Political Cherry-Picking in Florida

It looks as if Hillary Clinton's last-gasp attempt to wrest the Democratic nomination from Barack Obama will hinge on her efforts to get the party to seat delegations from Michigan and Florida, states punished for scheduling their primaries too early. In accordance with the party's punitive decision, the candidates all agreed to avoid campaigning in these states, and Obama and Edwards even went as far as leaving their names off the Michigan ballot. So the results of these two primaries are very suspect and, to any reasonable person, illegitimate. But now, since they both "went for" Clinton, she is now cherry-picking them as her "final hurrah" and even has the gall to include votes received from them as part of her claim to have won the popular vote over Obama. But this isn't the first time that my unfortunate state of Florida has been subjected to attempts to retroactively change the rules in order to favor one candidate over another.

In 2000, in the morning following the extremely close Bush-Gore election (both nationwide and in Florida), it was disclosed that, due to a "butterfly" ballot design flaw in Palm Beach county, independent candidate Pat Buchanan appeared to inadvertently receive thousands of votes that were intended for Al Gore. And many disgruntled voters there quickly affirmed this. There was a call to hold the election in Palm Beach again, in order to rectify this error. Of course, everyone knew that the almost certain result would be to tip the statewide total over to Gore, since not only would the accidental Buchanan votes mostly have gone to the Democratic candidate, but also most of those voting for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would have switched to Gore as well. So this idea, which fortunately didn't take off, was the first ominous sign of what was to come. The Democratic Party then made the both political and strategic mistake in pushing for manual recounts in only the three south Florida counties (Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade) that Gore had carried, in the hope of adding previously rejected ballots to the statewide total (and thus throwing the total count to Gore). That rejected ballots in pro-Bush counties weren't to be considered showed this tactic to be a highly unfair example of political cherry-picking. Finally, by the time the election dispute had gone to the courts and a statewide manual recount (which should have been the first proposal) was ordered, state-imposed time deadlines had been reached and the U.S. Supreme Court essentially handed the election to Bush, an act that could also be described as a cynical act of cherry-picking (this time on the part of Bush's side). To me, it's too bad we weren't allowed to have our statewide manual recount in order to at least give some semblance of legitimacy to the process.

After the 2000 Election debacle, one might have thought that lessons would have been learned and actions taken to avoid a repeat. But in 2002, immediately following the statewide vote to see which Democrat would run in the general election for governor against incumbent Jeb Bush (Tampa-based Bill McBride vs. Miami-based Janet Reno). Reno's forces began to insist on south Florida-only recounts in that very close race. McBride could only look on helplessly as his opponent's forces cherry-picked counties loyal to her to try and add an advantage to her and give her the nomination. But it still wasn't enough, and McBride proceeded to run (and get creamed) as the Democratic candidate against Governor Bush.

In a close race, both sides can usually point to different factors that may have unfairly tipped the vote total to the opposing side. But this recurring cherry-picking of regions known to be supportive of one particular candidate over another in order to tip the balance is so obviously contrived that it makes me question the integrity of any candidate who seeks this type of a solution in such a close race.