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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (7176)	11/22/2000 11:59:08 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10042

Mark Davis' commentary from today's Ft. Worth Star- Telegram. Mark Davis is heard daily on ABC's WBAP-AM: Hey, folks, it's actually over What a weekend. Tough Cowboys loss, great TCU win, nice weather, and Bush won the election. You heard, didn't you? On Saturday, the Florida secretary of state revealed the official results. Overseas absentee ballots widened George W. Bush's lead to nearly 1,000 votes. In the eyes of the facts and the law, that settles the matter. Now only human dallying can thwart the result. And we saw that process unfold before the Florida Supreme Court on Monday. The day began with a promising whiff of sensibility from the state bench in Palm Beach County. A judge's refusal to entertain the preposterous notion of a complete county revote set a tone that I hoped would lead to further clear-eyed judicial assessments of the folly that has followed the completion of the Florida vote tally. And make no mistake: That tally is complete -- as complete as it can be, and as accurate as it can be. If we find that sadly lacking, fine. Florida and the nation as a whole have four years to figure out if we ever want a punch-hole ballot system anywhere again. But this election is over. No matter what has happened this week, or what will happen next week or next month or next year, George W. Bush has been duly elected the 43rd president of the United States. Now all we have to find out is whether our system will allow the concrete of that truth to harden. Watching the justices on Florida's high court did not give an instant indicator. I loved the no-nonsense tone established at the get-go by Chief Justice Charles T. Wells. About a minute into the flowery platitudes of attorney Paul Hancock, Wells stopped him in his tracks and asked about the hard deadlines of reporting Florida's electoral vote. Hancock, his fellow attorneys favoring manual recounts and other attorneys opposing them would have loved to couch their arguments in bombastic prose about the people, the law, Mom, apple pie and whatever other imagery has served them well in other courtrooms. Not this one. The justices frequently interrupted attorneys on both sides to ask them to focus on a specific point. Often this was welcome, but sometimes the justices came off as somewhat clueless. Justice Peggy Quince in particular seemed obsessed by things that have nothing to do with the question before the court. She repeatedly asked anti-manual-recount attorneys Joe Klock and Michael Carvin about such nebulous concepts as voter intent and chad management. Madam Justice, that's not the point. The point is whether the laws of the state of Florida should be rewritten by the judiciary because of one squirrely election. Bad technology does not warrant thwarting the will of the people through judicial fiat. Nor does voter error. If we learn anything from this election, it is that voters sometimes err and that our voting system needs an upgrade. Tom Eschberger, senior vice president of an Omaha company that supplies all types of technology for voting, confirmed my suspicions about hand-counting punch-card ballots. "We sell that system, and one of its benefits is its cost," he told me. "One of its disadvantages is that it does not lend itself well to manual recount." No kidding. Observers have alleged some things in recent days that make the manual recount even more ludicrous than it was at the outset: * Pieces of chad were taped back onto ballot cards. * Some Bush ballots were found in a Gore pile. * Post-it notes were found attached to the fragile ballot cards. * Several ballot cards were dropped and walked on. And still, with straight faces, some people continue to assert that Florida and the nation will be better served by manual recounts. It recalls the most bizarre days of the impeachment drama, when people actually debated whether President Clinton had lied to the American people. I said then that if a president whom I admired ever denigrated the office as Clinton did, I would be off his bandwagon so fast your head would spin. And I say now that if this were the other way around, and Bush, whom I voted for, had lost Florida under the laws and procedures set down by the will of the people, I would be leading the chorus of those demanding that he concede. Mark Davis is a radio talk-show host on WBAP News/Talk 820 AM. His email address is mdavis@wbap.com. Write him at 3201 Airport Freeway, Suite 108, Bedford, TX 76021. fortworthstartelegram.com