Commentary

Tuesday, April 17, 2001 8:22 AM Published on Monday, April 16, 2001 in the Guardian of London Challenging the Big Buck Nader Was Right to Make a Stand Against the Corporate Domination of Politics, Even if It Did Let Bush Win by Gary Younge (thanks to Russ Newsom)

As George Bush plays chicken with the Chinese and fast and loose with the environment, it is time for the left to play truth or consequence with Ralph Nader. The Green party presidential candidate stood against the two main parties, arguing that there was no difference between them and that America needed an alternative. America ended up with what looks like being the most rightwing president since before the war. Bush didn't win the election, he won a court case. But, with the slenderest of endorsements, he promises to inflict severe damage. In Congress, many Republicans are beginning to think he is beyond the pale. Even Uncle Sam's faithful poodle, the British government, is yapping at his heels. Some in the cabinet are calling on Tony Blair to put the special relationship "into deep freeze". John Prescott flies to New York today to try to persuade Bush to change his mind about scrapping the Kyoto agreement on controlling greenhouse gases. So first, some truth.

There is a difference between Bush and his Democratic challenger, Al Gore. For Nader to have claimed otherwise during his campaign was disingenuous and opportunistic. We do not know what Gore would have done by this stage had he won, but we can be quite sure it would not have been this. His first decision as president would not have been to deny aid to non-governmental organisations that support abortion overseas through surgery, counselling or lobbying. Nor would Gore have put forward a budget planning to eliminate $309m in grants to help public housing authorities get rid of drug dealers or a programme to preserve wetlands so that he could give trillions to the wealthy. And least of all would he have turned his back on the Kyoto accord.

Now, for a consequence. If Nader had not stood, then Gore would be president. This is as close to a political fact as a statistic dares to be. True, polls showed that one-third of those who voted for Nader would otherwise not have voted at all. But it is also true that more than half of Nader's supporters would have voted for Gore, delivering him majorities in both Florida and New Hampshire and winning him the electoral college. For the left not to acknowledge this is spineless. If it wants to be taken seriously it must first take itself seriously. Nader stood to make a difference and he succeeded. In politics, as in life, a sign of maturity is accepting responsibility for your actions. Moreover, only once those points have been conceded is it possible to mount a credible defence of Nader's candidacy. Because Nader not only had a right to stand but was right to stand. The problem with George Bush is not that he is a vicious rightwing ideologue - the man can barely tie his shoelaces - it is that he is the paid representative of corporate America. It is no good challenging Bush without challenging the system that produced him - a system in which big money, not ideas, selects the candidates and then backs both sides to make sure it picks the winner. Since Gore and the Democrats were not only complicit in that system but abused it to their own ends while in office, they were incapable of taking on that task even if they had wanted to. It took an outsider. Nader alone provided a meaningful choice in what is rapidly becoming a multimillion-dollar, corporate-sponsored charade, masquerading as democracy. Nader was right not because there was no difference between the two main parties but because there was insufficient difference.

The Democrats' pitch to potential Nader supporters was: "At least we're not Republicans." The 2.7m people who voted for Nader felt they wanted more from democracy than that. Democrats love to blame Nader for Bush. Their logic is sloppy. Democrats deny a myriad of other far more compelling or equally tenuous factors that put Bush in the White House. They ignore the fact that, after two terms in office, they could not win Clinton's or Gore's home states. They deny that the situation was so close in Florida that any candidate who stood, including the Natural Law Party, could reasonably claim to have made the decisive difference. One could as well blame Theresa LePore, the election supervisor who botched the ballot papers, or Katherine Harris, the Republican secretary of state in Florida who obstructed the recounts. In such a tight race, Nader was a factor not the factor. Under such circumstances, to fixate on him as the principal reason for Gore's defeat is perverse. The charge also reveals astonishing political arrogance. It suggests that the Democrats have a right to the left vote regardless of what they say and do. Clinton can withdraw welfare benefits from the poor, promote a free-trade agreement (Nafta) that sells jobs to the lowest wages and weakest unions in the continent, broker global trade deals that hammer the poor or starve Iraqi children and still expect liberals to turn out for his successor. Democrats scream betrayal without realising that before there is betrayal there must first be friendship and trust. They demand loyalty, but show none in return. Having spent a decade distancing themselves from the left, they express shock that the left might choose to respect that distance and go it alone.

