Laughter antidote for election mess

One result of the lunacy permeating Florida in the prolonged ballot recount circus is an updating of the definitive baseball maxim coined by Yogi Berra, the wise and much-beloved old ex-New York Yankee philosopher-catcher.

“The game ain’t over ’til it’s over,” or words to that effect, Yogi reportedly once said to no one in particular when his team trailed with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, defeat lurking only a strike away. Today, as an increasingly restless nation watches assorted blowhard lawyers and recycled political hacks down in Florida scrambling to take credit for being the first guy on their block to steal a presidential election, the Al Gore campaign expands upon the Yogi-ism with a general truth of its own: “And sometimes, Bubba, the game ain’t over even when it’s over.”

The Election That Simply Will Not Die has more lives than your basic alley cat, having survived an original count that was deemed too close to call, then a machine recount that turned out not to suit the Gore crowd worth a damn, and now a court-sanctioned hand recount of the recount in selected Democratic counties. (Republicans are nowhere near as certain as Democrats that a hand recount of the much-handled punchcard ballots and their fragile “hanging chads” by teams of stressed-out human election workers is more accurate than the count of an unbiased mahine. No surprise there. Put the shoe on the other foot and the doubts about human fallibility would switch parties in a heartbeat.)

At each tortuous turn on this highway to national gridlock, Republicans could be forgiven if they thought the ballgame should have long been over. Now, they pin their hopes on today’s tabulation of Florida’s absentee ballots from overseas and the final certification by the secretary of state of all ballots except those from the recounted recount.

“When the Florida Commission of Elections or secretary of state announces the tentative final vote count after midnight Friday, the apparent loser should step up to the mike, foul off a couple of pitches and take a called third strike,” wrote Carle Gray of Sullivan earlier this week. “No more Yogi-isms. It would be over…”

Fat chance of that happening of course, unless Gore should pick up enough support from the overseas ballots to overtake Bush’s already certified 300-vote “win,” rendering the controversial recount of the recount superfluous, even without a court’s internvention. But even if that scenario should develop, a weary nation conditioned to expect the worst presumes that the Election From Hell would not be over, at least in the minds of the politicians. Lawyers for each side would merely do an about-face maneuver and be off and running in the other direction without missing a beat.

As a practical matter, though, in the public mind the ballgame may well be over, the Florida gamesmanship and grandstanding notwithstanding. The deluge of election jokes, phony Florida election ballots and the like that has inundated the Internet in the past week may signal that Americans, having lost patience with the pols, are treating the situation as one big national joke. Might as well laugh as whine about something beyond control.

Two bogus ballots in my e-mail Wednesday are typical of the Internet traffic.One is titled “OFFICIAL FLORIDA PRESIDENTIAL BALLOT” over a line that explains, “Follow the arrow and punch the appropriate dot.” Bush is listed first and a very long arrow leads straight from his name to the very center of the punchcard ballot hole opposite. Buchanan, Gore and Nader are listed in order below Bush, their arrows entwined in a huge confused ball of meandering swirls, convolutions and loops mindful of a plate of Mama Baldacci’s spaghetti, before emerging in the vicinity of their respective dots.

The other ballot is a replica of the Palm Beach County punch-card model, with Bush and Gore tickets in their proper order. To the right “Moron Party” is substituted for the Reform Party of Pat Buchanan – the listing that allegedly confused so many Palm Beach County voters who thought they were voting for Gore, touching off the Florida election disaster. Beside the arrow pointing to the punched-out Moron Party slot is this message: “I’m such a complete idiot that, although I meant to vote for Gore, I was baffled by this extremely simple ballot. I clearly am too numb to be included in the process of electing a president, so just forget about it, OK?”

This, of course, has been the nub of the Bush campaign’s lawyers’ argument all along. Too bad they haven’t possessed the skill to state the case so eloquently.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.