OT: Civil War Narrowly Averted in Schiavo Case

In <Gb06e.17352$1S4.1750794@news.xtra.co.nz>, on 04/10/05
at 02:28 PM, Terry Given <my_name@ieee.org> said:

learning@learning.com wrote:
In <425429b1$0$43992$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, on 04/06/05
at 06:25 PM, "Roger Johansson" <no-email@no.invalid> said:


learning@learning.com wrote:


Democracy is "rule by the majority" while a republic is founded upon a
Constitution, wherein the rules and rights of individuals are
'preset' and unchangeable.

Well, you are most welcome to your position, but you will find that many
consider the Constitution to be inspired by God, so yes, even if it is
"old" I have not seen anything better come along.

religious nonsense. "the boogeyman did it" Yeah, Right. A shame really,
you're doing fine with rational arguments.

I never will understand how people get by in usenet who cannot read, or
who simply react with a knee jerk.

I never said "I" believed it. I never said it was true that "God inspired
the Constitution" I only said that some people consider God to have had
a hand in it. Do you dispute the fact that some people believe it, or do
you just want to argue religion? There is a big difference.

Why do you condemn my words as "a shame?" They are true, in that some
people do believe it. All I did was state a fact. Nothing more, nothing
less. Your personal opinion of God is not relevant to anything that I
said. Only fools argue in usenet for, or against the existence of God.

JB

 

[Mark Cook]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.22.30.46.718109@comast.net...

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:11:19 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.05.00.40.997799@comast.net...
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 07:43:41 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Ignoring 'overvotes' is proper by every state law that I know of...
multiple votes VOID a ballot.


Actually, it's valid in Florida, unless those guys at CommonDreams are
lying.

Fla. Stat. 101.5614(6) (2000)

"(6) If an elector marks more names than there are persons to be
elected to an office or if it is impossible to determine the elector's
choice, the elector's ballot shall not be counted for that office, but
the ballot shall not be invalidated as to those names which are properly
marked."

David Boies, Gore's attorney, argued before the US Surpreme Court that
he did not challenge the overvoted ballots because they were not legal
votes.

Your quote contradicts the legislature in Florida, which ruled that the
only legal standard for counting votes was 'the clear intent of the
voter'. The fact that the Florida Supreme Court did not change this to
some clearer standard was the basis of the US Supreme Court's final
decision.

http://washburnlaw.edu/faculty/glashausser-a.htm

A few years ago, I read an article by Professor Alex Glashausser of Washburn
University School of Law. He was discussing laws concerning the Palm Beach
County butterfly ballots.

In the article, he said "Don't analyze a statutory phrase in a vacuum. When
interpreting statutes, students often rush to home in on superficially
relevant discrete phrases, ignoring broader context."

Clear intent of the voter is not a counting standard. The counting standards
are the rules that are used to determine the "clear intent of the voter".
Before the 2000 election, no county had ever counted a dimpled chad as a
legal vote. It took more than a dimpled chad to determine the "clear intent
of the voter".

The Florida Legislature has also said that these counting standards are to
be uniform across the state.

"(c) Any manual recount must be completed in accord with standards for
counting chards that are uniform across the counties. The Legislature has
directed: "The Department of State shall adopt rules prescribing standards
for ballots used in electronic or electromechanical voting systems. Such
standards shall ensure that ballots are counted in a uniform and consistent
manner and shall include, without limitation, standards for the ... Scoring
of ballots. FLA. STAT.§101.5609(8) (emphasis added). See also
FLA.STAT.§97.012 (the Secretary of State shall "Obtain and maintain
uniformity in the application, operation, and interpretation of the election
laws)."

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

As Judge Sauls noted, Palm Beach County changed it's counting standards. He
also noted that those changes could be considered a change in Florida
Election Code, thus would allow Congress to disqualify the state from the
elector college election.

"Having done so, Plaintiffs are estopped from further challenge of this
process and standards. It should be noted, however, that such process and
standards were changed from the prior 1990 standards, perhaps contrary to
Title III, Section (5) of the United States code."

http://www.quarterly-report.com/election_2000/sauls_opinion.html

The SCotUS found that not only had Palm Beach County changed their
standards, so had Miami-Dade.

Justice Souter writing:

"But evidence in the record here suggests that a different order of
disparity obtains under rules for determining a voter's intent that have
been applied (and could continue to be applied) to identical types of
ballots used in identical brands of machines and exhibiting identical
physical characteristics (such as "hanging" or "dimpled" chads). See, e.g.,
Tr., at 238-242 (Dec. 2-3, 2000) (testimony of Palm Beach County Canvassing
Board Chairman Judge Charles Burton describing varying standards applied to
imperfectly punched ballots in Palm Beach County during precertification
manual recount); id., at 497-500 (similarly describing varying standards
applied in Miami-Dade County); Tr. of Hearing 8-10 (Dec. 8, 2000)
(soliciting from county canvassing boards proposed protocols for determining
voters' intent but declining to provide a precise, uniform standard). I can
conceive of no legitimate state interest served by these differing
treatments of the expressions of voters' fundamental rights. The differences
appear wholly arbitrary."

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD1.html

The fact that there were contradictory rules was the real problem.
However, the Florida supreme court were put in a pickle. They couldn't
rule on the statement above, and set some clearer standard, because they
were not allowed to change the law after the election without being
overturned. Their ruling to continue recounts was upholding the existing
law (the declaration above).

(b) "Any manual recount cannot count dimpled or pregnant chads. If a manual
recount is done, it should not count a ballot as a vote unless the ballot
left a "clear indication of the intent of the voter as determined by the
canvassing board." FLA.STAT.§101.5614(5). See also FLA.STAT. §102.166(7)(b).
This was previously determined by the only canvassing board to address the
issue before this election, Palm Beach County, as meaning that chads could
only be counted as votes if at least two corners were detatched, and not if
the chad was merely dimpled or pregnant. See: Petitioner Exh. J. Prior to
this election, no Florida county board had ever counted a dimpled or
pregnant ballot as a vote."

All the Florida Supreme Court had to do was enforce the practices before the
2000 election. "Prior to this election, no Florida county board had ever
counted a dimpled or pregnant ballot as a vote."

Of course, if they upheld this principle, then there would be no need for a
recount. And the fact, Florida Case law says that recounts to find dimpled
or hanging chads are not required.

"(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

The US supreme court, however, decided that, in this particular case, and
no other (there are 33 other states that use the same wording as Florida)
that the above declaration of the legislature wasn't precise enough to be
valid. Thus, because the supreme court in florida did not come up with a
better standard, they can't use such an imprecise wording to be the basis
of a decision that the recount continue.

The upshot was that Bush was declared the victor by default, since his
(diminishing) lead was still something like 150 votes.

First, Bush had already been declared the victor BEFORE this recount. In
other words, he held Florida's Electors, and there was nothing that the
courts could do about to resend the state's certification.

Second, it is not by "default", Congress had the authority to remove Bush's
slate of electors (3 U.S.C. section 15), move the race into the US House,
and elect Gore to the white house.

Gore can win with or without the ruling in Bush v. Gore. The key was the US
House. If Gore could not win in the US House, he can't win the election no
matter how many "recounts" that he wins.

Third, the majority of the Judges/Justices who heard Gore v. Harris I and
II, along with SCotUS found that the counting standards would have would not
meet constitution scrutiny. Using an arbitrary counting standard does not
prove that Bush's lead was "diminishing".

Yet another issue with the US supreme court was that Both Scalia and
Thomas had personal stakes in Bush winning; Scalia's sons were laywers for
bush, and Thomas' wife was also working for bush, preparing for the
administration. Thus, either one or both of them should have recused
themselves. The fact that they didn't is scandalous.

The logic here fails because the court has NO AUTHORITY to give the elect to
either Bush or Gore. The Constitution give Congress the exclusive right to
count legal slates of the electors. Congress has said that they way they are
going to do this in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

There is no conflict of interest because the court cannot determine the
winner of the state of Florida. Only Congress has that authority.

http://www.iknowwhatyoudidlastelection.com/bush-supreme-court.htm

----
Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Mark Cook]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.23.18.58.515630@comast.net...

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:38:05 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.05.21.38.364463@comast.net...
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:25:51 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
I don't want to get into a brawl here, but analysis after the fact
of the 2000 election pointed out that Gore would have won Florida
had the US supreme court not overruled the Florida supreme court.

That is what the media would like for you to think, but if you check
out the NORC, you will find that they did not check all of the
disputed ballots. There were as many as 179,855 disputed ballots, the
NORC checked 175,010 of those ballots. A partial recount by the media
does not prove Gore would have won.

