You are grounded enough in the basis of English common law systems to know that the limit of what courts can/should do is not the specific letter of a given statute. If that were the case, many legal disputes in the US would be much, much easier to deal with.
Not saying whether or not I believe what is being done is right, just that you cannot go: “The statute says X, so tough titties!” and have that be the final say on court authority.
Thanks for responding. I’ve got nothing more to add, really, to what others have said. DSYoungEsq’s “tough titties” argument pretty much sums it up for me.
Excellent, thank you! I’ve used the site to check my registration but the ballot-specific link doesn’t exactly jump out at you.
Ballot was recorded received October 22 and was tabulated. Can’t ask for more than that.
Apparently, the deadline extension will be the only one:
https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/palm-beach-county-in-danger-of-missing-recount-deadline
I’d note that this is not disenfranchising anyone. It’s a recount, which is no more accurate than the first count, it’s just a different count. There is no constitutional right to a recount. All recounts are done within time limits and if they fail the first count is the final count.
Yay!!
Then all you have is a court setting another arbitrary deadline. The law says that the ballots must arrive by 7 p.m. Tuesday. My ballot arrived on Wednesday. I present your argument and the court agrees that this is close enough. The next guy whose ballot arrived on Thursday makes the same argument and he wins.
At some point the court will have to say no to these requests (lest the deadline stretch until eternity) and say that Sunday is the latest day for ballots to be received. Gavel bangs. Well, Sunday is not objectively better than Tuesday. Such a thing is not based upon any meaningful legal principle such as the right to vote. All you have now is a court using its imperial power to displace the rules made by the people’s representatives in the Legislature.
To your second point, what exactly does it mean to “vote”? If I stand in line at the polls and mark an x on my ballot when I should have filled in the bubble, then did I actually vote? I would say no because the machines will not count my vote. I think you would say yes because even though I did not correctly follow the procedure, my intent can be gleaned by the X next to a candidate’s name.
But if we allow that, why not allow a voter to verbally declare in the streets his vote? It is against the rules, but so is making an X. Why shouldn’t these emailed in ballots count in the Panhandle? Is your point that the voter can screw up the voting process a little bit, but not a lot? Who determines that? A judge again?
How about we just follow the rules? Yes, they can be unfair at times, but so is any human endeavor. But what it guarantees is at least an agreed upon process and not one where people can actually claim unfairness because the rules changed in the middle of the game.
Yes, there seems to be a Constitutional right to vote, but how is that stifled by saying that you must vote by 7pm on Election Day? Things get lost or delayed in the mail. The federal government cannot guarantee that every single piece of mail always arrives at its destination on time or even at all, and a voter who places his ballot in the mail is aware of this possibility.
How is it a denial of you right to vote by requiring that the ballot be filled out correctly? To me, that would be like saying that you were denied your freedom of religion because you made a wrong turn and were late in arriving at church.
I would agree with your points if the government intentionally made the ballots confusing or intentionally refused to deliver the mail, but there is no evidence of that here.
The remarks of Mark Walker, the US District judge who refused to extend the deadline for Palm Beach county are particularly relevant to this discussion. All bolding is mine.
There’s no excuse for any of this. Can the lawsuits be resolved, corrective legislation enacted, and systems changed before the 2020 election?
Yes, adaher, a nationwide ballot design would require thousands of testers. Which makes it much easier than the current system. There are over 3,000 counties in the US. Thousands of testers for one design is much easier than thousands of designs.
You keep referring to RULES when they’re actually INSTRUCTIONS. There’s no law that says voters must fill in the oval completely; they’re simply advised to do so to reduce the possibility of a machine misread. (When ballots were still hand-counted, the X in the oval would not have been rejected.) So yes, if you put an X in the oval, you have marked your ballot and have in fact voted. And that vote should count. The machine is the servant, not the master.
As for your take-it-to-extremes hypothetical, shouting in the street wouldn’t count because a vote by definition is a formal or official indication of a choice between candidates (initiatives, referendums, propositions, etc.). Unless you live in some strange and mythical land where officials sit at a table on the street and voters approach them and yell out their votes, which are then recorded, in which case, yeah, I guess, because that’s formal and official. Get it?
I agree with adaher, above. I do not believe that this is any sort of failure at all. When you have millions of votes and the election is so close as to fall within 1/4 of 1%, you are simply asking for too much precision of human beings to see who actually won.
As he noted, why do we have more confidence in the results of a recount than we do the initial count?
I would guess that things like this happen in every election in every state every single time. It is just that Florida has been unlucky enough to have two such extremely close elections where looking for handfuls of votes here and there could possibly make a difference.
I’m sure that in West Virginia, for example, we could find that votes were mishandled or improperly counted or not counted, but the margin was wide enough to not make a difference so there is no outrage.
Then all you have is a court[del]setting another arbitrary deadline.[/del], who is an actual person, taking into account the particular circumstances of this situation in applying the Constitution and the laws.
FTFY again.
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. That’s not what you would say.
I leave it to you to figure out why - but you’ve said over and over again that that isn’t what you’d say. Damned if I know why you’re now saying that IS what you’d say. But it flies in the face of practically everything you’ve said in this entire thread. Go figure.
Broward county missed the deadline by two minutes, so the recount will not count. Apparently the election in Florida is run by magical fairies.
Sweet, you’ll be ok with us just putting Gillum in the Governor’s mansion, then? After all, no need for actual results, let’s just do whatever the fuck we want!
For the sake of argument, sure. And the best way to handle the problem? That’s an easy one:
Given the fact that holding elective office as a Republican is indistinguishable from a crime against humanity*, the BEST way to handle the problem is to give it to the Democrat.
Or A Democrat. Any Democrat will do. The one who appeared on the ballot would probably present the fewest difficulties, though.
*And this IS a given, BTW. Don’t think that, being unable to argue against my logic, there is any recourse to be gained by denying my starting premises.
And the receiver was only out of bounds by two inches. Two minutes late is not on time.
This isn’t a game. This is finding out who the people wanted to represent them.
The Constitution requires Saturday instead of last Tuesday? Only a radical activist judge could hold that way and that judge should be impeached for his ridiculous reading of the Constitution.
We’re asking too much of humans to find out who actually won? Wow. If finding out who actually won is impossible, let’s just estimate and skip counting. If a Democrat leads by a razor-thin margin in any future election, you’d better stick to your guns on the futility of determining who actually won.
Why do we have more confidence in the recount? Because it’s actually an audit. It’s carefully watched by observers from both sides, and it’s conducted with much less haste and more deliberation.You might logically argue that the original count should be done this way, and I’d agree with you. So we wouldn’t know election results within hours. So what? It’s not like terms expire and officials have to be sworn in within days.
It would help if you made it clear which of my remarks you’re responding to.
Because it’s just a big old game, right?
Anyway, Rick Scott:
and now some of the ballots have been counted twice.
FTFY, Rick. 