None the less, the question of whether a principled stand against big money is best served by the practical outcome of a Bush presidency remains pertinent. The answer may change as his term progresses. For the time being, on balance, it was. For evidence look no further than Kyoto. Bush's decision to renege on the treaty is a vicious attack on the environment. But Clinton's record was not much better. He signed up to Kyoto, but he did not honour it. The US, by far the world's largest polluter, promised to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 7% from 1990 levels by 2012. Instead, emissions rose by more than 10% on 1990 levels by 2000. It was thanks to Clinton's administration that last year's climate talks in the Hague collapsed. The problem was not only that he could not get the legislation through a Republican Congress, it was that he dared not take on the might of the oil and gas companies. They gave Republican candidates $10m last year; but they gave Democrats, including Gore, $4m. Bush may be in hock to them, but Clinton was in awe of them. But much also depends on what Nader does now. The corporate domination of American politics cannot be undermined once every four years at election time or on television-panel discussions and the lecture circuit. The truth is that it will take not just a party but a movement, joining together the disparate voices of labour unions, tree huggers and pressure groups that made themselves heard at Seattle, to make complete sense of his candidacy. Having made a difference at the polls, he must now make a difference in civil society. Only then will it be clear that the consequence of Nader's candidacy was not to derail the Democrats, but to restore democracy.

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Here is further proof, as if any more were needed, that the wrong man is sitting in the White House today. Not only did the Toxic Texan receive half a million fewer votes than Gore nationwide, but in all probability he lost Florida as well--even with the massive campaign of voter intimidation waged by Cruella Harris and Baby Bush's brother. Read on, my friends... (From Donald)

