November 15, 2000
The recount of the popular vote for
the selection of presidential electors in Florida is going on and on and on
as this is being written in Lafayette, Indiana, on Friday, November 10. No
end appears to be in sight. As noted in the lead commentary in the current
issue of Christ or Chaos, leftists use any and all means
available to them to browbeat others into complete and total submission.
Vice President Al Gore and his minions are using all manner of
ever-shifting arguments to justify their effort to win the presidency by
brute intimidation.
The allegations of voting
irregularities in Florida are nothing new in the history of American
electoral politics. The lowering of the voting age to eighteen has resulted
in lots more stupid people going to the polls, joining those already in line.
Addle-brained people find it difficult to follow directions in all walks of
their daily lives. Many people on the roadways these days cannot follow
simple directional signs, especially at toll booths for bridges or tunnels
or toll roads. Others find a menu in a restaurant impossible to decipher.
Lots of people live in states of continuous bewilderment.
That is partly the result of a lack of
intellectual ability, and it is partly the result of the dumbing down of the
American populace in our schools and in our popular culture — the
cultural degradation owing much to so many Americans’ habit of
letting their lives revolve around the television, which has become the
new tabernacle of our secular era. And a good many such people want
others to indemnify them whenever they make mistakes in their lives, an
attitude that many of my college students exhibited rather predictably in
the past decade or so. It was my fault, you see, that they did not read the
clear directions I placed on the top of each examination. I was wrong for
holding all students to one standard of competence.
The claim (not yet established as an
actual fact) that some voters in Palm Beach County in Florida were
“confused” by a ballot devised by a local Democratic Party
election official is yet another example of people seeking to establish a
right to “correct” whatever mistakes they make in life. It is
frequently the case that we have to live with our mistakes. Indeed, we are
supposed to learn from them — learn how not to repeat them over
and over again. That is part of what we mean when we talk about the
learning process.
But voter mistakes are quite a
different thing from allegations of actual fraud and/or voter intimidation.
Recall what happened in 1960, when it was fairly evident that Richard
Nixon’s election to the presidency was stolen from him by Joseph P.
Kennedy Sr., working hand in glove with Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and
Senate majority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson to manufacture the votes
necessary to make Kennedy’s eldest surviving son president of the
United States (and Johnson vice president). By contrast, the current
situation in Florida hinges on a narrow margin between the two
major-party presidential candidates produced, in part, by what appears to
be simple voter carelessness. Not even Gore campaign chairman William
Daley, son of the late Chicago mayor (and brother of Richard M. Daley, the
current Chicago mayor), has alleged that George W. Bush’s campaign
stole any votes.
Once again, the hypocrisy of the Left
is on full display for all to witness. Loretta Sanchez defeated
then-Representative Robert K. Dornan in 1996 largely as a result of voter
fraud. Resident aliens who were not citizens of the United States were
permitted to register as voters and vote for Sanchez. Republicans in
Congress, eager to be rid of Dornan, did not investigate the situation
vigorously, and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said that she knew of no
specific laws forbidding resident aliens from voting. Similarly, Woody
Jenkins lost to Mary Landrieux in Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race that
same year. Charges of wholesale election fraud were dismissed by Senate
Republicans, most of whom did not want to be seen as
“bashing” another woman just five years after they’d
placed Anita Hill under justifiably intense scrutiny during the Judiciary
Committee’s confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas.
Actual election fraud has been a
common phenomenon in the history of this nation. The stuffing of ballot
boxes was common in the nineteenth century when paper ballots were
used. Voters were intimidated by means of physical threats. People voted
two or three times. Ballots cast for some candidates were thrown out or
burned. Dead people voted, a phenomenon still to be found in certain
precincts in the country. Most of the popular vote totals of the nineteenth
century are merely advisory. They do not truly reflect the actual votes
cast by voters.
The tradition of election fraud has
continued into this century. It was somewhat attenuated by the traditional
voting machine, which is much more difficult (although not entirely
impossible) to tamper with than the paper ballot of yesteryear or the
computer punch card now being used by a number of states. But even the
old voting machine can be “adjusted” in such a way as to
make it difficult for voters to vote for the candidate of their choice.
