The Question of Taking A Position Not A Side
- © Michele Toomey, PhD • December 12, 2000

In the recent controversy over Presidential ballots that count or don't count in Florida, each party has argued its side. The media reports these arguments, and through innuendo and their orientation to the data they reveal their own preference for one or the other side. However, some advocates attribute evil motives and foul play to the opponent, harassment and intimidation are used to stop them, and winning by any means short of criminal activity is part of the acceptable plan.

Where is the integrity in this battle? Nowhere, really. It is interwoven here and there among the twisted arguments, but it is not the guiding principle. Winning is the blinding force. No one, no party member, no commentator, no scholar, has stepped up to the plate and taken a position rather than a side. If they did, it might sound like this:

It is most unfortunate that Florida has become the critical state in the selection of the president of the United States. Obviously, the design of their ballots and their voting process of punching a hole in the ballot to vote, contributed to a most imprecise and potentially confusing process. As a result, the issue of counting every valid vote becomes a completely chaotic mess that absolutely no one agrees on how it can be accomplished. Whether the ballot is marked in a valid way becomes a debatable issue. Whether valid votes have not been counted or invalid votes have been counted, becomes an unresolveable debate. There will never be agreement on what votes should or should not be counted, and there will never be agreement on who should determine who should be credited with the disputed ballots.

As a result, the Supreme Court of the United States has been called on to decide one aspect of this disputed election. Regardless of what they decide, the underlying argument of who won, whether any hand counted ballots are valid and whether any winner is legitimate if the ballots are hand counted, still remains. The unfortunate fact is that if Bush wins it will be argued that he won because all the ballots weren't counted. If Gore wins, it will be argued that he won by gaining votes that weren't valid.

No court is ever going to resolve this issue for everyone to believe that the winner is really the one who was elected by the voters of this country. Courts will only decide what legal ruling is going to stop the debate and whatever the outcome, it will be seen as wrong by one side or the other. This election will never be decided in a clear and fair way. Other than a new election in Florida, this one is hopelessly flawed and entangled in ambiguity and impossibility, and can never give us a real winner. Someone will win, but there will be no winner.

To conclude that Gore should concede without ever knowing if he had enough votes to win, is not fair. To conclude that Bush won without ever knowing if the butterfly ballot favored him as the first name on the ballot and the first hole to be punched, and worked against Gore as the second name on the left, but the third hole to be punched, is not fair. To conclude that counting controversial ballots by hand is accurate, is not fair. To conclude that not counting controversial ballots by hand, is the right thing to do, is not fair. Nowhere is there a fair solution. This election will have to be determined by an unfair legal ruling and unfair counting. No one can win this election fairly. Whoever wins will have done so under a cloud of doubt and uncertainty.

The only thing that's certain is that someone will eventually win and someone will eventually lose. Either candidate should recognize that they were not overwhelmingly chosen by the voters of this country. Even without Florida, neither was an exceptional candidate, inspiring such confidence in voters that he broke away from the other. Whoever wins should be humbled by the experience and recognize that he needs to rise above whatever got him elected and try to make a mark as someone who learned from this slim margin and unfair selection. If he doesn't learn from this experience that he has not yet begun to be a chosen leader of this country, he will be a sorry excuse for a president. He has no right to inflate his position because he won. He won by default, whoever he is.

I, for one, hope and pray that he gets that message and humbly begins to build what he failed to build during his endless campaign, a feeling of confidence in his integrity and trust in his leadership. If he doesn't, he will not only have won by an unfair selection process, he will lose his credibility by a fair evaluation process. It is possible for the candidate who finally is determined to be the winner, to really win while in office, but it is not very likely. Maybe he will rise to the occasion, but maybe he won't. To win is no indication of stature in any election, but it is definitely a source of acute uncertainty in this one.