Recounts could have given Gore the edge Broward, Palm Beach checked BY SHARI RUDAVSKY AND BETH REINHARD breinhard@herald.com Broward and Palm Beach canvassing boards, although besieged by Republican claims that they used lax standards to award votes to Al Gore, could have credited hundreds more ballots to the Democrat if they had counted every dimple, pinprick and hanging chad as a vote, a review of ballots in both counties shows. In Broward, where the official hand recount added 567 votes to Gore's county lead over Bush, a Herald-sponsored ballot review found that Gore's margin could have been 1,475, if every mark had been counted as a valid vote. In Palm Beach, where the official hand recount added a net gain of 174 votes to Gore's tally, the Herald-sponsored review found a potential Gore net gain of 1,081. ``It's hard to believe that the canvassing boards could have counted even more votes,'' said Broward Republican Party Chairman George LeMieux. ``It was our contention all along that the canvassing board was being extremely loose in their standards.'' The review also revealed that the canvassing boards in both counties had difficulty maintaining uniform standards of judging ballots throughout a process that involved scores of people, hundreds of thousands of ballots, and intense deadline pressure. Among the ballots examined in Broward and Palm Beach by The Herald and auditors from BDO Seidman, LLP, were hundreds of dimpled ballots credited to no candidate that were virtually identical to scores of dimpled ballots awarded to Bush or Gore. Canvassing board members said they did the best they could to discern voter intent fairly. ``We didn't make the Democrats happy, we didn't make the Republicans happy, so I think we did something right,'' said Carol Roberts, a Democratic county commissioner who served on the Palm Beach canvassing board. Suzanne Gunzburger, a Democratic county commissioner on the Broward board who was accused of favoring Gore, said, ``We represented the will of the voter to the best of our ability. I feel comfortable with the job we did.'' The review, sponsored by The Herald, its parent company Knight Ridder and USA Today, examined 16,669 ballots in the two counties as part of a statewide review to determine the possible outcome of a Florida Supreme Court order that undervote ballots throughout the state be counted, a ruling later blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Florida court's order exempted Palm Beach, Broward, Volusia and 139 precincts of Miami-Dade, where canvassing boards had already reviewed ballots. The results of those counties were not included when The Herald computed that the Florida court's order probably would have resulted in Bush still being declared the winner. But viewing the Palm Beach and Broward ballots, while not illuminating the potential outcome of the state court order, did provide an opportunity to assess the actions of the canvassing boards in their pressured manual counting of all ballots. Some conclusions: * Had the Broward and Palm Beach canvassing boards used the loosest standard in judging ballots and finished the recount by the court-set deadline -- which Palm Beach did not meet -- Gore almost certainly would have won. He might have gained 2,022 votes in the two counties when Bush's state lead was only 930. And that tally may be conservative because it excludes the cleanly punched ballots in Broward, 252 Bush votes and 786 Gore votes. Broward election officials say they cannot be certain that cleanly punched ballots weren't also read during the machine count. U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Pembroke Pines, a constant presence at the Broward recount, argued that every ballot mark was made deliberately by a voter indicating a candidate. All impressions should have counted, catapulting Gore over the top. ``The reality is that the canvassing board did not use a liberal standard and did not use the correct standard,'' Deustch said. ``Had they used the correct standard, Al Gore would be president.'' * Both political parties adopted strategies in Palm Beach and Broward that turned out to favor their candidates. Republicans correctly anticipated that a lenient standard would benefit Gore in those two counties and fought strenuously against it. Democrats fought unsuccessfully for including more ballots as valid votes. * Consistency was hard to come by. Piles of dimpled ballots never made it to the canvassing boards for scrutiny because elections workers and observers agreed among themselves that they contained no valid votes. The canvassing boards only scrutinized ballots when teams of two election workers and two representatives of the parties did not agree. ``If we missed that many, I'll have to go kill some people,'' said Dennis Newman, a Boston attorney who represented the Democratic Party in Palm Beach. ``That depresses me. Our instructions were very clear. When in doubt, question it or challenge it if you see anything.'' Broward and Palm Beach kicked off their countywide manual recounts with basically the same benchmark for judging a ballot: the bit of paper the voter expels from the punch-card ballot, the chad, had to be detached by at least two corners to count as a vote. But as the recount battle went to court again and again, and the canvassing board members saw dimpled ballot after dimpled ballot, the basis for judging a vote evolved. In both counties, board members started looking at the whole ballot rather than just the presidential chad in an effort to determine voter intent. In Palm Beach, the canvassing board counted dimples as votes if the rest of the ballot bore similar marks instead of clean punches. ``Generally there had to be some pattern that this was how the person voted,'' said Judge Charles Burton, the chairman of the Palm Beach board. ``Out of 22 votes if you just had two little dings, we wouldn't necessarily