OUR VIEWS

For Court of Civil Appeals

However, the Alabama Supreme Court often "deflects" cases to the intermediate appellate court when the amount at stake does exceed $50,000. Like its criminal appeals counterpart, the Court of Civil Appeals has become a key actor in seeing that justice is applied fairly.

Three of the court's five seats are on the ballot this year. As with the candidates for most judgeships, all six men seeking these judgeships appear qualified to serve.

Place 1
Veteran Appeals Court Judge Roger M. Monroe, a Democrat, is being challenged by Mobile attorney and active Republican Craig Pittman. While Pittman has the potential to be a good judge, Monroe has already proven himself a hardworking judge who knows the law. We recommend the re-election of Roger M. Monroe.

Place 2
John B. Crawley's election six years ago may have been as much a surprise to him as it was to others. An appointed Pike County circuit judge who was defeated in his 1992 bid for a full term, Crawley neither raised nor spent any money in his campaign for the appeals court position. He is being challenged in his bid for a second term by Democratic attorney Henry Steagall of Ozark, scion of a distinguished legal family and a well respected lawyer in his own right.

It is significant that the Mobile Bar Association voted Steagall most qualified with more than twice the votes that Crawley received. We recommend Henry Steagall.

Place 3
Montgomery County Circuit Judge Gene Reese and Birmingham attorney Glenn Murdock are seeking this open seat as the Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively. This is the most heated of the civil appeals races with the ads of each man attacking the other. Although it is clear the two men come from different philosophical perspectives, it is not so clear that these differences would produce significantly different results on a court that is bound by precedent. Although we believe either man can perform the job, we give the edge to Glenn Murdock based on his legal scholarship.

The races for Congress

Republicans Bob Riley in the 3rd District and Spencer Bachus in the 6th District are opposed by Libertarians John Sophocleus and Terry Reagin, respectively. The challengers may be campaigning hard, but neither appears likely to overtake the incumbents.

We expect Riley to continue representing a district that covers much of east Alabama from St. Clair, Calhoun and Cleburne counties on the north to Macon and Russell counties on the South and reaching as far west as Bibb County as it wraps around Jefferson and Shelby counties on the east and south.

We expect the same of Bachus in a more compact but strangely shaped district that takes in all of Shelby County and parts of Tuscaloosa, Jefferson and Bibb counties.

Unfortunately, despite a dismal congressional record and despite being challenged by Libertarian Ken Hager and Republican Ed Martin, Democrat Earl Hilliard seems likely to prevail in 7th District. However, we recommend Ed Martin to voters in this district, which begins as a narrow strip through the heart of Birmingham, takes in southeastern Tuscaloosa County before expanding to cover several Black Belt counties and reaching eastward to take in portions of Montgomery County.

What appears to be the only competitive congressional race in the state is in the 4th Congressional District, which stretches across the state north of Birmingham. Two-term Republican incumbent Robert Aderholt faces Democrat Marsha Folsom, whose campaign is in the same financial league as Aderholt, and Libertarian Craig Goodrich, who is undoubtedly an also-ran. Marsha Folsom would be a welcome and invigorating voice in Alabama's congressional delegation.

For circuit clerk

The individuals elected to be clerk or assistant clerk must be capable of administering the work of the office. They should be able to get along with the other elements of the judicial system and they should believe strongly in serving the public. The clerk should also be able to maintain a good working relationship with the other members of the Election Commission.

Voters in the Bessemer Cut-off have a candidate who has already proven himself capable of doing the job. Incumbent Earl Carter Jr. is seeking re-election as a Democrat. He is recommended.

When it comes to the head clerk, voters throughout the county, including the Cut-off, have a tougher job. Neither Republican Cheryl Ann Bahakel nor Democrat Anne-Marie Adams has held public office before.

However, Adams' has the longer association with the legal system. We recommend Anne-Marie Adams for Jefferson County Circuit Clerk.

YOUR VIEWS

Bush gives hope deadly tide can end

As to the ethical issue of "sanctity of life" for the unborn, the handicapped and the elderly, we can have hope that some stemming the tide of death over life will occur if George W. Bush is elected.

