The Big Press Recount of the Florida vote has come and gone without us learning much about anything. Most of the stories in the "consortium" papers didn't seem to think much of their own survey, and didn't seem to know what was so newsworthy that it justified the time and trouble. (The fairest story seemed to me to be the one moved by Associated Press. Here's a link.)
Watching the partisans frantically spinning, one got the feeling they weren't too thrilled with the thing, either. The pro-Gore folks seem disappointed that it did not yield hard evidence that Gore clearly got more votes than Bush, but was cheated due to thuggish Republican tactics. The pro-Bush folks seem frustrated that it pretty well establishes that substantially more Floridians who cast votes were trying to cast them for Gore.
Personally, I think more folks on both sides should be outraged at how sloppy the whole voting/counting procedure was. Can anyone doubt that, using that system and those machines, we've had a number of wrong guys declared the victor in elections past? And probably not just in Florida? But of course, no one in the public discourse gives a fig about voting accuracy if it doesn't lead to their guy getting in.
The reportage with which I would most disagree is that the claim that, had the recounts gone forward, Bush would probably have won; ergo, the Supreme Court decision is somehow vindicated. I think it proves the opposite. Ostensibly, they were arguing the application of the law, not that they were finding a justification for installing the correct guy. A lot of press reports (including The New York Times) have come perilously close to saying, "Well, the right man got in; ergo, the decision was sound." Clearly, a fallacious court decision can, via the old stopped-clock theorem, yield the correct result. A proper decision would have stood the test of either outcome.
Moreover, the press recounts show that "recoverable overvotes," (i.e., ballots that had two votes for president, both the same) could easily have altered that outcome. The Supreme Court decision was ostensibly about "equal protection" but its result was that such overvotes were counted in some Florida precincts and tossed in others. And, despite the screw-ups of Gore's lawyers, which now look more formidable than ever, more votes could have been counted and should have been counted. Ultimately, the decision of who won Florida — and, therefore, the presidency — turned on which voters had their ballots tallied and which ones didn't. And it all came down to a court decision that sought to prevent "irreparable harm," not to the voters but to the candidate who'd triumphed in the first, incomplete counts.
That America is not more outraged at the Supreme Court is, I suspect, indicative that we have come to regard that institution as just another partisan body, with no wisdom to rise above the fray. We're used to our legislative and executive offices occasionally going foolishly liberal or conservative on us, depending on who happens to comprise them that week. Now, more than ever, we track control of the Supreme Court with the same expectation of power shifts that accompanied one recent Senator switching political parties. We are no more surprised when the highest court in the land is "wrong" (as per our views) than we are when we lose a skirmish in a Congress or Senate.
The theory behind appointing Supreme Court justices for life was to remove them from the political fray. Sure ain't worked out that way, has it?
(For more on all this, check out this recent piece by Mickey Kaus, who seems to have been the first commentator, many moons ago, to zero in on the significance of all them overvotes.)