Examining the Florida election statute on challenging the results of an election.

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/laws/index.shtml

drill down to this section, and I can't see the reasoning behind these claims of favoritism. -------------------------------------------------------------------

102.168 Contest of election.--

(1) Except as provided in s. 102.171, the certification of election or nomination of any person to office, or of the result on any question submitted by referendum, may be contested in the circuit court by any unsuccessful candidate for such office or nomination thereto or by any elector qualified to vote in the election related to such candidacy, or by any taxpayer, respectively.

(2) Such contestant shall file a complaint, together with the fees prescribed in chapter 28, with the clerk of the circuit court within 10 days after midnight of the date the last county canvassing board empowered to canvass the returns certifies the results of the election being contested or within 5 days after midnight of the date the last county canvassing board empowered to canvass the returns certifies the results of that particular election following a protest pursuant to s. 102.166(1), whichever occurs later.

(3) The complaint shall set forth the grounds on which the contestant intends to establish his or her right to such office or set aside the result of the election on a submitted referendum. The grounds for contesting an election under this section are:

(a) Misconduct, fraud, or corruption on the part of any election official or any member of the canvassing board sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.

(b) Ineligibility of the successful candidate for the nomination or office in dispute.

(c) Receipt of a number of illegal votes or rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.

(d) Proof that any elector, election official, or canvassing board member was given or offered a bribe or reward in money, property, or any other thing of value for the purpose of procuring the successful candidate's nomination or election or determining the result on any question submitted by referendum.

(e) Any other cause or allegation which, if sustained, would show that a person other than the successful candidate was the person duly nominated or elected to the office in question or that the outcome of the election on a question submitted by referendum was contrary to the result declared by the canvassing board or election board.

(4) The canvassing board or election board shall be the proper party defendant, and the successful candidate shall be an indispensable party to any action brought to contest the election or nomination of a candidate.

(5) A statement of the grounds of contest may not be rejected, nor the proceedings dismissed, by the court for any want of form if the grounds of contest provided in the statement are sufficient to clearly inform the defendant of the particular proceeding or cause for which the nomination or election is contested.

(6) A copy of the complaint shall be served upon the defendant and any other person named therein in the same manner as in other civil cases under the laws of this state. Within 10 days after the complaint has been served, the defendant must file an answer admitting or denying the allegations on which the contestant relies or stating that the defendant has no knowledge or information concerning the allegations, which shall be deemed a denial of the allegations, and must state any other defenses, in law or fact, on which the defendant relies. If an answer is not filed within the time prescribed, the defendant may not be granted a hearing in court to assert any claim or objection that is required by this subsection to be stated in an answer.

(7) Any candidate, qualified elector, or taxpayer presenting such a contest to a circuit judge is entitled to an immediate hearing. However, the court in its discretion may limit the time to be consumed in taking testimony, with a view therein to the circumstances of the matter and to the proximity of any succeeding primary or other election.

(8) The circuit judge to whom the contest is presented may fashion such orders as he or she deems necessary to ensure that each allegation in the complaint is investigated, examined, or checked, to prevent or correct any alleged wrong, and to provide any relief appropriate under such circumstances. -------------------------------------------------------------

3(c)(d)(e) put it rather plainly, if there is any reason to believe the certified candidate got fewer votes than the candidate who was not certified, then the contest may proceed.

I think you will have a time getting around (c), if you read the sections on what is a legal vote in Florida. And I'd think having the co-chair of the Bush campaign as an election official would point towards (d) and (e), since she has been pushing for an ambassadors job in a Bush administration.

If there was no doubt, just why are we argueing? Why did Bush bother to send in the lawyers on day one? Why did Harris add three days to the deadline for absentee ballots, while refusing to change the deadline for county certification?

There is the link to the whole of the Florida election law, you guys show me where Gore or the courts have overstepped the bounds.

Besides trying to put the 'wrong' man in office, by figuring out how many votes were cast for him, I meant.

Oh, just a BTW. There has been a lot of vitrol poured around about Democrats being nasty in their comments on some of the Florida officials.

