Hanging Chads

The nightmare of the 2000 presidential election with its hanging chads and butterfly ballots is never going to go away. Not that I didn't expect this to surface this year. What is interesting is that the folks in the Democrat Party are referring to it as it pertaines to the current mess with the delegates from Florida and Michigan. Already we are hearing the mournful "Count all the votes" only in this case the Democrats have brought disaster on themselves.

Let's take a little walk back in time to the year 2000, a presidential election year where that very smart guy and inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, was going to wipe up the floor with that dunce from Texas, George Bush. The whole thing came down to Florida's returns. Briefly here is what happened.

At 7:30 PM the networks declared Gore the winner based on exit poll information. Bush, however, began to pick up more votes so that by 10 PM the networks state that the race is undecided. At 2:30 AM Bush is declared the winner. By 4:30 AM Gore has narrowed the gap to approximately 2000 votes. While he had previously conceded to Bush earlier in the evening, Gore now with drew his concession and decided to wait for the recount.

On November 9, the day after the election, Gore initiated legal action by asking for a hand recount of four counties, heavily Democratic, putting the election in to the judicial system for a decision. On November 10, the automatic recount of the election was completed and Bush was declared the winner by a small margin. Note, this was not the hand recount of the four counties requested by Gore.

On November 11, the Bush team asked that a Federal Court in Miami stop the recount. On November 13, the judge in that Miami Federal Court denied the Bush team's request and the recount went on and on and on. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court stepped in and rightly stopped the recount. With that decision, George W. Bush became president of the United States. Further recounts had Bush winning in all legally recounted scenarios. If Gore had gone for the suggested full state recount he would have had a narrow victory. The Democrats and their allies in the press have yet to determine what a vote really is in the matter of a recount.

What was more distressing was the ignorance of the American voter. Many across this nation acted as though they had never heard of the Electoral College much less how it actually worked. People across this nation stated that they had always believed that the guy with the popular vote won the office of the presidency this despite the fact that this very type of election had occurred three previous times in our nation's history, 1824, 1876, and 1888. Please tell your kids to pay attention in history class.

Now the Democrats are stating that the folks in Florida and Michigan are not going to be properly represented at the Democratic Convention and if a compromise is not reached that will be true. But keep in mind Democrats, your party leaders made this decision and your party, at least 20 some years ago made the decision to put Super delegates into place to control who wins the nomination. This was done so that the party had the appearance of fairness while making sure that the right guys, McGovern, Carter, Dukakis,Mondale, and others, received the nomination. Your party took the smoke filled rooms public.