count that.'' Broward canvassing board members Robert W. Lee and Gunzburger tended to view a dimple as a vote if there were other marks on the ballot for candidates of the same party. Lee, a Democrat and county court judge, even made a list showing which punch-card numbers corresponded to Democrats and which ones corresponded to Republicans. A quick glance at the list and the ballot would show whether the voter appeared to choose a straight ticket. ``There had to be a pattern of two or three dimples in the Democratic field for me to feel comfortable to count a dimple for Gore,'' Lee said. ``That's the way I interpreted the law.'' Lee's rationale: Many people vote along party lines. Republicans and some election law experts strongly objected to that standard. Daniel Lowenstein, a UCLA law professor and an expert on elections law, called the voting pattern standard ``profoundly wrong.'' ``If you're going to count marks like that, you're surely going to count some significant number of votes that were not intended,'' he said. If people voted straight-party tickets then Democratic congressional candidate Elaine Bloom should have defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw (she didn't), and Republican Property Appraiser William Markham would have lost (he didn't). Gunzburger conceded that some voters cross party lines but said, ``We had to come up with a standard, and this is the standard we chose.'' Maintaining even an arguably flawed standard, however, proved impossible. The Herald compared similarly dimpled ballots to see if the pattern held up. While many dimpled ballots that were counted as votes did show a pattern of other dimples, others assigned to candidates did not. In the week and a half of recounting, boards often worked 14-hour-plus days, tediously inspecting ballots. In Broward, the board did not even break for Thanksgiving. The Palm Beach canvassing board worked non-stop before the recount deadline from 8 a.m. Saturday to 7 p.m. Sunday. All of this came under intense media scrutiny. Reporters and television cameras from all over the world hovered just outside the glass-paned rooms where the canvassing boards toiled. The late hours, life-in-a fishbowl atmosphere, and overall enormity of the task ahead took a toll on board members, despite their valiant efforts. Palm Beach had a written policy on recounts, which called for the two-corner standard and left little opportunity for partisan objections. But Democratic and Republican activists whittled away at the canvassing board's resolve. ``We blew every policy and procedure with all of that because of the demands placed upon us,'' said Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore. ``Looking back, we were trying to please everybody, we probably should have said, `This is the way it is.' '' Adding pressure on boards was the inherent difficulty of assessing punch cards. A chad is no bigger than a freckle. A dimple to one person can be a shadow to another. ``It's like reading tea leaves. Everybody sees something different,'' said William Scherer, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who represented the Republican Party in Broward's recount. Even canvassing board members acknowledge they could not be 100 percent consistent over the long days. ``I'm sure there's a few [ballots] in there now that if I went back and looked, I'd say these are votes, and if I went through the votes, I'd say some are not votes,'' Burton said. The order in which ballots came before the canvassing board was another variable. If the board saw a dimpled ballot and called it for Gore, they might call the next dimpled ballot for Bush. But if a similar ballot came three hours later, it might be discarded. ``At 10 a.m. a person might be a little more conservative, and by 10 p.m they may be a little more liberal,'' said LeMieux of the Broward GOP. Multiply the boards' inconsistency times 60 -- roughly the number of election workers and partisan observers in each county who reviewed the ballots first. If they agreed, the canvassing board never saw the ballot. A ballot ruled as bearing no valid vote and not reviewed by the canvassing board had no chance to count. Ideally, people looking at ballots would get the same training and follow it to the letter, minimizing discrepancies. But different teams behaved differently, noted Jeff Darter, informations technology manager for the Palm Beach elections office. ``There was a huge variation in their intensity, in observing or dissenting.'' Democrats in Palm Beach received clear instructions: insist that any ballot with a mark near Gore be canvassed. As the recount wore on, however, spirits and efforts flagged. ``There were less and less challenges. People were tired, too, so unless it was something glaring, they weren't challenged,'' said Kartik Krishnaiyer, assistant to the chairman of the Palm Beach Democratic Party. Krishnaiyer admits he failed to forward some ballots for canvassing in an effort to deflect GOP accusations that Democrats wanted to manufacture votes for Gore. ``There were a couple of times when I thought that I'd better just let that one go because it's going to be a hard sell,'' he said. ``Still the voter intent was clearly there.'' But others involved in the recount retort that ballot marks don't necessarily reflect voters' choices. ``If you just count a ding as a vote, you're no better off than a machine,'' said Palm Beach County Canvassing Board Chairman Burton, a Democrat. ``If you're just counting impressions, then you're really not interpreting the intent of the voter.'' While the quarrel over standards for manual recounts continues, there's one point where there is little debate. Said Brigham McCown, a lawyer who represented the Republican Party in Palm Beach: ``I think everyone's in agreement it did not work as advertised.'' Herald staff writer Geoff Dougherty contributed to this report.