It also doesn't prove that he would not have.

You are completely missing the point of the study. It was not to prove
who won or lost, it was to study the problems with the voting systems
used in the state.



So, you are saying that it doesn't prove that Gore would not have won?

The recount is not based in the reality of the situation. They didn't even
recount all of the disputed ballots, nor did they use the their own results
from all of the counties, i.e. they accepted the official results. That
means that all of these 9 counting scenarios are compromised because they
could not apply those "standards" to all the ballots in all of the counties.
Arbitrary recounts do not prove who won or who lost.

Gore could win all of those "counting scenarios", but that would NOT
have proven that he won because those scenarios MUST be in compliance
with 3 U.S.C. section 5, or they would have been disqualified by the US
House.

Bush won under the existing laws of the state of Florida, thus those
were the legal slate of electors.

Actually, this is untrue. The existing laws in Florida were ruled invalid.
That is the basis the US Supreme Court used to stop the recount.

False. The SCotUS did not invalidate any of Florida's Election Codes, they
reversed a Florida Supreme Court ruling that ignored Fla. Stat.§101.5609(8),
and both the Florida and US Constitution.

The recount as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated 3 U.S.C.
section 5, thus if that count would have been allowed to continue, the
results would have been invalid.

The (renewed) recount was an attempt to carry out the election according
to Florida state law, which had been made prior to the election. Thus, the
supreme court ruling was, in effect, a statement that Florida cannot
choose how it carries out it's elections. However, no other states amongst
the 33 others which use wording identical to that which the us supreme
court objected to were included in the ruling.

The court did not object to "clear intent of the voter", they objected to
the fact that the court ignored the laws that said the counting standards
should be uniform.

The point wasn't to make law, or to rule on law. The point was to stop the
recount, which was slowly eroding GW Bush's precarious lead.

A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not prove that Bush's
lead was eroding.

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of no legitimate state interest
served by these differing treatments of the expressions of voters'
fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly arbitrary."

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD1.html

The point is that the
Supreme Court stepped in, against all expectations, to overturn the
Florida Supreme Court.

As they should have. The Constitution does not allow for a state court
to rewrite state election law, that is a violation of Article II of the
US Constitution.



I've already pointed out that the ruling to continue the recount was an
effort to *uphold* Florida state law, as rendered by the state legislature
prior to the election.

In effect, the US Supreme Court indicated that ANY attempt by the Florida
Supreme Court to make any ruling on this matter might have changed the
rules under which the post ruling votes were recounted. Thus, the votes
counted before were not interpreted identially due to the equal protection
clause.

The state legislature did not see their actions as an effort to "uphold"
Florida Code. Here is the amicus brief filed by the legislature listing the
violations of Florida Code by the court.

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

However, two of the dissenting justices (Souter and Breyer) believed that
a constitutional recount could be done. Two others, (Ginsberg and Stevens)
believed that for reasons of Federalism, the FSC ruling should be
respected, and that it was (because it was an attempt to count every vote,
which is required by the constitution) actually in accord with the US
constitution. The quote I posted earlier (and again below) is from that
last minority opinion.

The five remaining justices decided that there was not enough time to
perform an adequate recount,

Which upheld the 7 members of the Florida Supreme Court. IF we are to
believe the Federalism argument, then the safe harbor date deadline by the
Florida Supreme Court was a CONSTITUTIONAL deadline for the submission of
election results.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways. The ruling from the
Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a recount by the
safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris, 11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is appropriate only
if the returns submitted the Department so late that their inclusion will
compromise the integrity of the electoral process in either of two way: (1)
by precluding a candidate, elector, or taxpayer from contesting the
certification of an election pursuant to section 102.168; or (2) by
precluding Florida voters from participating fully in the federal electoral
process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour
should stand. This amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of
the united states.

You are using a false premise. Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the
courts could not remove Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the recount had
been completed, Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25 Florida Electors
with the signature of the state's executive. The court cound NOT change this
fact.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors with the
signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can change this fact. No
recount can change this fact.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor can they
take them away.

Read the minority opinion. Here is a quote:

Is this the same dissent who believed that two idential ballots from
idential machines do not mean the same thing?

"What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida
election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the
impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the
critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their
position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by
the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical
appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence
in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the
true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to
that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing,
however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty
the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the
identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence
in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

"I respectfully dissent."

You may wish to actually read this. I find it terribly disturbing.

Why doesn't Justice Stevens want to keep the Florida Supreme Court (majority
opinion in Gore v Harris II) in check?

As Chief Justice Wells wrote in Gore vs. Harris 12/8/2000

"I could not more strongly disagree with their decision to reverse the trial
court (my note, the trial court is Judge Sauls) and prolong this judicial
process. I also believe that the majority's decision cannot withstand the
scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the United States
Constitution. My succinct conclusion is that the majority's decision to
return this case to the circuit court for a count of the undervotes from
either Miami- Dade County or all counties has no foundation in the law of
Florida as it existed on November 7, 2000, or at any time until the issuance
of this opinion." (p. 41)

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/OP-SC00-2431.pdf

Stuart Taylor, Jr writing:

"In my view, the Florida Supreme Court's majority--not the U.S. Supreme
Court--has betrayed its trust and done grave damage to the rule of law. The
Florida court's stunning 4-3 decision on Friday looks like (even if it is
not) a near-indefensible act of partisanship designed to flip a presidential
election by commanding a rushed, chaotic, patently unfair manual recount
process under circumstances virtually guaranteed to detract from--not to
perfect--the accuracy and credibility of the final outcome. I say this as
someone who would have supported a timely Gore request (say, a month ago)
for a statewide manual recount, assuming the Florida courts could devise
strict rules to minimize subjectivity, guesswork, and partisan bias in
vote-counting."

http://slate.msn.com/id/100666­4

----
Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 05:36:01 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

<snip>

Your statements basically parrot the supreme court's ruling on equal
protection. That ruling is based on a claim that the ballots in a
hand recount cannot be fairly counted (or at least not quickly enough.)
You say it yourself: if election officials cannot use intention of the
voter, in the form of the condition of the ballot, as evidence of 'clear
intent', then there is no point in a recount. That is tantamount to saying
that the clear intent of the voter comes down to whatever the counting
machine accepts. That is simply wrong, and anybody who thinks about will
agree.

When doing the hand count, as I understood it, there was both a republican
and a democrat who were deciding whether each vote should be counted for
Gore or Bush. Thus, while going through the mounds of votes which had been
rejected by the obsolescent voting machines deployed predominately in
democratic counties (and not by the newer machines deployed in republican
counties; another smart move for the 'neutral' Kathleen Harris) there was
some effort to ensure that each vote was actually counted with regards to
the intention of the voter, as the legislature has decreed, and as the
Florida supreme court had mandated.

Saying that different counties must have the same criteria for deciding on
votes is fair. Souter's argument is valid. However, your take on it, that
that in turn implies that no recount can possibly be done is wrong,
and he himself rejected it.

However, assuming for a moment that the supreme court equal protection
argument actually made sense, they could have simply mandated counting
standards, or ordered a full recount, as Souter pointed out in his
minority ruling. Instead, the conservative majority on the court decided
that there simply "wasn't time" to recount the Florida votes, and thus
ruled to stop it. They had the power, knew what they were doing, and made
sure it was over. Feel free to parrot whatever legal machinery they used
to justify this. It doesn't change the fact that it was wrong, obviously
partisan, and contrary to prior or subsequent rulings on equal protection.

You also keep repeating that the court has no authority to appoint the
president, and because of this, Scalia and Thomas need not have recused
themselves. Hogwash. If a justice has a personal stake in the outcome of a
ruling, they must recuse themselves. If they had not set out this ruling,
it is unclear what the result would have been. However, it was clear to
all what the result would be if they ruled.

If the court had not overstepped their bounds and ruled on this state
matter, and if all the votes and been counted, Gore would have won
Florida, there would have been no appeal to congress. The final count of
votes would have been Gore: 291, Bush: 246, a difference of 45 electoral
votes. As it stands, Bush only 'won' by 5 electors, and lost by nearly 3
million popular votes. Bush took office in 2000 simply because he had
friends in high places, just as I asserted initially.

Bob Monsen

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 05:36:03 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.23.18.58.515630@comast.net...
On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:38:05 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.05.21.38.364463@comast.net...
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:25:51 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
I don't want to get into a brawl here, but analysis after the fact
of the 2000 election pointed out that Gore would have won Florida
had the US supreme court not overruled the Florida supreme court.

