Gore's Next Task: Face Reality
By Michael Kelly
Wednesday, December 6, 2000 ; Page A35
The ruling by Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls that demolished Al Gore's claim to
another recount of the Florida vote in three selected Democratic counties very nearly finishes the Long
Election. Gore is, of course, appealing to the Florida Supreme Court, but it is unlikely that even a court
dominated by Democrats will overturn Judge Sauls's well-reasoned ruling. This is especially so in that he
found against Gore not just in the interpretation of the law but on the evidence.
There also remain lawsuits brought by Democratic activists in Seminole and Martin counties; these beg
the courts to throw out close to 25,000 absentee ballots on the grounds that election officials allowed
Republicans to add voter identification numbers to a few thousand of the ballots. But in these challenges,
no one is alleging fraud or anything close to it; the information the Republicans added was correct,
Democrats had access to the same information and the Republicans' actions in no way manipulated the
vote. It would be remarkably radical for the courts to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters on the
strength of this.
Even if the state Supreme Court overturns Judge Sauls and rules in favor of Gore, and even if the
Democrats win the Seminole and Martin cases, Gore still will have no real chance of gaining the White
House. This is so for two reasons: First, either of these rulings would be appealed and the odds are that
Gore would lose the appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court signaled in its unanimous ruling Monday that it is
watching the Florida Supreme Court for any signs of overreaching.
Second, there is not enough time to recount the ballots before the Dec. 12 deadline for Florida to choose
its electors for the electoral college vote on Dec. 18. And Florida's Republican legislators, who control
both houses, have made clear that they will choose the electors themselves rather than miss the Dec. 12
date. These electors would support Bush. The choice might then ultimately come before the House of
Representatives, but here again, the numbers mean victory for Bush.
Since Gore ultimately cannot win, it is reckless and selfish of him to continue a fight that can only
promise further wreckage. Rather than force this back into the U.S. Supreme Court or, far worse, into
Congress, he should withdraw his pointless appeal and concede now. He should also publicly ask the
Democrats waging the Seminole and Martin challenges to abandon their cases; he should remind them
that he has based his challenge entirely on a call for counting every vote, and that he could not, in
conscience, take the presidency on the strength of dis-counting some 25,000 votes.
But if Gore was the sort of man to do something of that nature, we wouldn't be where we are in the first
place. So what, realistically, should he do?
He should tell his people, now, to stop employing the count-every-vote rhetoric, which argues, to
tremendously destructive effect, that a Bush victory is illegitimate because potentially verdict-altering
Gore votes were ignored. The assertion that the Gore effort was simply about making sure every vote was
counted was always embarrassingly false. The votes were counted twice by machine, and Gore's efforts to
hand count them were confined only to Democratic counties where Democratic-controlled canvassing
boards might be expected to "find" some hundreds of Gore votes among thousands of dubious ballots.
What is more, Democrats have, when it has suited them, as in Seminole and Martin counties and as with
military ballots, sought to win through rejecting Republican votes.
What is more still, the so-called "uncounted" votes of Miami-Dade County are not uncounted; these are
most likely ballots in which voters punched holes in other races but chose not to cast votes in the
presidential contest. This happens, especially when you have candidates as uninspiring as Gore and
Bush. As Gore must know, the tiny percentage of the vote that was "uncounted" in Miami-Dade is entirely
in line with the percentage in past elections and with the national percentage in this election.
Gore should, when he finally accepts his loss, acknowledge that there was as full and as fair a count in
Florida as could be achieved, and that he lost this count fully and fairly. He should publicly speak
against the idea, already bruited by Democrats, of private parties employing Florida's sunshine laws to
once again recount the Florida vote and determine who "really" won Florida, in an obvious effort to
further delegitimize Bush's presidency.
As far as can be reasonably determined, George Bush really won Florida, and he really won the election,
and it is past time for Al Gore to face reality.
© 2000 The Washington Post
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