Why mail-in-ballots are important in US Presidential Elections

On the 19th anniversary of 9/11, I stumbled upon Jeff Greenfield’s masterpiece 43. He recounts the events of that fateful day in 2001 in this way, “at 5 p.m. on September 11, 2001, an ashen-faced but composed President Al Gore stepped into the East Room of the White House to deliver a televised address to the nation. With him were former presidents Clinton and Bush, as well as Texas governor George W. Bush — flown to Washington from Dallas on a military jet, his first visit back to the capital after the close race that lost him the presidency just months before. That’s not how you remember it?”

Greenfield’s 43 revisits an alternate history of what if a President Gore, instead of a President Bush, had taken the Oval Office. Would 9/11 have taken place, the way it did? If not, ergo no protracted wars in Afghanistan, no invasion of Iraq, and, perhaps, no economic quagmire in 2008/09? In a nutshell, a brilliant work of fiction in real world politics.

The reason that we had a President Bush, and not a President Gore, came down to one state: Florida, one system: the Electoral College, one debacle: hanging chads (incorrectly stamped voting ballots). The Supreme Court weighed in and Gore weighed out of national politics.