On Mar 31, 12:29 pm, wrote:
On Mar 31, 1:45 pm, (Doug Miller) wrote:

In article . com, wrote:

The FLSC was trying to rewriteFloridalaw to conform
to the 14th amendment. The USSC concurred 7 - 2
that theFloridaelectionas it then stood did not meet
the equal protection requirements of the Constitution.

That's absolute nonsense; in fact, it's the exact *opposite* of what happened.

Nonsense.



The FLSC was trying to rewriteFloridaelectionlaw to conform to its own
preconceived ideas of how theelection"should" turn out, including (among
other things) the assertion that when theFloridalegislature enacted a law
mandating certification ofelectionresults in seven days, it really "meant"
sevenTEEN.

Here you are confusing two different USSC decisions. Florida
law allowed for both a protest and a contest. I don't remember
which of these was first, but the first one was limited to 7 days.

The protest period is first, the contest of the certification is
second.

Bush sued repeatedly to stop the counting so that it could
not be completed in the requisite 7 days.

Bush could not get a single court to stop the recount.

The USSC upheld the decision to end the protest (or contest,
whichever was first) after 7 days,

As they should have, BUT, this decision came AFTER the 7 day period,
AND the extra 11 days added by the Florida Supreme Court.

The USSC found that the FSC violated the law by rewriting the protest
statute.

even though the counting
had been stopped several times during that period. The
argument for extending the deadline was based in part on the
several injunctions that had stopped the counting during the
seven day period.

FALSE. No injunctions were ever issued. NONE.

An analogy would be that a defendant doesn't
get to argue that he didn't receive a speedy trial if HE requested
a continuance. The argument for not extending the deadline
was that another remedy existed inFloridalaw--the contest.

Analogy based on a false premise.

That was the firstFloridaelectioncase to reach the
USSC in 2000.

The 5-4 decision that ultimately decided theelectionin favor
of Bush

FALSE. Bush v. Gore was decided on 12/12/2000. Bush was ALREADY the
winner of the state by that time. There was NO court remedy available
to Gore for him to win Florida. He had to face Congress to win.

relied (for the first time ever) on the Constitutionally
mandated voting date (so called 'safe harbor' date) of the
electoral college as its basis for enjoining further counting,
NOT anyFloridalaw.

FALSE. EVERY Democrat member (6 of 7) of the Florida Supreme Court,
and Al Gore himself, agreed that Florida Code REQUIRED these election
disputes to settled in the state by the safe harbor date. That IS
Florida Law.

During both the protest and the contest the Bush team
employed the same tactic, repeatedly obtaining injunctions

FALSE. Only one injunction was ever issue. That came on 12/9/2000.
"Repeatedly" is a bunch of BS.

to stop the counting until some deadline was reached.
'Counting' not 'recounting' because one county had a large
number of ballots that were not machine readable and were
never even examined until after the inauguration.

Again, FALSE. These ballots were spread all across the state, not "one
county".

Further, under Florida case law, these are NOT LEGAL ballots. Before
the 2000 election, the Florida Courts had REFUSED to order recounts
for ballots that were spoiled by the voter.

I say for the first time ever because the Consitution also
mandates that the newly elected Congress decides which
Electoral votes are 'regularly given'.

And in this case, that is exactly what happened. The Democrats in the
House lost a challenge to Bush's Florida electors because not a single
Senator in the Democrat controlled US Senate would sign on.


The Congress has
twice, in 1877 and in 1961 accepted Electoral Votes
cast after the day on which the Electoral College was
supposed to meet and vote. Indeed, in 1877 the Congress
rejected votes cast ON that day.

Thus relying on the 'safe harbor' date was specious as
the Constitution allows the Congress to ignore it anyways.

Why doesn't the Florida Legislature have a right to enact election
code in the manner they wish?? Why doesn't Article II of the US
Constitution apply to the state of Florida??

The 7-2 vote by the USSC held that the recounts
as being conducted violated the law.

Yes.

In so doing they affirmed the FLSC decision
which also found that the recounts were being
conducted in violation of the law.

FALSE. The FLSC ordered the recounts that were in violation of the
law. The FLSC said those counts were legal, the USSC didn't affirm
this, they OVERTURNED the FLSC orders.

Specifically the equal protections clause of the
14th Amendment was being violated by only
recounting some votes in some counties
and by the use of different methods in
some counties, though some of the justices
may not have concurred on every point.



