America’s Cliffhanger

With the mandatory recount underway in Florida over the presidential election, it remains unclear as to whether Texas Governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore will become the President-elect. At present, Al Gore has 260 electoral votes and George W. Bush has 245. That leaves 33 that have not as yet been decided. Seven are in Oregon and that race has not yet been called and Florida’s 25 electoral votes hold the key to the presidency for the winner. In addition, one of Maine’s four electoral votes has not yet been decided. Under the rules of the Electoral College, only Maine and Nebraska are permitted to split their electoral votes based upon their congressional districts. This was the way that Ronald Reagan got 1 electoral vote in the 1976 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

The recount should be done by 5 p.m. Eastern Time today. In addition to the regular ballots, there remain absentee ballots from Americans overseas and from military personnel offshore that may have an effect on the election. These absentee ballots must be postmarked by midnight Tuesday and arrive within ten days after the election for them to be counted. Bear in mind that these votes will affect only the spread of the electoral vote, and that is the vote that elects the President. Al Gore has won the popular vote, and no Bush surge can overcome that. As such, we are on the verge of history here, folks. This could be the first election in over 100 years where the one who won the popular vote still loses on account of the electoral vote. However, the Electoral College was put in place for among other reasons, to keep larger states from neutralizing the effect of the votes of the smaller states. Gore won the electoral vote-rich states of California (54), New York (33), Pennsylvania (23), Illinois (22) and Michigan (18). Bush snapped up 29 states to Gore’s 19 and the District of Columbia. Oregon and Florida as I mentioned earlier, have yet to be decided.

Should Gore lose Florida, he will have only himself to blame. He cannot blame Ralph Nader for the loss. Even Nader himself said that the election was Gore’s to lose, and I agree with that assessment 100 percent. The fact of the matter is that Gore failed to carry his home state of Tennessee with its 11 electoral votes. Had he carried Tennessee, he would have 271 electoral votes, putting him over the top by one, and he would not be needing Florida in the current do-or-die contest both candidates now find themselves in.

Perhaps the thing I noticed the most in this election was the way the media so shamefully conducted themselves on this night. I kept my viewing to CNN, ABC News and the FOX News Channel. As I was switching back and forth between them, all of them were trying to outdo each other by seeing who could make the big scoop first. First, they called Florida for Gore, then later retracted it as the exit poll strategy was found to be significantly flawed. Florida was then put back in the ‘too-close-to-call’ category. Then at about 2:30 in the morning, they put Florida in the Bush column and declared him the President-elect. About an hour later, the vote in Florida was found to be less than 1000 votes separating Bush and Gore, so Gore, who had conceded over the phone to Bush, later retracted his concession, which made sense in this case. Inasmuch as the margin of victory was less than 0.5 percent, an automatic recount was required under Florida law. The final difference on the initial count was 0.03 percent, making it probably the closest race ever.

In all this grandstanding and punditry on the part of the networks, which I thought to be a crock to begin with, came across to me a message that the Congress needs to hear loud and clear. That message is that there needs to be a universal closing time for the polls nationwide. This is due entirely to the fact that a lot of folks out West, particularly in vote-rich California can lose their incentive to cast their vote if they see the closed polls in the East declaring a winner. I would suggest the following in order to keep the networks in check.

First of all, Congress should enact a nationwide poll closing time of 10 p.m. Eastern Time. As such, the polls would close at 9 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Mountain, 7 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Alaska and 5 p.m. Hawaii Time. This way, all voters would have an equal opportunity to have an impact on the national vote and the incentive to make it to the polls. Such a move would inevitably enhance voter turnout. In addition, the networks and newspapers and their websites should be banned from projecting or declaring a winner until a minimum of at least one hour had passed since the closing of the polls and 50 percent of the precincts reporting. This would eliminate the mess that occurred Tuesday night in St. Louis when polls were kept open past the closing time of 7 p.m.

So, while we have the chance of making history with the popular vote and the electoral vote producing different winners, we are a nation that lives by the rule of law - and that law (the Constitution) says the electoral vote is the one that counts.

While such will be the subject of endless debate for the next umpteen number of days, and should Governor Bush become the President-elect, the nation should take comfort in the knowledge that while the man taking office January 20th may not be prefect, he will be a man of honor and integrity who will place the needs of the nation above his own carnal desires and thus return the reputation of the United States to one of respect and prestige on the world stage.

This cannot happen soon enough.

• Photo of Governor George W. Bush courtesy of Reuters
• Photo of Vice President Al Gore courtesy of the Associated Press

You can e-mail your comments to Timothy at trollins@idirect.com.

Copyright © 2000 by Timothy Rollins.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission