Gore’s behavior, tactics unacceptable

Perng is a fourth-year political science student and executive
director of the Bruin Republicans.

By Simon Perng

If you have been following the melodrama that is the Florida
election dispute, you’re probably just as annoyed as I am
about the never-ending presidential election. But I feel so much
frustration with the situation, not because it has gone on for too
long, but because Al Gore and his campaign-turned-legal team no
longer seek to end this divisive, partisan conflict. Now that he
intends to challenge Florida’s certified results with the
hand counts included, Gore appears more determined than ever to
steal the presidency with his barrage of lawyers than win it on the
rule of law and the will of the people.

Gore & Co.’s efforts to prolong an undue and
unnecessary constitutional crisis for perpetuity now reveal to the
American people that Gore will not be a gracious conciliator in
defeat ““ that he fully intends to go down kicking and
screaming.

During the past few weeks, Gore’s campaign “to get
the most accurate vote totals” has evolved into a campaign of
bullying local county election boards, character assassination,
disregarding the law, arbitrary lawsuits and selective
vote-counting. I’d like to illustrate the efforts that the
Gore campaign/legal team used during the Florida election dispute,
and then you should judge for yourself whether he is more concerned
with legitimately winning the Oval Office than usurping it.

First, there are Gore’s selective and absurd vote-counting
standards. Gore’s attorneys initially claimed that up to
10,000 ballots in the Florida election have not been counted even
once, thus asserting that Florida’s Secretary of State
certified incomplete election returns. Yet all of these ballots
simply did not mark a complete preference for president. These
ballots were counted twice (on election night and the recount), and
still they registered no preference for president.

But some of these ballots did count for other contested offices
in Florida, thus they did indeed count in this election, just not
for president.

Second of all, the Gore legal team seems hell-bent on being the
sole binding authority on what constitutes a correctly cast ballot.
The Gore & Co. lawsuit against local canvassing boards for
using such “narrow standards” for counting votes
actually aims not to clarify but to dictate to local canvassing
boards which ballots should be counted, even if they are not
clearly and correctly marked or punched out (e.g. pregnant, dimpled
chads, etc.). This sounds like changing the rules in the middle of
the game. Furthermore, whoever said that casting a vote was so
complicated?

George Will in the Washington Post comments that “anything
done with a ballot constitutes a cast vote” and that
“no vote can be considered counted until a presidential
intent has been ascribed to it, even if the ascription involves
intuiting the meaning of “˜marks … barely discernible to the
human eye.'” Will quotes Judge Charles Burton,
presiding judge over the Palm Beach county recount.

That sounds fairly reasonable to me, not so to the obsessed Gore
chad-and-random-indentation hunters. Will says it best: “It
is that casting a ballot is a task so challenging for many voters
that the task cannot be completed without the intervention of
lawyers-as-intuitors.”

Third, Gore wants to count improperly cast ballots, yet he
doesn’t want to count legally and legitimately-cast absentee
ballots, those that did not carry a postmark or a stamp. Officials
like Gore supporter Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth
recognize a lack of postmark as a technicality on the ballot
handler’s behalf and would count them as legitimate
votes.

So Gore wants to penalize the intent of absentee voters on the
sole basis of a technicality done of the behalf of the ballot
handlers, yet he wants to simultaneously reinterpret and count the
votes of voters that cannot properly cast a ballot. That’s
Al, folks.

Beyond the vote-counting issue, Gore’s legal challenges to
the election results violate state law. In his speeches Gore talks
a lot about following the rule of law. But the Gore legal
team’s victories successfully defied state law, state
constitutional authority of the secretary of state, and the local
authority of election canvassing boards. The recent Florida Supreme
Court ruling completely infringed on the law-making powers of a
state legislature by extending its written deadline for certifying
the election from Nov. 14 to Nov. 26.

It also infringed on the law of the legislative and the power of
the executive branch, forcing Secretary of State Katherine Harris
to certify hand recounts after the legislated November 14 deadline
expired (when all returns excluding absentee ballots should be
in).

By attempting to rewrite the local canvassing boards,
vote-counting standards with the issues of non-punched chads and
pregnant chads, the Gore legal team attempts to overrule legal
Florida guidelines for conducting elections. It seems Al Gore will
stop at nothing, not even mere laws, constitutions, or any
controlling legal authority, to claim the ultimate prize.

Additionally, Gore’s public relations campaign smacks of
borderline bigotry. In the latest attempt to rally support to his
dying cause, the Gore campaign imported Jesse Jackson down to
Florida to whip up support among Jewish and minority voters, hoping
that a slick public relations campaign would cause the American
people to ignore reason and the facts.

Taking his cues straight from the Gore playbook, Rev. Jackson
wails to eager television cameras stories of voter fraud by
segregationists from Selma, Alabama in 1965, comparing them to
today’s Florida scenarios.

Yet, neither Florida Republicans nor Democrats presented any
allegations or any evidence of voter fraud, let alone any voter
fraud committed by a “white-wing conspiracy”. Also
Clinton-Gore political hack Paul Begala decided to comment on
Bush’s victory, denouncing the 29 states in the Bush column
as being populated by racists, bigots, murderers, and neo-Nazi
skinheads. Begala’s insensitive and inexcusable comments
really set the tone for cooperation and civility, don’t
they?

Illustrating Gore’s bigotry-laced attacks to purposely
tarnish any legitimacy of a Bush victory, Kathleen Parker in the
Chicago Tribune says it better than I do: “Gore’s
greatest offense in his scramble to secure the “˜will of the
people’ was his relentless minority-baiting in ways that were
untrue and destructive in a land that struggles as no other to
achieve equality and tolerance.”

By now I hope you made up your opinion on the Al Gore that
desperately wants to be your Commander-in-Chief. Let me conclude
with the words of Bob Woodward:

“The rules were changed in a way that Bush did not like,
and that Gore requested. Bush still won counting with Gore’s
rules … (Gore has) to consider where reasonable people in the
center are going to look at this, and say, “˜Guys you had your
shot, the count, the recount ““ they changed the rules for you
and you still did not win.’ It’s time to be
magnanimous.”