On the other hand, the promise to play to all the excesses of the radical feminists is the one promise that Bill Clinton has never broken. Al Gore has made crystal clear that he will never forsake this part of his base for any reason.

Government has no money except that levied on and collected from the people. Accountability would seem logically to emanate from and be subject to the people. The current administration is the most incompetent one of my lifetime. Money in the millions spent by this administration cannot be accounted for in the Education, Energy, and Commerce departments. Nuclear secrets have been lost. Fund-raising laws have been broken with complete disdain for compliance. Existing gun control laws have not been enforced, but we are supposed to believe additional gun laws will be. How gullible are we?

The practice of any religion is not and should not be the concern of government. However, acknowledgment in our public institutions of the sovereign God who created us must be not only allowed but nurtured. It is He who made the rules by which the universe operates.

The promotion and furtherance of all religious ideas as equal is the "pluralism" the elitists in the current administration are promoting. If we continue on this path it will lead us further and further down that slippery slope where at its end we forsake the very core principles without which civilizations inevitably perish.

Shirley Files Peden
474 County Road 662
Cedar Bluffs

Still wonder

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

For Bush

Whatever happened to the idea that government exists to guard our freedoms and provide a framework for us to build and live our own lives? When did it become about voting for the guy who promises us the most stuff?

This prevailing attitude must be why people will overlook the fact that a man has no integrity or moral code and vote for him anyway since they might profit from him. Can't we see that as our country becomes more needy and self-serving, we become more decrepid and full of self-hate? Can't we see the absurdity of wailing over a fallen tree while at the same time screaming for the right to kill an unborn baby? This point must be made because it speaks to our desire for a cruel convenience above simple honor and decency, and, in fact, perfectly illustrates the selfish, selfish heart of our country.

A woman, of course, has the right to choose what to do with her body when deciding whether to have intercourse, which may result in an unwanted pregnancy!! There is no right to choose what to do with the body of another person whether it is an unborn baby, child, man or woman! Only God gives life and woe be it to those who stop the hearts of the innocent.

Although we should understand their ideologies, we must not search for our vote in the details of each and every plan the candidates have outlined. We must vote for the man who will lead our nation with honor, honesty and good common sense. When a leader exhibits these qualities, the details will follow.

Diann Hayes
640 North Lake Circle

Why won't Bush pay down the debt?

When George Bush left office in 1992, the nation was in a recession and the United States had a record deficit. Bill Clinton and Gore promised the American people that they would turn that around, and they did. In just eight years we have record surpluses and a balanced budget.

Republicans can say that Clinton and Gore shouldn't take credit for the upturn in the economy, but if the economy were bad, the GOP would blame them. Under Gore's plan, the national debt would be eliminated by 2012.

America would be debt free for the first time since 1835. Paying down the publicly held debt will keep the economy strong, keep long term interest rates low, and allow for greater investments in the economy. Fellow GOPer John McCain even said "Gov. Bush's plan has not one penny for Social Security, not one penny for Medicare, and not one penny for paying down the national debt." Surely a Republican wouldn't lie. Republicans like to call the Democrats the tax-and-spend party.

At least now we see that they belong to the borrow-and-spend party.

William Southard
5116 Pinson Valley Parkway

For Gore

I've concluded there is no comparison between the candidates. Bush wants to eat up the surplus by giving huge tax breaks to a small number of rich people. Al Gore wants to continue reducing the debt and putting core programs such as Social Security and Medicare in a "lock box." Clearly, Gore will be a more responsible money handler.

Bush wants to privatize everything. That ensures that businesses will make a profit. But we can't trust business to deliver a good product. It has been big business, for instance, the drug companies, the HMOs, and the insurance companies, with their greed for excessive profits, that have caused the cost of medicine to sky rocket.

For his fiscal responsibility and willingness to fight extraordinary profits on behalf of our citizens, I'm supporting Al Gore.

Rep. Tommie Houston
3709 Howard Ave.

Polls need salt

In the first place, it should take more than 1,000 responses from an authentic cross-section of people to get an accuracy rating of plus-or-minus 5 percent.

You might well have these questions:

1. How were the polling questions worded?

2. Was the number polled listed correctly?

3. Were the people actually polled?

4. Was it a good cross section?

5. Were the actual answers correctly stated?

6. Are the pollsters trustworthy?

7. In 1980, a personal political poll of 2,100 people, in 14 states, gave more nearly accurate results than the professional pollsters had.

