This one's for you, Frank....er, I mean, "Ain't"

Bush's Schoolyard Logic: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

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Double Standard By E. J. Dionne Jr.

You know you're confronting a double standard when the argument you're hearing reminds you of the schoolyard phrase: Heads I win, tails you lose. Let's examine the double standards that have been put in place to block Al Gore from becoming president.

For days now, the common wisdom, even among Democrats, has held that if Gore loses his case in the Florida Supreme Court, he should concede to George W. Bush and be "gracious."

It's not an unreasonable view, especially because many of the Florida justices tried hard during oral arguments yesterday to give Gore his due. Justices such as Harry Lee Anstead were forceful in questioning the strange decision of Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls to issue a sweeping ruling against Gore without looking at the core evidence in the case, the disputed ballots.

Since we're all lawyers now, let's stipulate that Gore should drop out if this court rules against him. Shouldn't the same expectation apply to George W. Bush? If the court orders recounts that show Gore won Florida, shouldn't Bush also be "gracious" and concede?

But no one expects that to happen. Already the Republican-dominated Florida legislature has moved to name Bush electors who would contest Gore electors chosen by the people.

There was a revealing moment in the courtroom yesterday when Joseph Klock, who otherwise did an excellent job as an attorney for Secretary of State Katherine Harris, underscored that the legislature would have no compunction about taking the choice of presidential electors away from the people.

For now, he said, "the legislature has allowed the people to make that choice." Note that word allowed, which makes the legislature the parent and the voters a bunch of children. If the lawmakers don't like what the people did, they can disallow the people.

And Bush, who got slapped back by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday in his effort to stop all hand recounts, can also be counted on to appeal any ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So Gore has to drop out quickly, but Bush can keep fighting. Heads Bush wins, tails Gore loses.

Or take those cases on illegally processed absentee ballots in Seminole and Martin counties. The facts are clear: Republican officials doctored applications to make sure that some 2,000 absentee ballots in Seminole County and a smaller number in Martin County got sent out. No one disputes that what the Republicans did was against the law.

Yet any effort to throw out the illegal ballots--which could give the election to Gore--will be condemned for denying citizens who themselves broke no law their legitimate right to vote. Fair enough, except that no such solicitude is shown toward voters who lost their ballots because of well-documented problems with Florida's voting equipment.

Think about the arguments being made here. When Broward County ballot counters were examining legally cast ballots, Republicans charged that counting any dimpled chads for Gore constituted some corrupt, outrageous violation. Yet Republicans who claim to be strict constructionist, throw-the-book-at-'em, law-and-order types suddenly go squishy and say the problems with the Seminole and Martin ballots are only "technicalities."

Can you imagine the vituperation that would issue from Rush Limbaugh or James A. Baker III if these were Democratic ballots in Democratic counties? Pity Todd Schmick, the political director of the Florida Republican Party. On the stand Wednesday night in the Martin County trial, he looked uncomfortable in confirming that the elections supervisor "was going to correct the problem internally in Martin County." In other words, the fix was in.

Thus, the new Bush slogan is: Illegally obtained ballots, yes. Dimpled chads, no. Heads Bush wins, tails Gore loses.

Here's what the double standard asks of Gore. He must: (1) ignore any illegally cast Bush votes; (2) never get to examine ballots in Miami-Dade that have already been shown to contain votes for him; (3) accept the exclusion of 215 ballots cast in Palm Beach that, by a strict standard the Bush campaign praised, were recounted in Gore's favor; (4) forget about elderly or African American voters disenfranchised by equipment that made it hard for their votes to be registered. Oh, yes, and then Gore must concede graciously.

And here is what the double standard asks of Bush: absolutely nothing.

As I write, we await decisions from the Florida Supreme Court and the two absentee ballot cases. If the courts go against Gore, the pressure on him to quit will be enormous.

As for Bush, he's above the courts, above the vote counts, above inconvenient questions about whether he really won the election. If the courts rule against Bush, he'll just keep going until January.

Will anyone say a word? Heads Bush wins, tails Gore loses.

-- Potato (Person@Spud.com), December 08, 2000

Answers

And for Flint, too!

-- Potato (Person@Spud.com), December 08, 2000.

I figured "ain't" was cpr. Frank? Hmmmmm, could be.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 08, 2000.

And you can bet Mr E. J. Dionne Jr would have written the same scathingly biased article about Al Gore if the situation were reversed! (Far be it from him to hold a double standard.)