Published on Sunday, March 11, 2001 in the Washington Post

"They Aren't 'Just Resting.' The Democratic Party is Dead"

by Robert B. Reich

If I were a political consumer, I would -- with apologies to the late Monty Python parrot -- be going back to the store right about now and registering a complaint: "This political party -- the Democratic Party. It's dead." "No, no, no no," he replies, "it's just resting."

But I know a dead party when I see one, and I'm looking at a dead party right now. Just consider the past eight years: lost the presidency, both houses of Congress, almost all its majorities in state legislatures, most governorships. Will lose additional House seats in the next redistricting. Most of the current justices of the Supreme Court appointed by Republicans, also most current federal judges. And the interminable Bill Clinton scandals. The Democratic Party is stone dead. Dead as a doornail.

Not at all, he says. After all, the Democrats are only one seat away from taking over the Senate. If Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court hadn't mucked it up, Al Gore would be in the White House right now. He won the popular vote by a half-million. Democrats and Greens together won more than 3 million more votes than the Republicans. And the Dems raised as much soft money as the Republicans for the first time in history. Forget the Clinton unpleasantness. The public will forget it. It always does. The party's not dead, "just resting."

Maybe, or perhaps it's stunned, lying there inert with less than two years to go until the midterms. Simply can't get over not having Bill Clinton in the White House.

But just you wait, say the party's salesmen: Someone will emerge to bring it back to life.

Look, the only reason the Democratic Party is sitting upright is that it's been nailed there, like the Python parrot. Who speaks for the Democrats? Clinton is utterly disgraced. Gore ran a lousy campaign. Terry McAuliffe heads the Democratic National Committee only because he raised a ton of money for Clinton.

And don't tell me the Democratic Leadership Council, with all that talk about being from the vital center -- why, even Hillary joined up -- is going to revive this bird. The DLC stands for nothing, nada, zero, except it's anti-union. No grass roots. No troops. No one out in America cares about the DLC. The DLC says it's centrist, but centrism is wherever the polls say most Americans are. And most Americans drift wherever there's a lot of hullabaloo. Centrism is unprincipled. Centrism doesn't lead. It follows. Centrism is Dick Morris. Centrism is nowhere.

If the Democratic Party's alive, why doesn't it insist that the budget surplus be spent on health care for the 44 million Americans without it? And child care for the millions who lack it? And good schools for all kids? Why doesn't the party say it's plain absurd to spend $300 billion on the military when the Cold War is over, and tens of billions more on a missile-defense shield that won't work? Why isn't it outraged that most of the benefits of President Bush's tax cut will go to people at the top? Why does it play dead on the environment? Why? Because it's not playing dead. It is dead!

The Dems aren't even fighting for campaign finance reform. They got so much soft money last time that they've decided to hold on. This party is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is an ex-party!

CONSERVATIVE RAGE vs. LIBERAL GUILT

By David Morris

Regarding John Ashcroft, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) maintains, "A

Republican president ought to be able to appoint people of strong

conservative ideology." Can you imagine Senator Jesse Helms or Senator

Trent Lott uttering those words about a Democratic president and his

strongly ideological liberal nominee? Think Lani Guinier.

Conservatives and liberals take a fundamentally different approach to

politics. Conservatives are driven by rage; liberals by guilt.

Conservatives attack. Liberals equivocate. Liberals inhabit a world

painted a thousand shades of gray. Conservatives live in a black and

white world. Conservatives believe they are battling evil. Liberals

believe they are struggling to overcome human frailties.

Christopher Lasch's 1978 book, The Culture of Narcissism, was rumored to

be Jimmy Carter's favorite book and the inspiration for his infamous

"malaise" speech. We have seen the enemy, the liberal President advised

in that speech, and he is us. No self-respecting conservative would be

burdened by such self-doubt.

Tolerance is the watchword for liberals. Punishment is the watchword for

conservatives.

In 1980, when the nation's overworked air traffic controllers went on

strike, President Reagan fired every last one. Ten years later, after

the union had been broken and a trickle of unemployed controllers came

hat in hand to apply for jobs, President Bush refused to hire them.

In the 1960s, Morton Halperin served in both the Johnson and Nixon

administrations. In l970, he resigned in protest over Nixon's illegal

invasion of Cambodia. In 1993, President Clinton nominated him to a

Pentagon post. He was eminently qualified. Enraged conservatives didn't

care. To them Halperin was a traitor. They forced him to withdraw.

A few days after the polls closed in Florida last November, Republicans

made it perfectly clear that if a court-ordered recount declared Gore

the winner, they would fight the outcome all the way to Congress. On

January 6, fifteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives

rose to challenge Florida's electors, citing a pattern of irregularities

in the voting. Their challenge could not be heard unless one senator

signed their petition. No Democrat would do so.

