In Jerry Springer
When I trundled downstairs Wednesday and switched on the TV, Jerry or Sally or Maury or someone was asking a man who said he was really a woman why he felt a compulsion to cross-dress in men's clothes.
And my faith in democracy was restored.
On this particular Wednesday after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, it did my heart good to see that America had marched off, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, to business as usual the day after the most chaotic election in the nation's history.
To turn the tube on and see good ol' trash TV, instead of street riots in Austin and Nashville, or the National Guard ringing the White House with fixed bayonets ...
... Or some general standing in the Oval Office saying ''I am in charge here'' ...
Reaffirmed my confidence in the Energizer Bunny-like resilience of the machine first set into motion by Washington and Adams and Jefferson, back in 1787.
What Jerry et al. were really saying to me last Wednesday was, ''Yes, this election has taken an unexpected turn -- heck, it's jumped the track altogether -- but it will work out according to the tenets of the Constitution, a new President will be sworn in as usual on Jan. 20, so let's get back to our daily snort of garbage TV.''
Even as this is being written, on Thursday morning, we still don't know for certain whether Dubya or Smilin' Al will be handed the keys to the White House. But outside my window, the traffic signals still work, the P.E. class over at the junior high is outside running laps, there's fresh coffee and cinnamon-sugar donuts over at the donut shop, and nary a whiff of tear gas on the crisp autumn breeze.
I think there are three big lessons we can learn from the Election 2000 debacle:
First -- the system works, dammit! You can twist it, squash it, stretch it, stomp on it, bend it like a pretzel, re-count it and take it to court; it will always spring back into its original Constitutional shape.
Second -- This graphic example of how a back-country precinct's worth of votes can chart the course for a nation of 270 million should send a shock wave through the 50 percent of eligible voters who didn't think it made any difference whether they voted or stayed home to watch ''The Young and the Restless.''
Third -- and the most relevant lesson to emerge from Election 2000: It's high time we brought voting out of the 19th century. We might as well be marking our ballots with goose quills and strapping them to carrier pigeons for all the good the current paper ballots are doing us.
A rainstorm or even just our good Gulf Coast humidity can slow the count to a crawl, as the paper ballots suck up the moisture and jam in the counting machines. Someone with an unsteady hand can make a stray mark and force a human being to step in and record that vote manually. And, as we saw in Florida, the ballots can be laid out so confusingly that people wind up unwittingly voting twice in one race, and having their precious votes go into the garbage can.
Folks, it's time to computerize our elections, right from the ballot box.
''But I don't know how to use a computer,'' you whine -- but if you've ever used an ATM or bought self-serve gasoline, guess what -- YOU USED A COMPUTER!
Imagine an election in which you sit down in the voting booth and face a computer screen. You take your plastic voter-registration card -- which you still presented at the front desk where you signed the precinct roll -- and ''swipe'' it like you do your gas card.
''Welcome, John Doe, to Precinct 233,'' the screen says, and a simple instruction on how to use the touch-screen ballot appears, as well as the ballot itself.
You merely touch a check-box, right there on the computer screen, next to the candidate of your choice (and there's even a picture of him/her right there along with the name!) Make a mistake? Don't worry, you can always go back and touch the right name, and the computer, which is programmed to allow only one vote per race, will automatically cancel out the error.
Look it all over, make sure you've voted the way you wanted to, hit the on-screen button labeled ''vote'' -- and your vote zips at light speed straight to the Secretary of State's central computer in Austin. At an appointed hour, the Secretary keys in the password to release the results to the people and the press and the Federal Election Commission. No ''late boxes from outlying precincts,'' no ''missing ballots'' mysteriously showing up at the last minute. No more Duval Counties, no more ''Chicago Surprises.''
No more Palm Beach Counties.
Sure, it may take away some of the coffee-soaked, nail-biting suspense of watching the last vital votes trickle in from the cow-country precincts. And it will make it just a little more difficult for dead folks to vote.
But we'll all get to bed at a decent hour -- and we'll get to bed knowing our next President's name.
