Recount!

OK, confession time. I actually voted for George Bush in 2000. Does that tinge my view of the following? I’d like to think not, but probably. I would like to add that I alleviate myself of responsibility for electing him though, on the grounds that Gore carried Illinois by a wide margin and thus my vote did not electorally contribute to him in any way. Is that rationalization? Yes. Yes it is. Does it help me sleep better at night? Yes. Yes it does.

So I watched the HBO film Recount the other night. For those poor souls without HBO and who haven’t heard of it, it’s a dramatization of the 2000 election in Florida and the days of madness that followed. Coming at the end of the Bush presidency, I think this is the right time for this film to have been made. The 36-days of confusion that occurred are of historic significance to the U.S. and is (hopefully) something we’ll never have to live through again. Had this film been made any sooner, the country wouldn’t have been ready to reflect on it. Any later and we might have collectively started to forget about it. Overall, the events depicted appear to be largely accurate, as they are approximately how I remember them. However, from listening to some of the filmmaker’s thoughts, it appears that they believed they were making a non-partisan film and I would have to say that in that regard they came up short. First of all, the story is told largely from the perspective of Al Gore’s chief legal counsel (played by Kevin Spacey). This inherently makes him the protagonist and, as the underdog, all of cinematic expectations lead us to want to root for him. That’s not by itself a bad thing, but it deals a blow to the claim of neutrality. Also, while I think they do a generally fair job of portraying each camp’s legal teams as simply doing whatever it takes to win within the confines of the law, where I think the film gets out of focus is in the portraying of the lower-level supporters of each candidate. If the film is to be believed, all Gore supporters wanted was to ensure that the intent of the voters was recognized, and all Bush supporters wanted was to stifle any and all efforts to give Gore any additional votes. While I’m quite sure there are lots of people that fall into those two categories, on balance I think Gore supporters weren’t quite as noble as they like to think they were, and Bush supporters weren’t quite so devious.

If there is one thing that is apparent and, I believe, true about the film is that the U.S. Supreme Court decision was exceedingly . . .odd. In case your memory of the events is a bit hazy, the Florida Supreme Court, on December 8th, ordered manual recounts in counties with a large number of undervotes. Then on December 9th the U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction stopping the recount and set a hearing for December 11th. Then on December 12th they ruled that the recounts hadn’t been valid because different counties were using different standards in the recount, and that now there was no time to complete the recount under new standards. So basically, they said, “We really don’t know who actually won, but we can’t trust these new numbers and they’re incomplete anyway, and now there’s no time left so we have to go with what the previous result was.” But perhaps the oddest part of the decision was that it was "limited to the present circumstances", meaning that it could never be cited as precedent. The film indicates that this is the first time the US Supreme Court has ever done that; I can neither confirm nor deny that.

My belief is that, under the way that the system was set up, you ultimately couldn’t call that election any other way. But the system should have worked better. I am reminded of the 2002 baseball All-Star game (stay with me here), which ended in a tie in the 11th inning after both teams ran out of relief pitchers. The fact that it ended in a tie didn’t really bother me. After all, it was an exhibition game (this was the year before the winner determined home-field advantage for the World Series). What bothered me was the 20-minute stoppage of play before the 11th inning while league officials met to discuss what to do. It was as if it had never occurred to any of them that this was a possibility, despite the fact that 5 games per week end up in extra innings. A lot of baseball games are close, so it seems like there probably should have been some guidelines in place. Well, some elections are really close, so it kind of seems like there should have been some guidelines in place there too. What are the standards for manually recounting ballots? How should you deal with pregnant or dimpled chads? I don’t know, but I know this: the day after the election is not the time to hold a debate about it. In a stunning coincidence, people’s opinion about those line up almost exactly with the position of the candidate they support.

Now, to bring this into the current realm, once you have standards you need to stick to them! Last year, in a stunning display of stupidity that only the Democrats can produce, the DNC voted to strip Michigan and Florida of their convention delegates for moving their primaries up. In October, Hillary Clinton said of Michigan “It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything.” Well, apparently something happened between October and April to make it less clear, because suddenly she was champion of the people of those two states and decided to do everything in her power to make sure they counted. When the DNC ended up allowing half the states delegates to be represented, and further awarded Clinton slightly more delegates in Michigan it was the Clinton camp that was outraged. But the group that should have been outraged was Obama (which, of course, he would have been had it actually mattered). What is the point of establishing the rules and standards if you’re just going to change them “when it counts”? I can’t believe that any Democrat who complains about Bush's supposed trampling on the Bill of Rights during his presidency could possibly support Clinton in this type of ridiculous logic. With the Patriot Act and things like warrantless wire-tapping, our president has basically said that sometimes the security of the nation is more important than an individual’s rights when the country is in danger. I disagree. I think that when the country is in danger, that’s when our civil rights are the most important. Similarly, it is during close elections where it is most important to adhere strictly to our established standards and guidelines. At the end of the day, the main goal in counting ballots is objectivity. Do I believe that the butterfly ballot was confusing? Yes, but so what? There was a process in place to approve it 30-days prior to the election and neither party filed a complaint. Hence, that argument holds no water. Don’t like the ballot? Then change it next time.

Someone could astutely point out that I voted for Bush and Obama, so of course I support these two outcomes. I would argue that I’m also an accountant, and as such hold a particular affinity for the absolute nature of numbers and recognize the need for rules and standards to clarify the subjective.

One final note on the 2000 election that I encountered. Being from Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt. I did find it interesting though:

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major U.S. news organizations, conducted a Florida Ballot Project comprehensive review of all ballots uncounted (by machine) in the Florida 2000 presidential election, both undervotes and overvotes. The media reported the results of the study during the week after November 12, 2001. The results of the study showed that had the limited county by county recounts requested by the Gore team been completed, Bush would still have been the winner of the election. The recount also showed that had there been a full statewide recount of all counties, Al Gore would have received more votes than Bush. However, neither campaign requested such a total statewide recount, and it was never formally carried out.