Everybody who says it isn’t over: Democratic National Committee Chairman Ed Rendell says it is, and is calling on Gore to concede. Ditto Dan Toricelli, Democratic Senator from New Jersey.
If the chairman of your party says it’s over, that’s a pretty strong indication it’s over.
Here’s what the Democratic Toricelli had to say about the U.S. Supreme Court a bit ago on MSNBC:
Pretty strong statement by Justice Ginsburg…
So do I 
You have a pretty creative way of counting, Milo. According to everything I have heard, the vote was 5–4. Now, it may be technically true that two of the 4 thought there should be a more uniform standard spelled out…But that is a far cry from giving Bush the election. In fact, I may well have voted that way myself. I think a uniform standard is a good thing.
When this is written up in the history books, people will marvel at what the Bush legal team did…Basically, the FSC was left in a no-win situation: if they give a specific standard, they will be overturned for rewriting the law and if they just point out the standard of discerning voter intent that is in the law, then they will be overturned for violating equal protection. And, in the meantime, we run out the clock!
Brilliant, yes. Ethical…I leave that question to your conscience.
They order a stop to a recount, that most observers say could be done in two days.
They take their good time in deciding the case.
They say, if you can count it in this absurdly short time span, go ahead…oh, I’m sorry your time’s up.
Brilliant. Milosovich can only wish he could rig an election like this.
If I were an Floridian, I’d seriously consider taking these folks to court for disenfranchising me!
Of course learning from this expirence, I’d probably lose.
Looks like we all lose.
The decision to overturn the FL SC decision was 7-2. I think there was a 5-4 decesion on the mechanism of where to go from there.
Given the fact that the US SC found a constitutional problem with what the FL SC said, it wouldn’t have mattered if they counted through the weekend. (This is according to Lawrence Tribe, one of Gore’s lawyers just interviewed by Bernie Shaw). Those counts would have been disregarded, given the counting standard (or lack thereof) that the US SC found to be in constitutional violation of equal protection.
The main decision was made with a 7-2 majority. Four justices dissented on varying parts of it, but 7 out of 9 agreed that there was at least one major constitutional violation.
Let’s not make this a partisan thing. EVERY legal expert I’ve heard has agreed that there were some constitutional problems with the FSC decision. The Supreme court agreed, other that two justices.
In fact, if you want to throw partisanship into the mix, isn’t it possible that the seven justices in the majority were correct, and only the two most liberal members of the court couldn’t see past their ideology?
I think the best thing to do is examine the decision on the merits of the law. Forget judging it on a political basis. We just don’t have any evidence that this was politically motivated.
Creative math, j?
The vote is 5-4 not to continue recounts. Did I say, anywhere, that it wasn’t? Was I in any way disingenuous about the court’s opinion?
No; I’m leaving that up to y’all.
Seven of nine justices on the court said that the recount process under way in Florida was flawed, illegal, unconstutional, inaccurate, wrong.
(What I’ve been trying to get you to understand for a few weeks now.)
But you still don’t get it, or won’t see it.
Because the count was flawed, illegal, unconstitutional, inaccurate and wrong.
Nooo … let’s stop the count because it is flawed, illegal, unconstitutional, inaccurate and wrong.
They’re forcing the Florida Supreme Court to follow Florida law and the U.S. Constitution! Those bastards!
No; we don’t have to worry about having Milosevic-style leadership until our rule of law is circumvented in some brazen attempt by someone to change rules and grab power.
Thankfully, we have a Supreme Court, state legislatures and a U.S. Congress to stop such things from happening.
There’s that, and then there’s the ignominy of Nader’s befouling influence. I, personally, place the lion’s share of the blame squarely on Ralph’s foolhardy and arrogant shoulders. Without his ill-conceived yet determined effort to shoot himself and the pursuit of his greater goals in the foot, this election would have ended on November 7 with Gore’s clear victory.
I shall not soon forget, Ralph. The further shameful degradation of our body politic is on your hands…
If by “they” you mean the Bush legal team (which is who I was referring to when I talked about the FSC being put in a no-win situation), then no, that was not what they were doing. They were trying to run out the clock and/or create a heads-I-win tails-you-lose situation. They could have pushed to have counts done statewide by a uniform standard, but that is not what they chose.
As for the Supreme Court, I have a certain degree of agreement with you. They were put in a very difficult situation. I think they did honestly try to do what was best, although I am not going to say I think they necessarily did a very good job of it. I am honestly not sure whether I believe that they would of damned the FSU either way. (I.e., if the FSU had laid down a standard, would the U.S. Supreme Court then said they were rewriting the law? My guess is that a few of the justices [say Rehnquist, Scali, and Thomas] may well have, although I’m not sure they would have gotten a majority on that. I never did like the FSU’s punting on the uniform standard thing. In hindsight now, it was also probably the wrong decision from the point of view of having their decision stand up to U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny.)
hansel wrote
No it isn’t. Every one of the counting machines worked exactly as expected, and correctly rejected invalid ballots.