That is what the media would like for you to think, but if you check
out the NORC, you will find that they did not check all of the
disputed ballots. There were as many as 179,855 disputed ballots, the
NORC checked 175,010 of those ballots. A partial recount by the media
does not prove Gore would have won.

It also doesn't prove that he would not have.

You are completely missing the point of the study. It was not to prove
who won or lost, it was to study the problems with the voting systems
used in the state.



So, you are saying that it doesn't prove that Gore would not have won?



The recount is not based in the reality of the situation. They didn't even
recount all of the disputed ballots, nor did they use the their own results
from all of the counties, i.e. they accepted the official results. That
means that all of these 9 counting scenarios are compromised because they
could not apply those "standards" to all the ballots in all of the counties.
Arbitrary recounts do not prove who won or who lost.

So you are saying that it doesn't prove Gore would not have won?

Gore could win all of those "counting scenarios", but that would NOT
have proven that he won because those scenarios MUST be in compliance
with 3 U.S.C. section 5, or they would have been disqualified by the US
House.

Bush won under the existing laws of the state of Florida, thus those
were the legal slate of electors.

Actually, this is untrue. The existing laws in Florida were ruled invalid.
That is the basis the US Supreme Court used to stop the recount.

False. The SCotUS did not invalidate any of Florida's Election Codes, they
reversed a Florida Supreme Court ruling that ignored Fla. Stat.§101.5609(8),
and both the Florida and US Constitution.

No, the FSC ruling was intended to continue the recount, and uphold
existing Florida law, because they believed they had a reasonable method
to ensure that all the the votes were fairly counted. 7 of the justices
believed that the law the FSC was attempting to uphold was not a good
enough standard to prevent a violation of the equal protection clause.
Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It was
also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria, since
it would be overturned due to having been decided after the election.
Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes in
poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection was,
of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

The recount as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated 3 U.S.C.
section 5, thus if that count would have been allowed to continue, the
results would have been invalid.

The (renewed) recount was an attempt to carry out the election according
to Florida state law, which had been made prior to the election. Thus, the
supreme court ruling was, in effect, a statement that Florida cannot
choose how it carries out it's elections. However, no other states amongst
the 33 others which use wording identical to that which the us supreme
court objected to were included in the ruling.

The court did not object to "clear intent of the voter", they objected to
the fact that the court ignored the laws that said the counting standards
should be uniform.

The point wasn't to make law, or to rule on law. The point was to stop the
recount, which was slowly eroding GW Bush's precarious lead.

A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not prove that Bush's
lead was eroding.

So, you are again saying that even though there were both democratic and
republican observers doing the recount, the result is meaningless. Sorry,
I don't accept that.

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of no legitimate state interest
served by these differing treatments of the expressions of voters'
fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly arbitrary."

Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to continue
the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the court.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD1.html

The point is that the
Supreme Court stepped in, against all expectations, to overturn the
Florida Supreme Court.

As they should have. The Constitution does not allow for a state
court to rewrite state election law, that is a violation of Article
II of the US Constitution.



I've already pointed out that the ruling to continue the recount was an
effort to *uphold* Florida state law, as rendered by the state
legislature prior to the election.

In effect, the US Supreme Court indicated that ANY attempt by the
Florida Supreme Court to make any ruling on this matter might have
changed the rules under which the post ruling votes were recounted.
Thus, the votes counted before were not interpreted identially due to
the equal protection clause.

The state legislature did not see their actions as an effort to "uphold"
Florida Code. Here is the amicus brief filed by the legislature listing
the violations of Florida Code by the court.

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when it
looks like they are going to lose.

However, two of the dissenting justices (Souter and Breyer) believed
that a constitutional recount could be done. Two others, (Ginsberg and
Stevens) believed that for reasons of Federalism, the FSC ruling should
be respected, and that it was (because it was an attempt to count every
vote, which is required by the constitution) actually in accord with
the US constitution. The quote I posted earlier (and again below) is
from that last minority opinion.

The five remaining justices decided that there was not enough time to
perform an adequate recount,

Which upheld the 7 members of the Florida Supreme Court. IF we are to
believe the Federalism argument, then the safe harbor date deadline by
the Florida Supreme Court was a CONSTITUTIONAL deadline for the
submission of election results.

Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you can't
count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge recount before
the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable procedures, and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers are
required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to prevent the
votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good reason to stop the
recount. There were adequate procedures in place. There were monitors from
both parties. Letting the recount proceed would have settled the question
once and for all. The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting
too close for comfort.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways. The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a recount
by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is appropriate
only if the returns submitted the Department so late that their
inclusion will compromise the integrity of the electoral process in
either of two way: (1) by precluding a candidate, elector, or taxpayer
from contesting the certification of an election pursuant to section
102.168; or (2) by precluding Florida voters from participating fully in
the federal electoral process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887,
the courts could not remove Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the
recount had been completed, Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25
Florida Electors with the signature of the state's executive. The court
cound NOT change this fact.

Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this. The
fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors with
the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can change this
fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor can they
take them away.

Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic. The recount was
proceeding. If Gore would have won, nobody could have stopped him from
taking office, regardless of what the law said in 1887. Thus, stopping the
recount was tantamount to giving the election to G W Bush.

 

[Mark Cook]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.10.08.12.16.470721@comast.net...

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 05:36:03 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.23.18.58.515630@comast.net...
On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:38:05 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:c

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.08.05.21.38.364463@comast.net...
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:25:51 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
I don't want to get into a brawl here, but analysis after the
fact
of the 2000 election pointed out that Gore would have won Florida
had the US supreme court not overruled the Florida supreme court.

That is what the media would like for you to think, but if you
check
out the NORC, you will find that they did not check all of the
disputed ballots. There were as many as 179,855 disputed ballots,
the
NORC checked 175,010 of those ballots. A partial recount by the
media
does not prove Gore would have won.

It also doesn't prove that he would not have.

You are completely missing the point of the study. It was not to
prove
who won or lost, it was to study the problems with the voting systems
used in the state.



So, you are saying that it doesn't prove that Gore would not have won?



The recount is not based in the reality of the situation. They didn't
even
recount all of the disputed ballots, nor did they use the their own
results
from all of the counties, i.e. they accepted the official results. That
means that all of these 9 counting scenarios are compromised because
they
could not apply those "standards" to all the ballots in all of the
counties.
Arbitrary recounts do not prove who won or who lost.


So you are saying that it doesn't prove Gore would not have won?

The study by the NORC has nothing to do with determining a "winner".

Gore could win all of those "counting scenarios", but that would NOT
have proven that he won because those scenarios MUST be in compliance
with 3 U.S.C. section 5, or they would have been disqualified by the
US
House.

Bush won under the existing laws of the state of Florida, thus those
were the legal slate of electors.

Actually, this is untrue. The existing laws in Florida were ruled
invalid.
That is the basis the US Supreme Court used to stop the recount.

False. The SCotUS did not invalidate any of Florida's Election Codes,
they
reversed a Florida Supreme Court ruling that ignored Fla.
Stat.§101.5609(8),
and both the Florida and US Constitution.

No, the FSC ruling was intended to continue the recount, and uphold
existing Florida law, because they believed they had a reasonable method
to ensure that all the the votes were fairly counted. 7 of the justices
believed that the law the FSC was attempting to uphold was not a good
enough standard to prevent a violation of the equal protection clause.

It was not only 7 members of the US Supreme Court, it was 3 members of the
Florida Supreme Court, Judge Sauls, and Gore's Florida campaign chair
(Florida's attorney General Bob Butterworth). It was Butterworth who quit
Gore's campaign and then sent a letter to the Palm Beach County Canvassing
Board telling them that their recount was a violation of equal protection.

The numbers are overwhelmingly in support of the equal protection argument.
12 bi-partisan judges along with Butterworth vs. 6 Democrat judges.

Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It was
also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria, since
it would be overturned due to having been decided after the election.

Correct, that is why the FSC should have ENFORCED the existing counting
standards. That would have solved their 3 U.S.C. section 5 problems.

Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Yet they violated Florida Code, and both the Florida and Federal
Constitutions by endorsing an uneven counting standard.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes in
poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection was,
of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

All the votes were counted at least twice. Gore never made a claim that the
ballots were not tabulated.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

As demonstrated by 4 members of the Florida Supreme Court.

The recount as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated 3 U.S.C.
section 5, thus if that count would have been allowed to continue,
the
results would have been invalid.

The (renewed) recount was an attempt to carry out the election
according
to Florida state law, which had been made prior to the election. Thus,
the
supreme court ruling was, in effect, a statement that Florida cannot
choose how it carries out it's elections. However, no other states
amongst
the 33 others which use wording identical to that which the us supreme
court objected to were included in the ruling.

