Just on this specific topic…
Yep. I could buy myself any number of signatures anywhere in the country starting oh, by Monday at the latest. There are firms I’ve used to do this for business purposes and they also do petitions.
Costs maybe a buck a name or so. Simplest thing in the world.
[Fixed coding. – MEB]
I don’t see how a “statewide remedy” makes a difference. The point is from where the unequal protection is derived. The SC reasoning (as I understand it) is that Government Entity A cannot treat one citizen differently than another citizen, but that Government Entity A can treat one citizen differently than Government Entity B treats another citizen. And since the different voting machines were the result of different decisions by different local governments, it makes no difference (for Equal Protection purposes) what consent decree the state might have entered into.
What difference does this make? The USSC said “we are not deciding that different treatment by different entities violates EP - we are specifically deciding only that different treatment by one entity violates EP”. Now if you want you can say that you, Sua, believe that different treatment by different entities also violates EP, but you can’t say that it is implied in the SC decision, as they specifically said that they are using a rationale that excludes your case. This is not analogous to the SC vaguely saying “we aren’t saying that such-and-such will be derived from our decision”.
I’m not sure what you are saying here. Is this your own opinion, or are you claiming that the SC said this? (If so, where?)
Sure, and he was also frothing at the mouth about how the Court has signed on to the homosexual “agenda”, and how laws against bestiality were now under fire. :rolleyes: I think his perception of the case may have been a bit off.
You–"2) Could you provide some stats to back up this claim? Numbers of judicial nominations submitted to Congress/approved by Congress by Clinton and* (so far)** Bush would be very illustrative, if you have them. "*
Note the usage of the term “SO FAR”.
How would you like me to compare the two POTUS. All of Clintons Eight years versus Bushs Two? I wanted to make an apples to apples comparison. Whats to cause me to think that the next two or six years of the Bush Admin is going to be any different?
If you want to make unfair comparisons then dig up your own info. I wanted to make the most fair comparison available - hence the charts I referenced.
In fact, if you want to carry this further, in his first two years Bush lags behind every modern president in judicial nominees, dating back to Carter. (according to the links).
Judicial Emergency - "The formula by which a judicial vacancy is determined to be a “judicial emergency” has been changed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts effective December 2001, to identify courts where vacancies have resulted in only one active judge.
The formula now used is:
Any vacancy in a district court where weighted filings are in excess of 600 per judgeship; OR any vacancy in existence more than 18 months where weighted filings are between 430 to 600 per judgeship; OR any court with more than one authorized judgeship and only one active judge;
AND
Any vacancy in a court of appeals where adjusted filings per panel are in excess of 700; OR any vacancy in existence more than 18 months where adjusted filings are between 500 to 700 per panel. "
Lets use the USDOJs (above) definition of “judicial emergency” for now.
You’ve aroused my curiosity. If you don’t mind saying, what business purposes involve the collecting of masses of signatures?
To run for Gov of CA, it only takes 65, apparently. That takes half an hour in the mall parking lot, tops.
Yep. But getting the X Hundreds of thousands for the recall is a proposition in need of professionals.
<hijack>
When working in a media that derives 90% of its revenue from advertising it is sometimes necessary to ‘prove’ that people signed up for your magazine through an audit. Those require that people signing up…well…sign something to get the magazine…even if it’s free.
Where the signatures come from? I couldn’t care less as long as we make rate-base.
</hijack.
You don’t? From your quote from Bush v. Gore
Here a court has ordered a statewide remedy.
No, no, no. The Supremes most certainly did not decide that or reason that. Again from your quote:
IOW, they were not addressing that issue. If that issue were to come before the Supreme Court in a future case, they may well decide that local entities may not develop different systems. The issue is unaddressed and undecided by the Supremes.
IMO, were the issue to come before the Supremes, they would have to decide, in order to remain consistent with the decision in Bush v. Gore, that all voting for a particular contest would have to be conducted in the same manner.
This is the heart of equal protection jurisprudence - persons in the same circumstances must be treated alike. If, for example, Philadelphia used a system in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election that resulted in 20% of its votes being uncounted, while Pittsburgh used a system in which only 2% were uncounted, the votes by Philadelphia residents are not treated equally, even though they are in the same circumstance as Pittsburgh residents - they are all Pennsylvania residents voting for their next governor.
First of all, the Supremes most certainly did not “exclude” anything - they simply said that the issue wasn’t before them. The principles of law set forth in Bush v. Gore, however, can be applied to that issue at a later date.
