Down for the Count

Last week, buried under stories of troops advancing on Kabul and the breaking news of another New York tragedy, America's leading news organizations finally released its long-delayed analysis of Florida votes cast in last year's presidential election. And the findings were in some ways less interesting than the way in which they were billed by their media sponsors.

The recount looked at not only the four counties where the US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court's order of a full count, but the state's other counties as well. And what we learned--assuming you believe this recount, and it's clearly the best one we'll ever get--is that had the Florida court's full count gone ahead as the Gore team wanted, Bush would still have won; but that if all of Florida's votes had been counted, Gore would have come out ahead.

The conclusion, then, is unavoidable: if the state of Florida had been equipped to actually count the votes properly cast by its voters, Albert Gore would be president today. And that's not even counting the confusing double-entry presidential ballots--the study found Gore lost three times as many votes as Bush through their disqualification--or the widespread allegations of voter intimidation and improper disqualifications, the majority of which occurred in heavily Democratic areas. No matter how you count it, Gore should have won Florida, and hence the presidency. And that's not even factoring in Gore's enormous lead in the national popular vote--only one candidate in the history of the country (Ronald Reagan) received more votes.

But unless you're a careful reader, that wasn't the story you got when the count was finally unveiled. The study's release was originally slated for September, but delayed because its sponsors thought that revealing it so soon after September 11th would be distracting and divisive at a time when the country needed to rally behind its (wrongfully elected) president in a time of war.

The same bias was apparent last week. The New York Times' headline proclaimed: "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote." The lead sentence declares that had the US Supremes ruled differently, Bush "would have won." The first three paragraphs were devoted to legitimizing Bush's win, and only in the fourth did we learn that Gore "might have won" with a full statewide count. When one set of votes is counted, Bush "would" have one; with the other, Gore "might" have. Hmm.

Similarly, the Washington Post's home page headline declares that "Bush Wins Most Recounts" (except the overall one, of course). The Seattle Times, a paper which more closely mirrors the garbage most Americans read each morning (the full color front page summer photos of little girls, squirrels, puppies, and sprinklers have been supplanted this season by worried-looking relatives of military personnel), buried the story on page 3, with a front page index blurb that uses the same "would have/might have" trick. And, of course, television news barely mentioned the story at all once the airplane crash in New York happened.

Statistically, the Florida vote was a tie--essentially, a coin flip, which is in fact probably what a lot of people did when deciding. Either side would be grumbling today about illegitimacy had the other won, and media would be propping up whoever was in power out of sheer reflex.

But there's an important issue here beyond what Bush has done with his flukish win or the particular court strategy the Gore campaign used. It's called democracy, and the seeming inability of the most technologically advanced country on Earth to count votes fully and fairly.

Aside from a bit of movement toward standardized ballots, almost nothing has been done, anywhere, to improve how this country elects its public officials. Seattle itself just went through another ridiculous two weeks of counting absentee ballots to determine its next mayor. Why? The media spin of the study release served not just to legitimize Bush, but, by focusing on the non-pivotal nature of the US Supreme Court decision, minimized the need for future reform. And if a debacle like last year's election can't inspire reform, one wonders what can.

>From President to Animal Control Board, a lot can be done to make elections in this country fairer. Many steps common in other Western democracies would be welcome here. The most obvious involve: campaign financing and our out-of-control spending; easing the voter registration process and increasing America's appallingly low voter turnout; giving people more reasons to vote by encouraging more viable parties, ideological diversity, and various reforms different folks support, such as Instant Runoff Voting, None of the Above, and Proportional Representation; and shortening interminably long campaigns. (After the "success" of Greg Nickels, we've now established 18 months as the optimal length time to run a city-wide campaign in Seattle. That's 16 and a half months too long. Heck, maybe it's 18 months too long.)

The bottom line is that the United States needs to maximize the number of votes cast in any election, and then ensure that they're counted fully, fairly, and quickly. It can be done. And had it been done two years ago, history would look very different today. That was last week's biggest domestic news story, and our obsequious, apparatchik news media ignored it.