On the night of Dec. 12, a deeply divided US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court decision and sealed George W. Bush's victory in the country's presidential election. The Florida court had ruled in favor of continuing manual recounts across the state and against establishment of a uniform standard of counting due to a lack of time. The Supreme Court ruling thus ended Al Gore's efforts to overtake Bush's slim lead.
A day later Al Gore bowed out with a gracious concession speech, calling for unity and support of the president-elect. Before we close the book on this unprecedented, rancorous post-election contest, it is worthwhile to reflect on some of the tactics underlying this prolonged fight, which undoubtedly caused additional fissures in a country already divided and diminished American democracy in the eyes of the world.
Soon after the polls closed on Nov. 7, TV news programs broadcasted numerous stories about the "illegal" butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County, where many old ladies claimed that they were misled by the poorly designed ballot into voting for Buchanan when they really wanted to vote for Gore. Many sued for a right to revote. Then it was revealed that the Gore campaign hired a telemarketing firm to ask thousands of voters questions over the phone. The firm targeted easily-confused and gullible old ladies who, as a result, became convinced they mistakenly voted for Buchanan. The suits for a revote were later rejected by the courts.
The Gore campaign sought hand recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, where the Democrats controlled the canvassing board and could dictate the standards for counting "undervotes" -- namely, ballots which do not allow the intent of the voters to be ascertained by the vote counting machines and were excluded as invalid ballots. Gore's argument was that democracy demands that every vote be counted. Thus, in Broward County where a decision was made to recount every dimple by hand, Gore was able to reduce Bush's winning margin by over 500 votes.
Yet when Florida started counting the overseas absentee ballots on Nov. 17, a Gore lawyer circulated a memo to Democratic operatives in all 67 Florida counties, detailing how to invalidate such ballots on various technical grounds. The reason? Because absentee ballots were predominantly from members of the armed services who tended to favor Bush.
Some Democrats also initiated suits in Seminole and Martin Counties to throw out some 15,000 absentee ballots on account of technical irregularities in completing the Republican ballot applications. Since there was no fraud and the ballots themselves were completed properly, the courts ruled against the plaintiffs, thus preserving Bush's lead.
While understandable in the heat of such a closely contested election, the fact is such demagoguery fans partisanship, sows discord and makes the country harder to govern. America is fortunate in that its founding fathers, taking note of people's selfish nature, put in place a series of checks and balances in the Constitution, so the country is able to deal with almost any constitutional crisis in a peaceful way.
The bitter 36-day fight in America has lessons for Taiwan's budding democracy where a consolidation of democracy is vital to the island's survival as a nation. The most important lesson is that fair play is basic to democracy. Democracy demands more than the rule of law. Democracy subsumes a sense of right and wrong, an ethical standard and a sense of proportion.
RSS