Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Every Vote Counts

Friday November 10, 2000

Starting with some time in the third grade, every American student is told that, in our country, EVERY VOTE COUNTS.

So, assume Bush wins Florida by the current 229 vote margin. The Democrats will claim that's not enough. But wait a minute. If Bush won by only one vote, and if EVERY VOTE COUNTS, he won Florida and its 25 electoral votes.

The other choice is to teach third graders that every vote counts but only AFTER THE FIRST 229!

If everyone in Palm Beach County who now claims they had intended to vote for Al Gore on Tuesday had actually gone to the polls, Worth Avenue would have looked like that farm outside of Woodstock in 1969.

Democrats, of course, want to change the rules because the current result is not fair. Here's the Democratic definition of fairness: Let everyone who said they wanted to vote for Gore, but screwed up the ballot, vote again.

I have one minor amendment to that plan. Let's add this as a requirement:
Anyone who voted on Tuesday can vote again if, and only if,
they first agree to take a driving test.

About three people will show up to vote.

To see the latest recount totals from Florida, and the latest national popular vote totals, go here.

Palm Beach County is not the Florida home of poor sharecroppers. A significant proportion of the county are white, rich, retirees - lawyers, many of them, who made their money in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey writing the kinds of rules and laws they are now complaining about - as well as the architects who built their houses and the doctors who treated their gout.

422,650 people voted in Palm Beach County. All but eight-tenths-of-one-percent voted for someone other than Pat Buchanan. So a lot of people were, apparently, not confused.

We expected Jesse Jackson to show up at something like this. Any time two or more television cameras are set up for a remote, Jackson will trundle into the frame. But, Bill Daley and Warren Christopher are former Cabinet Secretaries. Christopher was a former Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is the senior member of the Cabinet. We had a right to expect better of them than their "We're gonna sue everybody for everything, everywhere" performance Thursday afternoon.

Preserve your client's interests, sure. But don't threaten to throw the election into every courthouse between Miami and Washington, DC.

The important thing to remember about this: Despite the nation so closely divided that the two houses of the U.S. Congress, the legislatures of the States, the Presidential popular, and Presidential electoral votes are all split about 50-50, no one - not even people in the two campaigns - appears to be concerned that a national lack of confidence in the system will prohibit either man from governing.

For most Americans, another 24 hours will get us into the "flip-a-coin" stage of this election. Unless someone can point to some fraudulent behavior which would actually change the result, most Americans would just as soon flip a coin, choose a President, and move on to deciding upon with which family they are going to spend Christmas.

A sidebar to the Congressional elections. Remember how the Democrats were adamant that every single Impeachment Manager was going to be targeted and beaten as punishment? Remember? Here's what happened: Only one Manager running for re-election to the House was defeated, Jim Rogan of California. And that, according to analysts watching that race was, based on changes in his District,.

None of the others lost. Asa Hutchinson, of Arkansas, was so highly targeted that the Democrats in the President's home state couldn't even find anyone to run against him. Hutchinson was unopposed.

If the Presidential election goes to the House - where the vote is taken state-by-state - the GOP controls 27 state delegations, the Democrats control 19, and four are tied. 26 delegations are necessary to elect.

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?