Another Reason Why Gore Will Lose

[marcus]

The rule of law is going to put an end to what the Florida state supreme court has tried to do, which is overturn a Presidential Election. The "runaway four" was in the process of creating a constitutional crisis but fortunately the U.S. Supreme Court will put an end to this in the next few days. George Bush tickets will be cashed by Thursday. That's my prediction.

[TrendSetter]

The "runaway four"

[Jeff K]

MadameX... I just read your post again, and see you were quoting someone else when you said the USSC voted in favor of Bush. My mistake.

MarkDel... The polls in most of Florida close at 7 Eastern. The networks did call Florida around 8:15 Eastern, which would have been 7:15 in the panhandle.

[Jeff K]

Justices defend their decision in favor of late hand recounts
BY DANIEL de VISE

TALLAHASSEE -- In an eagerly awaited response to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court on Monday defended its Nov. 21 decision to force Secretary of State Katherine Harris to accept late election returns from manual recounts.

Florida's high court said in a 6-1 opinion that it relied on state law to reach its conclusion and did not attempt to write new law when it extended the deadline for recounting ballots in the presidential election.

Thrown on the defensive by the highest court in the land, the Florida high court issued its 41-page opinion Monday just hours after at least one justice on the U.S. Supreme Court criticized the state court in a hearing broadcast across the nation.

POINT BY POINT

Couched in the dry language of law, the opinion responded point by point to a laundry list of legal issues debated over the past few weeks of litigation.

Democrat Al Gore had asked for manual recounts in three Democratic-leaning counties over the objections of Republican George W. Bush and Florida's GOP leaders. Harris refused to accept the late returns, but the state Supreme Court ordered her to include them.

The recount trimmed Bush's state-certified lead from 930 votes to 537 out of six million cast statewide.

The U.S. Supreme Court, after hearing oral arguments Dec. 1, last Monday vacated the state court's ruling, telling Florida's high court to explain why it had ruled as it did.

In their amended ruling Monday, the state court judges asserted that their actions in the electoral contest were rooted in the court's right to interpret conflicting state laws, and said they used ``traditional sources'' of law and ``long accepted'' standards.

They again offered a passionate defense of hand recounts, writing that ``our society has not yet gone so far as to place blind faith in machines. In almost all endeavors, including elections, humans routinely correct the errors of machines.''

The justices said the dispute has no precedent in Florida law.

``In fact, the parties have provided us no citations to court cases in Florida involving disputes over presidential electors under Florida's election laws,'' they wrote. ``This case may be the first.''


DISSENT

Six of the seven Florida Supreme Court jurists joined in the unsigned opinion. Chief Justice Charles Wells dissented, objecting to the idea of ``issuing a new decision while the United States Supreme Court'' is considering the landmark Bush v. Gore case.

U.S. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in an exchange with Gore attorney David Boies, said, ``I did not find, really, a response by the Florida Supreme Court to this court's remand in the case a week ago. It just seemed to kind of bypass it and assume that all those changes in deadlines were just fine, and they'd go ahead and adhere to them. And I found that troublesome.''

The majority opinion of the Florida court assailed Harris' decision to accept no ballots after 5 p.m. on the seventh day after the election.

The judges conceded that state law set such a deadline but contended that it directly conflicts with another law that allows candidates to request a hand recount any time before that deadline.

Their reasoning: If a candidate can call for a hand count late in the game, then the law must allow a ``reasonable'' span of time to complete it. That could mean allowing the count to go on well past the seven-day deadline.

``In such a case, if the seven-day limit were to be strictly enforced, the manual recount provision would be eviscerated and rendered meaningless,'' the judges wrote.

The judges disputed Harris' position that only faulty vote-counting machinery justifies a hand recount. They contended that state law allows counties the discretion to authorize a hand count for ``errors in the failure of the voting machinery to read a ballot, and not simply errors resulting from the voting machinery.''

[MadameX]

It looks like this forum may be coming to an end now that the USSC has made this latest ruling. I am reminded of Gerald Ford's word of lo so many years ago: "Our long national nightmare is finally over".

This has been such an interesting exchange of thoughts and ideas. I hope we will be able to continue with new politicaly oriented forums in the future.