FLORIDA NATIVE: How could your state have elected George Bush governor?
TEXAS NATIVE: He used to be President, right? Besides, why would you want to go back to a state that can't count?

I swore this year I was going to do the Bad-TV-Show thing. I was going to make my stand, and I was going to tell the major parties how little I thought of the two guys they had tossed at us for the highest office in the land. I was gonna ignore them.

No, I wasn't going to abandon my vote. I was going to go behind the curtain and vote for junior senator. Yep, still stuck in Connecticut, so yes, I did vote for Mr. Lieberman, who's been there too long to bring home now, and whom I respect, because I believe he believes what he says, even if I disagree with most of it. I was also going to vote for Congress(wo)man, for the state house and senate. And for dog catcher if it was on there, but it wasn't. Catching dogs isn't much of a problem up here. Lyme Disease, yes. West Nile Fever, ayup. Dogs are plentiful, but they have big yards and fields to do their business in.

But I wasn't going to vote for President. I've talked about this before with some people, pushed it for an endorsement editorial in 1996. I'm convinced it's the only protest we have. Vote for everything but President. When enough people do that, and the votes for President start coming down to the level of the votes for everything else, maybe the pollsters and the parties will start taking notice, and maybe they'll give us something for a change in four years. (Or maybe, like this year, they'll just assume we meant to vote for Al Gore and put us in the pile.)

But I chickened out. I didn't even follow through on my threat to write in the first two people over 35 I could think of. I gave in and pushed down the first lever.

I know, I know, my state was already maddeningly in Gore's favor, so that Bush vote was essentially meaningless. If I was going to chicken out and push down something, I should have gone for a minor-party person.

But which one? The jerk, the communist, the fascist, or the ones I know nothing about?

I didn't learn a lot in college (well, in classes); just look at my transcript. (And no, you may NOT.) But one of my professors said something that stuck with me. She was far from a Republican (unless that republic was Soviet, maybe), far from a fan of the war-hero system of government, but she said her favorite president in her lifetime was General Dwight David Eisenhower. Yep, she liked Ike. Why? Because she had the feeling she knew where he was coming from all the time -- and he was going to do the least to mess things up.

Gore's a smarmy and arrogant liar. Nader and Buchanan, you know where they're coming from, and they've got a lot of messing planned.

So I went for the goofball. Shoot me. It's still not as bad as punching the wrong damn hole. Big-ass arrows aren't enough? Christ, been to the Bruckner Interchange lately? We don't even get arrows telling us which way the main-drag multi-lane interstate highway goes.

"Oh, I didn't take the time to look at the thing and read it, but I am absolutely positively convinced I punched the wrong hole." Excuse me? Y'all deserve Pat Buchanan.

(And before we leave the Bruckner Interchange: Can't wait to see that flooding I-95, Cross-Bronx-to-New-England-Thruway ramp in the freezing dead of winter. Ice at 150 feet on a one-lane ramp! Yay! Those Jersey barriers will surely stop the skids of the tractor-trailers in front and in back of me!)

In the end, of course, my vote didn't matter, just like it hasn't in every other of the eight elections I've been eligible to vote and did vote in (as well as a couple of primaries and referenda). So, I've decided to move to Broward County, where votes DO count. And count. And count. And count. And count again.

(I really want one of the NHL All-Star Game ballot boxes from the National Car Rental Center in Sunrise to get impounded by the league for hand recounts. "Oh my God, I thought I was voting for Pavel Bure, but I voted for Peter Bondra! My friends did it too! The ballot was confusing! And now Jaromir Jagr won by 14 votes! Revote! Revote!")

Man, a month ago, did you ever think this was the election you were going to talk about with your grandchildren? This campaign was absolutely uninspiring. At least, it was uninspiring until one hour after the networks believed it was over.

It's become painfully obvious we aren't going to be inspired by politics any time soon. Or, rather, by major national politicians. The closest thing to inspiring we've had in the last 15 years has been Newt Gingrich, and we all saw where THAT went. The way the climate is right now, you don't get elected with ideas. You get elected and stay that way by playing it safe and pandering.

So what do we have to hang our hats on? The game.

The fun little absurdities of renegade electoral votes, of mandatory and judicially inspired recounts, of 300-vote margins in one of the biggest states in the world, of lost and found ballot boxes. Of the odd wars of words. Of actually going back and re-reading the Constitution.

Of the waiting, at a time when we can get live play-by-play of a hockey game halfway around the world through our telephone lines into our bedroom, for four counties in Florida to figure out just what the score was in the game three weeks ago.

Even of watching those morons in Palm Beach County claim they've been defrauded and disenfranchised by their very own Democratic election officials. It's a comedy at the very least.

Of actually having an Election of 1876, an Election of 1824, of our very own. How crazy is it that in the year we get another Subway Series finally ("But he told me it could never happen again." -- Jim Nuzzo, Subway), we get the election we thought would never happen again?

It can't get any better than this one.

And they want to prevent its happening again and abolish the electoral college? Are they nuts? (More on Hillary later.) The president isn't Joe Rep. There's a grandeur to that office that isn't there in any other office in the land. The president is our little pseudo-king, a Head of State we pick and fire. We shouldn't pick him the way we pick a dog catcher. And friends, hate to tell you, but this ain't no democracy. If it was, you'd be taking breaks from work to vote on education funding every day. This is a republic. (Remember the Pledge of Allegiance? Right before Richard Sands, one nation under God invisible? You said it yourself.) We vote for representatives. Some are more direct than others. The President is somewhat less direct. Play the game. Get over it.

Besides which, as a guy at work pointed out, imagine if we did elect with the popular vote. The difference between the two major-party candidates right now is somewhere around 263,000 out of something like 103,000,000 cast. That's about 0.25 percent. What, a couple of votes per polling place? We're not just recounting Palm Beach County. We're recounting the NATION. We're challenging precincts from Hicksville to Boondocks. And neither one would end up with a majority of all the votes.

Our system has worked beautifully through 106 Congresses and 42 presidents and 212 years. Believe it or not, once you siphon out the oratory and posing on both sides, our system is working beautifully now.

Shut up, sit down and enjoy it. It may never happen again.

The 107th Senate will be split down the middle. There's no Vice President, hence President of the Senate, to break the tie, unless it's the President Pro Tempore. But the President Pro Tempore presumably would have either voted and couldn't break the tie, or didn't vote in the first place and hence wouldn't have a tie to break.

I can hear it now. "You want this nominee? Let's recount that recount of the recount of the recount of the recount of the recount, shall we?"

"I recant my request for a recount. But I reserve the right to request a recount."

"I recollect you recanted your request repugnantly rather recently."

"Regardless, it's reactionary."

"Ridiculous."

On second thought, lady, stay outta my neighborhood.

Anchored the Boring Homepage, 11/26/00-1/6/01.

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