I keep hearing those who despise George W. Bush in general and the Democrat Party, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton in particular complaining that “we was robbed” by the Supreme Court in 2000. I thourougly understand their point.
(I’m an Orioles fan who will forever remember the 1996 ALCS when that kid in Yankees Stadium, Jeffery Mayer, pulled in a ball that Umpire Garcia called a Home Run.)
What the Dems always refer to is the 5-4 decision by the court, split along “party” lines that “gave” the election to Bush by ordering a stop to the recounts in four of the 67 Florida counties. The complaint assumes that the 5 who voted in the majority were Bush partisans and the 4 in the minority were fair minded and non-partisan. No possibility seems to be allowed, even in the unbiased press, for the opposite argument: 4 Gore supporters and 5 fair minded justices.
But I seem to remember two decisions that day: the 5-4 which had the effect of stopping the recounts while not ordering any such thing, and a less “partisan” 7-2 decision that actually would have had the same effect. I have so much trouble reading legal documents from the courts. Can anyone give the un-Hillary Straight Dope on this one?
For those interested in a bit less of a partisan approach, I suggest reading “The Accidental President” by David A Kaplan. For a fire-and-brimstone deconstruction of the SCOTUS decision(s) there’s Vincent Bugliosi’s “The Betrayal of America.”
In a nutshell, 7 of the justices believed that there were equal protection problems with the Florida situation, but only 5 of them ruled that they were such that they could not be resolved without SCOTUS action.
From a recent thread, here is a summary I put together:
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with Florida Statute 201.141(4), which spurred the first recount when the results were within 1/2 of 1 percent. And Then Gore filed a protest under Florida Statute 102.166(2000), a requested a recount in four counties, Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade.
Then why don’t you see FS 102.112, and read what they says about the November 14th deadline. The current version reads,
Note the use of the terms “must” and “shall”. Those do not give wiggle room, like the term “should”.
Note what happened next. The Florida Supreme Court set the deadline for vote submission at Nov 26. In direct defiance of the established Florida Statutes. THAT is what I call Legislating from the Bench. (The US Supreme Court apparently agreed with me, since they vacated this decision, essentially allowing the election to run under the existing laws in place.).
The Florida Supremes then said, essentially, that their Nov 26 deadline wasn’t really a deadline, and that votes found after that date could be added, too, in Palm Beach.
The gist of the US Supreme Court decision hinged on rejecting the FL Supremes re-writing of the laws, Article 2, Section 1, clause 2 of the US Constitution, which says,
Legislature sets the rules, not Judicial.
The US Supreme Court decision can be seen here (PDF).
Their decision? Legislature makes the laws. Judges don’t.
Yes, that could be very well true. That was written in a slightly more heated thread, but in keeping with proper quoting etiquette, I did not edit this post (except one spelling correction).
A George Will column hardly fulfills the request for an un-Hillary explanation. It may be an anti-Hillary explanation, but that’s no better. (I pick on her only because she is currently the loudest and yes shrillest voice still objecting to the USSC decision from 3 years ago.) (Oh, and also, I don’t like her for a lot of reasons but that’s for else where.)
OK, so the best unbiased answer to my OP would be:[list=1]
[li]The USSC by a 7-2 margin ruled that the Fla-SC had no business interpretting the election law of Fla after an election held under that law. [/li][li]The USSC could only come up with a 5-4 decsion as to the remedy. I tried to re-read the decsion again (pardon my feeble brain but judges and lawyers tend to write for judges and lawyers but what they write affects us feebled-brain little people) and I cannot quite figure out exactly what the recommended remedies were. As well as I can figure they were:[/list=1] [list=a][/li][li]The 5 justices thought that if the count continued, it could never be completed in time for the electors’ ballot on 12 Dec, thus disenfranchising all of Florida, those who cast their ballots correctly as well as those who had problems casting their ballots (for whatever reason). Chosing not to disenfranchise six-million Floridians because a few thousand didn’t or couldn’t follow the instructions on the ballot, they ordered a halt to the count. (The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.)[/li][li]The other four justices felt that every effort should be made to complete the recount of all Florida votes within the remaining four days thus ensuring that even those few thousand who didn’t or couldn’t follow the instructions on the ballot would not be disenfranchised. (The good of the few outweighs the good of the many.)[/li][/list=a]
So, Gore supporters just “know” the fix was in by the five “Bush” justices and that the other four were fair minded arbiters. Meanwhile, Bush supporters feel that the decision of the justices to make sure Florida not be “disenfranchised” is the fairest most democratic thing to do and that the Fla-SC was “Gore-biased” in their decisions.
I am trying not to elicit (or express) an opinion one way or the other here, just to understand why the Dems still think “we was robbed” and the Republicans are in charge in spite of losing the popular vote by not a small margin nationally. (I understand the electoral college elects the president and the people elect the electors.)
Don’t forget the failsafe. The Constitution gives the states the power to decide who its electoral votes go to. The Republican Senate, House, and Governor proclaimed that if the SCOTUS ruled against Bush, it would quickly pass a law to give its electoral votes to Bush anyway.
daniel, keeping more with facts and less partisanship, the lawfully elected Florida House of Representatives could, under existing state law, have voted on the candidates if the voters’ decision could not be ascertained. They were Republican dominated in 2000, so yes, it likely would have gone to Bush. No new laws would have been to counter a Supreme Court decision. Every state in the Union has this provision.
Keep in mind these Representatives were elected by the people of Florida, not appointed. If the people of Florida had elected a Democratic dominated House, the vote would have very likely legally gone to Gore. No new laws.
I have no idea how you think my post was partisan. In fact, since I went to the trouble to be fact-only, I am proud that you guessed me the wrong way. I favored the outcome and the now-President.
Anyway, it would be a new law as it would have to trump the existing electoral distribution provision in Florida code. “An ACT to…”