Let me give you an example. A discrimination case comes before the Supremes involving a black convert to Judaism (Sammy Davis, Jr. v. Alabama). The allegation is that the State of Alabama discriminated against Sammy as a black man, not as a Jew. The Supreme Court determines that the State of Alabama did discriminate against Sammy on the basis of his race. They include a sentence: “The question before the Court is not whether Alabama discriminated against Mr. Davis on the basis of his religious beliefs.”
That does not mean that a Jewish person who suffers discrimination by Alabama the next week could not rely on the decision in Davis v. Alabama. He certainly could.
It simply means that the issue of religious discrimination was not relevant to the case.
All the the Supremes were saying was that the use of differing election systems by local entities is not at issue in Bush v. Gore, so the Supremes will not decide whether it is proper or improper for local entities to use differing systems.
But what is important is the principle established by Bush v. Gore - it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to treat and count votes in a statewide recount differently. I submit, and I believe I am on solid ground here, that the same Equal Protections concerns apply with equal force to the way votes are treated and counted in a statewide election. There is no logical difference between a statewide election and a statewide recount that would allow a different result.
So I certainly can say it is implied in the decision in Bush v. Gore.
It is the logical application of the precedent of Bush v. Gore. What a court may not do - cause or allow the unequal treatment of votes - local election authorities may not do.
Sua
[Fixed coding. – MEB]
sua,
Well yeah, they used the word “statewide remedy”, but that’s not the crux of the issue. The point in that case was that the court had created the recount (the “statewide remedy” in that particular instance) and it was being conducted statewide under their auspices and on their authority. Under such a circumstance, to have varying standards violates EP, because the same entity (i.e. the court) would be treating different citizens differently in the same area of jurisdiction (the state). The decision used the term “statewide remedy” to reflect the difference between a statewide government action being treated differently within the state, and a multitude of local actions being treated differently in different localities. In the CA case, the election itself is being run by locals, and the differing standards arise from this local control. The fact that the court had given some statewide order does not suddenly transform the election itself into a “statewide remedy”.
Well the SC itself doesn’t seem to agree with you, or there would be no point in the disclaimer, and neither do I.
Suppose a state decided that one set of rules applies to people in County A and a different set to people in County B, I see that as a violation of EP. But if County A makes one set of rules and County B makes a different set, I don’t see that as a violation.
Yes. Clinton (8 years) v. Bush (so far, since that’s all we’ve got).
Why not? What’s so difficult about comparing things that aren’t over time periods of different lengths? “No, we can’t compare Sandy Koufax’ career to Nolan Ryan’s; Koufax’ career only lasted a decade, while Ryan pitched more than twice that long.” :rolleyes:
If you don’t think it’s going to be any different, then you should have absolutely no problem extrapolating the 2.5 years of the current administration and comparing that with Clinton’s 8 years. Because the treatment of Clinton’s judicial nominees did change substantially over time, and your insistence on cherry-picking the years that best suit your argument is fundamentally dishonest.
No, I’ll leave that to you; you’ve already demonstrated expertise in that area.
What nonsense, Mr. Cherry-Picker.
I’m done with you.
::sigh:: IzzyR, all this means is that you don’t read court cases for a living. Disclaimers such as this are par for the course, and are included for a simple reason. Courts always attempt to rule upon the narrowest issues possible. When there is an issue at play that the court does not deem necessary to determination of the case, they will state that they are not ruling on that issue. That’s all the Supremes did there.
You are resting your argument on a support that is not designed to take the weight. In the simplest terms, if I were to argue to a court that the Supreme Court had determined that local entities are allowed to use different election systems, and read your quote to the court, the court would bitchslap me. The court would say, “um, actually, the Supreme Court said that they were not deciding that issue. Not deciding an issue is the exact opposite of deciding an issue.”
In your scenario, if the set of rules enacted by the different counties result in a higher or lower rate of uncountable votes in a statewide election, do you then see an Equal Protection violation?
Sua
Although the Supreme Court attempted to limit its holding in Bush v. Gore to the specific instance of a statewide recount governed by a state agency, the “rule” of law, if you will, that it applied can hardly be ignored when examining a statewide election. After all, the election is held pursuant to a statewide elections code; the procedures are those mandated by the state elections code; the eligibility to vote is based on the state’s code; the machines used have to be certified by the Secretary of State; the results of individual counties are irrelevant, as only the statewide total is determinative; in short, other than the fact that county elections boards run the polling places and choose the equipment, the whole thing is a statewide show. The difference between this situation and a statewide recount is of no importance; after all, although the Court glosses over it, the recount was carried out by individual counties and it was, in part, the lack of uniformity in how these recounts were carried out that was cited by the Court as cause for concern from an equal protection basis.
