Letter: Hand count only way to ensure votes recorded

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2000 | 9:45 a.m.

It highly perturbs me about the attitude of many in the public -- and sadly, in the courts, as well as public officials and members of the media -- toward the right to vote as expressed in their comments and opinions on the Florida hand-count vote.

Forget the automatic machine recount. It is over and done with. I am talking about a hand count that tries to pick up votes the machines missed for various reasons. It seems to me the paramount issue here is upholding the right to have your cast vote recorded.

It is not about deadlines or "gotcha points," but about a right people have fought and died for from Yorktown, to Gettysburg, to the Argonne, to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal, to Inchon, to the women's suffrage movement and to Selma.

Too many people have treated this right as a mere nuisance and a troublesome formality to be held hostage by deadlines. Political hacks have advanced the idea that "somebody be declared a winner" -- whether or not all the votes that were cast are counted.

Those unrecorded votes must be recorded -- all of them or as many as possible -- and to hell with Dec. 12, Dec. 18 or any other date.

The fealty to these dates has caused the whole process to be drawn out as Bush uses all kinds of stalling tactics to allow these dates to preclude any count and recording of the unrecorded votes.

Incidentally, I have checked the Constitution and there is no mention whatsoever of Dec. 12, and we have until Jan. 20 to get these votes counted and recorded, so let's do it!

If the votes aren't counted, Bush will not only be an illegitimate president, but the "right to vote" is not "worth a warm bucket of spit," in my opinion!

DAN OLIVIER