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Analysis Of The American 2000 Presidential Elections
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org
There is no moral merit to the process of democratically electing one’s leader. The masses can claim neither an intellectual advantage over the few who actually understand the qualifications of the candidates and the nuances of their positions on the issues, nor can they claim a moral advantage over the noblest of the citizenry who are inevitably a minority. In the words of the poet as-Samau'al: "She (was) reproaching us, that we were few in numbers; so I said to her, 'Indeed, noble men are few'" (A. J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1965).
The great virtue of the system of electing a head of state is a pragmatic one. Since it is the majority that would eventually win any war fought over the office, it is best to spare the nation the costs in material wealth, human life and human suffering, and simply count heads and let the majority have its way just as if a war had been fought.
This is certainly the case when there is a clear substantial majority. But, what of the case where the majority, as measured by an election is razor thin. And what if disputes about the process raise serious doubts as to whether the preferences of the majority polled was accurately reflected in the outcome? Such is the case with the current Presidential election in America, the closest race 120 years.
It comes as a surprise to many that the American system for electing its president is not one of simple majority rule at all. The system, as originally designed, had more in common with the process by which Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) was elected as the first Caliph. The election was not a popular ballot, but a face-to-face meeting of the acknowledged leaders of the community, who discussed the merits of various candidates and eventually agreed on Abu Bakr by consensus. The process was not without flaw, most notably the absence of the partisans of Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) whose exclusion resulted in a bitterness that evolved into the Sunni-Shi’a split in the ummah. Yet, the entire community, including Ali, ratified the selection and Abu Bakr served out his term of office without suffering death by violence as plagued his three successors.
In the American system, the body of electors is called the Electoral College and is selected by the several states (plus, in recent times, the District of Columbia). It was originally envisioned that these electors would be unpledged to any particular candidate and would make their decision after due deliberation, as in the case of Abu Bakr. With the rise of political parties in America, however, the electors quickly became expected to commit themselves to the candidate selected by the political party that backed them. This gave rise to the illusion that the voters are voting for the candidate to whom the electors are pledged, rather than to the electors. This illusion has been thoroughly shattered by the complication of the present election that, at press time, leave the country uncertain as to whether Republican candidate George Bush or Democratic candidate Al Gore will be the next President of the United States.
No candidate received a majority of the popular vote. Al Gore has 48%, George Bush 48%; Ralph Nader 3% and the remaining 1% is divided up among Pat Buchanan (Reform Party), Harry Browne (Libertarian Party), John Hagelin (Natural Law Party) and Howard Phillips (Constitution Party), in that order. This has happened many times in American history, including 1992 when Bill Clinton won with less than 44% of the vote. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 40% of the vote.
The candidate who received the plurality of votes (clearly Gore) may not have the majority of electoral votes. This has happened three times before in American history, but the most recent was in 1888. Although Grover Cleveland had a clear majority of 55% of the popular vote, he lost the election to Benjamin Harrison who scored 58% of the electoral votes.
The most remarkable aspect of this election may be the claim of several thousand Florida voters that a confusing ballot layout caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore as they had intended. 19,000 voters were confused enough to cast votes for both Buchanan and Gore. With the margin of the election now less than two thousand votes (excluding the as-yet-uncounted absentee votes) this has raised the specter that Florida may push Bush over the top even though he did not actually have the support of the people who actually voted. Yet this too would not be a first. Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy because his majorities in Texas and Illinois were taken away from him by “irregularities.” The difference is that whereas the controversial ballot in Florida was the inadvertent blunder of the Democratic election official who designed it, and was approved by both parties, the irregularities in 1960 were deliberate vote fraud conducted by the political machines of Mayor Richard Daly of Chicago and of Lyndon Johnson himself, the beneficiary of the irregularities. The normally combative Richard Nixon did not challenge the results, however. Like Ali accepting the election of Abu Bakr, he put the interests of the nation above his own and accepted the flawed election of John Kennedy because he felt that making an issue of matter in such a close race would detract from the legitimacy of the office of the Presidency.
The bottom line of the recent drama has been to demonstrate how effective has been the strategy of the environmentalist-voting block that put its energy behind Ralph Nader to get its message across. The winner of the election, whoever it turns out to be, will know that this block of voters could have changed the outcome. Expect them to receive ready accessibility in the halls of Congress over the next four years. This underscores the enormity of the error made by those Muslims who pressed for a block vote for George Bush despite his flagrant disregard for what we unconvincingly boast is our core issue: the status of Jerusalem. The one state where we should have made a difference was Michigan, and we failed to deliver that state to Bush. The next President, be he Bush or Gore, will not forget that when the Zionists press for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. (Especially given the substantial Jewish vote in Florida, which has turned out to be the pivotal state.)
In the great fuss over what is happening in Florida, no mention is made of Muslim voters. Although Bush's lead over Gore in Florida is less than 2,000 votes while the American Muslim Council determined that there are over 20,000 voters in Florida with Muslim names, no one is seriously considering that a Muslim block vote is responsible for Bush's lead. There is no way to prove that the Muslims voted for Bush as a block. Although Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan got only 16962 votes in Florida and Libertarian candidate Harry Browne got only 15658 votes, each had a total that exceeds the Bush margin of victory. Had the 20,000 supposed Muslim voters supported either Buchanan (who has been unjustly vilified as an anti-Semite for his criticism of Israel) or Brown (whose opposition to foreign aid includes aid to Israel) as a block, their presence, doubling either candidate's vote total, would have been as stuck out as plainly as the thousands of votes erroneously cast for Buchanan. Muslims could then have credibly claimed to have been the balance of power in Florida. Then, no one could have missed the significance of the Muslim vote or could have afforded to ignore it in the future. It may be another 120 more years before there is another election so close. We have missed a golden opportunity.
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