Teach Your Children Well: Bush Lost, Democracy Lost

Soon a consortium of major media organizations (including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Associated Press and others) will announce the results of a massive study of the undervotes and overvotes in Florida. Before this result comes out, I think it might be instructive to revisit the overlooked results of the last such study, because "neutral observers" seemed to miss the fundamental point -- under Florida law, Bush really did lose.

Just a few weeks ago, the Miami Herald and USA Today finished their own study, which provided new tarnish for the Bush victory bandwagon. And although their analyses tended to obscure the results, their conclusion should have been simple: Bush lost. Not only did fewer people in Florida attempt to vote for the Shrub, fewer actually did vote for him.

(a) Bush lost under Florida law.

Their study broke the undervotes into four types, based on the standard the accounting firm (BDO Seidman) used to categorize them:

(1) lenient or liberal (dimple in Presidential vote);

(2) Palm Beach (dimples in other races present);

(3) two-corner chad (two or more corners detached);

(4) strict or clean-punch (chad completely detached).

Under the first two standards, the papers reported, Gore won; under the latter two, Bush had more votes. Under all four standards, the margin was close.

Their breakdown, however, misses the point -- it is not these four standards that should matter, because these are only "proxies" for discerning voter intent.

Under Florida law, clearly articulated in the Florida statutes, "No vote shall be declared invalid or void if there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter." (I must confess, I am not at this moment taking this citation from the law books; I'm taking it from Jake Tapper's Down & Dirty, a book I couldn't put down once I picked it up.)

Using this legal definition, Bush lost. Obviously the accounting firm that the Miami Herald and USA Today hired was able to differentiate between the dimples on the ballots they put into categories #1 and #2 above, and the thousands of ballots that they concluded had no markings at all. Thus, in these dimpled cases, the voter's intent was clear to the accountants, these honest observers (as compared to, say, James Baker). Counting these votes, plus the overvotes -- which were supposed to be counted last November -- means that Bush lost, under Florida law.

The law that the Florida Supreme Court was trying to follow. The law that the U.S. Supreme Court subverted. The law that should have given Florida's electoral votes to Gore, thus sending George W. back to Texas.

We should remember this outrage when we "mark" the six-month anniversary of the Scalia Five's judicial coup on June 12th.

(b) Bush also lost under his own Texas law.

The almost unbelievable -- and widely unreported -- truth is, Bush lost under his own rules! Under Texas law -- a bill signed into law by Bush when he was Governor! -- the Texas Election Code provides guidance on determining "the intent of the voter." The Bush-approved Texas law said that a person's vote should be counted if:

(1) at least two corners of the chad are detached;

(2) light is visible through the hole;

(3) an indentation on the chad from the stylus or other object is present and indicates a clearly ascertainable intent of the voter to vote; [or]

(4) the chad reflects by other means a clearly ascertainable intent of the voter to vote."

(This quote is taken from the never-filed 12/13/01 Gore brief, also in Jake Tapper's book.)

Under these Texas standards, then, the accountants' dimpled votes count. This means Bush got fewer votes under his own law -- he lost again.

(c) Bush also lost the national popular vote.

Since the President-Select got half-a-million fewer votes nationwide, only the archaic, elitist, and unfair electoral college, invented as a compromise with the Slave Power states, distorted the will of the voters. We should not let this just slide by -- the electoral college has got to go.