Politics as Usual

It is one thing for a naif like Katie Couric to seem flabbergasted last week by the revelation that vote-counting is an imprecise science, or for numerous other talking heads to appear previously uneducated to the fact that American electoral politics has been a rough-and-tumble game since the dawn of the republic, when some Founding Fathers were known to buy votes with tobacco and liquor. It's disingenuous, not to say dishonest, for a political professional like William M. Daley, Al Gore's campaign chairman, to pretend his goal has been anything other than to recount and recount the Florida ballots until he obtained the desired result. His father, Richard J. Daley, Cook County Democratic boss, though less polished, was more effective: at least he got the ballots into the box before stealing the 1960 presidential election from Richard Nixon.

Daley knows full well that the more paper ballots are handled, the more opportunities there are for appropriate modifications to obtain the desired result. When the great Carmine DeSapio, longtime Democratic chieftain, first ran for district leader in Greenwich Village, he was denied election when the results were thrown out in the polling place at P.S. 3, at Hudson and Grove Sts. The election inspector?the guy sitting behind the table and checking the voters in the registration books?had made second markings on ballots cast for DeSapio and against the regulars, thus invalidating them. This was an old pro, just doing his job. So is Daley.

William Daley's other great contribution to hypocrisy in the past week was to say the courts may find the Palm Beach results "an injustice unparalleled in our history." Negro slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans without due process of law during World War II?all pale to insignificance in Daley's mind beside Albert Gore's apparent defeat at the polls.

Daley knows full well that American elections have always been played roughly. "Politics ain't bean bag," in the words of John F. Fitzgerald, JFK's grandfather, who helped his grandson defeat a popular Boston city councillor named Joe Russo by arranging to have a complete unknown, also named Joe Russo, become a candidate to confuse voters.

New York has a long tradition of rowdy, fraudulent elections. William M. Tweed testified, "I do not think there is ever a fair or honest election in the City of New York. The ballots made no result; the counters made the result."

Illegal immigrants have always been registered to vote in New York, as they are now in California and Texas, and vote en masse for the Democratic Party. We still have "repeaters," men who vote as often and as fast as their legs can carry them between the different polling places at which they are registered. In 1996, an empty Harlem warehouse was found to be the nominal residence of some 25 registered voters. They were also registered from a similar place in the Bronx and, one assumes, anyplace else they could reach by subway.

As this is being written on Monday, the present crisis is not yet a matter of corruption?unlike New York's mayoral election of 1905, won by William Randolph Hearst as the ballots went into the box and by George B. McClellan Jr. as the ballots came out. This one does, however, risk becoming distasteful and degrading, like New York's gubernatorial election of 1792, which George Clinton stole from John Jay by throwing out the results from counties favorable to Jay on the basis of "voting irregularities."

The three sanest men in politics last week were radically different Southerners, each of whom probably knew from blood-memory what happens when, as in 1860, you let the lunatics represent you in running the asylum. Former President Carter, a Democrat, simply called for patience. Democratic political consultant James Carville suggested folks needed to calm down, pointing out the lights are still on, the Navy's at sea and the toilets still flush. And Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana repeatedly pointed out?perhaps he had the feeling no one was listening?that 16,000 ballots in Palm Beach County were disqualified for double-voting four years ago in a lighter turnout and no one complained then. It is the potential Republican victory, undesirable to so many in the media, that has caused the feeding frenzy.

You do not get to keep recounting (and even, as has been suggested, revoting) until you win. The people of Serbia stood up to Milosevic when he wanted to do the same recently. Are we a lesser people than they?