Word: imperfections
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...weekend, the work of the Palm Beach County canvassing board--three elected individuals who probably expected an honorific rather than horrific job--worked tirelessly to count the votes of the county's citizens. Thousands of the ballots had not shown a vote for president due to a combination of imperfect ballots and imperfect machines. The canvassing board has already faced allegations of improper action over the butterfly ballot and an unusual number of votes for Pat Buchanan that Buchanan himself says were intended for Vice President Al Gore...
...voters deadlock, the law hands the outcome over to a game of chance: the candidates can flip a coin, draw a card from a deck or play a hand of poker--assuming they can agree. Florida law allows for drawing straws. But this tie is elusive, imperfect as the election that produced it because when you are shuffling through 6 million votes and double-punched ballots and hanging chads and missing postmarks and the whole archaeology of human frailty, every count by machine or by hand yields a different result, each so close as to be all but meaningless...
...should the future of free elections rest on the continuing popularity of big hair? The one heartwarming lesson from the Bush-Gore debacle is supposed to be that every vote counts. The less comforting lesson is that a lot of votes don't get counted. Thanks to the spectacularly imperfect voting methods in use around the U.S.--scribbled paper, antique voting machines and those finicky punch cards--hundreds of thousands of ballots are discarded each year. American political campaigns may be marvels of scientific polling and precision focus groups. Then comes Election Day and a piece of damp cardboard...
...pick candidates based on predictions of what they will do for us in office. Character is part of a results-oriented package that indicates what, as a nation, we are getting for our vote. Most Americans do draw a distinction between private and public life, and we recognize that imperfect individuals can still be president--indeed, must be, for there are no other types of individuals to be found. But this does not at all mean that in entering the voting booth, one should leave one's moral judgment at the door: even the most private of flaws can make...
...think good thoughts from here to Wednesday. Why speak ill of the merely imperfect? Al Gore and George W. Bush are not the Children of the Corn. From here on in, I intend to take the high horse...