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Satire

Election - With No End in Sight

By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal

The country is paralyzed as the American electoral process inexorably descends into a state of multi-leveled legal and procedural gridlock. This problem is rapidly proving that the United Sates of America is not so much "a nation of laws", as it is a nation of lawyers. The safest bet in sight is that things will get much worse, before they get much better, if for no other reason than over-legalization by eager barristers.

As of this eighth full day following the poll closings last Tuesday, a variety of legal issues have already been raised in forms and venues that are surely going to require substantive answers. We can enumerate the physical form of the Palm Beach “butterfly” ballot, the ballot count, reporting deadline(s), re-counting and re-voting. This is just for openers. The lawyers are still getting warmed up.

The present and potential litigants in Florida, include the Secretary of State, who was an active Republican participants in the Bush campaign in New Hampshire and elsewhere. Surely this goes far toward removing any suspicion of impartiality on her part, but she has steadfastly resisted suggestions that – in the interests of even-handedness, she should recuse herself from this contest.

Add also the State Attorney General, and a variety of election officials to the list of active participants. Beyond these local notables, Florida has been invaded by platoons of lawyers who want a piece of this once-in-a lifetime litigatory pie. The swallow-tailed-coat set runs the gamut from two former U. S. Secretaries of State, to legal celebrities bearing names like Tribe and Dershowitz, to local talents who are looking for client connections and - somewhere down the road - their fifteen minutes of fame.

The complexities of this legal/political melange attract "experts" like flies to the proverbial honey-pot. Lawyers, of course, head the roster but they are far from alone. The invasion of hopeful "expert witnesses" includes university professors, authors, statisticians and public relations gurus. Some of them are motivated by the opportunity for picking up a fee for their presumably valuable services. Others want nothing except an opportunity to stand in front of a news camera. Still others are looking for another entry on their curriculum vitae, like other groups - at other times - settled in on 'action spots' like the O. J. Simpson trial, Selma, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Seattle.

As for judicial involvements, this brouhaha is quickly taking on a litigatory life of its own. In just one week, the growing list of great and small issues that seem to cry out for decisions from the bench, have found their way into the County Court(s), State Courts, and the Florida State Court of Appeals. Without doubt, the coveys of legal eagles who have congregated to participate in this historic political picnic, are busily rough-drafting presentations, petitions, motions, amicus curiae briefs and related scholarly dissertations that they fervently hope some future occasion may give them an excuse to read before an audience - or into a reporter's mini-recorder. It's a high-class form of ambulance-chasing, but the fees are much better.

The political-legal pot is just beginning to boil. In hours and days to come, arcane premises, new causes of action and imaginative statutory and constitutional mandates and hypotheses will surface. Each one will occasion a renewed frenzy of speculation and stentorian pontificating on the part of the legal operatives, putative experts, news hounds and mere hangers-on.

Through all of this, let us not overlook the street demonstrators - as if we could, even should we want to. Their ubiquitous signs represent some kind of collective mind-set, if attributing even a modicum intellectuality to such an activity doesn't libel the once-respectable label of "public opinion". It's a form of outdoor competition in which decibels are all that count, and the street warrior with the loudest voice gets the most attention. Not unlike the protocol that governs in Georgia's annual Hog Calling Contest.

Who would ever have guessed that, as an exercise to launch the 21st century, the state of our nation would hang perilously on the subtle perceptions between "chads" variously described as hanging, dangling, swinging-door, pregnant, dimpled, etc.

But that's the way it is. Now our GREAT AMERICAN SHIP of STATE wobbles along its uncertain course into obscure history, like a bob-tailed chicken on a rickety hen-roost. Meanwhile, gaggles of lawyers and political cammp-followers shout short-tempered threats at each other, from opposite sides of the political river.

Political chaos seems altogether too close for national comfort.

Let's all have a nice day,

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