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Constitutional Golf

© Bill Howard

In the unlikely event that you missed it, we had an election last week. With any luck at all, it will have been settled by the time you read this. Florida is the state that's holding things up. I happen to live and vote in that same state.

Florida once held up a Presidential Election until the 7th of December. In that particular case, the ballots from Dade county took their sweet time getting to the state capital in Tallahassee. Seems one of Dade's political bosses wasn't completely satisfied with his showing on those ballots. Fortunately for him, he was the one entrusted with their delivery to the capital.

Dade county also has a habit of allowing corpses to vote. Hundreds of them. In our most recent mayoral election. Statistics show that the voting dead in our county lean to the Republicans. I just thought you might like to know what goes on down here. There are reasons why we're being very careful.

In light of this, Mr. Gore was wise to choose Warren Cristopher to oversee the Florida recount for the Gore campaign. He has some experience doing this in places that play fast and loose with the electoral process. In my county, death certificates are an acceptable form of identification at the polls, and we have elected convicted felons to local office on more than one occasion. We sent an impeached judge (bribery was the charge if memory serves) to Washington DC. We make Third World countries look like rank amateurs when it comes to rigging results.

Am I alone in anticipating legal challenges to whatever results we eventually supply the rest of the nation? I think not. There is also a remote chance that we'll never give you a victor in the Presidential race. Which made me think...

If our Constitutional machinery grinds to a halt, what then? This, like many of life's great questions, can be answered simply. Tee it up. Winner gets to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No strokes asked or given. Lets see how these guys handle real pressure.

The Republican and Democratic National Committees would no doubt be unable to agree on an acceptable course. Let a USGA committee decide. Could be Winged Foot, maybe Pebble Beach, Shinnecock, or Augusta National. Or perhaps a weed infested public track. We'd only have to decide this once. When we incorporate the plan into a Constitutional Amendment, we can specify that the contest be held on the US Open course from the year of the election.

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