From the WA Post:
A Fresh Start
Wednesday, November 22, 2000; Page A26
THE DECISION last night by the Florida Supreme Court, if properly received, could be the occasion for restoring legitimacy to a vote-counting process and thus to a presidential election badly in need of the help. The reception depends on the candidates themselves, neither of whom, in the post-election battle up to now, has behaved in a way that inspires confidence in how he might be expected to conduct himself as president.
We think the court's emphasis on the importance of counting as many legitimate votes as possible is right. If the hand recount that can now proceed for five more days in three south Florida counties fails to turn up enough votes for Al Gore to overtake George W. Bush, the Democrats will at least feel that they had a fair shot. Unfortunately, the converse may be less true. If Mr. Gore is elected president on that basis, many Republicans will understandably question a process that rested on a recount in three Democratic-majority counties and not in the rest of the state. The seven justices refer obliquely to this problem when they note in a footnote that "we inquired as to whether the presidential candidates were interested in our consideration of a reopening of the opportunity to request recounts in any additional counties. Neither candidate requested such an opportunity."
Neither candidate did; to do so would have conflicted with Mr. Gore's self-interest and with Mr. Bush's legal position against manual recounts. But Mr. Gore did offer a few days ago to support a statewide recount if Gov. Bush wished; last night he repeated that "I firmly believe that the will of the people should prevail." Perhaps now that the court has endorsed manual recounts in principle, the two could agree to a larger, and fairer, such recount. We continue to believe that such a recount would yield the fairest possible outcome. Such an agreement might also provide the basis for a fresh political start--for tamping down the increasingly bitter, shortsighted and mutually destructive accusations that threaten to create an ashen result, whichever candidate wins.
The court ruled last night that Katherine Harris was wrong to invoke a deadline in state law and refuse to include the results of hand recounts from the three counties. The law provides for the recounts in order to get the tally right; the recount and deadline provisions war with one another; the court held, rightly in our view, that the recount is the more important and should prevail. But the recounts can't go on forever; the state faces a federal deadline for naming its presidential electors next month, and room has to be left for steps in between. So the court gave the counties the rest of this week to finish the work. That should be enough if they bend to the task as the importance warrants.
The court was less clear on what standard should be used in the hand recounts to decide whether votes are valid. The machines that produced the original tallies count only clear holes beside a candidate's name. The hand counts are meant to go beyond that, but how far? Must there be a perforation of the ballot, or are so-called dimpled chads enough? The muddy law gives local officials discretion; when, in the exercise of that discretion, they've decided that merely dimpled chads aren't sufficient evidence of an intent to vote for a particular candidate, the Gore campaign has heavily lobbied them and gone to court to force them to change their minds. We have our own reservations about the dimpled ballots; the weaker the evidence of the vote, the harder it is to credit. In the absence of a firm guideline, our sense is that the campaigns should back off and let local officials make their best judgments.
The campaigns ought to back off in a larger sense, too. Their present win-at-any-cost tactics guarantee that whoever prevails will have a sullied victory. The Bush people say Mr. Gore is trying to steal the election, even as they themselves try to suppress valid votes that they fear could cost Mr. Bush his narrow lead. The Gore people do the opposite, muscling for inclusion of the dimpled ballots that they think will help their man while unashamedly seeking disqualification on technical grounds of military and other absentee ballots likely to help Mr. Bush. Maybe it's too much now to hope that the candidates would finally come together and agree on a plan to count as many legitimate votes, statewide, as can be found. But the Supreme Court decision could be an opportunity--maybe the last--to find a way for the process come to an honorable conclusion that people can respect as fair.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company |