Thus, the rule of law that we deduce from Bush v. Gore is: in a statewide election, carried out under a statewide procedure, where there is no guarantee of equal treatment of votes such that some significant portion of the votes cast will be rendered ineffective, then the procedure violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. Applying that rule of law to the facts in California, one can easily conclude that the election procedure in place, involving machines in some counties that disenfranchise significantly more voters than those of other counties, and resulting in significant overall disenfranchisement, would violate the standard set forth in Bush v. Gore. The fact that the remedy the Supreme Court in its per curiam opinion suggested was mandated to overcome the constitutional difficulties is almost identically parallel to the process being used in California and other states to revamp the mechanics of voting makes clear this situation is quite similar, though facially factually different.
Does this mean that Justice O’Connor can’t split hairs and write an opinion to the contrary? Of course not; she is well-known for writing whatever is needed in the way of reasoning to reach the desired outcome. One only has to read her tortured reasoning in the various police roadblock cases to understand that application of logic followed by reaching a conclusion is a process wholly alien to her. <sigh> But there is some hope that Justice Kennedy would at least be intellectually honest enough to admit that what he wrote in 2000 applies to what is going on in other punch-card cases.
RTFirefly, I had the odd thought that what California should do is pull punch card machines out in every county; one could certainly read the opinion of the 9th Circuit to mean that it is the difference between counties that is important. But closer inspection to what was said in Bush v. Gore compels me to reach a different conclusion. It isn’t just that people in Los Angeles County will be using bad equipment while their neighbors in Kern County won’t; it is the fact that the machines in use are so bad that they can’t be considered reliable, and yet 44% of the voters would be using them, and 40,000 votes (on average) out of the whole state would be mistabulated just from those counties alone. I don’t think you have to get to the disparate treatment between some counties and others to reach the conclusion of equal protection violations; indeed, with apologies to IzzyR, I think that this may be where he has accepted red herring instead of good bait. If only Alpine County, let’s say, with roughly a few hundred votes cast in each election, were using punch cards, if the issue was disparate treatment among the counties, the result would have to be the same (though there might not be valid grounds for an injunction). This seems unlikely to be true, although one could certainly argue this would be a reasonable extension of the principle of law in Bush v. Gore.
RT -
Be done, fine.
I cant extrapolate the remainder of the Bush years for the very reasons which you yourself brought up. You claim the Pubbies shelved a bunch of Clintons nominees. How do I know that the Dems wont do the same to Bush in the years to come. Or do the opposite?
Can I compare Cal Eldreds career to Nolans? After all, if we just take their rookie years Eldred was clearly the better pitcher. Now if I compare Eldreds career to Nolans it`s a different story.
If we had this discussion in Cals rookie year, we would have said that he had a better rookie year than Nolan, however few would assume that he would finish his career with better numbers than Nolan. But whos to know at the time. At the time we would/could accurately compare only their rookie years - apples to apples.
Although the Supreme Court attempted to limit its holding in Bush v. Gore to the specific instance of a statewide recount governed by a state agency, the “rule” of law, if you will, that it applied can hardly be ignored when examining a statewide election. After all, the election is held pursuant to a statewide elections code; the procedures are those mandated by the state elections code; the eligibility to vote is based on the state’s code; the machines used have to be certified by the Secretary of State; the results of individual counties are irrelevant, as only the statewide total is determinative; in short, other than the fact that county elections boards run the polling places and choose the equipment, the whole thing is a statewide show. The difference between this situation and a statewide recount is of no importance; after all, although the Court glosses over it, the recount was carried out by individual counties and it was, in part, the lack of uniformity in how these recounts were carried out that was cited by the Court as cause for concern from an equal protection basis.
Thus, the rule of law that we deduce from Bush v. Gore is: in a statewide election, carried out under a statewide procedure, where there is no guarantee of equal treatment of votes such that some significant portion of the votes cast will be rendered ineffective, then the procedure violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. Applying that rule of law to the facts in California, one can easily conclude that the election procedure in place, involving machines in some counties that disenfranchise significantly more voters than those of other counties, and resulting in significant overall disenfranchisement, would violate the standard set forth in Bush v. Gore. The fact that the remedy the Supreme Court in its per curiam opinion suggested was mandated to overcome the constitutional difficulties is almost identically parallel to the process being used in California and other states to revamp the mechanics of voting makes clear this situation is quite similar, though facially factually different.
Does this mean that Justice O’Connor can’t split hairs and write an opinion to the contrary? Of course not; she is well-known for writing whatever is needed in the way of reasoning to reach the desired outcome. One only has to read her tortured reasoning in the various police roadblock cases to understand that application of logic followed by reaching a conclusion is a process wholly alien to her. <sigh> But there is some hope that Justice Kennedy would at least be intellectually honest enough to admit that what he wrote in 2000 applies to what is going on in other punch-card cases.
