Hazel:
So punish the voters, right?
Never mind.
None of this has anything to do with my point. Which is, It seems pretty hypocritical to rage on about Republicans allegedly “disenfranchising” some voters in Florida when you wanted to throw out the ENTIRE state!!!
Elvis1Lives:
Define “Party affiliation.” Wasn’t Souter a republican?
Anyway, there’s not a single justice on the Supreme Court who wasn’t either nominated by a Democrat president or approved by a Democrat Congress or both. If the Democrats felt, before this occurred, that these Justices were likely to interpret the constitution correctly, then the fact that this decision went against their interests should not have changed their minds about it.
At no time did the Bush campaign suggest any clearer standards, offer to assist in creating them, or indeed express any interest in the subject. Every action they took can only be fairly described as stalling, running out the clock, and discrediting any possible method of hand-counting the ballots more accurately. We’re not talking about varying interpretations of the existing laws; we’re talking about refusing to address the subject entirely for completely transparent reasons. You can disagree if you like, but not, I think, reasonably.
I do not claim perfection for the Gore campaign either, and gladly acknowledge their own desire to win. Yes, they should have asked for a statewide manual recount, just as the “partisan Democrat” Florida Supreme Court finally ordred (to the panic of the Republicans).
But I see no reason not to stand by my assertion that the Bush campaign actively flouted the basic principles of democracy in its attempt to gain power. To its dishonor, the conservative wing of the Supreme Court supported the attempt. Can you honestly say that is not what happened?
The key concept is philosophical affiliation, as I said, not party registration. There are many precedents, including Souter himself since you bring him up, of Justices changing their world outlook once they have lifetime appointments. Earl Warren and Hugo Black are the most noteworthy examples. That can go the other way, too - Justices who were thought to hold the interests of the country and what it stands for higher than their own preferences during their confirmation hearings can feel free to do the opposite. There are several current examples of that.
Don’t you think it’s curious that there has been so little public support, or reasoned commentary even, saying the 5-vote majority decisions were philosophically sound and based on historical precedent and basic legal principle? All I’ve seen, including in the decision itself, amounts to post-hoc rationalization of a pre-decided case. Do you disagree?
Elvis*(emphasis mine)*:
This attitude pretty much sums up why there is a division in mind-set that can’t seem to be crossed on the Florida election fiasco. And it tends to fall right along partisan lines, as it did with the courts, the Legislature, and everyone involved.
Quite a few people see it as dangerously bad precedent to change rules or invent new ones after an election and re-count with a vote total showing one candidate the winner. Fortunately, Congress did see it; that’s why they made it illegal long ago.
I understand that the Fla. Supreme Court read the statute as inviting them to provide help and guidance. However, they certainly seemed to shy away from imposing a uniform hand-count standard statewide. Why?
Because even they were aware it was not within their power to do such a thing. It was and is the Legislature’s job. And the proper time to do it was before an election. They thought “intent of the voter” covered every conceivable election scenario.
That was short-sighted of them, as it would only seem to work and be fair from an equal protection standpoint with uniform standards for hand-counts with each type of ballot. Thus meaning any vote evaluation outside of a single county absent those uniform standards would have legal problems.
I would not at all say the Bush camp had no “interest in the subject.” They had a high level of interest in not changing the rules after the election had taken place.
Is there anything unclear to you about the meaning of “clear intent of the voter” ? The law DID provide that the local canvassing boards use their best judgment on that. Bush refused to accept that, and through his stalling tactics in effect got the law nullified. THAT is “changing rules or inventing new ones”, and it is indeed bad precedent and bad law as you point out.
Now, can you explain what you think a Supreme Court, state or federal, is FOR if not to provide interpretations of laws?
Elvis, perhaps if you pasted my quote one paragraph further, you see that I addressed that point.
Did you not see that, or …?
First, a correction. In an earlier post, I referred to 1,900 double votes in West Palm Beach. That should have been 19,000.
Scylla, here’s how I see it. Due to a combination of honest errors, not-so-honest errors, and outright cheating, Al Gore was deprived of thousands of votes in Florida; many times the number he needed to win that state. If the errors and cheating had not occurred, he would have won Florida, and with it the Presidency.
More of the the voters and attempted voters in Florida chose Al Gore then any other candidate, yet Bush was declared the winner. Letting Florida’s results stand was an injustice for the Florida citizens who voted for Gore or tried to do so. Letting Florida’s results stand, in effect, disenfranchized all the people there who voted for Gore, or tried to do so. Even though more voted for Gore or tried to do so then voted for any other candidate. (Letting Florida’s results stand was also an injustice to the whole country, as those results were were wrong. The man who came in second was being awarded victory.)
Tossing out Florida’s results in order to deny those 25 electoral votes to Bush would have allowed the wishes of the plurality of Florida’s voters to prevail. That is NOT “disenfanchising a whole state”. Tossing out Florida’s results was the only legal way to give the Presidency to the rightful winner.
