There was a lot of misunderstanding, some deliberate, about the “safe harbor” date. It was not a deadline for completing the count at all. It meant only that a decision reached prior to that date meant the state would send the appropriate slate of electors to the EC. The only way it constituted a deadline was that the challenges had to all be stalled until it had passed.
The legal standard was “the clear intent of the voter”. If that was truly obvious to you in every case, without even looking at them, then you’re the only one. How the principle of equal protection is consistent with that position of yours is not clear at all.
Having different standards of what constitutes a vote in different counties violates the Equal Protection clause.
A dimpled chad counts in Volusia but not in Miami-Dade. I don’t think too many people would argue anything other than SCOTUS was correct.
Stop the recounts
I for one believe that SCOTUS overstepped its bounds on this one and the whole argument about meeting the safe harbor deadline was ridiculous. HOWEVER, presidential elections are not like other elections for a few reasons and when Kathleen Harris declared the election results as per state law passed by the state legislature, SCOFla overstepped its bounds by ruling on the problem that the manual recounts could not be completed in time according to staute. Presidential election questions are determined by state legislatures and federal courts - not state courts.
Can there ever, under any conceivable circumstances be a “wrong” decision by the supreme court? They are the ultimate authority, so whatever their decision, that MAKES the law. It may be a bad law, or an unfair law, or one that needs to be changed, but it IS the law, until such time as it is changed by legislation or another ruling. Isn’t it? Or do I misunderstand?
On that particular point, yes. The ruling *prevented *that from being implemented it rather than requiring it, though.
Define “in time”. You just said the safe harbor stuff was nonsense.
Wrong. The selection of slates of electors by the states is a matter of state law, within parameters set by the federal constitution. Monitoring and enforcing compliance by state officials with state law is most certainly a matter for state courts.
The legislature had no legal say in the matter at all, despite some bluster to that effect. Wrong again.
Safe Harbor is nonsense. Under Fla law at the time, all recounts had to be done in 7 days. The counties complained they couldn’t recount in 7 days so SCOFla threw out that part of the law.
I’d have to double-check where in the timeline this occured, but there was also an issue that Harris as Sec of State could extend the deadline for certification in case of a natural disaster. Since there was no natural disaster, Harris certified the results in accordance with state law. I believe SCOFla threw out that law as well or at least invalidated it.
That was when certification by the state SecState was to be done, based on the counts performed at that time. There was no deadline as to completing recounts and appeals of the final result. A certificate is not final, it is merely a presumption pending completion of those steps. The political image of certification was, of course, critical in a political case.
Nope. Two counties sued for an extension, forced by stalling by the Bush people, and FSC accepted, putting the equal protection principle later affirmed by SCOTUS ahead of the sanctity of such procedural minutiae.
Nope yet again. The Legislature did that later, for future elections. They also took out the conflict between “may” and “shall” for the certification date. Harris (who, as you know was also Bush’s state campaign chairman) claimed to be bound by the word “shall” in the older statute even though the newer, normally-superseding one only had “may”.
People, I never asked what you thought about the decision, nor what the outcome may or may not have been had the court thrown in the other way, I just wanted to know if a majority of scholars think that either side with the majority or the dissent or whether those scholars support for an opinion is based on their ideology. I think that a majority of scholars think that the decision reached in, for example, Dred Scot is a poor one. I gather that there is no consensus.
The SC effectively answered the broader question of correctness *themselves *in the very text of the ruling, by saying it couldn’t be used as precedent.
But that hasn’t stopped other cases from referring to the principle it found that equal protection applies to elections too. If there’s disagreement about that particular point, I haven’t seen any.
What do you mean “Nope.”? How am I incorrect? The law said 7 days for the recount and the FSC invalidated it as unreasonable and in violation of the Fla Constitution. Hence they “threw out” that part of the law.
Wasn’t there soon after the decision a petition or statement signed by something like 600 lawyers that argued that the action of SCOTUS was incorrect? Something about Constitutional law, like maybe separation of powers? Isn’t there some kind of historical view of this position now?
I just wanted to put in my 2 cents that I voted for Bush, watched the post-election coverage every day, and at the time and still today I thought that Bush v. Gore was a garbage opinion that achieved the correct result.
I think we are still too close in time to the decision for partisans to put aside their preconceived notions.
Only for the issuance of the certificate, NOT for the cessation of all possible further attempts to determine the true outcome, and the appropriate cancellation and reissue of the certificate if needed.
There’s obviously a consensus. As Elvis wrote, the court itself specifically said that their decision did not establish a precedent on any future cases. So the only issue before the court was who got Florida’s electoral votes in the 2000 Presidential election. And the consensus is overwhelming that Bush got them.
As an aside (I do understand that this is not what the OP was asking), I don’t understand why people claim that the SCOTUS determined the outcome of the election, when almost all reasonable recount scenarios would have also resulted in a Bush win?
I do agree the decision was partisan.
The Supreme Court most certainly did decide the outcome of the election. None of the reasonable recount scenarios were used so who would have won under them was moot. The court said there was no need to count the votes in Florida and to just go ahead and give Bush the state. They could just as readily decided to give the state to Gore or Nader.
It is a shame that there was no vote counting done in Florida in 2000. Those two full machine counts and the hand recounts that were completed according to the law aren’t relevant? Or are you simply exaggerating to support your contention?
