This is how I see this whole thing right now, using sports analogy.
The Bush team believes this is a football game, with a clock, and that clock runs down on 12/12/00.
The Gore team believes this is a baseball game, with at least an inning or two left.
Look at these facts and you will see the dilemma here.
In FL, manual recounts are requested on a county by county basis. Thus, unless you are brain dead, you will request that manual recount in counties that you won..the exception being if you are questioning a particular type of methodology or practice in another county.
Gore requested a manual recount in selected counties. Bush requested no manual recount for himself. A week later and as recently as this week again, Gore said he would have no objections to Bush seeking manual recounts in other counties as well...both times Bush refused.
Now, here comes the spin...
The Bush team now states that the reason that Gore should not get his manual recounts in those selected counties is because a manual recount would be unfair unless it is done state wide!!!!! That is chutzpah to the tenth power.
Nevertheless, it explains why Bush did not request manual recounts elsewhere...he knew the counties that he won had voting mechanisms with lower likelihood of error and he also believed that the Counties that Gore picked, with more archaic technology, would probably pick up more votes for Gore...to be sure, that is exactly what the partial recounts found(Broward and Palm Beach).
Now, it gets even better...
Notwithstanding the fact that the Gore team believes this is a BASEBALL game, they also know that the commissioners(FL SoS and FL legislature) are treating this as a football game. As an aside, league management are of course Bush partisans.
So, the Gore team is trying to speed the litigation up so as to still meet the rules of a FOOTBALL game. The Bush team, who on the one hand CLAIM that they want to put an end to all of this quickly, are trying to s l o w w w w down the litigation to ensure that any ruling by the Judge (even if it were in Gore's favor) would not provide enough time to be completed before the FOOTBALL clock runs out,i.e., 12/12/00.
At that point, the Bush team can say: Gee, we're sorry, but you can't count those votes because you won't have a newly certified final result until after 12/12/00 and that will be too late to select the Electors.
Alternatively, if those disputed votes can be manually counted prior to 12/12/00, but not in time to address the Bush appeal to those recounts, the Bush team can then also become BASEBALL fans. They would then say to Gore...sorry, those runs that you scored in the top of the ninth inning don't count because of rain. The score reverts to the end of the previous inning, where Bush's lead still existed...game over.
The highest courts in FL and the US will now have to decide which one of these logic flows is the right one.
TG |