I think someone asked me to propose a better system. While no system will ever be completely foolproof, there are some obvieous things that should be done–
> Scrap the electoral college, OR modify it to eliminate its winner-take-all aspect.
> Have runoff elections whenever the person with the most votes has less then 50% of the vote, OR enact instant runoff voting.
> Talk the media into keeping their mouths shut about who’s ahead where until ALL of the polls are closed, nationwide.
> Federal standards for federal elections, including the following.
> Let states and localities do as they please in local elections, but for Presidential elections, can’t we outlaw the use of punchcards and any other method that has as high an error rate?
> Voter turnout is low enough as it is; let’s not turn away anyone who wants to vote. Require that the polls be kept open as long as anyone is in line waiting to vote. OR keep the polls open for really long hours. If 9:00 or 10:00 pm is too early (people still standing in line), keep them open till midnight, l:00 am, whatever it takes.
> In addition to sample ballots, send voters a list of the “voting rules” of their district, such as how many forms of identification you need, do you get a second chance if you mess up your ballot, etc. Also, post those rules in the polling places.
> Make sure all polling places have equal access to HQ to check the status of anyone who isn’t on the list, but says he or she is registered.
> Have voter ombudsmen to whom people can appeal if they believe that officials are unjustly turning them away from the polls.
And I again call on Hazel to provide a cite or some evidence outlining the examples of “cheating” that went on during the Florida election.
The fact that numerous counts of legally cast ballots have shown one winner consistently – and it ain’t Gore – exposes your statement about cutting out Florida and given the election to the “rightful” winner stand out for what it is.
Perhaps you should follow the lead of Al Gore, who, in an address to the nation during this whole drama, said he was instructing his people to not harp on the popular vote. Both Bush and Gore were running under an electoral college system, and knew it. Griping about it afterward just seems … odd.
Sort of like, “How can I be expected to win this football game when, every time the other team goes into the end zone, they get six points?”
Elvis1Lives:
I do disagree. The decision, which you call a “post-hoc rationalization,” certainly seemed to me to be a valid interpretation of the Constitution. At the very least, it quoted the relevant passages in the Constitution, unlike some other Supreme Court decisions which have not merely been accepted as law, but practically as sacred scripture (e.g., Row v. Wade).
And I think you’ll find that the only place where there hasn’t been public support has been amongst the pro-Gore camp. Big surprise there.
Hazel: (emphasis mine)
Mind showing me under what law that would be allowed?
Chaim Mattis Keller
Hazel:
Well, you se it wrong.
There were errors that affected Bush as well, that might have garnered him more votes had they not occured. How do you know that they just don’t cancel themselves out and the rightful person one after all?
Your assertion that Gore would have won is unprovable, and doesn’t follow.
The idea that somehow wiping out the results of millions of voters and an entire state doesn’t disenfranchise them is mindnumbingly stupid.
Milo, just so you’re clear:
No, courts do not MAKE laws. Yes, they do INTERPRET existing laws. You’ve been confusing the two concepts.
I trust the rest of the post you’re objecting to was clear, since you’re not contesting it.
Achmed:
Four of whom were considered to be liberals?? Um, which four would those be, exactly? (And claiming that the split was 7-2 is the height of disingenuousness…have you actually read the opinion?)
Elvis:
I’ve got to correct you on this one. The only way Hugo Black changed his world outlook after being appointed was in becoming more conservative during his last few years on the bench. FDR appointed Black because he was perceived as a populist and civil libertarian (short-lived Klan affiliation notwithstanding), and a populist liberal and civil libertarian he proved to be. From The People’s History of the Supreme Court:
I’ve got more stuff at home about this if you want to explore the matter further. 
Chaim, I think I’ve said before, Congress could have (should have, IMO) rejected Florida’s electors. Also, I think the Supreme Court could have declared Florida’s election to be invalid.
The irregularties in the FL election didn’t even need to be addressed. The results could have been tossed out on the grounds that those results (Bush winning by 1/100 of one percent) amounted to a tie, and that determining the winner was just not possible, because obtaining a sufficiently accurate vote count was just not possible. That the results amounted to a tie was pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould, and by the guy who wrote the book “Innumeracy”, whose name escapes me.
Scylla, the official FL results have Bush winning by 537 votes. To cite just one of the many problems in FL, Gore lost far more then that number of votes to the poorly designed ballot in West Palm Beach. About 3,000 people mistakenly voted for Buchanan. About 19,000 mistakenly cast double votes. I think that most of these 22,000 people were trying to vote for Gore. But suppose that only half of them were trying to vote for Gore – that would still have been more then enough votes to put him ahead of Bush. I put the WPB mess in the “honest mistakes” catalogy, by the way. The poorly designed ballot was an honest mistake on the part of the designer. Compounded by their failure to consult experts. The voters who goofed were also making honest mistakes.
If few dozen people make the same mistake, or even if a few hudred do, it’s fair to blame the voters – “they should have been more careful” etc. But if thousands make the same mistake? Then, I think you have to blame the poorly designed ballot, and not the voters.
