Gov. George W. Bush Wins Florida Vote

Secretary of State Katherine Harris' certification of Florida's electoral votes officially made Texas Governor George W. Bush the United States' president-elect, but Al Gore and the democratic camp appear to be prepared to challenge the results in court and throw the country into yet more turmoil. That decision no doubt brings a great deal of satisfaction to the trial lawyers in Florida and around the country who are growing quite wealthy at the expense of the country's collective dignity.

Vice President Gore is scheduled to appeal to the public in a speech later today and to explain his reasoning for further drawing out the election. David Boies, an attorney for Gore, apparently referred to ballots that are too unclear to distinguish when he noted, "an election's not over until the votes have been counted. And you have nine or ten thousand votes that have never been counted once.'' Boies further stated that he wishes to have the courts decide the election, an interesting concept that runs contrary to U.S. election procedure. Boies noted, "It's important that this election be decided by the courts and not by a partisan secretary of state who was one of the candidates' campaign manager and who's made every single decision that she was able to make to favor one candidate.''

Meanwhile, Bush appears to be ignoring the further courtroom wrangling that Gore wishes to thrust upon the country and has officially named Dick Cheney as the head of his transition team and Andrew Card as his Chief of Staff. Bush hopes to have Cheney working with Clinton administration officials to make the transition as smooth as possible, but Beth Newberger, of the General Services Administration, has noted, "As long as both sides continue with their plans to go to court, we believe that the outcome remains unclear," she said. "Therefore we are not planning to authorize the transition at this time." The GSA, a multi-billion dollar government spending machine, would benefit immensely from the free-spending, big government tendencies of a democratic administration. In response, Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card noted that "we may just open our own transition office."