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), December 08, 2000.

I figured "ain't" was cpr. Frank? Hmmmmm, could be.

Yes, I can see the same stamp of immaturity in the posts. But who will "Ain't" morph into next now that it looks like Gore will probably make it to the White House?

-- Connect (The@Dots.com), December 08, 2000.

Potato:

My word! I've never seen such whining in my life. Talk about a sore loser! Meanwhile, the courts have decided NOT to deliberately disenfranchise voters in the absentee cases, as I predicted (at least, pending the Florida Supreme Court's overruling them, and the USSC correcting the FSC). I laugh at your eagerness to count guesses as Gore votes in Miami, and yet to discard unambiguous Bush votes in the absentee cases. I guess Gore doesn't really want every vote to count, he wants empty ballots to count as Gore votes. Uh huh.

And since I'm tired of having these editorial grenades lobbed at me, I'l lob one one back. Enjoy!

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by Thomas Sowell

Shameless lies

FLORIDA has now given us the most famous dimples since Shirley Temple and the most famous long count since Tunney and Dempsey. Meanwhile, the Gore camp has given us the most shameless lies since Bill Clinton.

Lie number one is that there are "uncounted votes" out there, which should be counted because "every vote should count." Not only have all the votes been counted, partisan guesses about ballots by officials in heavily Democratic counties have also been counted as if they were votes -- and Gore still lost. This guesswork was imposed by the Florida Supreme Court, which substituted its discretion for the discretion which the written law gives to the Florida Secretary of State.

Sometimes courts step in because there has been an abuse of discretion by some official. But Secretary of State Katherine Harris did nothing more than decline to extend the deadline imposed by law. What does discretion mean if you cannot even decline to provide an exception to the written law?

Had Katherine Harris imposed some additional requirement of her own, that might have been a possible abuse of discretion, but everything that her raucous critics are objecting to consists of her declining to provide exceptions -- first, to the deadline established by state election laws and then to the new deadline established by the Florida Supreme Court.

Every national election, as well as many state and local elections, produces many ballots that cannot be counted for any number of reasons. Sometimes the voter has voted for two candidates for the same office and sometimes the voter has failed to vote for any candidate for a particular office.

What is unique about the Florida election is that these very common situations have been hyped in the media as "uncounted votes" and hand recounts have been launched -- but only in heavily Democratic counties -- thanks to lawsuits and spin by the Gore propaganda machine, as well as judicial activism by courts ignoring the law to impose their own idea of how elections should be run.

This process has generated its own additional lies. One is that counting "dimples" as votes has been common in other states. An Illinois case cited by Gore's lawyer David Boies, who got an attorney in that case to make a sworn statement backing him up, turned out to say exactly the opposite of what was claimed. "Dimples" were shot down by an Illinois judge, whose decision was upheld by an appellate court.

Keep that in mind the next time Boies comes on TV talking about wanting "accuracy."

What are called "dimples" are simply dents in a ballot which was never perforated. A "dimple" remains firmly attached to the ballot card by all four corners. This is what they want to count as "votes" in heavily Democratic counties selected by Gore and his lawyers, while only perforations count as votes in the rest of the state.

Another big lie which the truth has not yet caught up with in most of the media is that military ballots had to be disqualified because they lacked postmarks. Here again, the Gore lawyers have engaged in spin. The directive that went out to attorneys for Democrats across the state of Florida told them to object to military ballots without postmarks before the envelope was opened.

Why before the envelope was opened? Because the law allows military ballots without postmarks to be counted if they contain a signed and dated statement within the envelope. But if gullible or compliant election officials tossed military ballots aside unopened, in response to legal challenges, then these very real votes would not count, while guesses elsewhere would.

The most disgraceful -- indeed, corrupt -- action of the Gore camp has been trying to get Republican members of the electoral college to vote for Gore, even though their constituencies elected them to vote for Bush. What makes this truly sinister is the "quiet intelligence- gathering" about these electors reported in the November 16th Wall Street Journal.

In other words, Democratic operatives have been out digging up dirt on these Republican electors' past before trying to "persuade" them to change their vote. This is blackmail.

Yet this outrage -- which could prevent hundreds of thousands of real votes from counting -- has received far less attention in the media than Katherine Harris' makeup, which media pundits have been reduced to attacking. Shameless is the only word for it.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 08, 2000.