To wit, on the day of my primary
election against Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato to be the U.S. senatorial
nominee of the Right to Life Party, in 1998, I received reports from all
over the state of New York indicating that people who wanted to vote for
me had difficulty doing so. Eleven or so people told me that the lever they
needed to pull down to vote for me did not work. One man, a lawyer from
the Borough of the Bronx, said that an election judge refused even to hear
the complaint he brought about the situation. Several
long-time enrollees in the Right to Life Party were told at their polling
places that there was no record of their voter registration.
It was clear that something was
happening. Lacking the resources, however, to mount any legal challenge to
the results, I just went about my business, accepting the fact that it was
entirely possible that the Republican machine in New York found the threat
of my candidacy to be so real that it had to place obstacles in the path of
voters who desired to support me in the Right to Life Party.
Frequently sloth in the counting of
votes is encountered, as was the case when I served as a Republican poll
watcher in a voting precinct in Laurel Hollow, New York, on election day in
1972. When official Republican and Democratic registrars came up with
different totals from the absentee ballots, they averaged the differences
in the vote totals and then went home! (The registrars are employed by the
Nassau County Board of Elections to record the names of voters as they
cast their ballots, and to count and report the results to the board; poll
watchers are party workers who merely observe the work of the
registrars and report back to party officials.)
I was also an eyewitness to the
counting of the votes in the presidential caucus in Dubuque County, Iowa,
on February 12, 1996 (after serving as a surrogate speaker in behalf of
Patrick Buchanan’s candidacy). Buchanan won Dubuque County
handily over Bob Dole. But the vote totals from Dubuque County were never
reported to the Voter News Service by the Iowa Republican Party. The
same thing happened in Woodbury County, Iowa. Knowing the extent to
which careerist Republicans went to rig the process against Buchanan in
1996, I was not surprised when a similar effort was made against me two
years later.
However, in light of what is happening
in Florida right now, which could drag on indefinitely, perhaps I should
hold a press conference and demand from Al — D’Amato, that
is — a recount from the 1998 Right to Life Party primary. I could
argue I lacked the resources to investigate the claims but now realize
that I have the obligation to see that the vote is counted over and over and
over again. If the recount showed that I had won the primary, there would
have to be a new election for the seat now held by Sen. Charles Schumer.
Trading on my persona as one of the better-known Mets fans in New York, I
would defeat Schumer and D’Amato, taking my place in the Senate
next to New York’s recently elected senator, some woman named
Rodham or Clinton or something like that. If the presidential election in
Florida can go on and on and on, why can’t I reopen my primary from
two years ago? Indeed, why can’t the estate of the late Richard
Nixon reopen the results of the 1960 election?
Vice President Gore and his minions
will do anything to hold and acquire power. As is well known, I do not
carry any brief for George W. Bush. Gore is demonstrating just how
important it is for us to support candidates who are capable of
demonstrating the extent to which the Left believes in mobocracy, not
representative democracy or the rule of law. Bush fails that test. You
can’t blame Buchanan for electing Gore if it turns out that the vice
president prevails in the election. Most of Ralph Nader’s Green
Party votes would have gone to Gore if Nader hadn’t run, handing
him the popular vote by a comfortable margin and giving him
Florida’s electoral votes without question. Gore has come close to
winning the presidency because he was faced with an opponent who was
either unable or unwilling to make the case against him in clear,
articulate, and convincing terms.
The answer is quite simple:
dishonesty of any sort is prohibited by the Seventh Commandment
(“Thou shalt not steal”) and the Eighth Commandment
(“Thou shalt not bear false witness”). A nation founded on the
Social Kingship of Jesus Christ would be composed of people who
understood that we can never steal that which does not belong to us, and
we can never misrepresent the truth.
Yes, the only safeguard against
election fraud and manipulation is a nation that lives in the shadow of the
Cross. A nation immersed in the confusion that prevails all around us, you
see, winds up making a religion out of electoral politics. And when
politics becomes a religion, its secular foundation justifies the use of
Machiavellian means to acquire and retain power. All the more reason to
work for the Catholicization of our land, folks. There’s no other way
out of this mess.
In the meantime, however, tell Al
D’Amato I want a recount!
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