In January 1993, a liberal President took office. The Republicans were a

minority in the House and in the Senate. That didn't stop them from

waging war. Indeed, Senator Bob Dole used the filibuster to an extent

unknown in U.S. history to stop Clinton from enacting any significant

legislation. For almost two years, Dole forced liberals to gain 60

votes, not 51 votes, to win. Does anyone believe Minority Leader Tom

Daschle will embrace such a strategy?

I appreciate liberals' devotion to tolerance and diversity. Really. But

after awhile I begin to think Robert Frost was right when he defined a

liberal as someone "so broadminded he won't take his own side in an

“argument".

This is a dangerous time. We have a president who takes great

satisfaction in having put 150 people to death while governor of Texas,

more than the previous three governors of that state combined. Despite

the mounting evidence that some innocent people have been executed since

the Supreme Court ruled capital punishment constitutional in 1976,

George W. Bush has no doubts that every last one of those 150 people

deserved to die. The moral burden does not weigh heavily on our new

president. Governor Bush asked the television audience during his

second debate, "The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess

what's going to happen to them? They're going to be put to death."

The Chattanooga Times editorialized, "The triumphant look on his

face was chilling..."

Republicans from Richard Nixon to James Watt to Tom DeLay have treated

their opponents as the enemy. That is a well-documented historical fact.

What makes the nomination of John Ashcroft as Attorney General so

ominous is that this tendency toward demonization may soon be wrapped in

a higher authority. "There is no King but Jesus," Ashcroft proudly

proclaims.

To which I would respond, there is no war more devastating than a holy

war.

...on the President

Thanks to Donald W. ...

The G.W. Bush Theme

(to the tune of "What a Wonderful World" by Sam

Cooke)

(New lyrics by Joel Landy)

Don't know much about history.

Don't know much foreign policy.

I don't know the names of men I grill,

Or implications of the seats I fill.

But I do know who has paid my way.

For corporate interests and the NRA

What a wonderful world this will be.

Don't know much about ecology.

Cutting trees has always worked for me.

And I don't know about the women's vote,

And I can't think of any bill I wrote.

But there's one thing that I know for sure,

If the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor

What a wonderful world this will be.

I never claimed to be an A student, but I don't have to be

If you have deep pockets and sell nuclear rockets

You're a friend of my family.

Don't know much about air pollution.

Don't know much about the Constitution.

Don't care much for solar energy.

There's nothing in it for my friends and me.

And if we can't find any on our soil

We can go to war and get more oil, and

What a wonderful world this will be.

Don't know much about the driving rules.

Don't know much about the public schools.

Don't know why the inner cities fail

Why can't folks get dad to pay for Yale?

And if the issues causing you to lose

Are never covered in the evening news,

What a wonderful world this will be.

I never claimed to be an A student, but I don't have to be.

If you have a brother who's the Florida Governor, the result's no mystery.

Don't know much about history.

Don't know much foreign policy.

Don't know 'bout paying off a debt.

I never had to pay one off yet.

But I do know who has paid my way.

For special interests in the USA

What a wonderful world this will be.

SUPREME COURT ELECTS THE PRESIDENT!

Orchestrates "Velvet Legal Coup"

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. today said, "As a U.S. congressman

I swore to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United

States. Today I reaffirm that oath. I also reaffirm that we are

a nation of laws and not of men, thus, I accept and will abide by

the ruling of the Supreme Court.

"However, even as I accept and will abide by the decision, I also

-- with every bone in my body and every ounce of moral strength in

my soul -- strongly and vigorously disagree with it. In third

world countries when democratically cast votes are not counted, or

the person who most likely lost wins in a highly questionable

manner, we usually refer to that as a coup d'etat -- the overthrow

of a government, usually by a small group of persons. All legal

votes in Florida were not counted. If they had been counted, there

is at least a strong possibility that Vice President Gore would have

received the most votes in Florida as he did in the country -- which

is why the Bush people did not want the votes counted. Even more

important than partisan politics, the votes should have been counted

in the name of democracy in order to give the maximum amount of

credibility and legitimacy to the eventual winner. What we have

just witnessed is a Supreme Court that was used as a willing tool

of the Bush campaign.

