Just out of curiosity – IF the handcounts still show Bush winning by a slim margin, what is the next step? Will Democrats accept that tally as final, or will something else occur?
The contrarian in me would find it deliciously ironic if Bush won Florida by one vote after the hand recount.
The handcounts don’t bother me, or at least wouldn’t bother me if we could just let the election workers do their jobs. What bothers me are the assumptions that if someone belongs to a particular political party, that person will not faithfully carry out the duties of that job.
So, because a Democratic canvassar from one county says so, that’s the way it went in every county in Florida? A Republican canvassar in a different county said votes were being cast out for the postmark reason alone.
I’ve also heard that some county’s ballots had no space to put a date, just a signature. So if by chance that ballot wasn’t postmarked, that soldier’s vote won’t count. That’s the law. (Now there’s some real voter disenfranchisement. They filled their ballots out accurately, followed all the rules from their end, and their votes won’t count.)
It’s clear now that the Democrat’s statements on counting the overseas military absentee ballots were just window-dressing and damage-control. Nothing is being done differently. How can it be? It would violate what has become the clear goal of this entire week: Overturn the election and find (manufacture?) enough votes for Gore to win.
Danielintheetc.: “unconstitutional” means unconstitutional. Florida’s election law (and I don’t give a steaming shit if it’s the law in Texas, Swaziland or anywhere else) allowing candidates a hand-count in hand-picked counties is a violation of the 14th Amendment’s ‘equal protection’ clause. Votes there are being treated differently, more specially, than elsewhere in the state or country.
Let’s think about the message the state Supreme Court sent with their ruling yesterday: We must act on the side of preserving the will of the voters of Florida; and the will of the voters of Florida will be discovered by hand-counting votes in three or four of the counties most heavily supporting Al Gore.
???
Notice how they very carefully avoided the “dimpled chads” issue. Don’t worry, if it gets kicked up to them, clearly they will deliver it, gift-wrapped for the holidays, to Gore.
They don’t want to usurp the rights of county canvassars, but they have no problem doing it for the Governor, Legislature and Secretary of State? Oh yeah; wrong party.
The insanity of all this: Now they’ve given all the counties a deadline AND A TARGET! “We need 931 votes by 5 p.m. Sunday. Get to work!” Everything that’s happened after the mandatory re-count has been bullshit, for precisely the reason that the process cannot help but be partisan and subjective, and it was always heading for this absolutely Kafka-esque scenario.
Is anyone out there really still pretending that the outcome of the hand-counts is up in the air? It’s a foregone conclusion. And, if it doesn’t happen to be working toward that conclusion as well as it should, we’ll just change a few more rules.
And whoever said the legislature getting involved would be changing the rules after the election, but what’s going on currently isn’t. Legislatures make laws. Courts don’t. Someone forgot to tell that to the Black-Robe Liberal Country Club of Tallahassee. So now its incumbent upon the legislature to restore their authority and the intent of their laws as they were written, and as it was changed.
Can someone explain to me how a 5 p.m. Sunday deadline is fine, but a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline wasn’t? Because the Sunday deadline allows Gore-supporting counties who started their hand-count process too late to get it done in time? Fair, impartial, balanced decision there.
This isn’t about Republican or Democrat. It’s about fair and unfair. It’s incredible to me how a group of intelligent people can differ so dramatically on what’s going on down there and whether it is fair.
Milossarian, if you have any evidence at all of improprieties, you ought to be able to tell us what they are. Short of that, shouldn’t we be able to dismiss that post as another bitterly partisan rant? You’re virtually saying that only a Republican-run recount can be honest.
I was merely responding to your question about the Bush strategy
The assertion that the fact there are only a few counties conducting hand recounts violates the 14th Amendment is without foundation in case law. Those who disagree, I suggest that you actually provide some case law to support your position.
The equal protection clause does not require governments to treat everyone equally, despite the erroneous feeling to the contrary by many ignorant of constitutional law. It does require that there be valid reasons for treating people differently. Unless suspect classes or certain ‘fundamental rights’ are involved, courts generally defer to legislatures in determining that a valid reason exists to treat some people differently from others, either in law or in specific case.
Further, just because some fundamental right is involved does not mean that any given person gets to be treated equally; it simply means that the opportunity to be treated equally exists. In this case, the fact that any county can be recounted upon timely request treats all voters equally. Had some counties turned down requests for recounts while others granted them, there MIGHT be some claim of unequal treatment, otherwise the claim of a violation of equal rights has no merit.
Anyone who wishes to post a legal refutation of this analysis is invited to do so; those who wish to rant on about the issue without substantive analysis based on anything but their own opinions are invited to state their opinions, but understand that, to the extent their opinion is that something is ‘unconstitutional’, it generally will be ignored unless there is some valid constitutional analysis that backs it up. 
