As the Democrats' legal hurricane rages across the citrus orchards of the Sunshine State, a stench is emanating from the orange groves--and it isn't the smell of the Everglades. The Gore campaign has sunk to new lows by turning to the federal judiciary in a blatantly partisan effort to defy the recount process unanimously approved by the Florida Supreme Court.
With all of his flashy trial lawyers and his own well-advertised intellect, you'd think Gore might understand that the U.S. Constitution leaves voting procedures and decisions to the states. The voters and ballot officials of Snopes County were well within their legal rights in demanding a manual recount. As everyone knows, Snopes County is conservative-Republican territory. It went almost two-to-one for George W. Bush. How preposterous, then, that more than 3,400 Snopes voters should have cast ballots for Ralph Nader! Indeed, Nader's next-best county yielded only 780 votes. Yet another 19,000 Snopes voters had their ballots invalidated. It is self-evident that they were so confused by the butterfly ballot and the Nader box being next to the Bush line that they checked both.
Obviously, the only fair and reasonable way to find out what the voters really intended is to have a full manual recount. It is truly outrageous that the Democratic secretary of state (who co-chaired the Florida Gore campaign!) is trying to frustrate the will of local voters and duly appointed local election officials.
Even more disgusting is the behavior of the Gore campaign itself. Only someone who is obsessive about centralizing power in Washington would try an end run to the federal courts. It is all the more urgent that we find out what the voters of Snopes County really intended since George W. Bush actually won the U.S. popular vote by more than 300,000 votes. The legitimacy of the presidency is at stake. It may well be that the early exit polls, which caused the networks to call Florida for Bush, were accurate and that the voting system failed the voters. In our decentralized and federated republic, the Founding Fathers wisely left states and localities in charge of voting.
Gore's hypocrisy is ripe. Just imagine if, say, it were Gore who was ahead by 300,000 popular votes. Imagine how justifiably outraged the Democrat party would be if, say, 3,400 Jewish voters in liberal Palm Beach County had inadvertently voted for the archfoe of Israel, Pat Buchanan. In this election, the flagrant hypocrisy of these politicians and their lackeys in the liberal media knows no bounds.
