Will It Be Impossible to Determine Who Won Florida?

Writing for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg points out that it is very likely that after doing a recount of votes in Florida, the number of votes separating Al Gore and George Bush is likely to be within the margin of error for the counting process.

This means that, theoretically, Florida could do a dozen recounts and get a dozen different results each time. If Gore turns out to win the recount (and it doesn’t look like he will) by a few hundred votes, for example, Bush could sue to get yet another recount only to have that recount put him up by a few hundred votes and the process could go back and forth ad infinitum.

On the other hand, while I am indifferent to whether Gore or Bush wins, the hints that Gore might actively campaign for electors to vote for him rather than Bush is obnoxious. It would be like a football team that loses a game 14 to 9 begging the referee to change the rules so that the team with the most field goals rather than touchdowns wins. It may or may not make sense for touchdowns to count for more points than field goals, or for the electoral system to allow the popular vote loser to take the electoral college, but those are the rules that both teams were operating under when the contest began.

Both the winning football team and Bush would have used different strategies if field goals and popular votes counted more than touchdowns and the Electoral College respectively. Punishing either for playing by the rules of the game does not make any sense.

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