Undermining American Democracy
Something I’ve been thinking about for some time but never managed to get into words appeared in print Friday in the San Diego Union Tribune. Columnist Joseph Perkins talks about the disastrous erosion of confidence in our electoral process that began during the Y2K elections.
| :::::::: | Richard Nixon would have captured the 1960 presidential election but for five states he lost by 5,000 votes or fewer – Missouri, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico and Hawaii.
Gerald Ford would have retained the presidency in 1976 but for two states he lost by no more than 5,600 votes – Ohio and Hawaii. Though the 1960 and 1976 elections were close, though they turned on a few thousand votes in a handful of states, the outcomes were faithfully accepted by the American people, by Republicans and Democrats alike. That’s because neither Nixon or Ford demanded that the votes be recounted in the states in which they lost by narrow margins. And neither Nixon or Ford insisted they were denied election because of voting irregularities in some state or another. Then there was the 2000 election. George W. Bush and Al Gore went to bed on election night uncertain whether they had won or lost. Later, when all of Florida’s voting precincts had reported their tallies, Bush had eeked out victory in the Sunshine State, pushing him over the top in the Electoral College. But Gore refused to accept that he lost Florida, that he lost the presidency, by so small a margin. He refused to put the national interest before his own selfish interest. He dispatched his lawyers to the Sunshine State to contest the election. And his lawyers used every legal maneuver in their arsenal to overturn Gore’s defeat – challenging the manner in which Florida conducted its balloting, claiming that certain voter blocs were disenfranchised. The result is that a portion of the populace refuses to this day to accept the outcome of the 2000 election (despite a post-election ballot review by a consortium of media organizations that concluded, unequivocally, that Bush won Florida no matter how the votes were counted or recounted). It is because of the Gore precedent, because he tried to win the 2000 election in the courts after losing at the ballot box, that this nation remains so bitterly divided between Republicans and Democrats |
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Missing from the usual Democratic telling of the tale of the 2000 elections are the facts Mr. Perkins has mentioned. It’s absolutely not the first time that elections were this close. They’ve been every bit that close, but there was something different in those past elections. It wasn’t with the lawyers or the courts or the voting public. It was the decision by the candidates and their parties to accept the will of the people and place the interest of the Nation above their own. All that evaporated when Al Gore and the Democratic Party decided they wanted the presidency at all costs. Also missing from the usual Democratic telling is the admission of the fact that the ballot reviews of the counties in question showed that President Bush won the Florida election legally and completely. Gore lost Florida. And with it went the election. Bush was, indeed “elected, not selected.”
Fast forward 4 years and here we are again. The concept of filing legal challenges to the elections is now written in the stone manual of the Democratic Party campaign plan. And every time they do it, they damage the credibility of elections of any kind. Their written instructions to their operatives to file false reports of intimidation where none exists simply poisons the well of trust we, as Americans, are supposed to have in our system of democracy. That’s not hype, either. Their ambitions to the White House are far more important to them, it appears, than their responsibility to the democracy they claim to love. I sincerely hope that Tuesday shows them that these tactics aren’t appreciated and aren’t to be condoned.
Hat Tip: Power Line
