Authors libby rittenberg 833
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The 2000 election provides an illustration of the concept of rational
abstention. It also illustrates another point made in the text. If an election
is close, the outcome is likely to be determined in the courts.
Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, proved to be the decisive state. The
winner of that state’s electoral votes would win the presidency. The
outcome in that state was not determined until late November, when
Florida’s Secretary of State, Republican Katherine Harris, declared George
Bush the winner by a few hundred votes. Mr. Gore took the case to court.
The Florida State Supreme Court ordered a recount.
The recounting process proved to be one of the most bizarre chapters in
American political history. Thousands of lawyers descended on the state.
Each ballot in key counties was scrutinized in an effort to determine which
candidate each voter “intended” to choose. Chads, the small pieces of paper
that are removed from a punch-card ballot, turned out to be of crucial
importance. “Hanging chads,” which occurred when the ballot was not
thoroughly punched and which literally remained hanging from the ballot,
prevented a ballot from being counted by the state’s electric counting
machines. The Florida’s Supreme Court ruled that the roughly 170,000
ballots that had been discarded by the machines because they were not
properly punched had to be re-examined.
As the recounting went on, other controversies arose. Pursuant to Florida
law, Ms. Harris had ordered County Clerks to remove ex-felons from their
registered voter lists. One clerk, seeing her own name on the list, refused
to remove the names. Ms. Harris had come up with a list of 57,700 exfelons for her “scrub list.” The precise number of voters removed is not
known.Harper’s Magazine columnist Greg Palast charges that 90% of the
Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen
Saylor URL: />
Saylor.org
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