When Inhofe called the spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court 'a sweaty weasel', I suppose that was just being accurate or factual or whatever excuse you can come up with, right? Can't be wrong if he has that (R).

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

Answers

Paul:

It seems very clear from what you've posted that the law is attempting to correct an error introduced through mistake or misconduct. (c) Speaks of illegal votes accepted or legal votes rejected, yet nobody makes this claim. The claim is that, if we "interpret" creatively enough, we can *create* legal votes out of nonvotes. But according to procedures that have long been perfectly acceptable, we have rejected nonvotes as defined by those procedures.

(d) Talks about someone taking a bribe. No bribes have been alleged.

(e) Talks about other mistakes or irregularities.

Now, it sounds to me that you are interpreting (e) as authorizing an indefinite series of "fishing expedition" recounts in the hopes that, if the rules are bent far enough in the right counties, one of those recounts might reverse the outcome.

This is what Judges Lewis and Clark addressed directly. They said that the mere possibility of a different outcome is not a sufficient test. *Anything* is possible, and (sadly) all too likely when partisan people start divining votes by a laying on of the hands.

Instead, these judges said you need to show a substantial probability that there is some genuine indication of mistake, fraud, mechanical breakdown, or systematic error. This is a difficult test to meet -- they're saying you need some *reason* to recount stronger than "if we do it again by different rules, I might win".

Now, the FSC has an even more difficult burden. The circuit judge has made an evidentiary finding -- a determination of the facts. The FSC can't doubt those facts, they must find legal error. But there's not much legality involved here. There was either systematic fraud or machine failure or the like, or there was not. And there was not.

And as comes through loud and clear in the dissents, lacking either legal or factual grounds, the majority decided it on *political* grounds -- the "wrong man" won the 5 counts we've had so far, so let's keep counting!

This won't last a minute on review, and Wells says so.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

Paul,

Flint said it better than I could, so I'll make a different point. You have intrigued me from the beginning of this circus with your attitude toward the actions and comments of the two sides. You seem to feel that if you can find a few examples of similar actions on the side of the Republicans, that clears the Democrats of all charges.

By that logic, if I start a fire in the backyard that burns my neighbor's fence, I am part and parcel just as guilty as the arsonist who burns an entire neighborhood. That's ludicrous.

(We'll ignore the fact that you are obviously digging for examples to help blunt criticism of the Democrats -- and the fact that you must DIG to find them speaks volumes in and of itself[g].)

You aren't accounting for scale, severity or even extent. Aside from that claim that Republican workers had tampered with absentee ballot APPLICATIONS in two counties and a few other scattered charges (most unsupported), the Republicans have been accused of nowhere near the shennanigans of the Democrats down in Florida.

This is all an aside; a peripheral issue. The real problem here is that the Florida Supreme Court is mis-interpreting the very law that you cite (as Flint points out), which is actually quite clear.

Liberals, in general, feel that the courts should always be the final arbiters of any dispute. That this belief has now run head-on into the Constitution doesn't surprise me; I've been anticipating something like this for years. I just didn't know what form it would take.

And I still have to give you credit: of all the pre-election predictions that I read, you were bang-on. But the reason WHY it has become such the circus that you foresaw is because of the tension between the judicial and legislative branches in this country.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

A bow to Messrs Flint & Poole.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

And I'm going to make a no-brainer of a prediction: the US Supreme court is going to reverse the Florida court. The only questions are what the numbers will be (my guess: 6-3) and whether they will suggest sanctions against the four Florida justices who chose to ignore (read: flip a bird finger at) the previous USSC ruling.

The fact that a request for a stay was even granted, when I myself didn't see "irrepairable harm" in permitting the counting to continue, is a flag waving the USSC's intentions.

At some point in this fiasco, someone has got to have the moxie to point out that Florida voters were given clear instructions on how to mark a ballot, and that if they didn't follow those instructions, their votes wouldn't count. Let's hope the US Supreme Court does that (among other things).

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

You aren't accounting for scale, severity or even extent. Aside from that claim that Republican workers had tampered with absentee ballot APPLICATIONS in two counties and a few other scattered charges (most unsupported), the Republicans have been accused of nowhere near the shennanigans of the Democrats down in Florida.