To any who are characterizing the Florida Supremes’ decision as some clearly political act by a bunch of liberal, democrat-appointed activists, please observe that it was not 4-3 or even 6-1. A unanimous decision of 7 judges. Folks, that ain’t even close. And allow me to suggest that at least not every one of the 7 is a dishonest political hack who knows less about Fla law than you.
Harris certainly had the authority to make a decision. But do you really believe her decision should not be subject to some kind of review, at least under the “clearly erroneous” standard?
FTR, I voted for Gore. At this point, I hope it ends soon and probably would prefer Bush wins. Clearly, both the machine counts were inaccurate. But, you will not convince me that a manual recount will be any less so. So the question for me is which inaccurate count do you rely on. The system was screwed up and should be fixed, but you don’t get a do-over. And I don’t want my man in there with a cloud of illegitimacy hanging over his head.
BTW - I heard some local commentary that we are lucky that this didn’t come down in Illinois because our election laws make Florida’s look like a model of clarity.
Elvis, and Party, the Democratic position has never been that all valid votes be counted. The Democratic position has been that enough uncounted votes for Gore be counted to make him President. Their position has been consistent. When one method doesn’t produce results sufficient to beat Bush, they introduce another. Of course they will use the law and media spin to support their vote hunt.
The error that the Supreme Court of Florida made was it’s valiant statement that the Will of the people is paramount, yet they did not demand a hand recount of ALL punch ballots in the State.
Here is my post from another board…
The same type of voting system as is used in Palm Beach County is also used in:
Broward County with 573,396 votes towards Gore; Collier with 92,141 votes towards Bush, Highlands with 35,149 votes towards Bush, Hillsborough with 360,295 votes towards Bush, Lee with 184,377 votes towards Bush, Marion with 102,956 votes towards Bush, Osceola with 55,657 votes towards Gore, Pasco with 142,731 votes pretty close, leaning to Gore, Pinellas with 398,469 votes towards Gore and Sarasota County with 160,942 votes towards Bush.
Other style punch ballots are used in:
Miami-Dade with 625,443 votes towards Gore, Duval with 264,636 votes towards Bush, Sumter with 22,261 votes towards Bush, Martin with 62,013 votes towards Bush, Glades
with 3,365 votes towards Bush, Nassau with 23,581 votes
towards Bush nearly 3:1, DeSoto with 7,805 votes towards
Bush, Dixie with 4,666 votes towards Bush, Gilchrist with
5,395 votes towards Bush, Hardee with 6,233 votes towards
Bush, Indian River with 49,622 votes towards Bush, Jefferson
with 5,642 votes towards Gore, Madison with 6,162 votes
pretty close, and Wakulla with 8,587 votes towards Bush.
That is a total of 25 counties using punch ballots. Since the inequity of their count is solely assumed to be that chads are not thoroughly punched, they are all susceptable to the same inequities. Yet the Gore camp, in it’s high ground of EVERY VOTE COUNTS, only wanted the hand recount of four counties. Of all of those counties with punch ballots, there are 1,674,202 votes for Bush and 1,879,687 votes for Gore. However, Gore initially requested a hand count of 619,807 Bush votes and 985,095 Gore votes as an indication of the intent of the American people. As EVERY VOTE COUNTS.
Let me really underline the inequity here…
Well over 50% of the Florida population uses the punch ballot. Punch ballots are contested as inaccurate by the Democrats, however, they did not demand a hand count of all ballots, only the 1,604,902 that lean towards Gore. So the potential uncounted ballots’ intent of over half of the State will be decided by less than half of the population using punch card ballots (less than a quarter of the State’s population).
Further, the culmination of all those Counties using punch ballots sums to a 52:48 Democratic to Republican split. The paramount importance of counting voter intent for this significant portion of the State is being determined by less than half of their numbers with a 61:39 Democratic to Republican split on the counted ballots.
Assuming that the uncounted ballots are not prejudiced to Democrats moreso than Republicans, because such an allegation surely indicates either that A. Republican voters are stronger; B. Republican voters are smarter or C. Democratic vote counters are commiting fraud… This hand count is still in direct conflict with the assumption that every vote counts and that will of the people is of paramount importance.
It isn’t entirely Gore’s fault, he has offered a full hand recount and Bush turned down the offer. It is the courts’ fault now that they have used their interpretation of the law and their limited importance on the will of the people to help Gore along to office. Gore asked for a ruling on the appropriate counting of ballots, but his request was denied. That leaves it up to the Counties, who have recently decided that though at first they would not count dimples, since the swinging chads didn’t provide enough votes for a Gore win, they will go back and count the dimples in Broward County. Bravo! Way to steal an election, keep moving the chains, keep raising the hurdles, eventually you will assuredly change the course of the election and the “will of the people”.
