Losing Gracefully

One Response to Losing Gracefully

1. Lance says:

   November 14, 2006 at 7:39 pm

   Omar,

   It is interesting, but right after the election I was planning on doing a post on what I considered okay as far as contesting the results, but I didn’t have time and Allen conceded so quickly it seemed less relevant. However, you are right, or Sajak is, Allen behaved in an exemplary fashion.

   So what should candidates do in a close election? Canvassing to make sure there is even any point for one. Second, have the recount as the law provides for in close elections. That is absent obvious large scale fraud. Not questions about ballots, voter discouragement, etc. I mean truckloads of ballots carted off in the middle of the night, armed men at polling places turning away voters, handing out of cash at lots of polling places etc. Those things have happened, though today far less often and no longer on a scale large enough to affect federal offices.

   Absent that, that is it. Canvas, if it looks close enough that there is a realistic shot ask for a recount. Not your preferred recount, but what has been previously authorized. Preferably, as should have been done in Florida, a machine recount. “But hand ccounts are more accurate.” Maybe in some perfect world, but in the real world it becomes subjective as we saw in Florida. While a machine recount may be inaccurate, the errors are likely to be random. When elections are really close there really is no way to determine who should have won, only who did. Votes as close as 2000 (forget the nonsense about Ohio) are so far within the margin of error that nobody can say who the people of Florida preferred. Plant closing times, weather, and innumerable other events (including, yes, networks that call an election before the polls are closed in a particular strongest geographical areas) will determine the outcome. All we can really do is find a way to break the tie. No justice is served other than that the rules apply to everyone. No real winner can even be determined, just who will serve. I am sure such an approach will one day bite the Republicans as well, but it is not only the best thing for our republic, but the only rational way to do it, because a true winner in the sense of everything being perfect and finding the exact number of Floridians, for example, who support any given candidate is impossible. It is irrational to pretend otherwise.

   I will give an example from 2000 that cuts the other way. Suppose that Gore had led by a few hundred votes. I think Bush would have had a great case that he lost because of the networks having called the race in Florida before the panhandle had finished voting. That should have been an occasion for Bush to argue that the networks need to examine their behavior. However, given the need of the country and the impossible to prove nature of the complaint I would have been furious if he hadn’t spoken to his supporters and told them why we have to accept the result and why Gore did win under the rules as they stood and why it is bes that we accept that. Then it should have been a machine recount and then end it. period, no lawyers or claims of illegitimacy, none of that. We as a nation would be better off if Gore had not only done that, but accepted that even had he won in a recount, machine or otherwise, the legitimacy comes from the process, not the vote totals themselves. At that point no vote total arrived at would have proved he deserved the office, the margin was too small to prove anything other than that it was close. It was a sad period and has harmed us to this day.