Nobody had any problems with the butterfly ballot, or the counting mechanisms or the counting procedures. Those machines and ballots and procedures have been used for years with no problems and no complaints.
It wasn’t until one candidate lost and saw an opportunity to win by claiming the system was unfair. I’ll admit that had it gone the other way, Bush probably would’ve done the same, but that’s hypothetical, it didn’t go the other way, and Bush didn’t debase himself so. Gore did. Shame on Gore.
But even worse are the words and actions of Jesse Jackson, claiming that this was a pre-meditated, planned-to-be-broken election, carefully calculated to hold down African-Americans. Shame on you, Mr. Jackson.
It’ll be interesting to see how well Bush can rejoin things. I suspect that in two months this will all be old news, and life will be as normal.
Ambushed, it’s such a shame to have more than two parties to represent the different political ideologies people have. What a pathetic condition America must be in. :rolleyes:
OK, Milo and gang. Maybe I’m missing something in the pages here. Where are we changing the rules here? They tally the votes. It comes out so close that by law they have to tally them again. The numbers change signifigantly (in respect to the margin of ‘victory’). One participant ask for a recount using more accurate means which is afforded by law. At this point the other participant begins saying stop changing the rules. What rules were changed at this point? How exactly are hand counting the votes inaccurate and unconstitutional?
Well, one of the ways by which the rules were changed is from when the FSC extended the deadline from Nov. 14 to Nov. 26. There was no pre-existing Florida law that allowed to the FSC to make such a decision. Thus, the law was changed.
Sterling: There’s a federal law that says something to the effect of, all rules governing an election must be in place before said election.
Read Rehnquist’s opinion, where it goes into how the standards for counting ballots changed repeatedly in some counties, most notably Palm Beach. It also talks about changing of deadlines.
I find it interesting that many of you are referring to Bush stall tactics, when it was the highly liberal Florida Supreme Court who changed the deadlines to shorten the contest period.
I found Souter’s dissent interesting. His argument seems to be, at least initially, “However messed up the Florida Supreme Court’s remedy would have been, it should have ran its course and been corrected by the Congress, not us.”
The net result would have been the same, but a whole lot crazier, I imagine.
And I can’t believe how much I disagree with Ginsberg’s dissent. She seems to have a philosophy very similar to the majority of the Florida Supreme Court, which, in my opinion, is something like, “Law, shmaw. Let’s just do what we think is best, and try to fix things by any means necessary.”
While I think it’s OK for many people to hold such opinions, I don’t think it’s a good attitude for a supreme court justice to have.
But if you’re going to have a Scalia, Renquist or Thomas, I guess you need some Ginsbergs and Breyers to balance things out.
“The Bush family has already corrupted the presidency & the U.S. Supreme Court. Millions of Americans will never again be confident that their vote will be counted in any election. All we need now is the squalid spectacle of Jeb Bush on TV, saying ‘I am not a crook.’” --Hunter Thompson
The next argument we’re all gonna have? When the bushwhackers try to come up with some way to avoid letting anybody do an after the fact count. Where there’s a will, theres a lawyer.
And they will. Bet me.
Just wanted to say that I really think everyone on both sides should be exercising some restraint about trashing the Courts too badly. What this whole thing showed us is that judges are still human. Lots of them (on the circuit courts, the FSU, and the SCOTUS) were put in very difficult situations under lots of time pressure. And, the logic of the opinions on all sides seemed a bit tortured at times. But, unlike the partisans and politicians and lawyers, I do think the justices tried their best to act fairly.
The whole thing is unfortunate for all sides. One candidate was possibly denied the election under a cloud that means that the other is denied a full sense of legitimacy in his win. Those on “our side” can only hope it is a hollow victory and that Bush and the Republicans end up regretting that they adopted a legal strategy of trying to avoid a fair and accurate count of the votes rather than trying just to push for the votes to be counted by some fair standard. (And, I am willing to admit that Gore should regret having not pushed for a recount of the whole state earlier than when he did offer it to Bush…But when you look at the net transgressions on either side, while neither was perfect, I think that one was worse than the other!)
It’s a bet.
No way in hell they will do that. You’re clueless if you think they will.
Florida’s Freedom of Information Act is among the most liberal in the country.
Will they discount the results of said recounts by partisans with an axe to grind? Absolutely; as well they should.
Will they try to prevent them from occurring? Not a chance.
Please! I don’t think one can realistically equate Ginsberg and Breyer to Scalia, Renquist, and Thomas! The former justices of Brennan and Marshall maybe were about as strident and activist voices on the Left as S R & T are on the right, but Ginsberg and Breyer are not!
Ya know, I’ve read somewhere that Gov. Whitman (NJ) has endorsed an idea to lock away the ballots for eight years, in the interest of something…
And I’m going to find all those legal briefs to see exactly why and why not counting all the votes are/aren’t constitutional. I have a sinking feeling it isn’t as simple as all y’all are saying it is. I think everyone involved made bad decisions in trying to parse law finer than the writers intended. But we’d better get more accurate voting machines out of this!