Poole you are WRONG. Go check your facts sir. Even Lewis and Clark said there was misconduct, but to them it played no part in the will of the voter. Unfortunately, the Law as written, does not allow such judgements, especially in the area of absentee issues. The law in Florida handles these as priviledge and NOT a higher right and says so specifically.

In Leach's deposition he is clear, he added information where the law says it is illegal, a felony. He is also clear the Republican Party did very little publically to alert people to the fact the apps held a fatal error(gee wonder why). Why did they instead decide to send ONE guy to Seminole County to sit alone in a room for 12 hours a day, for 15 days adding voter registration numbers, two weeks passed the time the Election Department, by their own admission on their website, had already mailed out the absentee ballots? A guy who is the Director of the Northern Florida Republican Party area. A guy who claims he knew nothing 'bout no damn laws 'bout tampering(eye roll).

Leach was sent, and never sent help, because they knew what they were doing was flat-out illegal(imho). Go read his deposition. Ask yourself why he was allowed unsurpervised access to the ballot applications which had already been processed. Why was he even allowed to resubmit processed applications? The Election office was an accessory to illegal activities and has gotten away with it.

Why did it take him so long? What else was he adding or inserting? How many received absentee ballots who didn't even exist till Leach showed up? maybe a stretch and is, but does the fact Checkpoint handles the updating of Florida voter rolls give you a warm fuzzy feeling? Can you see the reason for the law?

October 10 is the cut-off to register to vote in Florida. Are late applicants allowed the same priviledge these Republican absentee voters were allowed?

Do you honestly think the Repubs ever in their wildest dreams thought what they did in Seminole county would ever come-out? I think they did indeed understand they had to correct these apps as they knew they needed every damn vote they could muster. Sending your NFlorida director to do clerical work does not indicate to me just a simple mistake or good faith effort. It indicates to me a POLICY of dirty tricks and win at all costs, legal or illegal.

What other horror stories go undetected? I bet a bunch.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

Doc:

First, nobody was talking about those absentee lawsuits. Second, those were purely nuisance suits, dangerous only because judges sometimes act unpredictably in a highly charged partisan environment. But very properly, the decision was "no harm, no foul" and since there was no harm, ANY remedy would have been harmful.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2000

Doc (and Flint),

Well, I brought up that absentee lawsuits against Republicans, and I don't deny that the judge found "misconduct." But note how much supposition we have here: we "KNOW" that there have to be other cases.

This reminds me of an email that I once received from a friend during the Clinton impeachment. The issue wasn't that Clinton had committed perjury; it was that Republicans were "just as bad." The discussion devolved back to the Iran-Contra thing against Reagan and Bush, and this friend said, in essense, "ah, you KNOW Reagan was guilty."

No, I don't know that and neither do you. It was never proven. In fact, I may shock you here: to this day, I'm not sure that O. J. Simpson is guilty of killing his wife and Ron Brown. There were things about the prosecutor's scenario that just didn't ring true to me (ex: he carefully disposed of the murder weapon and the clothes to avoid incriminating himself, then left a bloody sock on the floor of his bedroom. Duh.)

(At the very least, I believe that OJ had an accomplice. As a friend who was a Navy Seal pointed out, even HE would have trouble killing two people in the manner described. He'd need help. But that's an aside.)

For the same reason, I'm not sure that Reagan is guilty. Supposition and feelings and intuition have no place in the rule of law.

And NOW you see the problem in Florida, with video images of judges places ballots against their forehead and, like Carnak the Magnificent, saying, "it's a GORE vote." By DEFINITION, that is subjective supposition, an intent to read the voter's mind long after he/she has gone home. That's the VERY REASON why the rules say, "if there's ANY doubt, the ballot should get thrown out."

I'll keep repeating this until I'm blue in the face: we have standards and rules for mismarked and "undervoted" ballots for a reason. We CANNOT throw those rules out just because we don't like them. We need to change them for the NEXT election, but they have to stand for THIS one. Period.

