The time has come for Gore to accept defeat graciously
It is time for Vice President Al Gore to stop whining and accept defeat graciously. Mr. Gore is doing our country a great disservice by dividing us and pitting groups of citizens against each other.
The fairness of the Palm Beach County ballots is a non-issue. If anyone had problems or questions about how to use the butterfly ballots, he or she should have inquired how to use them before voting, not after the election.
This is not the first election that has used such ballots. Other states have used them without complaint.
For the sake of our nation, let everyone put party differences aside and unite behind Mr. Bush and Richard Cheney. Let us give them a chance to restore honesty and dignity to the White House.
Laura Moulton
Joppa
I am deeply concerned by the latest developments in Florida.
Our vote is our most precious commodity. Machines are impartial. Their mistakes will cancel each other out.
To cancel out the partiality of a hand-count in Florida, we would have to recount the entire country by hand. This is a Pandora's box.
Mr. Gore should have graciously conceded after the first count. Instead he is politicizing our most important liberty.
Christine E. Price
College Park
If you shoot into a lake enough times, you are bound to hit a fish. If you count the votes enough times, you are bound to get the number you want.
Enough complaining, enough crying foul, enough period.
There is nothing in the Constitution that gives us the right to vote again if we make a mistake.
Albert Franklin Hunt Jr.
Halethorpe
Only Gore can claim a mandate to lead
The people have spoken and Al Gore is the sole candidate with a legitimate claim to the presidency.
By apparently carrying the popular vote across our nation, Mr. Gore was the choice of the people.
And, while our nation chooses presidents not by popular vote but by electoral votes, on that front as well Mr. Gore may be the winner.
Without Florida, Mr. Gore has more electoral votes than Texas Gov. George Bush. And in Florida, the vote is simply too close to call and the controversies too serious to make a fair judgment.
The reasonable solution? Split Florida's electoral vote -- award half to Mr. Gore and half to Mr. Bush.
Then, by virtue of his success elsewhere, Mr. Gore would have enough electors to win the presidency.
Al Gore was the choice of the people. It is time for Mr. Bush to do the honorable thing -- step aside and urge all the American people to back Mr. Gore as president.
Carol Braun Trapnell
Ellicott City
Texas Gov. George W. Bush should concede the election for the good of the country.
He apparently lost the popular vote and if he wins the electoral college, it will be by a highly disputable margin. His victory would be by a technicality -- and this is hardly a mandate to govern.
Mr. Bush should do the honorable thing and let the voice of the people be heard.
Kate Sampsell
Baltimore
In every election, from dogcatcher to U.S. senator, the person with the most votes wins. It is a hard pill to swallow that an antiquated constitutional process might reverse this most basic principle in the presidential race.
With the most votes for president, Al Gore has a mandate to pursue every legal recourse to see if his victory can be sustained in the Electoral College.
If the roles were reversed, I would want Texas Gov. George W. Bush to do the same thing. Nothing less than confidence in how we elect representatives is at stake.
Whoever wins, I hope he spends the next four years repairing the damage to a country split in half.
Rick Keister
Monkton
It doesn't matter who won more votes
To my amazement, I keep hearing Vice President Al Gore's apparent victory in the popular vote interpreted as demonstrating that "will of the American people" was that he won the election. I can think of nothing more absurd.
The current margin is so insignificant statistically that it has no meaning. But even that is irrelevant: It is meaningless to judge the outcome of a contest on elements that are not contested.
There is no prize for the winner of the popular vote and, therefore, it is not contested. Republicans living in Democratic states or Democrats living in Republican states are not as likely to vote since their votes are not likely to have an effect on the outcome of the Electoral College.
Mr. Gore claiming victory because of a lead in the popular vote would be analogous to Texas Gov. George W. Bush claiming victory because he won more states.
You simply cannot interpret results of a contest based on criteria that differ from those accepted at the start of the contest.
Mark Williard
Woodsboro
Maybe we should just cast our votes again
When we were 10 and there was a dispute about scoring on the playground, after a short argument someone would inevitably call for a replay.
With the clouds of indecision floating over Florida and other states, perhaps it's time to put away the rhetoric and have an old-fashioned "do-over."
I'm not sure the country can survive anything less.