The court did not object to "clear intent of the voter", they objected
to
the fact that the court ignored the laws that said the counting
standards
should be uniform.

The point wasn't to make law, or to rule on law. The point was to stop
the
recount, which was slowly eroding GW Bush's precarious lead.

A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not prove that Bush's
lead was eroding.


So, you are again saying that even though there were both democratic and
republican observers doing the recount, the result is meaningless. Sorry,
I don't accept that.

The majority of the election boards in Florida were controlled by Democrats.
The DEMOCRATS make the final decision on what would be counted as a vote.

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of no legitimate state interest
served by these differing treatments of the expressions of voters'
fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly arbitrary."


Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to continue
the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the court.

Because the court upheld the 7-0 Florida Supreme Court's ruling. Between the
two courts, the numbers here are 12 bi-partisan justices vs. 4 Democrat
justices.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD1.html

The point is that the
Supreme Court stepped in, against all expectations, to overturn the
Florida Supreme Court.

As they should have. The Constitution does not allow for a state
court to rewrite state election law, that is a violation of Article
II of the US Constitution.



I've already pointed out that the ruling to continue the recount was an
effort to *uphold* Florida state law, as rendered by the state
legislature prior to the election.

In effect, the US Supreme Court indicated that ANY attempt by the
Florida Supreme Court to make any ruling on this matter might have
changed the rules under which the post ruling votes were recounted.
Thus, the votes counted before were not interpreted identially due to
the equal protection clause.

The state legislature did not see their actions as an effort to "uphold"
Florida Code. Here is the amicus brief filed by the legislature listing
the violations of Florida Code by the court.

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when it
looks like they are going to lose.

The only place they can lose is in Congress, not the courts. What codes do
you believe that they quoted incorrectly?

However, two of the dissenting justices (Souter and Breyer) believed
that a constitutional recount could be done. Two others, (Ginsberg and
Stevens) believed that for reasons of Federalism, the FSC ruling should
be respected, and that it was (because it was an attempt to count every
vote, which is required by the constitution) actually in accord with
the US constitution. The quote I posted earlier (and again below) is
from that last minority opinion.

The five remaining justices decided that there was not enough time to
perform an adequate recount,

Which upheld the 7 members of the Florida Supreme Court. IF we are to
believe the Federalism argument, then the safe harbor date deadline by
the Florida Supreme Court was a CONSTITUTIONAL deadline for the
submission of election results.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you can't
count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge recount before
the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable procedures,

They had 30 days, Gore did not support a full recount (he never filed for
one), thus he wasted the time needed. 3 U.S.C. section 5 has been on the
books since 1887. Gore knew the deadline.

and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers are
required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to prevent the
votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good reason to stop the
recount.

Why do believe that two identically marked ballots do not mean the same
thing??

Article II is the very reason why the recount should have been stopped. A
recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not settle the issue.

There were adequate procedures in place.

The Florida Supreme Court IGNORED those procedures.

There were monitors from
both parties.

But that does not change the fact that the majority of the canvassing board
were controlled by Democrats.

Letting the recount proceed would have settled the question
once and for all.

Using an arbitrary counting standard does NOT settle the question.

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting
too close for comfort.

Bush already had 271 electoral votes committed to his election. It was NOT
too close, it was OVER. The reason to stop the recount was to keep the
Florida Supreme Court from rewriting Florida Election Code.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways. The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a recount
by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is appropriate
only if the returns submitted the Department so late that their
inclusion will compromise the integrity of the electoral process in
either of two way: (1) by precluding a candidate, elector, or taxpayer
from contesting the certification of an election pursuant to section
102.168; or (2) by precluding Florida voters from participating fully in
the federal electoral process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Clearly you are wrong. You are ignoring the ramifications of the Electoral
Count Act of 1887 and the make up of Congress on 1/6/2001.

Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887,
the courts could not remove Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the
recount had been completed, Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25
Florida Electors with the signature of the state's executive. The court
cound NOT change this fact.


Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this. The
fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

I don't need a website, all I need is the law. 3 U.S.C. section 15 does not
allow for a court to remove a slate of electors. Only Congress has that
power.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors with
the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can change this
fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

3 U.S.C. section 15 proves you to be in error.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor can they
take them away.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic.

You hang your hat on the dissent of the US Supreme Court, then you call
their opinions moronic. I have given the law as laid out by Justice Breyer's
dissent.

Justice Breyer's aguement was that the courts did not need to get involved
because Congress has the final say. They are the ones to fight it out, not
the courts. If it was not for the fact that the US Supreme Court needed to
stop the FSC from rewriting Florida Code, I would have agreed with his
opinion.

Breyer writing: "To the contrary, the Twelfth Amendment commits to Congress
the authority and responsibility to count electoral votes. A federal
statute, the Electoral Count Act, enacted after the close 1876 Hayes-Tilden
Presidential election, specifies that, after States have tried to resolve
disputes (through "judicial" or other means), Congress is the body primarily
authorized to resolve remaining disputes. See Electoral Count Act of 1887,
24 Stat. 373, 3 U.S.C. § 5 6, and 15.

The legislative history of the Act makes clear its intent to commit the
power to resolve such disputes to Congress, rather than the courts:

"The two Houses are, by the Constitution, authorized to make the count of
electoral votes. They can only count legal votes, and in doing so must
determine, from the best evidence to be had, what are legal votes .... The
power to determine rests with the two Houses, and there is no other
constitutional tribunal." H. Rep. No. 1638, 49th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1886)
(report submitted by Rep. Caldwell, Select Committee on the Election of
President and Vice-President).

The Member of Congress who introduced the Act added:

"The power to judge of the legality of the votes is a necessary consequent
of the power to count. The existence of this power is of absolute necessity
to the preservation of the Government. The interests of all the States in
their relations to each other in the Federal Union demand that the ultimate
tribunal to decide upon the election of President should be a constituent
body, in which the States in their federal relationships and the people in
their sovereign capacity should be represented." 18 Cong. Rec. 30 (1886).

"Under the Constitution who else could decide? Who is nearer to the State
in determining a question of vital importance to the whole union of States
than the constituent body upon whom the Constitution has devolved the duty
to count the vote?" Id., at 31.

The Act goes on to set out rules for the congressional determination of
disputes about those votes. If, for example, a state submits a single slate
of electors, Congress must count those votes unless both Houses agree that
the votes "have not been . . . regularly given." 3 U.S.C. § 15. If, as
occurred in 1876, one or more states submits two sets of electors, then
Congress must determine whether a slate has entered the safe harbor of §5,
in which case its votes will have "conclusive" effect. Ibid. If, as also
occurred in 1876, there is controversy about "which of two or more of such
State authorities . . . is the lawful tribunal" authorized to appoint
electors, then each House shall determine separately which votes are
"supported by the decision of such State so authorized by its law." Ibid. If
the two Houses of Congress agree, the votes they have approved will be
counted. If they disagree, then "the votes of the electors whose appointment
shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal
thereof, shall be counted." Ibid.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD3.html

The recount was
proceeding. If Gore would have won, nobody could have stopped him from
taking office, regardless of what the law said in 1887.

Clearly you do not understand the law on the matter. All the Republican
controlled US House has to do is support Bush's slate of Florida Electors
sent with the signature of the state's executive, and Gore loses. It doesn't
matter how many arbitrary recounts that Gore wins, that does not place him
into office. The Republicans were not going to support a recount for Gore
that excluded the legal overseas ballots (Bush vs. Hillsborough) and a
recount that used an arbitrary counting standard.

I am not sure why you believe that a court can install a President when the
US Constitution clearly states that only Congress can count electoral votes.
Congress has the power to throw out any and all slates of electors,
including those sent by a court.

Thus, stopping the
recount was tantamount to giving the election to G W Bush.

Bush already held Florida electors and there was nothing the courts could do
about that fact.

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:47:13 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message

<snip>

It was not only 7 members of the US Supreme Court, it was 3 members of
the Florida Supreme Court, Judge Sauls, and Gore's Florida campaign
chair (Florida's attorney General Bob Butterworth). It was Butterworth
who quit Gore's campaign and then sent a letter to the Palm Beach County
Canvassing Board telling them that their recount was a violation of
equal protection.



I've stated there was a violation of equal protection. There were lots of

violations of equal protection. Justice Kennedy decided to pick this
particular one, at this particular time. Clearly, by doing so, they were
choosing sides. Otherwise, they would have objected to the far greater
equal protection issues inherent in the differences between polling
procedures in poor rural counties as opposed to rich republican counties.
They also wouldn't have made this ruling inapplicable to any other
situation. This was a court that was almost, but not quite completely
disinterested in any equal protection law, up until, and, coincidentally,
after this time.

