The presidential cliffhanger has presented a formidable challenge to the media as we try to convey the constitutional processes at work without boring our readers and viewers. One way has been to scare the bejeezus out of people by proclaiming that the legal wrangling will end up destroying the earth. In the words of one pundit, "All this legal wrangling will end up destroying the earth."
Even Congress is running scared, because it knows that without a president members will actually have to do something. According to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, "For the love of God get us a President, anything to take the public's eye off of what we are doing here. I can't kill campaign finance reform with you people looking at me. Go away. Cover the Department of Housing and Urban Development or something...."
Instead of bringing you the supposedly enlightened views of pundits and observers, this journalist took it upon himself to dig deeper and personalize the Florida recount. I volunteered for the Florida Recount Effort (FRE) and headed to the Sunshine State as a non-partisan participant who happens to be a member of the Democratic Party.
Upon arriving at the Palm Beach International Airport I rushed over to the Avis Rent-A-Grandparent counter and got myself a nice old man, much more agreeable than the mean elderly woman who I rented last Spring Break. I hugged him (it is part of the rental agreement) and said, "Grandpa! I am so happy to see you! Come on, let's get my bags, we're gonna be late!" (Another component of the rental agreement is you have to pretend that you are the rental's grandchild, since they are old and will believe anything.)
He looked at me for a moment with his one good eye and said, "You gotten so big, I can't believe it. Wait till Mildred sees you! My car is outside. Have you eaten today? The food they serve on the plane is just atrocious. That is why whenever I fly I take a bag of raisins with me, and sometimes, I sneak a knish onboard and have the young lady heat it up."
So "Grandpa" and I headed to downtown West Palm Beach in his DeVille. Unfortunately, the 20-mile trip took an hour and a half when he took a wrong turn down Clematis Street. (Note to readers: There actually is a Clematis Street in West Palm Beach).
"No Grandpa, we want Main Street, not Clematis."
"Chlamidya, what? Where did you learn such things?"
"No, turn down Simons Ave. and then we'll be golden."
"You have syphilis too? Does your mother know about this?"
Upon reaching the elections board I sent my new family member into the nearest dialysis center/deli and headed in to start counting. Outside the elections commission building was a row of street vendors selling everything from Electoral College T-shirts to chads. A chad is basically the punch hole from the punch card ballot; it is the bit of paper that is displaced from the punch. The problem is that on Election Day some of the cards were not completely punched, so the machine didn't read them, and the hand-counters, like myself, have to interpret the partially punched ballot.
"Get your chads heah! All types of chads! We got your hangin' chad, your pregnant chad, and a dimpled chad for the ladies! Get your chads heah!" the vendor shouted.
After pushing my way through a throng of reporters from all over the world, including 18 live reporters from CNN who were each reporting on where the other reporters were located, I made it to the counting room. I was shocked to find just one person, an elections board intern, recounting all the votes. "Hi, I'm Mike. I go to college down here. I'm glad you came, I've been expecting someone. Everyone else is out in court fighting over whether we should be recounting at all," he said.
Mike explained to me the way things have been going, and told me to settle in for a long and boring experience. "Settle in for a long and boring experience," he said.
"We have started the recount ten times, but each time we have been stopped. The Republicans don't want us to recount because they think that Gore will pick up votes, so they are coming up with excuses," he continued. "When they hear that we have started counting again they call and mess us up. Watch what happens."
I sat and watched Mike for two hours as he counted half a precinct. Just as he was about to write down his total, the phone rang. He put it on speakerphone: "Three, no, four, no, 3,395," the female voice said. "Divide everything by two, then multiply by five, and take the square root of that. Oh, and this is not the Florida Secretary of State calling," and with that she hung up. "Damn, I lost count again," Mike said, as he threw the ballots down.
In his frustration Mike let me have a go at the ballots. I held them up to the light like I had seen on TV. I poured water on them to see if they leaked like you do with a suspect tire. I even lit a few of them on fire to test their heat response. My results: an overwhelming majority of Palm Beach County voters voted for someone with the last name "Erog." Mike told me that was probably wrong, so I tried again, this time taking over six hours before I came back with the result of "What number comes after 5,999 again?"
"Screw it," Mike said. "Let's just call the county for Gore, with a few votes for seceding from the Union." We agreed and headed out for a night of media interviews. The questions I received were a little strange. For example, CNN Legal Analyst Greta Van Sustren (known by the acronym GVS) asked me the leading question: "Which has been better for my career: the current electoral crisis, the Elian Gonzalez case, or the OJ Simpson trial?"
While chatting it up on CNN's Talk Back Live I was informed that my hard recounting work was all for nothing. CNN summarized the legal wrangling that had taken place while I was counting. CNN said that a Florida State Court judge had ruled that the hand recounts were not going to be accepted, but that judge was then overruled by another judge who said they could be accepted, but only if the Secretary of State agreed. Then the Republican Secretary of State said 'no,' but a Federal judge said 'yes,' to which the Secretary of State invoked the rarely used "no times infinity" clause, at which point the US Supreme Court had no choice but to release a statement saying, "We just can't compete with that."
So, I left the next morning, satisfied that I at least tried to make a difference. As for my Rent-A-Grandparent, he says he accidentally voted for Proposition 5 for President, but that he doesn't care at this point. "I meant to vote for Prop four, but it is fine. As long as one of them wins, I don't care. I am just trying to leave the world a better place for you. I love you," he told me as he drove me back to the airport.