However, some of the voters who goofed say that they realized their error, asked for a 2nd ballot, and were denied it. FL law does require that people who ask for a 2nd, and even a 3rd ballot should get one. Also, some of the voters who goofed say that they asked for help and didn’t get it. Election workers could not, or would not, answer their questions.
In the not-so-honest mistakes catagory, one item would be the list of people who supposedly had felony convictions and were dropped from the voter rolls. Many did NOT have felony convictions. I agree with the suspition that Republican state officials knew that the list was not reliable, and used it anyway, in the belief that most of the people improperly deleted would be likely to vote Democrat. But if my suspictions are untrue, surely it can at least be acknowledged that using this list without checking it was sloppy and careless?
This brings me to another improvment that I’d make to our electoral system, under the heading of federal standards for federal elections. In Presidential elections, I’d extend the franchise to people with felony convictions, once they’ve served their sentences. The denial of the francise to people with felony convictions exists mainly in southern states, and impacts mainly black voters – which is its most likely purpose. It’s a method of keeping the black vote down. This law alone can tip any close Presidential election to the Republican candidate, as blacks overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Anything that reduces black participation in elections helps Repub candidates.
I’ve had this question since the electoral college vote: how many voters really understand that Gore got more votes than Bush? What percentage knows what the phrase “popular vote” means? Has a poll been done that asks: Al Gore received over 500,000 more votes in the 2000 election than George W. Bush, but Bush is president.
Hazel:
…Which is all very interesting, but has nothing to do with the two points that I have made repeatedly, which you have refused to address.
POINT ONE
-Seeking to disenfranchise an entire state is blatantly hypocritical in one who complains that Republicans were disenfranchising voters. Am I really supposed to just accept this contradiction or are we pretending it isn’t real?
POINT TWO
-There were irregularities that affected both parties. Announcing Gore’s vctory falsely before the polls closed could have easily cost Bush tens of thousands of votes. Those people who didn’t receive help at the polls were only Democrats? Give me a break.
You don’t know who would’ve won if these irregularites didn’t occur, and no honest and fair-minded person would assume they did.
This August edifice of rationalizations you’ve constructed is nothing more than a house of cards.
MGibson said: And you’d be quite happy, it would seem, with a system that allows the majority to drown out the voice of the minority.
That’s unpleasant. However, isn’t it worse to have a system where the voice of the minority drowns out the voice of the majority? You know, like what happened in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, or like what happened for so many years in South Africa?
MGibson, again: If we do have a system where the smaller states have no discernable voice then we’ll sow the seeds of discontent and eventually violence. After all nobody in these states voted for Lincoln… wait, that’s something else.
Um… what? The south had no discernable voice? And all the southern states were smaller states? You mean like Virginia and Texas? They had significant populations in 1860, as I recall. Besides, there were fifteen states that permitted slavery at the outbreak of the Civil War, and eighteen that did not, and even then, four of those states didn’t feel compelled to leave the Union. So what do you mean to imply? That the deep south and the Rocky Mountain states are going to threaten civil war if we don’t let them decide our elections? I fail to see how a majority-elected government will plunge us into civil war.
Thought I’d jump in here with a few comments even though Hazel addressed these points to other posters…
Ok. I’m assuming that the mishaps in the above quote are in the “honest mistake” category.
Not sure which category you felt these issues fell into. Are you saying that Election workers did not assist voters who made errors specifically because they intended to vote for Gore? Or are you saying that Election workers made mistakes and failed to assist voters across the spectrum of political parties (some Gore voters, some Nader voters, and some Bush voters)?
If you provide me with an appropriately neutral cite regarding the origins of the felony convictions list and the error rate in the list, i.e. 1 out of every 100 people on the list was incorrect (or whatever the error rate was), then I will accept this item as having some implications on republican conduct during the election.
Yes, using a felony conviction list without checking its veracity is careless. How do we know that the list wasn’t checked?
So in your latest post there have been some “honest mistakes”, some possibly “dishonest mistakes” (I’ll say possibly until you post appropriate evidence) but I see no mention of items which fall under “outright cheating”. I’m assuming by “outright cheating” you’re referring to blatantly illegal actions on the part of the republican party. Would you care to clarify what you consider to be “cheating” as well as what actions perpetrated by the republican party fall under this category according to your definition?
Grim
Are you suggesting, then, that if California, New York, and Texas all dominated every single Federal election, then places like North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Alaska wouldn’t feel resentful?
Last I heard, residents of those states were citizens, too. Do you believe that citizens of one part of the country are more important than others?
**
Either way the victory would have gone to someone who had a statistically insignifigant higher number of votes. I don’t care for Bush myself but I don’t think that his victory can be compared to the minority rule of South Africa.
**
Uh, the Civil War thing was kind of a joke on my part. One of the things they bitched about in the 1850’s and 1860’s was their lack of representation, or perceived lack, in the federal government.
I don’t know about a civil war. For the most part we have a majority elected government this past election was a fluke. I think the powers of the smaller states and larger states do need to be somewhat balanced. The minority must be protected from the majority and vice versa.