You pick the bits of republican party disinformation you've chosen to use,
and ignore the broader issues. These issues include the importance of
settling the matter; the importance for the supreme court not to appear
partisan; the importance of states rights, and the rights of the
electorate in a particular state to chose their method of recount. You
also ignore the obvious fact that the recounts were proceeding fairly. All
of these issues were brushed aside by the court in order to prevent the
recount from continuing. Using the equal protection clause was a
calculated ploy to checkmate the FSC. They are, after all, brilliant men
and women. It worked. Their guy is president, despite the possibility that
it would go otherwise.

The numbers are overwhelmingly in support of the
equal protection
argument. 12 bi-partisan judges along with Butterworth vs. 6 Democrat
judges.

Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It
was also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria,
since it would be overturned due to having been decided after the
election.

Correct, that is why the FSC should have ENFORCED the existing counting
standards. That would have solved their 3 U.S.C. section 5 problems.

Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Yet they violated Florida Code, and both the Florida and Federal
Constitutions by endorsing an uneven counting standard.



The FSC clearly believed that the counting standards being used were

sufficient. I agree. I believe that having both a republican and a
democrat deciding, together, that a vote is valid is going to give a
better indication of the desire of the voter than a counting machine
would.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes in
poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection
was, of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

All the votes were counted at least twice. Gore never made a claim that
the ballots were not tabulated.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

As demonstrated by 4 members of the Florida Supreme Court.



You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court

from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so obviously
wrong.

<snip>

The majority of the election boards in Florida were controlled by
Democrats. The DEMOCRATS make the final decision on what would be
counted as a vote.



This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers. The

republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they could,
to slow the process. However, the vote was slowly inching towards the
proper result. Remember the "Brooks Brothers" riots? Republican
congressional staffers, intentionally flown down to disrupt the
proceedings, and thus slow things down?

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of no legitimate state
interest served by these differing treatments of the expressions of
voters' fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly arbitrary."


Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to continue
the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the court.

Because the court upheld the 7-0 Florida Supreme Court's ruling. Between
the two courts, the numbers here are 12 bi-partisan justices vs. 4
Democrat justices.



This makes no sense. It's impossible to call any of the 5 justices on the

conservative block bi-partisan.

The FSC also can't be counted as among those who supported this. Perhaps I
misunderstand. It voted 4 to 3 to continue the recount, as was proper.
They were attempting to prevent James Baker and his gang of thieves
(including Kathleen Harris) from certifying the election in order to
support a partisan cause. They prevented one illegal attempt at
certification, and then demanded that all votes be recounted. Seems like
the right decision to make given the situation. Only a partisan supreme
court, bent on installing their chosen candidate, would think otherwise.

<snip>

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when it
looks like they are going to lose.

The only place they can lose is in Congress, not the courts. What codes
do you believe that they quoted incorrectly?



Again, you stick to the same tired legal argument. Given a Gore victory in

Florida, the electorate would have demanded that he be sworn in as
president, regardless of what the congress wanted. The 1887 statute was
nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate. There would have been
mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the will of
the people. This is obvious. The supreme court ruling was a brilliant
checkmate of the Gore people, the FSC, and the American people.

<snip>

Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you
can't count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge
recount before the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable
procedures,

They had 30 days, Gore did not support a full recount (he never filed
for one), thus he wasted the time needed. 3 U.S.C. section 5 has been on
the books since 1887. Gore knew the deadline.



This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately pushed

for a statewide recount. However, that was not really possible, due to
Florida law. They would have had to wait until certification to request a
statewide recount. By then, they would have lost the momentum.

and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers are
required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to prevent
the votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good reason to
stop the recount.

Why do believe that two identically marked ballots do not mean the same
thing??



The same can be said of any hand recount, unless all ballots are counted

by the same individual at the same exact moment. This is clearly
impossible. The nature of the problem was such that there were a broad
variety of personalities and interpretations of the law. This is
inevitable.

However, again, and again, there were checks in place. By asserting (as
you do below) that the democrats were in control, you imply the democrats
were cheating. This is unfounded, and is also revisionist. It was the
republicans who flew in hundreds of supporters to harass election
officials.

Article II is the very reason why the recount should have
been stopped.
A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not settle the issue.

There were adequate procedures in place.

The Florida Supreme Court IGNORED those procedures.



Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was

clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was the
right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can have
these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would have
happened.

There were monitors from
both parties.

But that does not change the fact that the majority of the canvassing
board were controlled by Democrats.



This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic

observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established. That was
the point of the FSC ruling, which was overturned. Any attempt to
influence things one way or another was immediately challenged.

Letting the recount proceed would have settled the question once and
for all.

Using an arbitrary counting standard does NOT settle the question.



You seem to believe that counting standards are uniform. This has never

been the case. There are as many standards as there are polling places.
The idea that a single, uniform standard is in place elsewhere is absurd,
and given the nature of the issue, can only be construed as a
rationalization for the 5 majority justices' partisan ruling.

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting too close
for
comfort.

Bush already had 271 electoral votes committed to his election. It was
NOT too close, it was OVER. The reason to stop the recount was to keep
the Florida Supreme Court from rewriting Florida Election Code.



Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to certify

the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were active
recounts. Kathleen Harris, appointed by the republican candidate's
brother, Jeb Bush, was the election official responsible for this. She
was, up until election day, a Co-Chair of the campaign for George W Bush.
Hardly a non-partisan. Her attempts to certify the election results were
stopped by the FSC. Jim Baker and the gang were outraged, and attempted to
force the issue by getting the legislator to pledge their electors
prematurely, before the hand recounts. They were trying to cheat the state
out of a recount in a presidential election that hinged on 500 votes.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways. The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a
recount by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is
appropriate only if the returns submitted the Department so late that
their inclusion will compromise the integrity of the electoral
process in either of two way: (1) by precluding a candidate, elector,
or taxpayer from contesting the certification of an election pursuant
to section 102.168; or (2) by precluding Florida voters from
participating fully in the federal electoral process." (reference to
footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Clearly you are wrong. You are ignoring the ramifications of the
Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the make up of Congress on 1/6/2001.


Again, you appear unwilling or unable to understand my point. This law is

irrelevant, and was never really considered by either the FSC or the US
SC. It was yet another historical anomaly, like laws against spitting on
the sidewalk. The recounts were proceeding, and the result would be
binding, because the electorate would demand it. This was a special
situation, and only those bent on preventing any kind of recount would
even consider invoking that law, particularly since the legislature was
usurping the will of the people in attempting to pledge their electors.

Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the courts could not remove
Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the recount had been completed,
Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25 Florida Electors with the
signature of the state's executive. The court cound NOT change this
fact.


Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this.
The fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

I don't need a website, all I need is the law. 3 U.S.C. section 15 does
not allow for a court to remove a slate of electors. Only Congress has
that power.


Yawn. Sure thing bub.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors
with the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can
change this fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

3 U.S.C. section 15 proves you to be in error.



Again, it's beside the point.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor can
they take them away.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic.

You hang your hat on the dissent of the US Supreme Court, then you call
their opinions moronic. I have given the law as laid out by Justice
Breyer's dissent.

Actually, I hang my hat on the idea that

a) the recounts were proceeding in a reasonable fashion.

b) there were checks and balances in place to ensure that any counted
ballot reflected the 'clear intent of the voter'.

c) The recount was inching towards a Gore victory.

d) if the recount had overturned the election result, the congress would
have had no choice but to acquiesce.

e) The supreme court knew this. Scalia attempted get the court to stop the
recount even before hearing Gore's arguments prove this.

f) A supreme court justice would NEVER use such strong language, as was
used by Justice Stevens, without real cause. BTW, Stevens is a republican.

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular, Scalia,
Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of clerks,
acting inappropriately through the whole situation. O'Connor believed,
without real evidence, that the FSC was 'stealing the election', and thus
made up her mind to prevent the recount early. She expressed her dismay
over an apparent Gore victory publicly. Scalia was openly partisan through
the entire thing, sending scathing memos to Stevens. Rehnquist and Thomas
are both very conservative. Kennedy's clerks were vetted by republican
hardliners for him, so he wouldn't stray from the straight and narrow.
This block of conservatives was able to bring the matter before them, and
rule on it, without even consulting the other justices. They attempted
to do this quietly, while the other justices were ON VACATION, to
the utter astonishment of clerks, the press, and the media.

get a clue:

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

 

In <pan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net>, on 04/10/05
at 08:26 PM, Bob Monsen <rcsurname@comast.net> said:

You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court
from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so obviously
wrong.

