This is far better than I have ever stated it:
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Here is the beginning of wisdom on the electoral jam.
1) In competitions, somebody wins. That means that somebody loses.
2) Margins of victory can be interesting, suggestive; worth probing for a number of
reasons. But they have nothing to do with the question of winning and losing.
3) In athletic contests it is nowadays not unusual for a skier or a runner to win by
1/100th of a second. Using round numbers, 100 million Americans voted, one half going
to each of the two major candidates. Winning or losing by 300 votes in a political
contest in which six million voted is to win or lose by 1/10,000th of a point. That
kind of thing happens all the time in sports.
4) We are not engaged in a national plebiscite on the Electoral College system. Both
of the candidates have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and it decrees how new
presidents are to be selected. Those who wish to amend the Constitution are entirely
free to do so. See Article V. And set aside a couple of years to get it done.
5) The single question that properly occupies us is what was the recorded vote in
Florida. This is a different question from: What would the vote have been in Florida
if a) Nader wasn't running, b) Buchanan wasn't running, c) voters gave more time to
deliberating over the ballot they used, or d) voters had given more time to
deliberating the leverage of a vote on that day, in that state.
6) Accordingly: Procedure is king. Nothing else counts, or should count. Procedure
asks a relatively simple question: How did the voters mark their ballots on November
7th?
John D. Giorgis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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