Partisanship vs Ideology in Politics

By Gary M. Pinkston
Record Gazette 12-18-2000

NATION - With the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision a week behind us it is beginning to feel like the election is really, finally over. Al Gore has made a concession speech most consider statesman-like. Team leader Dick Cheney at last holds the keys to the transition offices and, in keeping with his campaign promise of inclusion, President-Elect George W. Bush has chosen his first four advisors and has yet to name a white male.

Still, accusations of election theft, rancor over perceived unfairness and anger at court decisions considered partisan persist. Factions opposed to the Republican victory in the protracted Florida battle threaten to utilize that state's sunshine law to "count all the votes" after-the-fact in an attempt to delegitimize the Bush presidency.

The difference in the number of votes received by the two candidates in Florida is statistically too small to discern. It doesn't make any difference how many times, or in what way, or to what "chad standard" you count them, no one is ever going to know who really received the most votes in Florida. The combination of the statistical margin of error of punch-card voting systems coupled with different ballot types and machine types used across the state and the excessive handling the ballots have already undergone in previous recounts makes any truly accurate count impossible.

It appears, however, that regardless of the fact that no truly accurate count is possible, and that although any so-called count will be eyed with great skepticism towards the counter's political biases and motivations, several of these after-the-fact counts are inevitable.

What is the point of "counting all the votes" now that the contest has been decided? What could possibly be accomplished by such a biased and inaccurate after-the-fact recount other than intentionally damaging the office of President of the United States of America? What motivation could drive someone to even want to do such a thing? The question is not rhetorical. It has an answer and that answer is partisanship. Partisanship in the worst sense of the word.

The people calling for these post election recounts seem to think they're candidate (Gore) has been egregiously wronged because they see what went on in Florida over the last six weeks as "partisan' and, therefore, somehow unfair. They are wrong in this assertion on two counts.

First, there is nothing more partisan in American politics than an election. Partisanship is exactly what elections are all about; this group of partisans vs. that group of partisans in a contest to see whose views will prevail in governing the nation. To expect elections to be "non-partisan" in nonsensical. Elections are partisan by definition; by design, in fact.

Secondly, it occurs to me that those who think the members of the Florida or U.S. Supreme Court conducted themselves unethically are imagining partisanism where, in fact, the justices on both courts appear to have simply acted in accordance with their own long-standing and well known political ideologies rather than out of any partisan motivations.

The four justices of the Florida Supreme Court who voted to continue the recounts even after once being chastised by the U.S. high court didn't do so in some act of blind partisan allegiance to Al Gore and the party that put them on the bench. Rather, being liberal activist justices all, and, therefore, believers in the the nanny state, they truly felt it their duty to see to it that those poor unfortunate voters who proved too dumb to properly punch their ballots needed to have their ballots "rescued" by the government. Never mind that to perform this act of governmental mercy required trampling all over Florida election law; utterly rewriting it in direct violation of federal election statutes to suit the needs of their "never mind the law, the end justifies the means" mentality.

In their liberal eyes the sanctity of each individual vote overweighed the rule of law intended to govern the election process. "Counting every vote" seemed the "right' thing to do so to hell with the process if that's what it took to do what they thought right. They felt perfectly justified in ruling to alter the process to accommodate the ballots the existing process could not. Partisanship had nothing to do with it; ideology, everything.

And as for those seven justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who so vehemently disagreed with and ultimately overturned the Florida court's liberal ideology based ruling, declaring the recounts unconstitutional; did they act in a partisan, pro Bush manner? No. They simply acted as any self-respecting Conservative would under the circumstances. Conservatives don't believe in the nanny state. Conservatives believe in personal responsibility rather than having big government take care of you. They don't believe in the sanctity of every vote because they look around the country and see two to three million similarly disqualified ballots with no court attempting to "rescue" them.

Where Liberals believe every vote sacrosanct and, in Florida, were willing to sacrifice the process to count disqualified ballots, Conservatives consider the process sacrosanct and are willing to sacrifice the vote of anyone who fails to properly execute their own franchise to maintain the integrity of that process. Liberals believe it important to count every vote no matter what alterations to the process are required to accomplish that. Conservatives believe that deviations from the process open it to fraud and abuse and render the votes meaningless. That deviating from the process leads ultimately to a kind of Orwellian democracy in which some pigs will become more equal than others and that only strict adherence to the process can guarantee the sanctity of the individual vote.

So even though both sides may think they have reason to claim partisanism in the court decisions affecting the Florida vote, in hindsight, it appears far more likely the justices on both courts simply ruled in accordance with their long-standing strongly held Liberal or Conservative ideologies and that partisanship really had little or nothing to do with their rulings.

Those who wish to engage in private after-the-fact recounts of selected Florida ballots, those are your true partisans. Beginning the counts with the statement, "We know Al Gore won in Florida and we're going to prove it" is as partisan as anyone can get. I have no doubt that by choosing which ballots to count, by setting their own standards as to what constitutes "the intent of the voter" and by beginning the process with a predetermined outcome in mind that they will accomplish their objective. They will return a verdict that satisfies their purely partisan ends.