11/30/00 9:30 a.m.
Seven Election Blessings
It’s not as bad as you think.

By Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. From 1987 to 1991, he was a deputy in the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division.

rritated and frustrated by the interminable election? Here are a lucky seven things to be thankful for.

1. We all can be grateful that there won't be another presidential election for four years. I know this is perilously close to Pollyanna's "glad game" and her observation that the nice thing about a Sunday is that, once it's over, it won't be Sunday again for a week. But there was a time right after the election when it was being seriously suggested that some precincts in Florida — the ones where apparently many voters, Democrats of course, had trouble figuring out the butterfly ballot — should hold the election over again. That idea seems to have died a well-deserved death.

Even the latest claims by Jesse Jackson and civil-rights groups of voter confusion and intimidation will not result in any judge ordering a revote. Nor, indeed, will they change the tally in this election, since there is no reliable way of telling how confused or intimidated voters would have voted, or even if they would have voted at all. So any remedies will be prospective only. For all this we can breathe a sigh of relief.

2. Americans have more proof that the Founding Fathers were smart guys. There was a boomlet of opinion that this election shows that we ought to get rid of the Electoral College. But think how much worse things would be without it. Since no candidate got a majority, we'd be staring at another election (see blessing number one, above). And if the national popular vote tally were ever anything close to as tight as Florida's was, we'd have everything that's going on in Florida now multiplied by 50. Every county in every state in the country would be deluged with lawyers demanding — or trying to block — a recount.

Maybe what we'll end up with is more states following Maine's example, and awarding their electoral votes pro rata, rather than by winner-take-all. That would make it less likely to have a president elected without a popular vote majority or at least plurality, and diminish the stakes in any even a closely contested state — all without jettisoning the Electoral College or amending the Constitution.

3. Southerners have more proof of racial progress. To be sure, there have been the predictable claims by Jesse Jackson and the NAACP that black voters were "disenfranchised" — and, who knows, maybe there really were instances in which the credentials of black voters were challenged more aggressively than those of white voters (although the fact that Jackson and the NAACP say so is no reason to believe it happened, let alone that it happened on a systematic basis).

But the good news is that no one can seriously argue that anyone had any objection to black voters voting because they were black. If black voters were being singled out, it was because they were overwhelmingly likely to vote Democratic (90 percent nationwide, as it turned out, and 93 percent in Florida). Indeed, if Republicans believed that a black voter was going to vote for George W. Bush, not only would they have had no objection to him or her voting, but they would have cheerfully driven him or her to the polls — and then urged that voter to accept a leadership position in the party itself.

A generation ago, it was irrelevant how a black voter in the South planned to vote. The objection was to them voting, period. That's over. The only accusation that can be made now is that some fringe players were using race as a guide for challenging people likely to vote a particular way. That's illegal and wrong — indeed, voter intimidation is illegal whether or not race is in the equation at all — but it's very different and not nearly as horrible as systematically denying people the right to vote for no reason other than their skin color.

In fact, it is safe to say that the real problem is not that Republicans are prejudiced against African Americans, but that African Americans are prejudiced against Republicans. The lies told about Republicans by black leaders are what is really divisive and irrational.

4. Democrats have finally found a protest they can condemn. Kierkegaard observed that a crowd of people shouting something makes it false, and surely this truth must have made some elitist Democrats uncomfortable over the years. In their heart of hearts, they must have found it just a tad unseemly when Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton used raucous protests as a way of blackmailing corporations or shaking down government officials. And so, at last, they have found a protest they can condemn, namely the Republican protest against a closed-door recount in Miami-Dade County. Not only that, but they are able to resurrect the old segregationist complaint about "outside agitators" coming into the South to stir up trouble. Too bad Jesse continues to lead his own protests down there.

5. Republicans no longer need to question their worst suspicions about Democrats. We all need to be reassured in our prejudices, and in that respect the recent events in Florida have been reassuring indeed for Republicans. They have long viewed Democrats as dishonest, ruthless, and venal. Gore's post-election actions in Florida will confirm that for them. Republicans think Democrats, rather than them, deserve the title of "The Stupid Party." And it turns out that a high percentage of Democrats can't even figure out how to punch a hole in a piece of paper. Republicans think Democrats are lazy. And, sure enough, even after some Democrats had managed to get a third opportunity to "find" votes via a manual recount, others of their party in two counties decided it was too much trouble (one group took Thanksgiving off and so missed the deadline, and the other decided not to bother with a recount at all).

Finally, Republicans always suspected that Democrats thought homeless people who could be bribed to vote with a few cigarettes were morally superior citizens to our soldiers, and, what do you know, it turns out that Democrats really would rather see the former vote than the latter. In this regard, Republicans will also not be surprised that Gore supporters have been oddly silent about reports that sizeable numbers of felons, noncitizens, and illegal immigrants all voted in Florida, despite being legally ineligible to do so.

6. Political junkies have hope for the end of a cliché. For years, we have heard that no one should watch sausage or legislation being made. Now, perhaps, we can update that to include juries and elections. The voting process, like the jury box, has a "rough justice" component and is filled with imperfections — some accidental, some not. "Politics ain't bean bag," as the Tammany boss said, and any enterprise that involves millions of people and extremely high stakes is going to have some, uh, irregularities.

That's why deadlines have to be taken seriously and finality is important — and why statesmen understand that, in the electoral arena, each side can always find imperfections and the perfect quickly becomes the enemy of the good. This is not to condone the abuses that occur, but one must accept the fact that, by their nature, it will be pointless as well as unappetizing to look at juries and voting too closely. Sort of like watching sausage being made ….

7. Bill Gates has found a better way to spend his money. Last year, Bill Gates announced that he was going to give away $1 billion in race-based scholarships — a very bad idea. But now he can see a better use for his money: Replacing all those Votomatic machines with a higher technology version that will count votes more reliably and decrease the potential for abuse during recounts. Doubtless Gates will be able to figure out a way for the new machines to increase Microsoft's revenues, too.

So cheer up. Every American — and not just us lawyers — can find something to be thankful for in Florida.