And just for the record: the first lawsuits over the Florida election were filed by the Democrats, not the Republicans. Virtually all of the charges of vote fraud, such as illegal aliens voting, have been leveled against Democrats, not Republicans. Virtually all charges of ballot and chad tampering have been leveled against Democrats, not Republicans. And every case that Bush has filed in Florida has been in reaction to a Democrat suit or threat. He is certainly entitled to do that.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Stephen, OK, I can't resist replying to that nonsense.

Tell you what, have you even LOOKED at the statistics by precinct?

Have you even glanced at the number in the undervoted precincts?

Why do you think NO standard was acceptable for hand counts?

Get over the dimpled chads nonsense. Gore was undervoted by tens of thousands of votes.

How about Texas rules for counting? Too liberal? How about only counting three corners broken? Is that clear enough?

Don't you even realize that counting the partial hand count already done, in a tiny portion of Florida, plus using the REAL numbers from the machine count, instead of the numbers from the first count, as Harris allowed in cases where Gore gained, even allowing the illegally manipulated ballots by Republicans, gives Gore a clear win?

What do you want? Angels coming down from on high and anointing Gore before you admit he won the state?

You are getting what you wanted - a Republican in the White House. Quit trying to spin it to the point where you feel good about it. There is no such place.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Stephen Poole sir you have lost your mind.

OJ innocent??? Well sure in a botched LAPD criminal trial he sure was. A trial based partly on, shall we say, "creative" evidence. Civily he was taken to the cleaners, as he should have, cause he murdered two people(all by his crazed self).

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Paul:

[Gore was undervoted by tens of thousands of votes.]

This is purely a statement of faith, not supported by anything except wishful thinking. Undervotes are ballots with NO candidate selected. How can these be "Gore" undervotes but not "Bush" undervotes? Answer: It depends on who's counting and how. And we do NOT have ANY procedures in place for divining which candidate a nonvote was somehow "intended" to be for.

So we're back once again to Gore winning by *definition*, whereas Bush wins by mere *examination*. You continue to claim that we must create rules for examination to FORCE it to meet the definition. This is not generally considered good form.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Speaking of undervoting: I've always felt that this was perhaps the least ambiguous way to protest a race with no decent people running.

Let us suppose that a voter is totally disgusted with both Gore and Bush. Staying home can be misinterpreted as laziness or apathy. Voting for Nader, or Buchanan etc. can be misinterpreted as agreement with any of these candidates.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Paul,

What you can't seem to understand is that I disagree with the entire Democratic contention that "all votes haven't been counted." And that, my good friend, is DEMOCRATIC spin. It is disingenuous, it is misleading and it is inaccurate. Under Florida law, all *VALID* votes have been counted.

The operative word is VALID.

Let me repeat that: VALID. All VALID votes have been counted. Twice.

Further, each voter was INSTRUCTED to check his/her ballot to ensure that it would be VALID. They had the right and every opportunity to ask for help, or even to hold their ballot up to a precinct worker: "does this look like a clear Gore/Bush/Buchanan vote to you?"

I will repeat this as many times as I have to. Just as I refused to play the "compliance" game during the Y2K debate, I'm not going to play this game. It's CRITICAL for you to understand this, or you're not going to understand where I'm coming from.

See? When you say, "the whole state should be hand recounted!" I say, "where's the evidence that the machines clearly failed to count large numbers of *VALID* votes, which were clearly marked by the voter?"

You want to leave out the last half of that sentence. I'm not going to do that, so we will continue to disagree.

And I'm sorry, my crappie-huntin' friend, but I have the law on MY side; I have precedent; and I have history. This is a completely unprecedented thing that the Democrats are trying to do down in Florida. The liberal Florida Supreme Court will let them get away with it, but not the US Supreme Court.

You are getting what you wanted - a Republican in the White House. Quit trying to spin it to the point where you feel good about it. There is no such place.

I won't feel good about it, but not because of anything Bush has done (I make a small exception for Republican efforts in general out in New Mexico). Bush has been forced to defend himself against that which anyone who believes in the rule of law and precedent should believe: that if the ballot ain't legally marked, it CANNOT be counted.