The difference wa that the USSC also issued an injunction
5 - 4, prohibiting remedy.

Wrong again. The 5-4 vote forced the recounts -- previously held illegal by a
7-2 vote -- to be stopped. Justices Souter and Breyer voted with the majority
that the recounts were being conducted in violation of the law; then, later
the same day, voted to allow them to continue anyway.

False.

Recounting votes per se did not violate the equal protection
clause. It was the manner in which the recounting (or for that
matter the first counting) was done that violated the equal
protection clause. For example, some counties used paper
ballots that were marked with a black marker and optically
scanned. Some of those 'prescanned' the ballots for the
voters to check for errors and offered the voter a second chance
if the ballot was unreadable or had other errors (e.g. over or
under votes) detected.

FALSE, that is not part of the 7-2 decision. In fact, the court ruled
that this was NOT a violation of equal protection. The people are free
to choose what type of voting system they wish.

Thus some voters had a better
chance of having their vote counted than others, violating
the equal protection clause.

When the FLSC allowed some counties to include the overvote, while
ignore others, that is a violation of equal protection. When the FLSC
allowed IDENTICALLY marked ballots from IDENTICAL machines to be
scored in a different manner, that is a violation of equal protection.
Afterall, IDENTICALLY marked ballots MEAN THE SAME THING.

You are aware, aren't you, that *every* recount taken post-electionshowed
Gore lost?

You are aware, aren't you, that the circumstances
met the requirements inFloridalaw that permitted
recounts under both the contest and the protest
yet Bush successfully sued to stop them so that
the only recounts that were completed were completed
after the inauguration?

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that those
recounts were being conducted illegally.

Yes, for the reasons I stated.

The 5-4 ruling prohibited any attempt to count them
in accordance with the law, by stopping them from
being counted at all.

Florida Code does not allow for recounts for voter error. How can
recount be in accordance with the law IF those are NOT LEGAL
BALLOTS????

Aside from confabulating the two cases your attempt
to spin the decision into a declaration that it was
illegal to recount ballots in a disputedelection
would be remarkable had I not already become a
ccustomed to such nonsense from you.

"(f) Prior practice before this election, which was not to do a manual
recount because of the claim that a county's machines were failing to
count partially perforated or indented chads. See Transcript of Oral
Arg. in Bush, at 39-40 (concession of Florida Attorney General that no
county had previously done so). For example, in Broward County
Canvassing Board v. Hogan, 607 So.2d 508, 509 (Fla. 4th DCA 1992), the
board recognized that "voter error in piercing of computer ballot
cards created loose or hanging paper chads." But the board declined to
do a manual recount even though two machine counts indicated a margin
of 3-5 votes. "Such voter errors, the board explained, are caused by
hesitant piercing, no piercing, or intentional or unintentional
multiple piercing of computer ballot cards, creating what are referred
to as overvotes and undervotes. The board thereupon declined
appellee's request for a recount". Id. (emphasis added). Thus, before
this election, the fact that a request for a manual recount was based
on incompletely perforated chads was considered not just insufficient,
but an affirmative reason to reject a manual recount because the
request was based on voter error rather than on machine or ballot
defects."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/floridahouse.pdf

Even Gore's own Florida Campaign Chair admitted that this was not a
type of recount that had EVER been conducted in the state of Florida.

And you are correct, those showed that Gore lost
the popular vote inFlorida.

Yep.

I also have little doubt that had the situation been reversed
we would have seen essentially the same cases with
the same arguments but with Gore as plaintiff and Bush
as defendant. I am less confident, however, that the decisions
would have been the same in any of the courts.

It would have been tragic if the votes had been miscounted
so as to change the result in favor of Gore, just as it would
be for anyelectionto be miscounted producing an incorrect
result regardless of the comparative qualities of the candidates.

The tragedy we actually endured instead was a direct result
of the will of the electorate. Consider that as VP Gore chaired
a commission on airline security that, among other things,
recommended that airliner cockpit doors be closed and locked
at takeoff and remain that way during flight other than when
authorized persons were entering an leaving cockpit. How likely
do you suppose it would have been for Gore, as President, to
have tabled a rule he himself had recommended a year before?

How likely do you think it would have been for a Gore
administration to remove bin Laden's name from the State
Department's list of international terrorists or to abandon
the attempts to kill or capture him and disband the
program to track him. Some people, of course, will say
they are 100% confident he would have done those things
or worse. Such people are the real reason he was not
elected President.

--

FF