Democracy and the Florida fiasco

By Donna K Woodward

MEDAN (JP): In its Dec. 15 editorial this newspaper posed the question being asked by many: Is the U.S. electoral system, "often believed to be the most democratic in the world," really worthy of emulation by developing democracies?

The editorial repeats two of several truisms that became parts of this election's lore, thanks to partisan "spin doctors." One is that the next president was chosen by the Supreme Court instead of by the electorate.

Another is that the American Electoral College system deprived the candidate who received the most popular votes (Al Gore) of the victory that should have been his, thereby tainting the ideal of democracy that the United States advocates for the rest of the world.

With all due respect: these myths that the Democratic Party spun quite successfully to support their descent into vote- counting indecency are unworthy of the public.

Does the Electoral College system abridge democracy? The United States is a democracy with a representational form of government. While at first glance pure democracy might seem more perfect than representational democracy, political scientists remind us that populous democracies (like the U.S. or Indonesia) can only exist with a representational (parliamentary) form of government.

We simply do not run our countries in a perfectly democratic manner; it is impossible. Nevertheless Americans like to believe that our system guarantees government by the will of a majority of voters. Starting on election night political partisans exploited this belief shamelessly to win support for their protracted litigious contest of the Florida vote count, hinting that the Electoral College system, an example of representational democracy, was unfair.

The drafters of the U.S. Constitution devised the Electoral College with several purposes in mind. One was to safeguard presidential elections against demagoguery. They feared that a populist, opportunist national figure from afar might impassion citizens who could not judge a distant candidate's character and political position.

The founding fathers created a system of government grounded on solid democratic principles; they gave strong legal protection to individual rights. They trusted voters to elect local representatives and vested in them the right to elect their presidential electors.

But they did not fully trust popular democracy when it came to the nationwide direct election of a president. The Constitution's architects preferred electors who were likely to be better educated, more familiar with current affairs and government issues, than were the general citizenry.

Members of an Electoral College were presumed better equipped to evaluate national candidates. The philosophy behind the Electoral College may be offensive to us today, it may be erroneous.

But it is understandable in light of 18th-century experience and thought. The Electoral College was also viewed as a means to avoid the splintering effect that regional political parties might have on national government, whereby some third party might garner enough support to have a more dominant role in national politics than its numbers justified, and deprive the president of a majority mandate.

The Electoral College was an attempt to prevent these political problems by a means consistent with the U.S. federal system. Though its validity as an electoral tool may be debated, the idea of the Electoral College may not be as antithetical to democracy as it has recently been portrayed.

Did the Supreme Court choose the 43rd U.S. President, thus perverting the very foundations of the American political system? Not at all. The Court did not initiate judicial action; the candidates invoked the Court's jurisdiction.

Thereafter the Supreme Court ruled on specific legal questions presented. The ultimate question was whether the recount of votes proposed by the Florida Supreme Court was consistent with or in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Given the question, the Court's decision was necessarily dispositive of the election outcome. But to say that this means that the Court usurped the role of the voters to elect the president is a vast stretch of logic. In making such stretches of reason resemble valid inference, the U.S. media does a disservice to public opinion.

The great shame of the American election of 2000 is not the imperfect count-imperfect though it was. Is there a system anywhere that assures a perfect count of over 100 million ballots when the process involves numerous varieties and vintages of mechanical equipment and innumerable human beings who are at best fallible or at worst biased?

Most Americans understand well our electoral deficiencies. Machines malfunction; ballots are spoiled; certain voters still face discriminatory barriers; outcomes are susceptible to fraud -- not just in Florida but nationwide.

In every election unknown numbers of voters are unknowingly disenfranchised by these deficiencies. This is intolerable in a democracy and cries for correction. But the battle cry of "Every vote must be counted" rang hollow and hypocritical in view of these well-known problems, which the Democratic Party focused on only after Mr. Gore's victory was jeopardized.

The great shame of the election is that just 52 percent of eligible voters of America cared enough about the outcome to cast a vote. Gore emphasized that he won the majority of popular votes cast. He conveniently ignored the fact that like most previous presidents of the 20th century, neither he nor Bush was the choice of the majority of voters.

Half of U.S. voters no longer even bother to vote. Even veterans of wars and civil rights battles stay home from the polls. Americans feel disenfranchised by a campaign system that favors candidates supported by big business and moneyed interest groups.

We are disillusioned by a two-party system having homogeneous ideologies that favor corporate interests before people. We have lost faith in generations of politicians whose partisan self- interests take priority over the common good.

These realities, not the Electoral College system and not the Supreme Court's involvement in deciding questions of law, are the real dangers to democracy in America.

They are the dangers for any young democracies that look to America as an exemplar of democracy.

The writer, an attorney and former American diplomat at the U.S. Consulate General in Medan, is president director of PT Far Horizons consultancy firm.