If you look at the subject header, and then reflect on what happend to
this woman in that same state, and that same court, I think its easy to
see that the FSC has credibility problems from the get-go.

This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers. The
republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they could,
to slow the process.

Meanwhile, Big Al hired telemarketers to call tends of thousands of
Floridians, the day after the election, and tell them that their votes
were not being counted, when there was no proof that such a thing was
going on. Class act, all the way to the end

However, the vote was slowly inching towards the
proper result. Remember the "Brooks Brothers" riots? Republican
congressional staffers, intentionally flown down to disrupt the
proceedings, and thus slow things down?

Not much compared to the actual candidate authorizing the thousands and
thousands of calls filled with lies to incite the public, and create even
more problems. Class act, all the way to the end

nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate. There would have
been mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the
will of the people. This is obvious. The supreme court ruling was a
brilliant checkmate of the Gore people, the FSC, and the American people.

The paranoia that you continue to pour out is actually quite frightening.

What is amazing to me is you give all this credit to the Bush people for
"checkmating" Gore and overthrowing the Republic, and yet the liberal left
continues to call Bush a stupid man, who has no brains. Based on your
position, he is smarter than the left, and if he is stupid, what does that
leave the liberals?

This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately
pushed for a statewide recount. However, that was not really possible,
due to Florida law. They would have had to wait until certification to
request a statewide recount. By then, they would have lost the momentum.

No, Gore's mistake was being such a butt head that the citizens of his own
state didn't even want him to be president. If he had only won his own
home state.........

Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was
clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was
the right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can
have these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would have
happened.

The right thing to do is to follow the law, which is what they did. The
wrong thing to do is to pretend to be a democracy, and alter the laws on
the fly, to fit the agenda of the masses.

This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic
observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established.

The voter makes his intention known by punching the ballot. Does the left
now believe in telepathy, and the ability to divine intent by handling the
ballot and invoking the spirit of democracy to inspire them as to the
wished of the person who handled the ballot before?

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting too close
for
comfort.

Again, massive amounts of paranoia coming through.

Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to
certify the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were
active recounts.

All she was doing was following the law. Did she follow the law, as it is
written? Yes. That does not make her a republican stooge.

Yawn. Sure thing bub.

Quick, someone create a web page and put this guy out of his misery....

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular,
Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of
clerks, acting inappropriately through the whole situation.

O'Conner is NOT a conservative, and neither is Kennedy. Take a look at
their record, and you cannot call them anything but liberal, NWO thinkers.

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

another web site. Gee, that must make it all true.

The bigger issue here is two fold.

1) you are paranoid beyond belief.

2) you actually think that either side, right or left, is smart enough,
and has the brain power to pull off what you accuse them of, in the time
that it occured. Forget the legal argument, forget the fact that your hat
with the tiny propeller has been hit by lightening, and forget the fact
that "they" are everywhere, and realize that our government officials are
stupid, incapable of quick, efficient thinking, and unable to organize and
agree on anything, EVER.

Your arguments might pass muster if the people you accuse of wrongdoing
were smart enough to do it in the first place. A quick read of this, and a
thousand other usenet groups and you will see that in general, politicians
are idiots, incapable of independent, 'on your feet' thinking, and could
in now way ever pull of the conspiracy you are presenting. Its just not
possible. We see these morons in action every day. No way could either
side pull off such a titanic steal.

It has been four years, and Bush is still president, the liberals have
given up, except for you and that bald advisor guy on CNN. The legal
challenges have all failed, and yet you and three other tin foil hatted
conspiracy theorists are still spewing all the legal double talk, with no
hope of accomplishing anything, other than dragging it on and on and on
and on.

Its one thing to disagree, its another to dedicate your life to a cause
that has no reason to exist, and can never be brought to a conclusion to
meet your fears.

Move on man. There is so much more you could do with your legal skills,
and so many topical issues you could get involved in that would benefit
everyone.

Gore lost. Schiavo is dead. The Branch Davidians are dead, Randy Weaver
lives in hell every night. Bill Clinton's sperm was all over the dress,
and he lied to a federal judge under oath. Elian is in Cuba, and the world
is still a crappy place to live. The Constitution, which is rather
required in order to make ANY of your arguments valid, is completely
overthrown and without authority in this country. We have a government
that is not even authorized to exist, and all you can do is whine about an
election four years ago?

I read your posts, and you are a wise man in a lot of ways. You can do
better than this.

JB

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <pan.2005.04.07.20.18.29.852454@example.com>,
wacko@example.com says...

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 11:01:29 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:42:19 -0600, learning@learning.com wrote:

In <5coa511isl9kia2tjijpe9er9prosm0kfk@4ax.com>, on 04/07/05
at 09:42 AM, Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> said:

One big snag in your reasoning seems to be an assumption that company
pensions will actually have value.

The "snag" you refer to is the inbred assumption by Americans that their
retirement is an entitlement, and that they don't have to work for
themselves.

MOST people in the US work for EMPLOYERS. Except for early in my life,
I've worked for myself, but that's unusual in this country.

Yes, especially unusual when one considers that most of us work for our
customers.

What's really unusual is for someone today to know who their customer
really is. I know who mine is and it's not who my boss thinks, or at
least says, it is.

--
Keith

 

[Mark Cook]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net...

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:47:13 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message

snip

It was not only 7 members of the US Supreme Court, it was 3 members of
the Florida Supreme Court, Judge Sauls, and Gore's Florida campaign
chair (Florida's attorney General Bob Butterworth). It was Butterworth
who quit Gore's campaign and then sent a letter to the Palm Beach County
Canvassing Board telling them that their recount was a violation of
equal protection.



I've stated there was a violation of equal protection. There were lots of
violations of equal protection. Justice Kennedy decided to pick this
particular one, at this particular time. Clearly, by doing so, they were
choosing sides. Otherwise, they would have objected to the far greater
equal protection issues inherent in the differences between polling
procedures in poor rural counties as opposed to rich republican counties.
They also wouldn't have made this ruling inapplicable to any other
situation. This was a court that was almost, but not quite completely
disinterested in any equal protection law, up until, and, coincidentally,
after this time.

Which still doesn't change the fact the court could not remove Bush's
electors.

You pick the bits of republican party disinformation you've chosen to use,
and ignore the broader issues. These issues include the importance of
settling the matter; the importance for the supreme court not to appear
partisan;

The arguments in Bush vs. Gore were started by the DEMOCRATS in the Florida
Legal System. Upholding those arguments does not make the Supreme Court look
partisan.

It was the DEMOCRATS who said the safe harbor date was the final deadline,
the SCotUS UPHELD this ruling. It was the DEMOCRATS who said that changing
the counting standards would NOT withstand the scunity of the US
Constitution, the SCotUS UPHELD this argument.

the importance of states rights,

This is not a state's rights case. This is a case of the rights of the state
legislature. According to the Constitution, the legislatures are to enact
election code, not courts.

and the rights of the
electorate in a particular state to chose their method of recount.

IF a state wants their votes to count, they must follow the Electoral Count
Act of 1887, or risk having their state disqualified from the Electoral
College.

You also ignore the obvious fact that the recounts were proceeding fairly.

That is a myth. The lack of a counting standard is not an accurate way to
count votes.

Justice Souter writing, "But evidence in the record here suggests that a
different order of isparity obtains under rules for determining a voter's
intent that have been applied (and ould continue to be applied) to identical
types of ballots used in identical brands of machines and exhibiting
identical physical characteristics (such as "hanging" or "dimpled" chads)."

All
of these issues were brushed aside by the court in order to prevent the
recount from continuing. Using the equal protection clause was a
calculated ploy to checkmate the FSC. They are, after all, brilliant men
and women. It worked. Their guy is president, despite the possibility that
it would go otherwise.

Do you really believe that the PARTISAN Republicans in the US House, who
were outraged that the Democrats in Florida had changed the counting in
violation of 3 U.S.C. section 5, were going to elect Gore??? You can't be
that naive.

The numbers are overwhelmingly in support of the
equal protection
argument. 12 bi-partisan judges along with Butterworth vs. 6 Democrat
judges.

Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It
was also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria,
since it would be overturned due to having been decided after the
election.

Correct, that is why the FSC should have ENFORCED the existing counting
standards. That would have solved their 3 U.S.C. section 5 problems.

Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Yet they violated Florida Code, and both the Florida and Federal
Constitutions by endorsing an uneven counting standard.



The FSC clearly believed that the counting standards being used were
sufficient. I agree.

The NARROW decision by the court thought that it was sufficient. The
majority between the three courts DISAGREED.

