Election shows system works

DIMPLED chads. Pregnant chads. Hanging chads. Undercounts. Overcounts. Butterflies.

This is the language of election aficionados. They're a small group, but they wield mighty power every time there's a close election.

We've gotten an education on how voting is conducted and how votes are counted.

It's been a comprehensive civics lesson, despite inflammatory background noise from win-at-any-cost political supporters of Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Listening to the Rush Limbaugh crowd, you'd think Democratic Boss Tweed had risen from the grave to hijack Florida's presidential ballots and perpetrated a massive fraud. They keep talking ominously -- in conspiratorial tones -- about a "stolen election."

You can't win the White House by crying "fraud" when none exists.

What we've seen in Florida is the messy work of representative democracy in action. We hold elections and then count the votes.

Sometimes voters make mistakes in casting their ballots. Sometimes election officials make mistakes in counting ballots. Judges must sort things out.

It is a very human process. And human beings make mistakes.

That's why the notion of a recount in a close election should be a given. Let's make sure every vote has been tabulated properly, that all votes have been recorded. It's the American way.

We don't riot to decide elections. We don't let the military seize power. We don't cut off election results on the whim of a political candidate who happens to be ahead. No, we count the votes -- absentee ballots, overseas ballots, disputed ballots that are deemed valid. Sometimes we go back and recount them to get it as accurate as possible.

That's what we've seen happen in Florida. Election officials have strived mightily to do their jobs with integrity and fairness. That's the way it works in every state.

Yet Republicans have tried to smear and intimidate election officials, whose only crime is that they must make some close calls on how to count the votes.

Democrats, too, were guilty of a tasteless, personal attack on Florida's Republican secretary of state because she issued a narrow ruling on election laws to try to short-circuit recounts.

Sure, she's partisan, an avid Bush backer. But she also was doing her job in instructing election judges on how to count the votes.

Similarly, the courts have been doing their job: interpreting laws passed by the Florida legislature and implemented by the executive department.

The state's Supreme Court took two conflicting statutes, applied elemental law-school principles and came up with a logical conclusion: It is "paramount" that every vote be counted, even if it means ignoring "hyper-technical" deadlines. Now the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if the state court applied the proper remedy.

Judges play an important role: They have the power to overturn executive or legislative actions, based on legal interpretations. In Florida's fast-moving drama, judges -- regardless of political affiliation -- have issued a slew of rulings that disappointed first Democrats, then Republicans. The rulings were based on a reading of the law, not election returns.

This has been a wonderful example of the nation's system of checks and balances. When laws are passed that are contradictory or vague, executive officials implement them the best they can. But sometimes it takes a judge to analyze the legislature's intent and give the executive new directions.

It happens every day in every city and state. We haven't noticed.

We also haven't noticed, until the Florida dispute, that the United States isn't just a single entity, but also an alliance of 50 states, each with considerable independence to run its internal affairs as it sees fit.

Not only 50 sets of state laws and 50 ways of holding elections, but also 50 ways of taxing citizens and 50 ways of running government.

Regional differences have always mattered in electing a president. Differences among the 50 states matter, too. It's no accident the Electoral College hasn't been abolished. Our nation's original dispute over how to form "a more perfect union" among these 50 states continues to this day.

Perhaps the presidential race will end later this week. Perhaps the drama will persist until the Electoral College meets Dec. 19.

Either way, the procedures laid out by the Founding Fathers 213 years ago eventually will determine the winner. They've worked well all those years. They're working just fine this year, too.

Barry Rascovar is deputy editorial page editor.