The Palm Beach County ballot may well have been illegal, at least insofar as it violated statutory requirements for a ballot layout set down in the Florida codes (Title IX, Chapter 101). On paper ballots, candidates must be listed linearly and the holes placed to the right of their names. On electromechanical ballots, which is the sort of ballot used in Palm Beach County, where hole punches are then read mechanically, the holes may be to the right or left, but a linear arrangement is still expected--and this was not the case in the "butterfly" ballot. Moreover, the two major parties (i.e., Democratic and Republican, with the governor's party on top), must occupy the top lines of the ballot, with minor parties below. The Republicans had the top. The Reform Party was beneath. The Democrats were bemeath the Reform Party.

Having established that the ballot did not meet the statutory requirements, it is next necessary to show that the failure to conform created a result that caused the will of the electorate not to be represented. The 19,120 double-voted ballots and the number of Buchanan votes huge beyond statistical probability are indications that the form of the ballot created confusion and probably caused misrepresentation of the voter's will. It was not merely that the voters were incompetent; the ballots were badly designed. (Could one file a complaint under the ADA provisions, I wonder?)

Then we'd have to show that this matters. Normally, voting irregularities might affect final tallies, but rarely do they amount to enough votes to change the final outcome. In this case, they change the final outcome not merely for Palm Beach County, but for Florida as a whole, and for the entire nation, which is being asked to trust in the Electoral College system, and which will potentially give a majority of its electoral votes to a candidate who did not receive a majority of the poplular vote. Under the circumstances of the electoral vote countermanding the popular vote, the nation outside of Florida must be assured that the result in Florida was legitimate. Otherwise, it will have cause to see President as having assumed the office without legitimacy or authority. And that lack of faith in the process would spell the ultimate demise of the system.

How long can this go on? The good news is that there's a deadline--the second Tuesday of November, 2004.

--Charlie Baum