Dear Editor:
Now that Al Gore has aligned himself with Howard Dean (or vice versa) the whining continues about the contentious year 2000 ballot process. Democrats continue to say that the Bush election was “stolen” from Gore in Florida in 2000.
However, we should consider what the admittedly liberal New York Times has to say about the outcome of the Florida voting process!
As the New York Times reported on November 21, 2001: “A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.”
Of course this is not good enough for Gore; he reminds the electorate that the “popular” vote declared him a winner. But the Constitution does not provide for the President to be elected by popular vote, but rather that each state shall appoint a number of “electors” equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress. Al Gore should read the U.S. Constitution!
In this process, each state has two votes (one for each senator) and additional votes equal to their membership in the House of Representatives. When these electors vote for a President, they supercede the electorate. The President is, therefore, not elected directly by the people but by their surrogates in the form of electors.
During the 2000 Presidential election process, Milwaukee TV station WISN reported that the Gore campaign was enticing vagrants with free “coffin nails” if they would follow campaign workers to the polls and pull the Democrat lever. When Gore complains about “dirty tricks,” he need only look at this nefarious campaign practice.
Frank X. Landrigan