The principle applies to this year’s election. We witnessed recount after recount, and the end result was always the same. The Gore supporters refused to accept what seemed to be fate. They filed legal suits, aired complaints, and everything else instead of doing the thing that they should have done from the start — concede.
We’ve all heard a variety of complaints. “The butterfly ballot was confusing and illegal,” or “The ballot-counting machinery in certain precincts is old and outdated and highly inaccurate.” The list of complaints goes on and on.
I hate to break it to you, but in an election that involves 100 million people, the results will not be 100 percent accurate. It is not for us, however, to start hand-counting each and every vote. If the machine rejects an improperly marked ballot, then pity the person who cast that vote. Instead of babying the “victim,” we should toss out the ballot as the law allows and hope that the “victim” learns to read the instructions next time he or she decides to cast a vote in an election of such enormous impact.
In the discussions I’ve had with liberals regarding this issue, they all seem to come back to the same story of the poor, blind grandma who can’t lift a spoon to her mouth let alone cast a vote properly. I’m here to tell you that the poor old grandma is a myth made up by the Gore camp.
They want us to believe that the nation is full of poor old grandmas who are too inept to vote properly and therefore need the liberal’s strong hand to aide them. In other words, every “questionable” ballot was some poor old lady who couldn’t figure out how to vote properly or was too weak to push the chad all the way through. What a joke.
Despite these complaints, none of them have been substantiated. Butterfly ballot samples have been brought to second-graders and nursing home residents alike. Both groups were able to get it right. If second-graders and nursing home patients can vote properly using these ballots, then where are the grounds for the complaints mentioned above? There are none. It is just another Gore lie.
The nation is not comprised of imbeciles and weaklings who have neither the brains nor the intelligence to vote. We are all self-reliant individuals, capable of making our own decisions and choosing our own paths. Certainly, we are able to cast a vote properly, if voting is important to us.
As stalwart individuals, however, we need to accept the responsibility for our actions. If we goof up our vote and are too stupid to ask for a new ballot, then we don’t come out of the poll crying to our local congressman saying, “The ballot was too confusing. I think I voted for Buchanan instead of Gore!” Instead, we suck it up and say, “You know what? I messed up. I didn’t mark the ballot properly, and although my guy didn’t win, there’s no one to blame but myself. I should have read the instructions.
“Next time, I’ll make sure I pay attention to what I’m doing.” This is what it means to be self-governing. Think about it.