Paul, I've been hangin' around elections since I was a kid, and that's the way it has ALWAYS been done. No court, prior to the Florida Supreme Court in this election, has EVER played Carnak the Magnificent with ballots.

Gore is the one who wants to count illegal and spoiled ballots, not Bush. He will do anything to get into the White House, or barring that, to adopt a scorched Earth policy and completely discredit a Bush presidency.

If that makes YOU feel good about Democrats, well, that's your opinion. I flatly disagree with it.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Errington,

Do you hear the angelic choir? We actually agree here. :)

I'm a registered Democrat from a long line of Democrats, on back to my great-granddaddy David Scott Poole, who served in the NC Legislature way back when. On top of that, we're an old Southern family with strong Southern feelings. Given what the Repubs did to us during Reconstruction, it was hard, before my generation, to find a Poole who'd EVER vote for a Republican.

And yup, if they didn't agree with the Democratic candidate for President, that's exactly what they did: they'd go in and vote for school board, county commission, city council, etc., etc. ... but they'd leave the Presidential ballot blank. They couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Republican, but they couldn't support the Democrat, either; so, NO VOTE.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

To Stephen Poole:

My primary concern, and I'm sure you share it, is that we have a President whose victory doesn't leave half the country feeling utterly screwed.

Let's hope that the Supreme Court speaks clearly enough, whatever it decides, to help bring this about.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Peter:

I don't think any court can do this. Not even a unanimous USSC saying the FSC was clearly in error and in flagrant disregard of both law and fact.

I say this because Gore's PR campaign is founded on the *definition* of nonvotes as Gore votes. He can say that "the will of ALL the voters" means having nonvotes reinterpreted ONLY in heavily Democratic counties where democrats are in charge of the recount procedures, and get away with it ONLY because he knows there are people out there like Paul and Doc Paulie who will swallow it gladly. He can publicly support cases where Democrats are trying to disenfranchise Republican voters because of irregularities in the ballot *application*, and the Paul and Paulie types suddenly (and very selectively) forget about "the will of all the voters".

And the PR people understand this very well. People are absolute *masters* at seeing what they choose to see, making them easy to play like hand puppets. Just read the original post on this thread, where Paul Davis is trying to equate enforcement of a legal deadline with taking a bribe! Rational? No. Self-serving? Extremely. The reason you can fool some of the people all of the time is, they've already done it to themselves.

Legitimacy, I believe, will ultimately be a function of how convicing one candidate or the other can be in conceding that he has genuinely lost. As the old saying goes, if you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Flint,

Likewise with voter registration. Some people just don't understand this; they'll try to vote, and when they're turned away because they haven't been properly registered to vote in that precinct, they'll scream bloody murder.

Now: this seems like a pickayune legal point. It makes great pictures on the telly, too: we have some poor elderly lady whining into the camera about how her "constitutional right to vote" was denied. Why, that would have been a vote for Gore, too! The injustice of it all!

But registration is required for several reasons. The biggest is that it helps ensure that I vote for MY local officials, and not yours.

(Actually, I'd like to GIVE you the Birmingham city council, but Huntsville might start running backwards.[g])

And here's the point: most politicians on BOTH sides know perfectly well how this works, because they have to follow a pretty detailed set of rules just to get on the ballot. So ... when you see a politicritter agreeing with that elderly lady, you are looking at a disingenuous politician. He (or she) very likely helped craft the very laws that prevent this elderly lady from voting, and yet, he'll appear sympathetic for the cameras!!!

So with this "vote - novote" thingie. They KNOW the rules. They know the law. But it's irresistable to use that "will of the people" mantra because it just sounds so good to the average American, who DOESN'T understand the intricacies of election law and procedure.

It's pure disingenuity, plain and simple.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

God talk about a circle-jerk.

Poole and clones your whole premise rests on some assumption them paper-ballot systems are as accurate as they HAVE TO BE in an election where the margin is 150 or 1200, it ain't even close to that reliable or accurate. Adding to the confusion was a badly laid-out ballot in a major voting county.