RTFirefly, I had the odd thought that what California should do is pull punch card machines out in every county; one could certainly read the opinion of the 9th Circuit to mean that it is the difference between counties that is important. But closer inspection to what was said in Bush v. Gore compels me to reach a different conclusion. It isn’t just that people in Los Angeles County will be using bad equipment while their neighbors in Kern County won’t; it is the fact that the machines in use are so bad that they can’t be considered reliable, and yet 44% of the voters would be using them, and 40,000 votes (on average) out of the whole state would be mistabulated just from those counties alone. I don’t think you have to get to the disparate treatment between some counties and others to reach the conclusion of equal protection violations; indeed, with apologies to IzzyR, I think that this may be where he has accepted red herring instead of good bait. If only Alpine County, let’s say, with roughly a few hundred votes cast in each election, were using punch cards, if the issue was disparate treatment among the counties, the result would have to be the same (though there might not be valid grounds for an injunction). This seems unlikely to be true, although one could certainly argue this would be a reasonable extension of the principle of law in Bush v. Gore.
As well they should. The USSC did NOT say that local entities are allowed to use different standards. But what the court DID say, or at least strongly imply, is that there is no implication in their ruling that local entites cannot use different standards.
I understand that courts try to rule on the narrowest issue possible (and this despite not reading court cases for a living! 
). Nonetheless, according to you, the two issues are one and the same, and there is no meaningful distinction between them. So the court was going out of its way to say something completely pointless.
If the court is ruling in the case of a guy named Jones, it does not go out of its to say that they are not ruling one way or another in the case of guys named Smith and then leave it to others to determine that there is no difference. Obviously the court perceived that a reasonable case can be made for a different ruling in the case of local entities.
Well that’s pretty much exactly what we are talking about. So the answer is no. (But again, I’m not saying that the SC has ruled this way - only that they specifically left open this possiblity).
On preview I see that DSY has made the same point at length. I continue to disagree. It is true that the election is statewide and follows state rules etc. But the specific area of unequal treatment happens to be that area that is given over to local control.
Let’s see how it plays out.
BTW, a question for the lawyers: does the decision to have a full 11 judge panel hear the case actually hurt the recall, by derailing an appeal to the USSC (which might be expected to be more symphathetic) until the time of the stay (1 week) runs out?
Nobody’s linked it yet? Pending appeal, the recall is postponed.
What no one seems to be addressing in this issue is the validity of this claim (per my bolding above). I haven’t seen a good enough explanation of how the “error rate” was calculated, but let me offer a few observations:
These machines have been in use in CA for decades, and no one has seen problems. The issues encountered in FL were to a large extent specific to that specific election. It’s unclear that any voting method has the resolution to measure an election that was that close.
If someone says the error rate is 2% (about what they’re saying for the punch card machines) what does this actually mean? Assuming that the miscounting (over/under counts) is random, wouldn’t one expect the errors to cancel out given the large number of votes (44% of the voters using punch card machines).
Given the fact the new machines are, well, new, what is the actual error rate we would expect from them? Let’s not forget that we’ll be dealing with voters who are using new equipment for the first time. Let’s not foget that weaknesses in the new equipment may not even be apparant due to the fact that it hasn’t been used that much.
The 9th Circuit decision was made w/o any input from the actual folks who run the elections in the various districts. The suit was against the Sec of State, who is not involved in the mechanics of vote collection.
Let’s hope that when the full court meets, they listen to a few statisticians and engineers who are intimately familar with the actual machines in question.
For now, I’m just not buying the argument that punch card machines would result in a significantly greatly number of “disenfranchised” voters than any other method we’d be able to get in place in a reasonable amount of time.
It it irrelevent whether or not they “cancel each other out.” The simple fact remains that 44% of the population will arbitarily be forced to use a more inferior, inaccurate method of voting. For a state to treat one group of people as being worthy of accurate vote counting, and the other as worthy of less accurate vote counting, that is a denial of equal protection.
It’s partly because conservatives feel that the ACLU is rather selective in which parts of the Bill of Rights they defend. E.g., they’ll fight tooth-and-nail to protect First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights, but they pretty much drop the ball on Second Amendment rights.
I thought the ACLU was pretty much (and self-proclaimed as) being pretty much focused on free speech and freedom of the press? Isn’t there an ACLU concerned with the Second Amendment called the NRA?
No voting method is “accurate”, although I expect you know that. Every system has some error rate. If you use all the same machines throughout the state, there will be machine-to-machine variation. How much variation is acceptable?
I havn’t seen a detailed enough report that convinces me that the punch card machines are significnatly less accurate than other methods. After all, those precise machines were used to elect Davis in '02. If you find an article that explains the details, let us know.