Unless John Kerry wins a decisive victory on Novemer 2, we may be in for a long, long nasty battle, making the 2000 recount fiasco look tame. John Broder and
The NY Times Week In Review have this analysis:
America could very well wake up on Wednesday, Nov. 3, not knowing who won the presidential election. Judging by the latest polls, the race is close enough in a number of key states that human error, technical foul-ups and the inevitable legal challenges could delay the results for days or weeks, in an unwelcome replay of 2000.
The likelihood of trouble at the nation's 200,000 polling places may be greater in 2004 than in any year in memory. Absentee and mail-in ballots, provisional voting, redrawn districts, untrained poll workers, millions of first-time voters and unfamiliar new technology are all conspiring to create a potential electoral nightmare in a tight contest.
The two major parties have brigades of lawyers ready to file legal actions at the first signs of irregularity at the polls. Already, lawsuits are challenging voter registration procedures in several states, and more litigation is sure to come anywhere that it might affect the outcome.
In every American hamlet, city, county and state, elections officials are praying, "Please, don't let it be close here."
All of which leads to the question: Could the country stand another Florida? How deep would the political and psychological damage be?
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If either candidate wins without leading the popular vote, as Mr. Bush did in 2000, there could be serious calls to abolish the Electoral College and make other fundamental changes in the machinery of American democracy.
Warren Christopher already seems willing to let the Republicans roll over the electorate again:
the former secretary of state who oversaw Vice President Al Gore's legal challenges in 2000, said that the actions of the Supreme Court and some Florida officials that year had, at least temporarily, tarnished the American way of choosing leaders. A second tainted election, followed by more bare-knuckled partisan conflict, Mr. Christopher said, would be far more damaging. He urged both parties to cool their rhetoric and put the nation's interest ahead of partisan advantage.
"A repeat performance would do irreparable damage to the good will and forbearance so essential to a functioning democracy," he wrote in an e-mail message. "For the political parties, 2004 could be one time when winning isn't everything."
Uh, right.
Leon Panetta sees people reacting a bit more energetically:
"Trust in our basic institutions is being undermined in a number of ways: in corporate America, with our religious community, in the press, and certainly in government, particularly with the revelations of the failure of our intelligence systems in Iraq," Mr. Panetta said. "Now we're in an era of disputed elections. Everyone would like to believe the Constitution is designed to resolve these disputes, but I don't know how many national elections you can take to the Supreme Court and not at some point have an explosion in this country."
Now there's food for thought. Something to motivate Get Out the Vote. And for http://www.electionprotectionvolunteer.org