Therefore, if you are not on a ''salt-free diet," take reported poll results ''with a grain of salt."

A. E. Semzar
P.O. Box 610747

OTHER VIEWS
ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Simple-minded majoritarians would ruin good system

By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

Even if that is true, it means that in 50 of 53 elections since 1789 — in 94 percent of elections, and in 27 consecutive elections — the system has not produced the outcome that troubles the sleep of its critics. Besides, the assertions about those elections can be true without being pertinent.

In 1824, before the emergence of the two-party system, all four candidates appeared on the ballots in only six of the 24 states. Six states, including New York, had no elections: their state legislatures picked the electors. Nationally, only about 350,000 of the 4 million eligible white males voted. Andrew Jackson received 38,149 more votes than John Quincy Adams, but neither received a majority of electoral votes. So the House of Representatives decided, picking Adams. In 1888 fraud on both sides may have involved more votes than the victory margin (90,596).

There never has been an Electoral College victory by a candidate who lost the popular vote by a substantial margin. And only simple-minded majoritarianism holds that "the nation's will" would be "frustrated" and democracy "subverted" (this is the language of Electoral College abolitionists) were an electoral vote majority to go to a candidate who comes in a close second in the popular vote count. In such a case, the framers' objective — a president chosen through state-by-state decisions — would be achieved.

The Electoral College has evolved, shaping and being shaped by the two-party system, which probably would not survive abandonment of winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes. Direct popular election of presidents, or proportional allocation of states' electoral votes, would incite minor parties to fractionate the electorate. This might necessitate runoffs to guarantee that the eventual president got at least 40 percent of the vote—and runoffs might become auctions in which minor parties sold their support.

The electoral vote system shapes the character of winning majorities. By avoiding proportional allocation of electoral votes, America's system — under which Ross Perot in 1992 got 19 percent of the popular votes and zero electoral votes — buttresses the dominance of two parties, and pulls them to the center, producing a temperate politics of coalitions rather than a proliferation of ideological factions with charismatic leaders.

Furthermore, choosing presidents by electoral votes is an incentive for candidates to wage truly national campaigns, building majorities that are geographically as well as ideologically broad. Consider: Were it not for electoral votes allocated winner-take-all, would candidates campaign in, say, West Virginia? In 1996 Bill Clinton decisively defeated Bob Dole there 52 percent to 37 percent. But that involved a margin of just 93,866 votes (327,812 to 233,946), a trivial amount compared to what can be harvested in large cities. However, for a 5-0 electoral vote sweep, West Virginia is worth a trip or two.

Some Electoral College abolitionists argue that a candidate could get elected with just 27 percent of the popular vote — by winning the 11 largest states by just one vote in each, and not getting a single popular vote anywhere else. But it is equally pointless to worry that a candidate could carry Wyoming 220,000 to 0, could lose the other 49 states and the District of Columbia by an average of 4,400 votes, and be the popular vote winner while losing the electoral vote 535 to 3. Serious people take seriously probabilities, not mere possibilities. And abolitionists are not apt to produce what Madison was too sober to attempt, a system under which no unwanted outcome is even theoretically possible.

Critics of the Electoral College say it makes some people's votes more powerful than others'. This is true. In 1996, 211,571 Wyoming voters cast presidential ballots, awarding three electoral votes, one for every 70,523 voters, whereas 10,019,484 California voters awarded 54 electoral votes, one for every 185,546 voters.

So what? Do critics want to abolish the Senate as well? Delaware, the least populous state in 1789, understandably was the first to ratify the Constitution with its equal representation of states in the Senate: Virginia, the most populous, had 11 times more voters. Today Wyoming's senators' votes can cancel those of California's senators, who represent 69 times more people. If that offends you, so does America's constitutional federalism.

The electoral vote system, like the Constitution it serves, was not devised by, and should not be revised by, simple-minded majoritarians.

George F. Will can be reached
c/o Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20071-9200

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, Nov. 2, 1950

25 years ago, Nov. 2, 1975

Birmingham native Graydon Hall is elected president and chief operating officer of Southern Airways.

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