Welcome to Local Control, Election-Style

by Molly Ivins

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia -- that cute little scamp, what a judicial activist he is -- wrote an opinion holding that Florida has no fair and uniform standards for hand-counting ballots. And if any court were to set such standards, it would, of course, be changing the rules after the game was played, and so they would have to be thrown out anyway.

A perfect Catch-22.

Ah well, at least we don't have to listen to the right rave about liberal judicial activists anymore.

My favorite moment came when the Florida Legislature, faced with a dicey political, legal and constitutional pickle, rolled up its sleeves and proceeded to make it all worse.

An awesome performance.

The Legislature decided what the state needed was not one set of electors, but two sets of electors just to make everything perfectly clear, you see. We were moving from SNAFU (situation normal, all fouled up) to FUBAR (fouled up beyond all recognition) at brisk clip.

What madness possessed them I do not know, but they seemed to be laboring under the impression that because they were present at a moment of high historic drama, they had been reincarnated as the Founding Fathers.

"The guys who sat by candlelight (the Founders) were just like you and me," said Rep. Johnnie B. Byrd Jr., floor manager of the resolution, to his colleagues. An unlikely proposition. (And don't ask me how a legislature can choose a new set of electors by concurrent resolution: this is not knowable.)

Byrd proceeded to read the "Prayer for Heroic Service" for his colleagues because, "All 120 of us are heroes."

Speaker Tom Feeney, in the same vein, solemnly intoned, "If the Founders were here, they would have been proud of us."

This was after five hours of relentlessly partisan debate clogged with cliches. We never heard "our country" or "this nation" referred to, but always "our great country" and "this great nation." We were reminded innumerable times that our great nation is a great country of laws, not of men.

Ken Littlefield, the silver-haired rep, told a touching story of how he had played Little League baseball as a boy. His team got into the championship game, but the young Littlefield was 20 minutes late to the game, and it was then he first heard the dread words, "We lost by default." And he was so ashamed.

You may think this is somewhat irrelevant to a state legislature arrogating the right to name electors, but it was actually one of the best speeches of the day. "We lost the game by default." O the agony of it. Several members came by to comfort him afterward.

Also adding je ne sais quoi to the seance was Rep. Irving Slosberg, representing "the great people of Boca Raton. Thanks for sending me here, guys. I love ya. I got a note from my constituent, Rose. I love ya, Rose. But Rose, ya sent me here to vote for prescription drugs, and here I am voting for president."

The people of Florida appeared to be bearing up well under the strain of having such a legislature.

Virginia Johnson, a Bush fan, drove 299 miles from Wauchula in Hardee County to hear the debate with her mother, niece and great niece. "I know the voting in Florida was messed up, and I know it's hard for the other side, I just believe our guy won," she said.

A nest of Republican operatives were also convinced their man had won, but seemed vaguely uneasy, as they were on the verge of winning, that maybe they hadn't done it the right way. Others remain so angry they cannot discuss the case rationally or civilly. One suspects it is not this election at the bottom of that degree of anger; some are just finding it a handy focus.

It's been a long count. It would have helped if the media had been better informed to begin with -- knowing what chad are, how protested and then contested elections work, and how hand re-counts are done. What was normal and noncontroversial suddenly seemed bizarre and unheard of because reporters themselves were so ill-informed.

How do you tell if a chad is dimpled or hanging? People asked, as though the mysteries of the universe were in play. It either is or it isn't. Any three sensible people of differing political persuasion can agree on 999 out of 1,000 ballots in a hand-count. It does not require a magnifying glass. And it is more accurate and thorough than a machine count.

Lots of people are talking about electoral reform, always a good idea, and the nice thing about electoral reform is that you can't rig it. You can try, of course, but it's one of those deals where what goes around comes around real fast, the biter is always bit, so all you can do is try to make elections as fair as possible.

And for those who are horrified by the hodge-podge and high-jinks from Pensacola to Key West, this is what "local control" means.

And you wonder why the schools aren't well-run. This is also why some of us don't consider "local control" sacrosanct.