It happened again. After all the complaining, all the suggested reform, all the talk about abolishing the Electoral College, for the second straight presidential election, the nation is at a loss, trying to figure out who our president will be. While it would have been nice to decide on a clear winner, that has not happened. The best we can hope is that the next president is decided in the fairest way possible.
In 2000, the election was decided by 537 votes in Florida. In a very partisan process, the Republican governor, who happened to George Bush's brother, and the Republican secretary of state, who happened to chair Bush's campaign in Florida, led an effort to disenfranchise thousands of mostly Democratic voters, and the supposedly neutral Supreme Court voted along party lines to put Bush in office. This year, lawyers in swing states all over the country anticipated a similar episode.
They got that repeat episode in Ohio and Iowa. Now we are faced with another series of challenges that may again go to the Supreme Court. If the next president is not decided fairly, it will severely damage the credibility of the United States as a protector of democratic values.
The partisans should be kept out this time, and bi-partisan commissions should assess the situation objectively to decide the president. While this will still leave many people unhappy, it will at least give the president, whoever he may be, a clearer mandate to govern.
Regardless of which way the scale tips, it should tip fairly. The reputation of the United States of America is in the balance.
