Re: Supreme Court didn't step in; election still an embarassment [LWN.net]

Re: Supreme Court didn't step in; election still an embarassment

Posted Apr 25, 2003 23:21 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Re: The real major losers are... by Ross
Parent article: DARPA Cancels OpenBSD Funding

The Supreme Court decided to step in to avoid a Constitutional crises

This is a misstatement. The Supreme Court's decision was not to act. The Court was petitioned to order Florida officials to recount votes. The Court denied the petition, leaving interpretation of election laws up to Florida.

I don't see that a Constitutional crisis was ever in the offing.

By the way, for those who believe technicalities of vote counting laws shouldn't matter and the person who got the most votes should simply win, I'd like to point out that an army of journalists did finish an accurate count of every single Florida ballot a year later. It showed that by any interpretation of the unclear ballots (hanging chads, etc.), Bush got the most votes. It is true, though, that in the precincts that were in controversy just after the election, Gore won by some counts.

If you want to take pokes at the election results, it is much better to look at 1) Ralph Nader certainly split the vote. Asked to choose between Bush and Gore, voters would have chosen Gore by a landslide. 2) It is quite clear that hundreds of voters using the butterfly ballot preferred Gore but marked their ballots otherwise by mistake. 3) Voting by states achieves no desirable purpose these days; had the vote been a simple popular one, Gore would have won by a wide margin.

(Log in to post comments)

Re: Supreme Court didn't step in; election still an embarassment

Posted May 1, 2003 21:01 UTC (Thu) by ffeirtag (guest, #10976) [Link]

>>The Supreme Court decided to step in to avoid a Constitutional crises

>This is a misstatement. The Supreme Court's decision was not to act.
>The Court was petitioned to order Florida officials to recount votes.
>The Court denied the petition, leaving interpretation of election
>laws up to Florida.

Even though this thread is off topic, I can't believe this posting, which
is so utterly wrong, has gone unchallenged.

Far from deciding "not to act," in
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/ELECTION/2000/resources/uscdecision1212.pdf

The majority wrote:
"The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is reversed,..."

Dissenting, Justice Ginsburg wrote:
"Time is short in part because of the Court's entry of a stay
on December 9, several hours after an able circuit judge in
Leon County had begun to superintend the recount process."

Dissenting, Justice Breyer wrote:
"By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that the
uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard,
this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted
harm. And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the
Court is attempting to protect."

From: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10-recountchrono.htm

"Dec. 8: The Florida Supreme Court orders manual recounts to begin in
Gore's election challenge and adds 383 votes to his total.

Dec. 9: Counting begins of 43,000 statewide "undervotes" and then halts
when the U.S. Supreme Court, divided 5-4, orders the manual recounts stopped.

Dec. 11: U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Bush's appeal of
Florida Supreme Court's decision ordering recounts.

Dec. 12: In late-night, divided opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court rules
Florida high court erred in its order for a further recount of contested
ballots. The justices send the case back to Florida but indicate there is
no time to fashion a new effort to pass constitutional muster, all but
assuring Bush of victory. Earlier, the Florida House approves 25 electors
pledged to Bush."