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Social Studies of Science 31(3), 2001, pages 419-422.
Please do not quote from this version, which may differ slightly from the version that appears in print.
1100 words
The US election controversy of 2000 reaffirms a central finding of science studies: numbers -- vote totals, for example -- are complex beasts. This could not have been news to any American who has followed current events for the last few decades, given that controversies over the mechanics of voting were central to the civil rights movement. Precisely because the resistance to desegregation conceived itself as a morally legitimate guerrilla war, these controversies often turned on fine details of the voting process that were deformed, or allegedly so, under pretexts that appealed to categories of administrative and political reason. Laws to prevent voter suppression are not self-enforcing, any more than the Reconstruction amendments were self-enforcing in the wake of the contested election of 1876. Understandably, then, the legal instruments that have papered over the controversies about voting, from the 14th Amendment to the Voting Rights Act to the Supreme Court cases on electoral redictricting, also paper over the most basic fissures in the country's history.
Historically, the great majority of white citizens have experienced the civil rights controversies as matters affecting someone else -- often nearby geographically, but effectively in a different world. But with the 2000 election controversy in Florida, the problematic details of voting attained nearly universal consciousness as things that affect basic institutional legitimacy and thus the material interests -- economic stability, for example -- that depend on it. The racial divide in experiences of the Florida controversy was strong: where African-Americans heard stories that were entirely familiar, even archetypal, white Americans heard stories that were strange and grotesque. The entire picture of local political machinations, technological backwardness, chaotic street scenes, dubious legal proceedings, organized political violence, and conflicts of interest could be rendered intelligible by locating it in a racialized other -- a "third world country" or a "Banana Republic". Clearly, though, we had met this other and it was us.
Yet even as the legitimacy of public institutions was at stake in the Florida controversy, it was also much of the terrain. Accusations of illegitimacy were among the primary weapons in a controversy that was fought from hour to hour in both its legal and publicity dimensions. Republicans and Democrats both sought to delegitimate institutions that went against them. Their strategies were, of course, asymmetric. The Democrats' game was straightforward: obtain a hand-count on a liberal interpretation of the "intent of the voter" test. The Republicans' game, surprisingly, was much more complicated. They had come out ahead in the initial count, and they enjoyed the symbolic presumption of victory that they gained when Al Gore prematurely conceded on the basis of faulty news reports. One would expect their task to be one of holding everything still. The textbook of recount conflicts, naturally enough, says that the leader wants to keep the rules and the follower wants to change them (Von Drehle, Balz, Nakashima, and Becker 2001). But the textbook assumes that the outcome of the counting process is deterministic with respect to the rules, and that did not seem to be happening. And so the Republicans found themselves trying to delegitimate Democratic attempts to "change the rules" while simultaneously working through two distinct routes -- the Florida legislature and the federal courts -- to do just that.
Fortunately for them, the Republicans had spent the previous eight years developing a considerable expertise and infrastructure for delegitimating governments -- in their case that of Bill Clinton. (That same expertise was also put to work training the Serbian opposition in the delegitimation of the government of Slobodan Milosevic, while experts from the Democratic Party trained Serbian opposition parties in the arts of legitimate government (Dobbs 2000).) The Republican techniques were drawn largely from public relations, which begins with a distinction between a relatively vague "message" and a steady pipeline of "facts" to support it. Having decided on the message that the hand recounts were illegitimate, the Republicans could easily set to work a cadre of trained staff and pundits, all of whom were familiar with the conduct of campaigns of that sort. Trivial anecdotes of chads found on the floor readily became the raw material for faxed talking points, quotable statements by public figures, and commentaries by pundits. In a controversy whose time-frames were even more compressed than those of the 24/7 news cycle, the demands on political staffs to produce facts to spec were extraordinary.
The Democrats lacked much of this capability. Different Democratic interest groups proceeded along their own lines, using their familiar methodologies -- street protests, public hearings, private lawsuits -- none of them geared to the media dynamics of the age. Media coverage of the Florida controversy lacked the obvious slant toward Bush that had been detected by all serious observers during the campaign (Hall 2000, Johnson 2000, Leeds 2000), but neither did it show much sign of being influenced by an effective, unified, or sustained Democratic message. The Supreme Court decisions in Bush's favor certainly crystallized a rank-and-file Democratic interpretation of the events as an illegitimate coup, but then it was too late. Media coverage did not determine the outcome, of course, but leaders of both parties were attentive to public perceptions of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of their contemplated actions. In that sense, constructions of legitimacy in the public sphere bounded the playing field.
These details of the controversy are significant for the light they shine on the nature of legitimacy. Public controversies may not come to closure in the same way as scientific ones, but the very possibility of democracy rests on the practical assumption that reality is more or less what it seems (Porter 1995). And inasmuch as the reality of national affairs is constructed through the esoteric workings of institutions (government agencies, media organizations, research foundations, academia), presuppositions of legitimacy are central to democracy as a cognitive system. A decay of legitimacy is likewise tied to disorders of public cognition, such as the wave of conspiracy theorizing that swept through American culture alongside the conservative campaign against the Clintons. Public relations is often conceived as a conservative force in the traditional sense of the word -- a technology for legitimating the particular institutions that the PR practitioner's client supports. Yet the techniques of public relations are also antirational: they depend on strategic vagueness and the selective use of facts. Not all forms of legitimacy, evidently, are created equal. When a candidate can be mocked by the legitimate news media for insisting on rational, factually grounded discussion of public issues, the foundations of public reason are truly at stake. Democracy rests on the counting of votes, but the counting of nearly anything depends on the legitimation, and the institutionalization, of rational thought.
References
Michael Dobbs, US advice guided Milosevic opposition, Washington Post, 11 December 2000, page A1.
Jane Hall, Gore media coverage: Playing hardball, Columbia Journalism Review 39(3), 2000, page 30.
Peter Johnson, Networks boost Bush, USA Today, 14 August 2000, page 5D.
Jeff Leeds, Voters, media differ on campaign, poll shows, Los Angeles Times, 28 July 2000, page A17.
Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
David Von Drehle, Dan Balz, Ellen Nakashima and Jo Becker, A wild ride into uncharted territory, Washington Post, 28 January 2001, page A1.