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concordmonitor.com
Editorial: Give it up, W
Thursday, November 30, 2000
Monitor editorial
Bush could win at all costs or do the right thing: concede.
The time has come for Gov. George W. Bush to concede the presidential election and go
back to Texas. This will be good for him and good for the country.
What is at stake is the integrity of the election process. Consider the factors that are
holding Bush up in Florida: voting irregularities and errors in county after county,
intimidation of election officials by over-zealous Bush partisans, a secretary of state who
joyfully subordinates voters' interests to Bush's and the prospect of a decision favorable
to him in the state's Republican-controlled legislature.
To assume the presidency on such a foundation would give Bush no chance whatsoever
of uniting the country behind him. His handlers have done all in their power to
disenfranchise Florida voters. If partisanship, law-bending and political spin are allowed
to silence the voice of the people, a Bush presidency is doomed.
So far, these are the most egregious instances we know about in the Florida vote count:
A boisterous and threatening pro-Bush crowd and a too-tight deadline coerced
Miami-Dade County into abandoning its recount. This shut out thousands of citizens in
a county that voted heavily for Vice President Al Gore.
In Seminole County, a Republican elections supervisor allowed GOP officials to amend
4,700 Republican absentee ballot applications that had been improperly filled out.
Erroneous Democratic applications were simply thrown out.
A similar thing happened in Martin County. The difference was that the Republican
elections supervisor actually allowed Republican operatives to take the faulty ballot
applications home. Bush beat Gore by nearly 3,000 votes among Martin County absentee
ballots, winning a much larger percentage than he did among voters who actually went to
the polls.
Even without these problems, the taint of what happened in Palm Beach County would
be enough to undermine a Bush victory in Florida. Palm Beach is where voters confused
by an ill-designed ballot mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Gore or voted for
them both. It's also where Secretary of State Katherine Harris disallowed a recount when,
after a marathon, county officials missed the deadline by hours. This was typical of
Harris's efforts - extraordinary efforts, considering her position - to prevent a full and
accurate count of the votes.
All this partisanship and slipshod supervision of Florida's election could have been
forgiven had Bush simply agreed to a statewide hand recount. This is a routine
procedure for close elections at all levels. Gore asked for as much both early and late in
the process. A recount might take a week or 10 days to complete, but even that would
meet electoral college deadlines.
We're not surprised that Bush has declined to support a recount. His refusal fits a
pattern of behavior since the election that has created a stature gap for the
oft-self-proclaimed president-elect. There is something about his brief, nervous turns at
the microphone that transforms his American flags and other power props into a
Muppets set.
With so many courts going full-throttle, which is to say slowly, it is possible that
Florida's legislature will name the electors who could put Bush over the top. This would
complete the trifecta. His brother's the governor, the secretary of state stumped for him
during the campaign, and his party dominates the legislature. Why Bush believes such a
sequence of events would make his presidency acceptable to the public is beyond us.
What he really needs to do is support a fair count of the votes. But apparently he has no
confidence that he could win one. If that's the case, he should just concede. |
