By Ted Rall

NEW YORK--In the course of the tortured drama of the New Jersey Senate race, the U.S. Supreme Court has inadvertently confirmed that Al Gore won the presidency in 2000. Don't hold your breath waiting for George W. Bush to pack up for Crawford, Texas. Nevertheless, the high court's decision serves as an important cautionary tale to those who think it's okay, every now and then, to bend the rule of law.

Here's the back story:

Robert Torricelli's 1996 Senate run was scarred by scandal. Seven people plead guilty to giving the New Jerseyan illegal campaign contributions. Korean businessman David Chang even claimed to have bribed the influence-peddling Democratic senator with sculptures, a big-screen television and other goodies. "These accusations were simply false, the evidence is overwhelming, and it will be brought to a conclusion," Torricelli asserted in July.

Indeed, the senator was never charged with a crime. But the Senate Ethics Committee "severely admonished" Torricelli, saying he "evidenced poor judgment (and) displayed a lack of due regard for Senate rules." That letter quickly became his Achilles' heel, fueling insurgent Republican Douglas Forrester's long-shot bid with accusations that Torricelli was irredeemably corrupt. Widely considered unbeatable just weeks before, Torricelli watched his poll numbers plummet.

In a move that shocked the political establishment, he dropped out of the race on Sept. 30. "I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate," the disgraced politician explained.

With the evenly-split Senate at stake, Democrats nominated former Senator Frank Lautenberg, 78, to replace Torricelli on the ballot. It appears to have been a smart choice; an Oct. 4 poll gave him a 44-33 lead over Forrester. (A previous survey a week earlier showed Forrester beating Torricelli 47-34.)

The rest of the story reads like a replay of the 2000 Florida election crisis. Republicans cried foul, arguing that pinch-hitting candidates during the final months of a campaign violated both basic decency and state law. "The laws of the state of New Jersey do not contain a `we think we're going to lose so we get to pick someone new' clause," howled Forrester.

It's not as if Torricelli had been incapacitated by illness, after all--the only thing preventing him from running was Forrester's adept capitalization on Torricelli's sleazy recklessness. If dropping out in the face of falling polls becomes a standard campaign tactic, chaos and confusion would reign and the democratic system would be undermined. But is it illegal?

No, ruled the New Jersey Supreme Court on Oct. 2 in a 7-0 decision. Noting that the alternative would result in there being no Democratic candidate for Senate, justices wrote that replacing Torricelli two weeks after a Sept. 16 deadline for filing ballot amendments was "in the public interest and the general intent of the election laws to preserve the two-party system."

It's a debatable conclusion. The two-party system isn't established by law--it's a historical vestige of British colonial rule. Nothing grants voters the right to choose between two or any particular number of candidates for any given office.

Just as, during the 2000 campaign, the Bush campaign appealed the Florida Supreme Court's decision ordering a recount, the Republican Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the New Jersey decision. "What the Democrats have done is clearly illegal," said Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, a point man on the GOP appeal. "They are attempting to steal an election they could not win." Writing that some members of the military serving abroad had already filed absentee ballots, Republicans, following the Dade County template, asked the feds to prevent "the disenfranchisement of American military personnel and citizens by replacing candidates on the ballot after these citizens have already cast their vote."

A stay would be "the only means of protecting the integrity of the federal election process," Republicans argued. But that's exactly the point: there is no "federal election process." Elections, even for national office, are governed by state law and administered by state bureaucrats. The highest arbiter of election disputes is each state's supreme court.

The 2000 Florida dispute resulted in Republicans--historically the great champions of states' rights--obtaining the help of the federal court system to subvert the states' constitutionally-protected control of elections. An appeal of the Florida Supreme Court's decision, no matter how flawed that decision may have been, violated the Constitution. The fact that Renhquist et al. agreed to hear Bush v. Gore is what makes Bush's regime illegal. Had the court installed Gore rather than Bush, Gore would be the usurper. Recounts, hanging chads, choosing Bush over Gore--those details are mere footnotes to a brazenly extrajurisdictional judicial coup d'état.

A Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court broke the law on behalf of George W. Bush. Would they do it for Douglas Forrester? "The elites beat up on the Supreme Court very severely for Bush v. Gore," commented conservative George Mason University professor Dan Polsby. "I'm sure they don't relish being beat up by those elites again." On Oct. 7 the Supremes did what they ought to have done two years ago in the Florida case--they refused to hear the case, without comment.

Election disputes, after all, are resolved by each state's supreme court.

Florida, the court has now clearly signaled, was not the beginning of a transfer of electoral administration from states to the federal government. It was an exceptional ruling for a unique circumstance. At the same time, the New Jersey case reaffirms that its ruling in Bush v. Gore was a deviation from constitutional law. This reinforces Bush's illegitimacy, essentially admitting that, as far as the law is concerned, Al Gore is the President of the United States. Bending the rules may have seemed expedient during the confusion of December 2000, but the reputation of the Supreme Court--and the strength of the Constitution it is sworn to uphold and interpret--have been irreparably damaged. We'll be living with the fallout for years to come.

(Ted Rall's latest book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)