Legitimizing Elections

After nearly two years of superficial sound bites, trivial TV ads and staged smooches, you'd think people could wait a few more days.

With as many as 10,000 ballots in Palm Beach County read by computers as having no presidential vote, Florida election officials made the right decision yesterday in ordering a hand recount of votes in the county. The Bush camp protested the decision on grounds that hand counts will be influenced by political interests and will be inaccurate. But where's the accuracy and fairness in blatantly ignoring the will of 10,000 voters?

Yes, the hand count could swing the final vote in favor of Vice President Al Gore '69. But Texas Gov. George W. Bush cannot try to block the hand recount and expect to emerge from this campaign as a man of integrity--whether or not he becomes our next president. As much as the arguments for advocating or dismissing the hand count are colored by partisan interests, the fair administration of elections is not a partisan issue.

But if we really want to talk about fairness in this election, we have to look beyond Florida and the technicalities of ballot counting.

While the only constitutional requirements for being the president of this country are U.S. citizenship and 35 years of age, we all know that two additional unwritten prerequisites are also necessary to have a successful candidacy: money and connections. The higher the office, the more crucial the financial contributions. Political campaigns in the United States are increasingly resembling auctions at Christie's--offices go to the highest bidders and those without serious dough should look elsewhere.

This January, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 in favor of maintaining the current $1,000 cap on individual contributions in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC. Justice David H. Souter, in writing for the court, asserted that the cap functioned to fight against corruption and to prevent politicians from becoming too privy to the "wishes of large contributors." Although the intent of the decision was laudable, the case failed to touch upon the heart of corruption in politics today--the prevalence of unregulated "soft money" contributions. Limiting one channel of political contributions is pointless if you're going to leave another wide open.

But there is indication that broader spending limits may be put in place. Justice Kennedy wrote that he would "leave open the possibility [of] a system in which there are some limits on both expenditures and contributions, thus permitting office-holders to concentrate their time and efforts on official duties rather than fundraising."

The length of our campaigns and the growing use of 30-second TV ads require that candidates neglect their current offices and raise millions. Nevermind that Bush has a state to govern or that Gore is our current vice president--someone must be covering for them while they fly from state to state, delivering the same stump speeches and hosting one $10,000-a-plate dinner after another.

But how much time do we really need between the primaries and the general election to read up on the issues and decide on who we'll support? How many times do we need to hear the same sound bites? And how do commercials with blatantly subliminal messages help us make informed choices? We would do well to consider structural regulation of campaigns in addition to campaign finance reform. Shortening the campaign period would be a first step in enabling candidates to spend more time in their roles as public servants.

In Britain, laws reduce the need for inordinate amounts of money--paid broadcast advertisements are prohibited and TV and radio stations are obligated to give each major party free airtime during campaigns. These laws haven't made politics in Britain squeaky-clean, but at least the Brits try. In the U.S., candidates don't have to break any rules because corruption is legal.

Regardless of who is named our next president, his integrity and the integrity of the Florida ballot count will be questioned. But if we're that concerned about integrity, we should begin by questioning our wasteful campaign structure itself--not its inevitable by-products. In the meantime, let's hope for a fair administration of the hand count, so that this country has at least one thing it can trust.

Hoon-Jung Kim '01 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.