Go do at least SOME reasearch on Votomatic type systems, PLEEZE!!! Hell even the ballots that one actually marks a bubble with a marker is beyond the accuracy needed in this close election. I will give you them votes, but the punch-card ones absolutely ALL have to be hand- counted. And unfortunately many will require 3 knuckleheads to interpret to what if anything the voter meant.

Look, Florida is a mess. The sooner all that can be done is, the sooner we can all get on to more productive life experiences. NOBODY is going to feel anything was laid to rest unless what Al Gore asks for, and has legal standing for, is allowed to happen, a full recount, including looking at the ballots which the machine registered nothing for.

Unlike you, I have not seen him as being unreasonable.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Doc,

Poole and clones your whole premise rests on some assumption them paper-ballot systems are as accurate as they HAVE TO BE in an election where the margin is 150 or 1200

That's not so. A few days ago, Flint made the point (and I agreed with him) that the real problem down in Florida is that the margin of victory is below the "granularity" (his word) of the system. I wonder if ANY system is accurate enough, out of 6 million cast, to resolve a difference of a few hundred votes.

But the answer isn't to try to determine "voter intent" on ballots that are not clearly marked. The answer is to follow the Constitution and let the legislative branches (federal and Florida) determine the winner.

Doc, the founders of this country *KNEW* that there would be disputed elections. They knew that there would be ties, fraud and all that other stuff. The remedy that they provided was LEGISLATIVE, not JUDICIAL.

Adding to the confusion was a badly laid-out ballot in a major voting county.

My turn to say, "pleeeze." That's old news, it has already been blown away by countless demonstrations of 8 year olds successfully choosing a candidate from similar ballots.

And voter responsibility comes into play here, too. IF you don't understand the ballot, ask a precinct worker for help. That's why they're there!

Yeah, that sounds mean, doesn't it? But that's how the system has always worked, and it has never been challenged as it has in this election -- solely because we have a sore loser who doesn't want to accept defeat.

Go do at least SOME reasearch on Votomatic type systems, PLEEZE!!!

I have. They suck. They're awful. The people in those precincts should holler for something better. Where have I argued otherwise? Show me the post.

In fact, I agreed with Paul and Cherri that they should be replaced. The disagreement here is what the remedy should be for THIS election.

but the punch-card ones absolutely ALL have to be hand- counted .... NOBODY is going to feel anything was laid to rest unless what Al Gore asks for, and has legal standing for, is allowed to happen, a full recount, including looking at the ballots which the machine registered nothing for.

This is the crux of our disagreement. If a precinct chooses to use machine voting, they do so knowing up front that the machines have a certain level of inaccuracy. Doc, HAND-COUNTING has a level of inaccuracy, too.

My contention is that what's happening in Florida is totally unprecedented. I could be wrong. Find me a case where anything like the level of recount demanded in Florida has ever been done.

Remember, I'm not talking about cases where the machines were shown to have failed outright. And by that, I mean we demonstrate it: I stick in a ballot that is clearly punched according to the rules and and the machine says, "I dunno."

I have NEVER heard of an election where that is the case and yet hand recounts have been mandated. Find me one. Or -- put another way -- are you going to be stunned if the Supreme Court rules that paper ballots which are not clearly and unambiguously marked cannot be counted? :)

And I have to say this.

I'm not the one with the meme, Doc. You have resorted to name-calling, ridiculing those who disagree with you and worse. Find one post here where I have done that.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Typo: I have NEVER heard of an election where that WASN'T the case ...

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

"someone has got to have the moxie to point out that Florida voters were given clear instructions on how to mark a ballot, and that if they didn't follow those instructions, their votes wouldn't count..."

Can't remember if it was Poole or Flint who stated tha above, but I have to address it because by FLorida precedent alone, such votes have been counted in the past, hanging chads and all. Much of election law, and the disputes which arise in contests, focuses on what happened before in similar circumstances. If the above qoute were true and were to be enforced, then we would have to wipe off the books all the statutes in all the states that specify how undervotes are to be recounted. What you are stating above is that you believe there should NEVER be a manual recount of undervotes, because in EVERY case of an undervote there is voter error.

