The collected wisdom of political soothsayers assured us that the presidential election of 2000 would be close in the days prior to November 7th, but the potential ramifications of the concept �close� eluded us. What began as a traditional election in the early hours of that Tuesday morning would be transfigured into an election that would not end.
The peculiarities of the Electoral College that most of us knew in passing, if at all, suddenly became of great moment during the anguish of the Florida impasse. The archaic nature of the College and its presumed irrelevance in the modern era was replaced with the uncomfortable realization that its existence might secure the presidency for a candidate who received a minority of the popular vote. Floridians and others wanted to know if a person actually had to graduate from the electoral college to be an elector or if bestowal of an honorary degree was sufficient. People who had never been to a state party convention where most electors are actually selected nowadays were understandably in the dark over a process and procedure that heretofore had been an antiquated holdover from the eighteenth century.
When political lightning struck on the 7th of November in Florida, local officials were put in an awkward position at several levels. The initial problem that faced them was one common to any public official trapped in a democrat-republican controversy. The local officials themselves were affiliated with one or the other of the political parties; therefore, their decisions in a hair-trigger situation such as the recount created were automatically suspect politically.
A secondary problem that developed was that local officials were soon out of their depth in addressing the controversy. Procedures for counting hanging, spinning, and wanna-be chads were of course ill-defined. Higher level state officials didn�t just fall off the turnip truck, so they studiously avoided giving substantial direction to local officials lest the higher officials be held responsible for the emerging discord. Local officials were then left holding the bag, with their every decision both politically suspect and legally problematic.
Local and state courts were dragged into the mess, with the political affiliations of judges undermining the already shaky expertise of courts that themselves had no substantial experience in or understanding of presidential election recounts. The statutory framework for recounts was somewhat vague and, in any event, was never written with the expectation that it would be applied in a presidential election that was essentially a statistical tie in the state. Laws respecting recounts that were expected to apply mainly in local races and only occasionally in statewide races were now determining the outcome of a presidential election.
The public was made forcibly cognizant of some of the ugly realities of democratic politics in the United States. Some votes are not counted; some voters do not complete their ballots properly; some polling stations have more modern equipment than other polling stations. The reality that all local election officials are not equally competent nor are some of them above bending procedural rules to favor the candidate they prefer became the stuff of afternoon television. The political hypocrisy that characterizes both parties at some levels became evident with the increasingly ugly mood of the participants. The hypocrisy of republicans going to the federal courts when they didn�t like state court decisions was balanced by equally hypocritical liberals who suddenly discovered the meaning of the concept of states� rights and the shortcomings of judicial activism.
Yet the chaos that was Florida will likely speed several results. First, it is likely that one of the first orders of business when the Florida state assembly meets this year will be election reform. The humiliation Floridians received regularly from late-night comedians will perhaps result in significant monies appropriated to systematize the electoral process throughout the state and to purchase modern voting machines. Second, there is some chance of federal legislation setting parameters for recounts in future presidential elections, if such become necessary. This legislation might remove part of the ambiguity faced by both state and federal courts during the most recent electoral season. Finally, states other than Florida are likely to review their own electoral processes knowing that, absent the whims of fate, the Florida anarchy could just as easily have occurred in their states.
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