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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Elections

The US Elections: Democrats bow to bullying from the Republican right

By Patrick Martin
23 November 2000

Use this version to print

Capitulating to the threat of violence from right-wing elements backing Republican candidate George W. Bush, the election board of Miami-Dade County voted Wednesday to call off its recount of the presidential vote and submit an admittedly inaccurate machine count as its official tally. The action means that the votes of more than 10,000 Miami residents will be excluded.

The Democratic-controlled board took the unanimous action only two hours after it had decided to halt the full recount of 654,000 ballots cast in Miami and concentrate on the 10,000 so-called undervotes—ballots for which the punch-card machines failed to register a presidential selection—in order to meet the Sunday 5 p.m. deadline set by the Florida State Supreme Court.

The initial decision was met with a calculated outburst of violence by a band of pro-Bush demonstrators who had been assembled in Miami by Republican Party officials. The two dozen demonstrators began shouting, “Cheaters,” and “Vote fraud.” They screamed at election officials when they attempted to remove the 10,000 disputed ballots to a smaller counting room where party observers could monitor the process, but the larger crowd would be excluded.

The incident escalated to fascist-style thuggery when a Democratic Party attorney was mobbed as he walked through the building, with Bush supporters screaming that he had removed a ballot from the counting room and demanding his arrest. The attorney, who was holding only a sample ballot used to explain the vote-counting process, had to be rescued by police and escorted out of the building.

It was in this atmosphere of intimidation that the election board decided to call off the recount entirely. Board member David Leahy admitted that the pro-Bush protests had played a role in the decision. Without the disruption, he said, “Speaking for myself, we'd be up there counting.”

After the election board's announcement, Republican officials gloated over the success of their strong-arm tactics. Florida Republican Party Chairman Al Cardenas declared, with a straight face, “We're happy that there's finality coming with respect to this election. Finally, we're getting some semblance of the rule of law here.”

The decision cuts off the hand recount in the most populous county in Florida, which Gore carried by a substantial margin. It also invalidates a 157-vote swing to Gore that was uncovered in the first stages of the hand recount, on Monday and Tuesday, when 23 percent of the county's precincts were re-counted. If uncounted Gore votes had continued to be restored at that rate in the rest of Miami-Dade, the Democratic candidate would have nearly eliminated Bush's nominal 930-vote lead in the statewide tally.

The calling off of the Miami-Dade recount shows the political cowardice, not only of the local Democratic Party officials, but of the national Democratic Party and the media as well. Not one public official or media commentator has dared to speak the truth: that a right-wing mob has succeeded through force and intimidation in depriving thousands of Florida voters of their rights. All accept the pretense that the board made its decision because it lacked sufficient time to complete a full recount.

Gore campaign officials immediately filed a lawsuit seeking a reversal of the Miami-Dade decision, which refers only cryptically to the intimidation of the board: “The Miami-Dade canvassing board decision today to halt its recount-for whatever reason-flies in the face of an unambiguous, unanimous Supreme Court decision of less than 24 hours ago.”

A Miami-Dade circuit judge denied the suit, and his decision will now be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.

As the New York Times noted Wednesday, there is a distinct difference in the intensity of the Democratic and Republican responses to the presidential election crisis. “Mr. Bush can take heart in that Republicans are more unified and more willing than Democrats to wage total war, at all levels legal and political, to reach the White House,” the Times said.

Kowtowing and passivity towards the fascist elements that infest the Republican Party has been a characteristic of both the Democratic Party and the media ever since the impeachment and trial of Bill Clinton, the result of a conspiracy of right-wing lawyers, judges, Republican congressional leaders and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Congressional Democrats voted against the impeachment and removal of the Democratic president, but they joined Clinton in covering up the political significance of this attempt by the extreme right to mount a pseudo-constitutional coup d'etat.

The same social and political types that engineered the impeachment conspiracy are at work in Florida in the Bush campaign and the state government run by the presidential candidate's brother, Governor Jeb Bush. Earlier this year they were whipped into a frenzy over the Elian Gonzalez case, at one point declaring that federal laws and decisions would not be enforced in Miami-Dade because the right-wing Cuban exiles who had kidnapped the young Cuban were opposed to returning him to the custody of his father.

See Also:

The US election: right to vote upheld in Florida Supreme Court decision on recounts
[23 November 2000]

Hand recounts in the US elections: fact and fiction
[21 November 2000]

Florida presidential recount: Bush campaign makes appeal to military and extreme right
[20 November 2000]

Court slows Bush grab for power: America at the knife-edge
[18 November 2000]