It has been shown that due to chad build up, or softening of the rubber, problems DO arise in these punchcard machines.

If we were to redefine what a "legal" vote was, we would be open to a world of pain, as we have yet to find an election scheme in which undervotes(maybe Oregon?) are not a problem.

And FLint, you have been on a roll with worries about partisanship in finding the clear intent of the voter-I am sorry that you are so skeptical that the mere fact of a democratic canvassing board reviewing ballots means they will "cast" votes for their party. The whole sad story of the republicans in this case is that they continue to claim this, yet have provided no evidence of actual fraud.

They just keep running to the courts claiming misapplied standards, and equal protection violations, but have not filed any contest alledging fraud. This is because they have no evidence.

If we go by the above qoute, and believe that there is not a SINGLE undervote, or overvote for that matter, that is a legal vote, then the republicans are correct.

If we leave any legal votes on the table, as legal votes have been defined in previous FLorida elections and election contests, then it really is a sorry state.

As someone said on the tube last night-the winner of FLorida, at this point, is an existential question.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

FS,

I need to see a reference to an election where dimpled chads and the like were accepted as valid. In the Illinois case cited by Gore in his first trip to the Fla Supreme Court, the judge ruled that these types of ballots could NOT be counted, because determining voter intent was too subjective.

There are some special cases that are not analogous here. In this case, the machines basically performed as expected; Gore simply wants to do a hand count because he believes the machines "undercounted" his total.

If you've listened to the oral arguments before the US Supreme Court (I was listening on the way home for lunch), this very thing came up. Harris' attorney pointed out that the only time that ballots are examined as closely as they have been in Florida is when the ballots themselves have been damaged (for example, a leaky roof, a machine ate them, something like that). In those cases, precinct workers sometimes have to use special methods to arrive at "voter intent."

The USSC is in a box, too. They don't want to be seen as interpreting Florida statues. That's supposed to be the Florida Supreme Court's job. Thus, they would naturally want to do what they did last time: admonish the Fla Supremes and remand the case back for corrections.

But since they've already done that once and Florida has basically ignored them, there's no telling what will happen. I believe Wells had this in mind when he said (in his dissent) that their decision could even cause damage to "the institution of this court."

The Supreme Court has the authority -- rarely used, but it's there -- to bring Thor's hammer down on the Florida court. For example, they could rule that the Fla supremes will hear no further appeals on this election; that the process will either stay in the circuits or bypass the Florida supremes and head straight for Washington.

Boy, THAT would be a mess. I personally hope they don't do that.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Stephen wrote, "if they didn't follow those instructions, their votes wouldn't count." That's exactly what Justice Day asked Boies; he replied that even if they didn't follow the rules (I believe the example of someone laying the ballot on top as opposed to into the slot), their vote should still count. Huh? Why bother with rules, if people don't need to follow them?

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

No Poole you don't just call one a moron, you are not that candid/honest. Your style is a condescending tone that only you good- old boys know whats up, we'll you don't.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Doc wrore, "Do you honestly think the Repubs ever in their wildest dreams thought what they did in Seminole county would ever come-out?" Doc, you need to keep up. The journalist who broadcast the story on 10/30/00 was deposed. During deposition, he explained that all the details of what had occured was reported on the news. When the judge asked the dem lawyer, why he didn't do anything then, the lawyer replied, "it was too late". The dems knew about this little crime at least a week before the election. The republicans broadcasted it. It was out a long time ago but the dems really didn't think it would matter.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Appreciate a link if you have one Maria.

From your analysis it makes perfect sense. It also shows me a clear understanding the Dems knew long ago what they faced in the Jeb run state of Florida. "It was too late", as the final outcome showed. Laws don't seem to matter much these days.

Clear criminal acts of voter fraud were allowed to go-on. Courts ruled they played no part in direct opposition for their existence, with no evidence other than hopes they played no part, they played law makers.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

BTW Maria, the before the election part takes on a much different meaning when you understand these were absentee ballots. Most of which were cast long before the actual election day. You do understand that don't you?

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000