"Note: If you make a mistake, return your ballot card and obtain another. AFTER VOTING,
CHECK YOUR BALLOT CARD TO BE SURE YOUR VOTING SELECTIONS ARE
CLEARLY AND CLEANLY PUNCHED AND THERE ARE NO CHIPS LEFT HANGING ON
THE BACK OF THE CARD. --Voting instructions, Palm Beach County, Florida"
"The capitalized words appeared on the voting guide clearly posted in every Florida
polling station that used Votomatic machines and in leaflets mailed to many voters in
Palm Beach. They are the only instructions on the flyer in bold capitals. ... The
[Gore] position, so far as I can glean, is that ... [a] vote should be counted ... even if
the voter blithely ignores clear voting instructions" ... A Gore victory through
judicially imposed, loosely interpreted hand counts in South Florida will resonate
across the country as the triumph of a liberalism that has replaced responsibility with
victimhood, law with legalism, character with partisanship. Rather than challenging
voters to a new civic responsibility, the Democrats are defining down democracy to
include those who cannot even be held responsible for following a simple ballot
instruction." (Andrew Sullivan, "TRB from Washington: Bad Intent", The New
Republic Online, Nov. 22; see also commentaries on andrewsullivan.com, and
Charles Krauthammer, "There is a good reason that casting a ballot is a precise act",
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 24). "[I]t is the voter's duty to take reasonable care to
record a vote. To correct that judgment after the fact is unfair." ("Dimples aren't
votes" (editorial), Miami Herald, Nov. 24).
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