The forgotten disenfranchised voters of Florida

Robert Bartley’s article in today’s Opinion Journal “Angry Democrats: Florida and Beyond” does the old pot-kettle turnaround on Democrats angry about election losses. But Bartley also resurrects an issue that I always think of as the great unreported story of the Florida mess: the disenfranchised voters of the Florida panhandle.

The media recounts found that Mr. Bush won by 493 votes. Mr. Bush also won, this tally determined, under an honest recount of votes in the counties the Gore lawsuits had selected. It did construct a Gore victory scenario if you counted spoiled ballots. But if you entertain "what if" scenarios, you have to remember that many Republican voters were dissuaded from voting when the television networks called the election for Gore before the polls had closed in the western panhandle counties. While the Florida election was excruciatingly close, it is simply not true that the Supreme Court let Mr. Bush steal it. [Emphasis added]

Sure enough, there were probably only a couple dozen voters in the western Florida counties who decided not to vote because the state had been called for Gore (although some have claimed the premature call cost Bush 10,000 votes!) But imagine the outrage if these counties were heavily minority and liberal instead of white and conservative (the FL panhandle lies right below Alabama and Georgia). Voters would have claimed they didn’t vote because the state had already been decided for their candidate. And if the state had been erroneously called for Bush? – oh boy. The caterwauling would still be going on.

Suck it up Dems – Gore lost.