This election has been the most horrific display of Partisanship and manipulation of the press and the law that I never hope to see again. Bush has no reason to concede Florida, nor does he have the power to do so, but I wish he would since it is obvious that no matter what happens, the Democratic Counties will find a way to make Gore the winner. It is a sad day for our Democracy. Our courts have become a Partisan mockery. Our politicians have become whiners. Someone revoke term limits!, Clinton wasn’t so bad after all.
No; I’m saying that at the earliest stages of this process, when there could be no argument that it was objective and not subject to interpretation from representatives of either party (the initial count and mandated re-count), Bush won.
The process has now moved to a situation where it is impossible for partisanship and subjectiveness to not be interjected.
Hell, when two of the Democratic-controlled counties TRIED to be impartial, saying they didn’t feel a hand-count was necessary after their initial review of ballots, they were pressured into doing so by threats of lawsuits from the Democratic National Committee. Their own party!
(Feel free to ignore all points I make and stamp “partisan ranting” on it. It furthers “The Agenda.”)
Well, if we’re going to claim that something is unconstitutional, why don’t we actually LOOK at the Constitution, shall we? Article II, Section I says, in part, this about “chusing” (that’s how it’s spelled, and that spelling is consistent throughout the original document) a President:
This section clearly says that each State may decide on its own how a member of the Electoral College may be chosen. And since it does not specifically forbid recounts, each State can, therefore, recount its votes all it wants as long as it has statutes on the books describing how those recounts may be conducted. (Remember, anything the Constitution does not specifically forbid is allowed.) Hell, for that matter, it does not specifically say that the Electors have to be chosen in a popular vote; it can be done by the Legislature itself. And if the election fails to determine a winner, look at what Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Code says:
Gore is no doubt hoping it won’t come to this, since the Florida Legislature is mostly Republican.
Besides, Millosarian why should any other state have a recount (other than New Mexico or Oregon, I mean)? Why should California, for example, have a hand recount of over 10,000,000 ballots since Gore received more than 1,200,000 more votes than Bush did? What would be the point?
You’re right. They’re supposed to interpret laws, decide which law takes precedence when two or more are in conflict and supposed to decide which laws are valid (i.e. constitutional). How did the Florida Supreme Court violate those three purposes?
(I am not a lawyer.)
jab1:
Trust me, I have a copy of the Constitution handy, and I thumb through it more than a little.
Let me direct you to the 14th Amendment, which you did not address. The relevant portion:
An argument can be made that Florida election law does not give equal protection and abridges the privileges of those voters whose ballots are not being specially evaluated and decided upon using different criteria than those upon which their ballot’s validity was decided.
Indeed, if Bush had followed the law and had manual, subjective hand recounts in his own hand-picked counties, the situation would still could be considered unconstitutional for the reasons I’ve outlined above.
The amendment notes that Congress has the power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce this article.
Anyone care to respond to my question of why an arbitrary 5 p.m. Sunday deadline is fair and appropriate, in that it specifically is designed to allow Gore-picked counties to finish recounts that in some cases weren’t started until a day or two ago; but a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline mandated by legislation is not?
I’ve opened up a new thread for anyone interested in critiquing the actual language of the FL Supreme Court decision, as opposed to arguing in generalities.
As I said there, I’ve read it through, and while I’m no lawyer, it seems pretty tightly reasoned to me. They had a conflict between statutes, and resolved it using the FL Constitution, FL S.Ct. precedent going back 25 years, and well-established standards for resolving statutory conflicts. If there’s a specific problem in their reasoning that anyone finds, I invite them over.
And I particularly invite DSYoung and SuaSponte for the benefit of their legal expertise, as well as their general good sense. (And any other juris doctors here who I’m not familiar with - I don’t mean to slight you; I just don’t post often enough, these days, to know who you are. My apologies.)
I had generally stayed out of the elections thread up to now, but finally feel compelled to post.
Milo stated:
Despite the logical explanation of constitutional law provided by other posters, you still have not identified how the vote counting violates the equal protection clause. Every voter, every candidate and every county had the opportunity to conduct a manual recount. All the equal protection clause provides in situations like this is equal opportunity. What is the argument that this scheme violates the equal protection clause, taking into account the equal opportunity given to every voter, vote, candidate and county?
P.S. I voted for Gore by the slimmest of margins (I don’t see that big a difference), but am hoping Bush wins after the recount because it will give us the most settled result, hopefully giving the country the best opportunity to move on after this is all done.
So maybe there is a conflict between Article II and Amendment 14? The Article allows each State to make whatever election laws it wishes, but the Amendment says they cannot “abridge” anyone’s “privileges.” Does that mean they cannot forbid anyone to vote? And yet many states do not allow felons to vote. Or the mentally incompetent.
