In the ground war, African-American leaders used traditional forms of political chicanery, offering $3 a head to black pastors for every potential Democrat they registered. But they invented new ones as well, trolling the nation's jails and homes for the aged to round up support for the Democratic slate. In specious pronouncements calculated for maximum prejudice, they declared that long-standing laws to take away the voting privileges of felonious criminals were examples of old-fashioned racism -- a conspiracy to disenfranchise blacks on the basis of skin color and, therefore, a "civil rights" cause.

This reprehensible campaign of racial distortion, exploiting the themes of victimization, has now reached its climax in the effort to subvert the election result. Among the first to launch the assault on Florida's polls was Jesse Jackson, who arrived trailing images of the segregated American past. On behalf of the Gore campaign, Jackson claimed that African-Americans in Palm Beach County had been denied their franchise much the same as their parents had been 40 years before. A ballot had been designed to confuse voters -- specifically to fool Gore supporters into voting for Pat Buchanan. In all, 19,000 ballots had been destroyed by officials because the ruse was so successful and the hopelessly confused had actually voted twice. Of course, in the 1996 presidential elections, which had a lower voter turnout, a comparable 15,000 ballots had been similarly destroyed by Florida officials. But now that the hornets' nest of suspicion had been stirred, such rational explanations cut no ice.

The African-American divisions of the Democratic Party claimed, moreover, that it was impossible that Buchanan could even get the 3,000-plus votes that he did in a county with such a large African-American population. Utterly racist statements were marshaled behind this bogus claim, such as Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings' declaration that no African-American could ever vote for Buchanan. Of course Buchanan's running mate, Ezola Foster, is an African-American woman. But a racial demagogue like Hastings could hardly be fazed by a fact like that. In 1996 Buchanan got 8,000-plus votes in a Republican primary in the same county. Moreover, in the present election cycle there were 16,000 registered members of Buchanan's various parties (Reform, Independent) in Palm Beach County, who could easily have accounted for his total.

It was quickly established that the "confusing" ballot in question was designed by a Democrat official. And all the officials in control of the electoral system in Palm Beach County, a Democratic stronghold, are Democrats. In fact, as the local Democratic official in charge of the ballot explained to the press, the "confusing" design was an attempt to increase the size of the print on the ballot so that older people could read it. Moreover, when the ballot had been distributed before the vote -- and up to the time that Florida's result became an issue -- no Democrat had complained. Nonetheless, Bill Daley, the chief of Gore's campaign, charged that the ballot design was illegal. One of the legion of lawyers mobilized by Gore to descend on the state confirmed Daley's charge. But the same ballot design is used in Daley's home state of Illinois, which turned out a majority for Gore.

Additionally, there are questions that no one seems to be able to raise out loud: If a voter cannot tell the difference between two holes on a ballot that are clearly marked, how can they tell the difference between the candidates for president? Who are these people (both black and white) who voted twice anyway? How competent are they to make up their own minds? Did they make up their own minds or were they led to the polls by the $3 bounty hunters?

These are not idle concerns. In Milwaukee, Democrats scoured the streets in search of homeless people to drag to the polls. The volunteers from this voting pool, made up largely of psychotics and substance abusers, were enticed by their Democratic handlers to come along to the polling booth by an offer of free cigarettes. (What an index of the cynical sewer into which the "anti-big-tobacco" party descends when a vote is at stake!) If Democrats are willing to raid the jails and recruit the homeless to elect their ticket, what incompetence, malignancy or infirmity will they not bring to the polls to wrestle with the complexities of butterfly ballots? Perhaps some disgruntled voters were genuinely confused, but perhaps there were others who were mentally non compos or couldn't even read the text beyond recognizing the name that their abettors provided? Who knows? Or will ever know?

In 1960, Jack Kennedy was elected with less than a majority of the popular vote. There was clear evidence that the ballot boxes in Chicago had been stuffed by minions in the employ of the late father of Gore's present campaign manager, putting the crucial vote of Illinois over the top. Though he believed he had won, Richard Nixon refused to challenge the result of the vote. Such a challenge would have been too damaging to the country he loved.

At the end of election night in this campaign, the Florida vote was automatically going to be recounted anyway, under the laws of the state. Gore might have said: "The vote is so close that there is going to be a recount mandated by law. Because the result of an election provides the legitimacy for the new administration, and that legitimacy is the foundation of our civil peace, I think it would be prudent for me to wait on the recount to concede this election. That way all Americans will recognize the result, and that it is what our democracy is all about."

But Gore did not say this. Instead he unleashed the dogs of political war on Palm Beach County. He allowed the Jackson arsonists to rush in to inflame the passions of social hysteria, to recklessly sow bitter doubts about the process itself that no one can now allay. He allowed the chief of his campaign to suggest that the Constitution be overthrown so that the popular vote would prevail -- because that was "morally" more right than letting the Electoral College decide. He launched a partisan and enormously dangerous campaign to undermine the very process that keeps the nation united, and that alone can make the next administration a government of us all.

In launching this destructive action, Gore poured the corrosive acid of suspicion and distrust on an already fraying body politic, and showed in one reckless decision during a moment of crisis that he is not fit to be president of these United States.

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