Suspense continues in race for president

  ALISA STOUDT Students who voted at campus and Westwood
polling stations Tuesday may not have known the results of the
presidential race would not be determined for days after they cast
their ballot.

By Michael Falcone
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The first day of ballot recounting in Florida brought the
country no closer to knowing whether George W. Bush or Al Gore will
be the 43rd President of the United States.

But in a morning press conference Wednesday in Austin, Bush,
appearing with vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, said he
expected to win Florida and win the election.

“It’s going to be resolved in a quick
way,” Bush said. “˜”˜I’m confident
that the secretary and I will be the president-elect and the vice
president-elect.”

But Bush’s statement was tempered later in the day when
Gore appeared at a Nashville press conference with his campaign
chairman, Bill Daley, and former Secretary of State Warren
Christopher.

“We now need to resolve this election in a way that is
fair, forthright and fully consistent with the constitution and our
laws,” Gore said. “Because of what is at stake, this
matter must be resolved expeditiously, but deliberately and without
any rush to judgement.”

Even as rumors whirled in the mass media about whether Gore
““ who is leading in the nation’s popular vote ““
would challenge the election results if Florida goes to Bush, the
vice president expressed his faith in the constitutional process of
presidential elections.

“The consent of the governed is the living heart of our
democracy,” Gore said. “It is crucial that our American
people have full faith and confidence in the electoral process by
which the president derives his authority.”

Results of Wednesday’s recount added 843 more popular
votes for Gore, cutting Bush’s lead to 941 votes.

The recount continues Thursday and Florida election officials
say the final retabulated number should be released after 5
p.m.

The five electoral votes of New Mexico, a state that was too
close to call early Wednesday, fell into Bush’s hands, and
Oregon’s 11 votes were also likely to be taken by Bush. Gore
took Wisconsin’s 11 electoral votes, bringing his electoral
vote total to 260, 14 more than Bush.

A post-election day that should have marked the beginning of the
transition to a new presidential administration, only brought more
political uncertainty.

Speculation persisted Wednesday on CNN and other major media
outlets about what an election in which Gore captured the popular
vote and Bush may win the electoral vote would mean for the future
of the electoral college system.

Political Science Professor Scott James said perhaps the only
certainty to come out of the election results was that whoever ends
up in the White House will have an extremely weak mandate to
govern, and will face an almost evenly divided House of
Representatives and Senate.

If Bush wins the election, his effectiveness as the
country’s chief executive will hinge on how serious he and
the Democrats are about cooperating, James said.

“It will depend on whether George Bush can build a
bipartisan consensus and yield some ground to the Democrats on his
agenda,” James said. “That could be tough given that
this may be the first time Republicans have been able to control
both Houses of Congress and the presidency in the last 50
years.”

James also said that though Green Party candidate Ralph Nader
did not capture the 5 percent of the popular vote needed for
federal matching fund eligibility, he may have been enough of a
spoiler in this election to force the Democratic party to become
“a little more green.”

“There have been spoiler parties throughout American
history,” James said. “They didn’t have enough
votes to win, but they could take enough votes from another party
to get their issues on the table.”

In Florida, Nader won nearly 100,000 votes. If there had been no
Nader factor in the race, Gore may have carried the state by a slim
margin.

But even as the presidential race hung in the balance Wednesday,
new questions about whether the country may see a president of one
party and a vice president of another emerged as speculation of a
possible legal challenge to Cheney’s Wyoming residency
surfaced.

Political Science Lecturer Robert Hennig said there is a
possibility that Cheney’s residency switch from Texas to
Wyoming before the election may be legally questionable. The 12th
Amendment to the Constitution requires that an elector of one state
may not vote for both the president and vice president if they are
each residents of the elector’s state.

Since the president and vice president are elected separately,
that constitutional provision might provide a loophole the Gore
campaign could use to contest Cheney’s 32 electoral votes in
Texas.

“I’m not sure that Cheney would qualify as being a
bona fide resident in the state of Wyoming,” Hennig said,
adding that electors in Texas would not be able to vote for Bush
and Cheney if that were the case.

In that case, Cheney would lose a majority in the electoral
college, setting in motion a chain of events that would put the
vice presidential choice up to Senate approval and, as Hennig
speculated, even the possibility that Joe Lieberman could become
vice president under Bush.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.