How can they do that? They used “due process.” So it seems to me they can also use due process to decide which votes count and which ones do not and how to do recounts.
This just in: Miami-Dade has elected to count ONLY 10,750 “undervotes,” which are the ballots that the machines said had no vote at all. It means they will NOT recount all the votes cast on Election Day. They are doing this to meet the 5PM Sunday deadline.
[rhetorical mode]Why is it that the people who weep for “our Democracy” seem to show so little understanding of how the executive, judicial and legislative branches work to achieve the checks and balances we hold so dearly in “our Democracy?”[/rhetorical mode]
IMNSHO, our system has never worked better. In an incredibly close election for our nation’s highest office, disputed on both sides by heavily partisan state officials, we’ve seen hotly contested electoral issues resolved quickly, effectively and impartially through the legal resources available by law to each party. There is no military preparedness to step in “for the good of the country”, no evidence of widespread fraud, no panic in the streets, no rioting, market crashes or failure of government infrastructure.
Instead, we’ve had the expected baseless charges and jingoistic rhetoric from minor partisans of both sides. “Stealing elections”? “Partisan mockeries” of justice? “Unconstitutional Florida statutes”?
I don’t think so.
It’ll be gratifying to me if Bush, as expected, retains his lead after the recounts even though I’m a Gore-supporting liberal, for the simple reason that the Bush administration will then hold a more solid and validated claim to legitimacy than they would ever have afforded had they successfully prevented the recounts.
It would be even more gratifying for me to hear any Bush supporter admit that every action and statement made by Gore since November 7th can only help a Bush presidency! -Let me say that again: all of Gore’s actions since Election Day have served to set up legitimacy for George Bush, if he prevails in Florida, while if Gore prevails he can expect four years of “election stealing” rhetoric from conservative politicians and ditto-heads. Sure, Gore’s actions have been self-serving, but they’re good for the other guy, too, because he can then say “the will of the people has been reflected as accurately as possible.” And it sounds to me from Gore’s latest statement that he intends to support that view if Bush’s lead holds through Sunday.
“Dimpled” ballots count in Texas. And Republicans have been saying that “dimpled” ballots DON’T count in Florida.
If you’ll take the time to read the decision (it’s not all that long), you’ll note that the FL SC in fact DID suggest doing that during oral arguments. Bush turned it down once again. So how is that Gore’s fault?
As to how the Democratic and democratic positions differ, you haven’t explained that at all. You’ve simply noted that Gore wants to win. Care for another try at that one?
Not so fast there - you were going on about how the Democrats were cheating, falsifying ballots, and so forth, and I simply asked for any evidence you might have. You have not replied to that. OK, maybe you’re not partisanly ranting, maybe you’re just lying?
Well, it’s all over but the shouting and appealing.
Pres.-Elect by Intent Mr. Roboto is no doubt rehearsing his Let’s-all-heal-and-come-together-for-the-good-of-the-American-people lecture, with the excruciatingly precise enunciation we will be enduring for the next four loooooong years.
There can be no civil unrest until after the Superbowl, by which time everything will have been long settled.
If your ballot-counting friends down in Gore Country are as inattentive as you, Elvis, Buchanan might end up president.
Point to where I said, “The Democrats are doing [fill in the blank]” I made reference to allegations, and labeled them as such.
I (opinion here) find the number of allegations, and the slant of all of them to a particular side, troubling. Even if you are completely on the other side of it, and say the Republicans are making up every single allegation, it still proves my point.
Everything that has occurred in the past week has moved this to a realm where partisanship, subjectivity and potential for wrong-doing are introduced. It’s not moving closer to a fairer, more accurate count; it’s moving farther away from one.
I’ll refrain from telling you what I think you are for calling me a liar, out of deference to this forum.
So, Mr. I-Want-a-Cite, let’s see what you’ve got. What improprieties did I allege are absolutely going on? Other than the overriding one, that all of the maneuverings of this past week by the Gore camp are designed solely to overturn the election to him. That’s A)my opinion; and B)self-evident.
Nice try at diverting the argument, but why don’t you try to address these two points:
Everything that has occurred in the past week has moved this to a realm where partisanship, subjectivity and potential for wrong-doing are introduced.
Why is a Sunday 5 p.m. deadline fair, reasoned and impartial; but the Tuesday 5 p.m. one that was legislatively mandated wasn’t?
MOST RECENT DEVELOPMENT: Miami-Dade County decides to follow the law determining that they can’t hand recount all of their ballots in the allotted time given them by the Florida Supreme Court, as required by Florida election law. (Read it; you can’t count just part.)
The Gore camp’s immediate response? A threat to, you guessed it, take them to court to force them to continue to recount.
Sigh.