In the year 2000, even before a winner of the presidential contest was finally named, representatives of the media along with partisan Democrats and Republicans announced their intentions to hand count every Florida vote. Party hacks and media bosses said that they would take advantage of Florida's liberal "Sunshine Law" to get access to all the ballots. The Democrats thought the hand count would prove that Al Gore won the Presidency. The Republicans thought the hand count would only prove that it was impossible to divine the true intent of a voter who left a "dimpled" chad on a punch ballot. The media bosses thought the hand count would be a ratings booster on par with the O.J. Simpson and Clinton impeachment trials, two well-known media obsessions of the time.

But before the first ballot was counted, a group of wise citizens came up with another idea. During the Clinton impeachment trial, they argued, the Democrats kept repeating the mantra that it was time to "move on." The wise citizens thought that this was sound advice as regards the ballot count, but they also realized that they were living in a time period when it was difficult to move on until "closure" had been achieved.

How to achieve closure? The wise citizens proposed that all of Florida's ballots be taken from storage in Tallahassee, transported to the coast, and dumped in the Gulf of Mexico. Without having the ballots to obsess over, the wise citizens argued, the country could finally "move on" to the business of the nation.

The "Dump in the Gulf" proposal made a big splash. So popular was the idea that the wise citizens added a further proposal: that on the first Tuesday of November in each non-Presidential election year, citizens gather at the site of the ballot dumping as part of a national day of atonement for all historical voting abuses. The day would be called "Clinton Harris Atonement Day," or CHAD, named after the Democrat most despised by Republicans (Bill Clinton), and the Republican most despised by Democrats (then Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris). Clinton and Harris were perfect symbols of the petty partisanship produced by the United States election laws of the twentieth century.

The CHAD caught on and soon became a popular national holiday. Each year, citizens gathered at the coastal site and listened to speeches about the ways Americans had historically been denied the right to vote or had the power of their vote minimized- poll taxes, literacy tests, property restrictions, gender and racial discrimination, confusing ballots, onerous ballot access laws, "winner take all" elections that made it near impossible for third party candidates to win, and many others. Those gathering would pledge to protect and defend democracy, then dive into the Gulf as a symbolic reenactment of the great Florida ballot dumping of 2001.

But the Clinton Harris Atonement Day did not only focus on the negative. Citizens began discussions of ways to improve America's antiquated election procedures. As early as 2001, citizens wrote to their representatives and demanded consideration of HR 5631, a bill introduced by Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jim Leach (R- IA) that required study of pro-democracy reforms. Soon, citizens developed persuasive proposals for pro- democracy measures like instant runoff voting, proportional representation, weekend voting, and voting via Internet and mail.

Thanks to the CHAD, by the middle of the twenty-first century the United States had finally developed electoral laws respecting the right of every citizen to participate equally and fairly. Voter turnout began to increase, and for the first time in American history it became possible for third parties such as the Greens and Libertarians to have an impact on the political system without being labeled "spoilers" by the Democrats and Republicans. By the year 2050, the United States had finally become the role model of citizen participation and democracy always dreamed of by early reformers like Wisconsin's Bob LaFollette.

Dumping those Florida ballots was a controversial proposal in the year 2000. But by doing it, the United States was able to avoid a prolonged partisan and media induced obsession with minutia and get on with the business of making the United States into the great democratic republic it had always promised to be.

Tony Palmeri teaches at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He can be reached at Palmeri@uwosh.edu

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