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Strategies & Market Trends : NetCurrents NTCS -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jill who wrote (4181)	11/10/2000 12:21:02 AM
From: Lane Hall-Witt	Respond to of 8925

Jill -- OT: Well put on all counts. One thing we can agree on definitively . . . I'm a bull at heart, too! <GG> Actually, I also agree with you on the notion of freedom and its discontents -- the consolation of philosophy -- and with the profound unfairness to Republicans when the media called the state before polls in the Florida panhandle closed. I'm very keen on the idea of coordinating polling times across the entire nation, so that all polls from Florida to Alaska and Hawaii would be open during exactly the same hours. The long hours would create logistical problems, because it is already hard enough to find volunteers to staff the polls, but it would be worth it to stop this hideous practice of declaring results while the election is still in progress. The one thing I'll take the liberty of disagreeing with here is the notion that the Democrats are simply whining at this point. That trivializes the problem here, which is that an entire "class" of people lost their votes, not just a few isolated individuals who made random mistakes with their ballots. This class of voters repeated the same few errors, systematically, on thousands of ballots, 4-5 percent of the total ballots in the county, which is an extraordinarily large percentage of ballots to be contested or nullified. (The Democrats, not surprisingly, are disputing the number Republicans are claiming for double-punched ballots in the 1996 Palm Beach County presidential election. We'll have to wait for the Times or the Post to give us a good number on that.) These voters are entirely within their rights to take their complaints to the courts, and the Gore team is within its rights to support those complaints. For better or worse, the right to litigate on most matters, including perceived electoral grievances, is a fundamental right in our free society. That right, in my opinion, cannot be denied or trivialized without jeopardizing our freedom. It might also be plausible to say that Gore has a duty to appeal to the courts for a ruling in a case where there is clearly a problem that appears to be deciding the entire election. Al Gore is the standard bearer for 49 million Americans who voted for him. In a crude sense, he's like the CEO of a company with 49 million shareholders, and he has certain "fiduciary" responsibilities to his shareholders. He can't break the law in order to protect the interests of his supporters, but he certainly can act in a lawful way to pursue a court hearing of their grievances. What would AMGN shareholders think of management if it did not pursue legal action against TKTX in order to protect the intellectual property behind Epogen? I haven't heard even one person claim that is a frivolous lawsuit. Surely the outcome of a presidential election is more important than the effort to prevent generic Epogen from reaching the market -- and therefore is at least as deserving of due process. Of course, along with the right to litigate comes the obligation to heed the ultimate decision of the courts. Nothing I've heard from Al Gore or the Democrats even remotely suggests that they would defy an adverse court ruling and attempt to usurp power. All I've heard them argue is that they want their day in court, which is certainly their right and which also is quite routine in disputed elections where it's claimed that irregularities have affected the outcome. Have a good evening. I've enjoyed our conversation! <G>