Democracy In Peril (2000 Version)

The October issue of Vanity Fair has a very disturbing article about the shenanigans surrounding the 2000 election in Florida. The article, which you can download here thanks to the fine folks over at SCOTUSBlog, basically deals with three issues. Two of them, the disenfranchisement of African-American voters and the mechanics (so to speak) of various voting methods, are interesting and confounding in their own way. But being a lawyer, I was drawn to the first part, dealing with the machinations of the Supreme Court leading up to its 5-4 decision that ended the recounts and handed Dubya the election.

Anyone who was naive enough to believe that the decision rested on anything other than pure political motives needs to read this piece. Rather than berate the Court for it's internal dynamics, I'll just say this: the whole mess in Florida in 2000 demonstrated how fragile democracy really is. In 9 of 10 elections, the margin of victory is so big that the details really don't matter. When it gets close - really close, as the case was in 2000 - the system teeters dangerously on the verge of collapse. We should be able to do better.