I will add only the following to this interesting duscussion:
The assertion that the Supreme Court of Florida incorrectly interpreted ‘legal vote’ to mean votes with something other than a fully detached chad (the definition theoretically propounded in advance of the election by the Secretary of State, Ms. Harris) was accepted by only three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States. In Florida, therefor, it still is the case that a ‘legal vote’ can include something less than a fully detached chad.
Indeed, folks, you should wake up and catch up with reality. Virtually EVERY state in the union which utilizes detachable chads (or any other method which is not inherently an exercise in on/off switching) includes as a legal vote something other than full and complete compliance with the method of recording one’s vote that will most likely result in proper recording of that vote by the tabulation machinery. So almost all states accept as legal something less than ‘on’ or ‘off’.
I submit that, if the whole damn nation thinks that a swinging door chad, or a hanging chad, is an acceptable vote, then it is absurd to assert that the only valid vote is one that removes the entire chad.
And, by the way, this assertion that the Secretary of State had determined within her authority that the only ‘legal vote’ was a fully detached chad is nonsense. The ballot instructions were there to advise voters how to make sure that the machinery that reads the ballot would properly register their vote. This ‘standard’ was never promulgated by the Secretary of State as a determination of the meaning of ‘legal vote’ as it applied to punch card ballots; one supposes this might be because the Secretary of State understood that §101.5614 was intended to establish the definition of ‘legal’ vote and requiring a fully detached chad would not comply with that standard. It was only after the election when the chairman of the campaign for the Republican candidate for President, who also happened to be the Secretary of State, proposed the ridiculous theory that these ‘ballot instructions’ meant nothing short of fully detached chads were legal votes.
To test this hypothesis, ask yourself the simple question: can the machines that tabulate votes tabulate a vote on the basis of LESS than a fully detached chad? Answer, based on the evidence presented in numerous lawsuits, is yes.
We now return you to your intellectual discussion of theoretical novelties. 