If Al Gore succeeds in winning this presidential election, America will no longer be a democracy. It will be a kleptocracy.
These are the facts: In Florida, the state whose electoral votes will determine the rightful winner of the highest office in the land, Gore finished with fewer votes than George W. Bush on Election Day. He also finished with fewer votes than Bush after a recount.
The people of Florida accept that outcome. Indeed, the latest Mason-Dixon poll shows that 49 percent of Floridians think Bush won the state vote, compared to only 29 percent who think Gore won.
The vice president claims that he wants the "will of the people" to prevail in the Sunshine State. Yet, his every action has been to contravene the will of the majority of Floridians who cast their ballots for Gore's Republican opponent.
Indeed, Gore's attempt to overturn the vote in Florida, to hijack the presidency, began even before the polls closed on Election Day.
Anticipating defeat in Florida, the vice president's apparatchiks made a pre-emptive move to challenge the validity of the results.
So the Democratic National Committee paid a telemarketing firm to call thousands of voters in overwhelmingly Democratic Palm Beach County urging them to raise questions about the county's so-called "butterfly ballot," and advising them to complain to local election officials.
"Some voters have encountered a problem today with punch card ballots in Palm Beach County," said the script for the call. "These voters have said that they believe that they accidentally punched the wrong hole for the incorrect candidate.
"If you have already voted and think you may have punched the wrong hole for the incorrect candidate," the script continued, "you should return to the polls and request that election officials write down your name so that this problem can be fixed."
And what "fix" did Gore have in mind? Not the machine recount, to which he was entitled under Florida law, but a hand count in Palm Beach and other selected, overwhelmingly Democratic counties.
So that the "intent" of the people would prevail.
Of course, hand counts provide a ripe opportunity for "mischief" as two California Republicans, Bob Haueter, chief of staff to the California Assembly Republican Caucus, and Pat Nolan, a former California Republican Assemblyman, explained in an article published by WorldNetDaily.com.
Having been victimized by fraudulent hand counts here in the Golden State, Haueter and Nolan are quite familiar with the unsavory tactics now being used by Gore's operatives in Florida.
"The first rule," they explain, "is you keep counting until you're ahead. And if that doesn't put you ahead, you recount and recount. You keep counting until you're ahead. If you're behind, then you've got nothing to lose."
Second, they say, "The more times those ballots are handled, the more chance there is that chads will break loose," which, of course, the Gore team hopes to use to its advantage."
Finally, they say, "the minute you're ahead, you stop and declare yourself the victor."
And in Gore's case, he can expect that his pals in the national media -- most of whom voted for him -- will close ranks behind him, declaring him the rightful victor in Florida.
But if the Democratic standard-bearer snatches a victory on the strength of hand-counted ballots, the results will be illegitimate.
"Hand counting ballots in only a few, carefully chosen counties is a sure way to bias the results," attests Ed Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a recent article published in The Wall Street Journal.
"Giving candidates influence over how election results are processed does not help democracy to accurately reflect the will of the people."
Florida's Election Day recount has been certified. And by the time this column is published, its outstanding overseas ballots will have been certified. If Bush remains ahead in the vote after the overseas ballots are counted, he should be officially awarded Florida's electoral votes.
If Gore somehow manages, through legal maneuverings, to negate the Election Day vote, the mandatory recount and the overseas vote, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. For while his fellow Democrats may celebrate his theft of the presidency, he will not enjoy the consent of the majority of those he presumes to govern.