I believe that having both a republican and a
democrat deciding, together, that a vote is valid is going to give a
better indication of the desire of the voter than a counting machine
would.

Again with the myths.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes in
poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection
was, of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

All the votes were counted at least twice. Gore never made a claim that
the ballots were not tabulated.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

As demonstrated by 4 members of the Florida Supreme Court.



You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court
from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so obviously
wrong.

You are still using a false premise. The courts cannot decide a presidental
election.

snip

The majority of the election boards in Florida were controlled by
Democrats. The DEMOCRATS make the final decision on what would be
counted as a vote.

This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers.

The PARTISAN Democrats who were deciding on what were legal votes does not
matter?? The same PARTISAN Democrats who got their hands slapped by 11
Judges.

The
republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they could,
to slow the process. However, the vote was slowly inching towards the
proper result. Remember the "Brooks Brothers" riots? Republican
congressional staffers, intentionally flown down to disrupt the
proceedings, and thus slow things down?

And you believe that these same Republicans were going to allow Gore to win
in the Electoral College?

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of no legitimate state
interest served by these differing treatments of the expressions of
voters' fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly arbitrary."


Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to continue
the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the court.

Because the court upheld the 7-0 Florida Supreme Court's ruling. Between
the two courts, the numbers here are 12 bi-partisan justices vs. 4
Democrat justices.



This makes no sense. It's impossible to call any of the 5 justices on the
conservative block bi-partisan.

But I didn't say 5, I said 12. These arguments were made by the DEMOCRATS in
the Florida Judiciary and upheld by the Republicans in the US Supreme Court.

The FSC also can't be counted as among those who supported this. Perhaps I
misunderstand. It voted 4 to 3 to continue the recount, as was proper.

But it was 7-0 FSC decision that said no recount could go past the safe
harbor date. Further, this was a narrow decison to allow a recount to go
forth with an uneven counting standard.

They were attempting to prevent James Baker and his gang of thieves
(including Kathleen Harris) from certifying the election in order to
support a partisan cause.

You are thoughly confused. The 4-3 decision came on 12/8/2000, but the same
court, in a 7-0 decision, crafted the remedy that allowed for Bush to be
certified on 11/26/2000.

They prevented one illegal attempt at
certification, and then demanded that all votes be recounted.

The attempt was not illegal, it followed Florida Code. BUT, in a 7-0
decision the FSC allowed for certification to be granted based on a 4 county
recount. Bush won that recount, thus he was certified the winner.

Seems like
the right decision to make given the situation. Only a partisan supreme
court, bent on installing their chosen candidate, would think otherwise.

You have confused a recount under Fla. Stat. 102.166 vs. 102.168. The
Supreme Court did not stop the recount under 166, they stopped the recount
under 168. By the time the court got the case, Bush had his slate of Florida
Electors.

snip

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when it
looks like they are going to lose.

The only place they can lose is in Congress, not the courts. What codes
do you believe that they quoted incorrectly?



Again, you stick to the same tired legal argument. Given a Gore victory in
Florida, the electorate would have demanded that he be sworn in as
president, regardless of what the congress wanted.

A number of Democrats, but not a majority of the electorate. Most of the
electorate is smart enough to understand that a count with no standards is
meaningless.

The 1887 statute was
nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate.

Electors are counted by the laws passed under this act. We saw these laws
used in the 2000 and the 2004 Election. In 2000, there was an attempt to
disqualify Bush's electors, but this challenge fail to get any support in
the Senate. Not a single Democrat would sign on. In 2004, the challenge was
debated, but failed to get the required number of votes.

IF the electorate was so upset in 2000, then the Democrats would have had
the public support to bring a challenge to the floor, but they did not have
the support, thus the DEMOCRATS in the Senate did not allow it to go forth.

There would have been
mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the will of
the people. This is obvious.

Maybe a number of Gore Democrats, not a majority of the people.

The supreme court ruling was a brilliant
checkmate of the Gore people, the FSC, and the American people.

Gore was checkmated on 11/26/2000, not 12/12.

snip

Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you
can't count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge
recount before the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable
procedures,

They had 30 days, Gore did not support a full recount (he never filed
for one), thus he wasted the time needed. 3 U.S.C. section 5 has been on
the books since 1887. Gore knew the deadline.



This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately pushed
for a statewide recount.

And he should have INSISTED that the counting standards were not changed
from the previous elections.

However, that was not really possible, due to
Florida law. They would have had to wait until certification to request a
statewide recount. By then, they would have lost the momentum.

This is incorrect, there is no limit on the number of counties that Gore
could have protested under Fla. Stat. 102.166. Gore argued all the way to
the US Supreme Court that he was not required to recount all of the ballots.

and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers are
required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to prevent
the votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good reason to
stop the recount.

Why do believe that two identically marked ballots do not mean the same
thing??



The same can be said of any hand recount, unless all ballots are counted
by the same individual at the same exact moment. This is clearly
impossible. The nature of the problem was such that there were a broad
variety of personalities and interpretations of the law. This is
inevitable.

Actually it is pretty easy. Florida had not allowed a dimpled chad to be a
legal vote in the past, thus it cannot be a legal vote in this election.

However, again, and again, there were checks in place.

The counting standards are the checks and balances, the Florida Supreme
Court threw them out.

By asserting (as
you do below) that the democrats were in control, you imply the democrats
were cheating. This is unfounded, and is also revisionist.

When the Democrats VIOLATED the LAW, i.e. 3 U.S.C. section 5, as to change
the counting standards, that PROVES they were cheating.

It was the republicans who flew in hundreds of supporters
to harass election officials.

It is called protesting the violation of the law.

Article II is the very reason why the recount should have
been stopped.
A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not settle the issue.

There were adequate procedures in place.

The Florida Supreme Court IGNORED those procedures.

Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was
clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was the
right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can have
these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would have
happened.

BUT to be legal, and it has to be complete with counting standards that were
in place BEFORE the election, and completed by the safe harbor date.

There were monitors from
both parties.

But that does not change the fact that the majority of the canvassing
board were controlled by Democrats.

This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic
observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established. That was
the point of the FSC ruling, which was overturned. Any attempt to
influence things one way or another was immediately challenged.

And those challenges fell on deaf ears. Don't you remember the partisan
fights in Palm Beach County?

Letting the recount proceed would have settled the question once and
for all.

Using an arbitrary counting standard does NOT settle the question.



You seem to believe that counting standards are uniform. This has never
been the case. There are as many standards as there are polling places.
The idea that a single, uniform standard is in place elsewhere is absurd,
and given the nature of the issue, can only be construed as a
rationalization for the 5 majority justices' partisan ruling.

Why are you ignoring what the Democrats in the Florida Judiciary had to say
about this issue??? IF you take a look at the opinions from Gore vs. Harris
I and I, along with Bush v. Gore, you will find that there are MORE
DEMOCRATS making these same arguments.

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting too close
for
comfort.

Bush already had 271 electoral votes committed to his election. It was
NOT too close, it was OVER. The reason to stop the recount was to keep
the Florida Supreme Court from rewriting Florida Election Code.



Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to certify
the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were active
recounts. Kathleen Harris, appointed by the republican candidate's
brother, Jeb Bush, was the election official responsible for this. She
was, up until election day, a Co-Chair of the campaign for George W Bush.
Hardly a non-partisan. Her attempts to certify the election results were
stopped by the FSC. Jim Baker and the gang were outraged, and attempted to
force the issue by getting the legislator to pledge their electors
prematurely, before the hand recounts. They were trying to cheat the state
out of a recount in a presidential election that hinged on 500 votes.

You seem to have forgotten that Bush received Florida's electors as a result
of the ruling from the Florida Supreme Court. The COURT set up the recount,
and the COURT set the new date for certification. Bush was certified under
their ORDERS.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways. The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a
recount by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is
appropriate only if the returns submitted the Department so late that
their inclusion will compromise the integrity of the electoral
process in either of two way: (1) by precluding a candidate, elector,
or taxpayer from contesting the certification of an election pursuant
to section 102.168; or (2) by precluding Florida voters from
participating fully in the federal electoral process." (reference to
footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Clearly you are wrong. You are ignoring the ramifications of the
Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the make up of Congress on 1/6/2001.


Again, you appear unwilling or unable to understand my point. This law is
irrelevant, and was never really considered by either the FSC or the US
SC.

INCORRECT. Both the 7-2 and the 5-4 decision SPECIFICALLY deal with this
law. The deadline set by the FSC, and upheld by the US Supreme Court is part
of this 1887 law. The idea that election laws cannot be changed after the
vote has taken place is also a part of 1887 law. Both can be found in 3
U.S.C. section 5.

