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Will people go to the polls in 2004?
I should hope so! A margin of 537 votes is too small!.
According to
Lance deHaven-Smith
in an op-ed article published in the September 02, 2002 edition of the
Tallahassee Democrat
the 2000 Presidential Election was won in Florida by
537 votes
. deHaven-Smith points to evidence published by the New York Times and the Washington Post that indicate that
Florida's governor, secretary of state, and speaker of the
House ... used their offices to manipulate the
election controversy and secure Bush's victory. During the
controversy, they collaborated either directly or through
intermediaries with the legal and political advisers of George W. Bush
to: (1) put pressure on the state's top law firms not to work for
Gore; (2) bend the rules on absentee ballots to allow improperly
marked absentee ballots to be counted; (3) block, stall or discredit
manual recounts; and (4) create fears of a constitutional crisis so
that the U.S. Supreme Court would intervene.
If more people had voted, maybe the election wouldn't have been won in
corrupt Florida. Maybe there would have been a clear, obvious, and
uncontestable winner. Then there it wouldn't be reasonable for people like
Michael Moore to refer to
fictitious presidents
on
national television.
In 2000, Gore won the majority of the popular vote but did not obtain
the majority of electoral votes. That winning national popular vote
does not imply winning the electoral vote and therefore winning the
election is not new and may or may not be controversial. In an
election that was so close, we owe it to ourselves to count the votes
both thoroughly and impartially. After an election, it ought to feel
like the will of the people has been carried out. The 2000 doesn't
have that feel.
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