"After the Soviet Union collapsed, many of its satellites fell.

In the case of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel became the new

President on the basis of a legitimate people uprising and a

democratic "Velvet Revolution." In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court

orchestrated a questionable 'velvet legal coup.'

"The basis of politics and legal authority in the United States is

the Constitution. The first words in the Preamble are 'We the

people.' We the PEOPLE are the ultimate source of power and legal

authority for our government. The people express their will

through the vote. And the will and intention of the voter, as best

it can be discerned by machines, bipartisan hand counters and

accompanying public witnesses must be the legal standard.

"While I urge calm and a political response in 2002 and 2004, I

see this decision as a potential threat to our democracy and

potentially de-stabilizing to our democratic institutions. I see

it as undermining the legitimacy of a President Bush should he be

elected without all of the votes being counted. All Americans can

live with votes counted for Gov. George W. Bush. But democracy

cannot live if the votes of the American people are not counted.

An uncounted vote says to the American people that THEY don't count.

"I do not believe that over 100 million Americans went to the polls

and cast their ballots with the expectation that they would not be

counted. I also do not believe they voted with the expectation that

their next president would be selected by five conservative, strict

constructionist, narrowly ideological, Republican-appointed justices

who used the means of legal nitpicking and highly questionable legal

technicalities as a substitute for the peoples' democratic will as

expressed through their vote.

"Justice Scalia, in the previous decision, went so far as to say

that there is no legal right of suffrage in the Constitution. Thus,

the American people, through their federal and state elected

officials, may need to amend the constitution making the right to

vote -- which all Americans thought was implicit in our Constitution

and laws -- explicit in the Constitution. This decision, with the

kind of thinking reflected by Justice Scalia, is a threat to our

democracy. It is hard to imagine that Bush v. Gore will be viewed

as a high water mark in the history of the Supreme Court when viewed

through the eyes of history. It will more likely be compared to

other infamous decisions such as Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson.

"The road is now even tougher for Vice President Gore, but it is

still up to him as to whether he pursues any further legal or

political remedies. I still strongly support all legal and

political efforts to make sure that all voters who cast votes on

November 7 have their votes counted. Legal options seem to have

exhausted any hope of getting all the votes counted. However,

there may be political means in Congress still open to the Vice

President that he may wish to pursue. I will respect whatever

course he chooses.

"The Vice President won the most national votes. And I believe that

if all votes cast in Florida had been counted he would have won the

most votes there as well -- and, thus, the 25 electoral votes and

the presidency. Legal matters have been pursued through the courts,

ultimately with no relief. If everything remains the same, it

appears that the Electoral College vote will go to Governor Bush.

"However, beyond and even more important than Bush or Gore, is the

issue of the integrity of the voting system itself. There appears

to be 'voting rights' violations that should be pursued regardless

of who wins the election. Congress needs to pass legislation to

federalize and nationalize future elections to the extent that

there is one, fair, inclusive national standard and mechanism for

conducting our federal elections.

"It appears, through a combination of inferior voting machines,

police roadblocks, questionable voting procedures, roll purges and

other such mechanisms, that a significant number of African

Americans were denied either their right to vote or to have their

vote count. These matters should be fully investigated beyond the

election results and corrective procedures should be put in place

for the future. African Americans should remain more determined

than ever to vote and to have their vote count. If there is a fire

and water is poured on it, but it doesn't put out the fire, don't

conclude that water doesn't put out fires. Conclude that it will

take more water. By the same token African Americans should NOT

conclude that voting doesn't count, but that we need even more

votes to achieve the desired effect. We must spend the time

between now and 2002 registering and politically educating the

nearly 8 million yet unregistered black voters. In fact, we must

Jackson concluded.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jesse Jackson, Jr. - Congressman Second District of Illinois

http://www.jessejacksonjr.org

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