are fiercely opposed to this
"ergonomics" standard. Hastert gets 93 percent of his campaign cash from
business interests; DeLay, 94 percent.
What Shall We Do Now?
A poll taken by CNN shows that half of the country is not happy, satisfied,
nor certain about G.W. Bush becoming our next President - no, according to
the poll they are "relieved".
We shall see how they respond in 100 days; which, as it rightfully should
be, I am willing to give our new President-appoint the benefit of a doubt
on.
But people must not forget the facts.
- The U.S. Supreme Court installed a president who did not win the election.
- The Miami Sentinel has vowed to file a Freedom of Information Act request
to count those 12,000 ballots that never got counted in Florida. And when
they do and Al Gore is determined to be the actual winner not only of
Florida but the popular vote, will the majority of our country still be
relieved?
- George W. Bush and his allies in Congress, the Florida legislature and
the U.S. Supreme Court have successfully staged a coup - an overthrow of
the will of the people.
- The theft of this election didn't just start with Jeb Bush's
girlfriend/Bush for President Co-Chairwoman/Bush delegate to the Republican
Convention/Secretary of State Katherine Harris's refusal to count the
ballots. Months ago, Jeb and Katherine sought to eliminate as many black
voters as possible from the voting rolls.
A lawsuit filed in Leon County, Fla.by African American leaders contests
the presidential election, charging George W. Bush was declared certified
winner in Florida only after minorities were systematically denied the vote.
Since Election Day, national and Florida civil rights groups have received
hundreds of reports of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement related to
race and ethnicity. Charges from African Americans, Haitian Americans and
Latino voters include claims of disparate treatment and the outright denial
of their right to vote.
For example, in Miami, where there is a growing Haitian population, many of
the Haitian Americans who could not speak English, who speak Creole were
not provided with assistance, and when they did have someone there to
assist them in Creole, they were denied that opportunity.
The other thing that investigators found is that African Americans were
showing up to the polls with their voter registrations cards and
identification, which is required in the state of Florida. Many had voted
in the primary and all of a sudden, their names were not on the voter list.
They were told, "Well, your name is not on the list, you'll have to go into
this line over here to have your status verified." And inevitably, what
would happen is that the line would be so long, that those people would
ultimately be denied the right to vote because they couldn't get the call
through to the board of supervisors to verify
their status.
The same thing happened in particular in Broward County. One woman went to
a polling place she had gone to for several years in the past and during
the primary election. On Nov. 7, she shows up to that same high school, and
it was not being used as a polling place. She didn't get notice; she went
to four other places to figure out where she needed to vote. By the time
she got to the fourth place, they told her, "You're not on the list here
either, and by the way, it's 7 o'clock, it's too late to vote anyway."
- The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the counting of the ballots and not only
violated their own opinion but also the law in doing so. They are allowed
to grant a stay only if "irrevocable, irreparable harm" would happen if the
votes were counted. Since when does the counting of our citizens' votes
cause "irreparable harm"?
Looking Forward -
Solace in the Nightmare
We do have a few things to look forward to in the aftermath of this
election.
First, thanks to the 5-4 Supreme Court decision stating their allegiance to
the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, we can look forward to
more litigation on these grounds.
As reporter Carl Bernstein noted, "The real equal protection case doesn't
concern uniform tabulation standards so much as the issues of equality
involving why one in three black voters in some Florida precincts were not
allowed to vote."
Secondly, out of this, we will by the next election have a Nationwide
Uniform Ballot. Perhaps we should consider the Canadian system of one X
inside a box. Last month they hand-counted 13 million paper ballots in
under 4 hours, which is another reason we look like idiots to the rest of
the world.
Finally, we all know that one person, one vote is a lie. Consequently, we
can do something about it. Perhaps we should consider proportional
representation whereby if one party gets 10% of the vote they get 10% of
the seats. A number of local governments in the U.S. have switched to this
much fairer and representative system. Indeed, perhaps the Electoral
College should be reformed in this manner.
And finally, with Bush in the White House liberals and Democrats will be
forced to finally take a stand.
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