The Governor's Podium: Oklahoma Votes

On Monday, Dec. 18, I greeted Oklahoma's eight presidential electors at the State Capitol as they cast their votes for President-elect Bush.

While George W. Bush and I are of the same party, and I supported him throughout the hotly contested 2000 election, I would have done the same if Vice President Gore had carried Oklahoma.

If we learned a lesson from the long and often painful ordeal of this election, it is that our system works.

The Constitution says the president is to be elected by a majority of the electoral college, as selected by the voters of their states.

The laws of Florida, where the contest was so close and so energetically fought out, set specific deadlines and procedures for counting and certifying those votes.

Despite a blizzard of court challenges and occasional hot rhetoric on both sides, those laws were carried out. In the end, both Mr. Gore and Mr.

Bush said essentially the same thing: we are a nation of laws and we must abide by those laws in the selection of our leaders. As Mr. Gore said, you may not like every outcome, but what is important is to accept it.

Many nations have no free elections at all. Many others would have broken down into chaos and even bloody revolution if they were faced with a cliffhanger election like the one we just experienced.

Instead, we will be inaugurating a new president in an orderly manner next January. In fact, Vice President Gore, who lost the election by a whisker, will preside over the Senate as it certifies the electoral votes.

That says a great deal of good things about our system. It may not be perfect, and there will no doubt be some who will remain bitter over the 2000 election, but in the end that system worked to allow the orderly and civil transfer of power.

It was no accident that the first two words of the very first presidential inaugural speech ever made, by George Washington in 1789, were "fellow citizens."

After all the turmoil of 2000, it's still our government, and it still works.