It’s interesting how things change when you see history from two different perspectives. See below two recountings of the 1984 election results from Indiana’s 8th District. It has come up because of the situation in Florida’s 13th District and the close vote there, and the options the Democrats have of simply not seating the Republican, who seems to have won by malfunctioning fiat of the paperless voting machines.

Here is the first telling of the ’84 tale:

[In 1984, there was] a vicious dispute [in the House] over a contested election, this time in Indiana. After a recount, Republican Richard McIntyre was declared the winner by 34 votes over Democratic incumbent Frank McCloskey. The Indiana secretary of state, a Republican, certified the McIntyre victory, but the Democratic House refused to seat him and left the seat vacant for four months while a special task force recounted all the ballots. The task force decided–and the full House agreed along party lines–that the Democrat had won by four votes. Republicans charged that the Democrats had recounted the ballots until their man was ahead and then promptly shut down the count. Newt Gingrich, the future House speaker, labeled the refusal to seat the certified winner “the Watergate of the House,” and led a walkout of GOP members from the chamber.

And here is the second:

In the 1984 election, Rep. McCloskey faced conservative state senator Rick McIntyre. Buoyed by President Reagan’s strong coattails, McIntyre trailed McCloskey by only 72 votes after the initial vote count. A tabulation error, however, resulted in an overcounting of McCloskey votes and the Republican Indiana Secretary of State certified McIntyre as the winner by 34 votes, ignoring other recounted tallies that actually showed McCloskey was in the lead. The Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either McIntyre or McCloskey and conducted their own recount. In the end, the House seated McCloskey after declaring him the winner by just four votes (116,645 to 116,641). The vote was largely along partisan lines and in response every Republican House member marched out of the chamber in protest.

This is what makes it so hard to judge from the sidelines: which story is true? Are both? That’s possible. The first story was told in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and the slant is obviously that the Democrats overturned a valid vote. The second is the Wikipedia telling, which adds elements that make the Republican Secretary of State sound crooked. So how are we to take this story?

One disturbing thing is that were you to read just one of the two stories above, you would come out with the impression that one side played fair and the other did not. Another disturbing fact is that the full story is not easily findable; I know it must be out there, but probably not on a web page anywhere. But with the casual leaving out of a single fact (that the Indiana Secretary of State ignored other recounts, that there was a charge that Congressional Democrats stopped counting once their man won), the story takes on considerably different tacks.

However, there is something striking about this story: what the Republicans howled over in 1984, what Newt Gingrich later built his leadership upon ten years later, what they called an unacceptable injustice–pales in comparison to what that same party did in 2000. The Floridian Secretary of State using a ginned-up “felons” list, and then prematurely–and repeatedly–calling the race for the candidate of her own party. Ironically, this echoes not just what Republicans claimed the Democrats did in 1984, it echoes even more closely what the Indiana Secretary of State–a Republican–did to precipitate the crisis in the first place.

And now we come to the same impasse: in Florida’s 13th, the seat vacated by Katherine Harris, by ironic coincidence, the election is in serious question. Voting machines (which left no paper trail) were reported by a large number of people to have left out the House race, or not recorded the vote; these reports took place in Sarasota County, where the majority of affected voters were Democrats; and in those same areas, impossibly large undervotes were recorded. All point to the conclusion that the voting machines malfunctioned (I only reluctantly restrain myself from using scare quotes around the word “malfunctioned”), and the clear winner was the Democrat. However, the Republican state government “verified” the undervote and certified the Republican candidate to be the winner.

This leaves House Democrats in a difficult position: do they repeat 1984 and refuse to seat the Republican? If the Wikipedia telling is to be trusted, the situations are closely similar, in that Republicans in the state government ignored valid evidence and instead certified their party’s candidate to be the winner–but the Democrats stand to be tagged as the bad guys if they essentially do the exact same thing–even though they have far greater justification.

But Republicans have learned that in situations like this, possession is 9/10ths of the law; by having done their crookery first, they get to slag the Democrats for doing it later.

Hopefully, the courts will intervene and demand a special election–the only solution that is really viable. Here is a PDF file which lays out the argument very well. After all, the undervote was clearly not legitimate, and a special election (which Republicans thought was fine and dandy when the duly and legally elected California governorship was not to their liking) will serve to clarify the issue.

This time, without paperless voting machines, thank you very much.