It was yet another historical anomaly, like laws against spitting on
the sidewalk. The recounts were proceeding, and the result would be
binding, because the electorate would demand it. This was a special
situation, and only those bent on preventing any kind of recount would
even consider invoking that law, particularly since the legislature was
usurping the will of the people in attempting to pledge their electors.

You are trying to tell me that PARTISAN REPUBLICANS were going to allow Gore
into office. I don't buy that for a second.

Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the courts could not remove
Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the recount had been completed,
Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25 Florida Electors with the
signature of the state's executive. The court cound NOT change this
fact.


Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this.
The fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

I don't need a website, all I need is the law. 3 U.S.C. section 15 does
not allow for a court to remove a slate of electors. Only Congress has
that power.


Yawn. Sure thing bub.

Yep, it is a sure thing.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors
with the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can
change this fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

3 U.S.C. section 15 proves you to be in error.



Again, it's beside the point.

Gore can't win with out this law. It IS THE POINT.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor can
they take them away.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic.

You hang your hat on the dissent of the US Supreme Court, then you call
their opinions moronic. I have given the law as laid out by Justice
Breyer's dissent.

Actually, I hang my hat on the idea that

a) the recounts were proceeding in a reasonable fashion.

Yet, several Democrat members of the Florida Judiciary disagreed.

b) there were checks and balances in place to ensure that any counted
ballot reflected the 'clear intent of the voter'.

Which were thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court.

c) The recount was inching towards a Gore victory.

With a recount that endorced an uneven counting standard that violated 3
U.S.C. section 5.

d) if the recount had overturned the election result, the congress would
have had no choice but to acquiesce.

Congress is going to throw out the rule of law to allow Gore to steal an
election. Fat chance.

e) The supreme court knew this. Scalia attempted get the court to stop the
recount even before hearing Gore's arguments prove this.

If Gore is going to win the white house on this late date, he has to win his
arguments before Congress, not the courts.

f) A supreme court justice would NEVER use such strong language, as was
used by Justice Stevens, without real cause. BTW, Stevens is a republican.

Dissent does not rule the day.

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular, Scalia,
Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of clerks,
acting inappropriately through the whole situation. O'Connor believed,
without real evidence, that the FSC was 'stealing the election', and thus
made up her mind to prevent the recount early. She expressed her dismay
over an apparent Gore victory publicly. Scalia was openly partisan through
the entire thing, sending scathing memos to Stevens. Rehnquist and Thomas
are both very conservative. Kennedy's clerks were vetted by republican
hardliners for him, so he wouldn't stray from the straight and narrow.
This block of conservatives was able to bring the matter before them, and
rule on it, without even consulting the other justices. They attempted
to do this quietly, while the other justices were ON VACATION, to
the utter astonishment of clerks, the press, and the media.

Which still does not change the fact that the court could not remove Bush's
electors.

get a clue:
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Clarence_A <no@No.com> wrote (in
<DNV4e.3050$qD2.1736@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com&gt about 'OT: Civil War
Narrowly Averted in Schiavo Case', on Wed, 6 Apr 2005:

Sounds like HE does know,

You really are priceless!
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Clarence_A]

"John Woodgate" <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote in message
news:2Kq5K2Tx1CVCFwdX@jmwa.demon.co.uk...

I read in sci.electronics.design that Clarence_A <no@No.com
wrote (in
DNV4e.3050$qD2.1736@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com&gt about 'OT:
Civil War
Narrowly Averted in Schiavo Case', on Wed, 6 Apr 2005:
Sounds like HE does know,

You really are priceless!

Why --- thank you John!

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 14:40:40 -0700, Bob Monsen <rcsurname@comast.net>
wrote:

[snip]

I don't want to get into a brawl here, but analysis after the fact of the
2000 election pointed out that Gore would have won Florida had the US
supreme court not overruled the Florida supreme court. The US supreme
court stepped in, against precedent, to interfere with state politics,
simply because a majority of them wanted Bush to win.

[snip]

Where did you come up with this hare-brained "analysis"?

Everything I've seen says Bush won even more handily.

Gawwwd! Can you imagine anything as bad as Gore Booooor ?

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[Clarence_A]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net...

Again "Bob Monsen" has shown that facts are irrelevant to him and
the DemonRats who have an unreasonable belief that the results
were incorrect and there was a conspiracy involved.

He will continue to argue with no other point than asserting that
HE is right and everyone else is wrong.

He is also incapable of learning since he will not consider
anything which does not allow him to interpret the outcome as
wrong.

Why bother? He's a lost cause, impossible to be reasoned with!
Unlike Gore, he has been unable to come to grip with the truth!


--
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent
of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 22:44:04 -0400, keith wrote:

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 13:30:33 -0700, Robert Monsen wrote:

John Woodgate wrote:
I read in sci.electronics.design that Clarence_A <no@No.com> wrote (in
CcA4e.9602$FN4.804@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com&gt about 'OT: Civil War
Narrowly Averted in Schiavo Case', on Tue, 5 Apr 2005:

America is not and never has been a "Democracy."


What about 'government of/for/by the People'? 'By the People' is
surely 'democracy'?

It's formally defined as a representative democracy. The people don't
vote, they vote for the people who vote. This leads to wierd anomalies,
such as George W Bush, who lost the 'popular' vote in 2000, but won the
election due to quirks in the law, and a few friends in high places.

Horse-shit! No "quirks in the law", nor "a few friends in high places".
The constitution was (finally) followed.

I don't want to get into a brawl here, but analysis after the fact of the
2000 election pointed out that Gore would have won Florida had the US
supreme court not overruled the Florida supreme court. The US supreme
court stepped in, against precedent, to interfere with state politics,
simply because a majority of them wanted Bush to win.

...but if you want to continue to slog on in your hate and stupor,
please don't let me stop you. You folks need someone to hate.

Are you offering yourself as a candidate? I don't think you have the
credentials. Here is the job description:

=========

Job Opening:

The liberal elite are again searching for a candidate for the position of
"person to hate".

Job requirements:

The perfect candidate is an evil scion of an evil family, who is totally
committed to raping the middle class for the benefit of himself and the
rest of the richest 1%.

You must have intimate connections with the Christian Right, and be
willing to use them to your own advantage. You must be willing to
undermine the separation of church and state.

You will be required to start vanity wars in the middle east with the
hidden agenda of pumping up Texan oil prices for your friends.

You will also be required to attempt to destroy social security, medicare,
and other cherished programs of the "New Deal" and "Great Society".

Finally, you will be required to destroy the economic well-being of the
united states by building up the national debt to a point where other
nations lose confidence in treasury bonds.

Benefits:

A large house (white) will be provided for the use of you and your family.
All transportation, security, food, and medical care will be supplied.

Salary:

While our salary package is not as attractive as many other positions in
the private sector, the connections and influence that can be gained may
be used to your financial advantage after your tenure in too many ways to
count. Former 'person to hate's have gone on to peddle their influence to
obtain lucrative careers in both the private and the public sector.

=======

This job is already filled at present. You may, however, reapply in 3
years.

-------
Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Roger Johansson]

John Woodgate wrote:

The United States is just that. It's about the states
choosing the executive, not the people. See: amendment XXVII
(above). Without the Senate, and by extension the Electoral
College the small states would be totally forgotten.

That's precisely a soviet system, which is a hierarchy of committees,
each electing representatives to the next senior committee:

In Sweden and most european states we have a more direct democracy.

A few weeks before the election everybody who has the right to vote
gets a voting card in the mail, so there is no registration procedure.
All citizens are automatically registered, so to speak.

I can vote in the mail office before the election, or in a special
location, often a local school, on the election day.

When I vote I show my voting card and I get 3 envelopes, one for the
parliament, one for the state government, and one for the county.

I choose pieces of paper the 5-6 political parties have put outside the
voting booth and put one paper in each envelope.
I can vote for different political parties at the 3 levels, or the same.

Every piece of paper has a list of names, the people who will represent
me and the party I have chosen.
I can strike names from the list if I want to, so my favorite
representant(s) in that party has bigger chance to get a seat.

The party which has got most votes form the government, maybe in
alliance with one or two other parties, and the same system is used at
state and county levels.

The "state" level in my country is much less significant than the
national
and county level.
The state level only handle health care and road building in a certain
part of the country.

So compared to USA we have practically no states, we have a national
government and some 200 counties.
The 15 "states" at the level between government and the counties have
practically no influence over the counties.
The "states" are more like regional committes for matters which are
regional, mainly how the big hospitals are to be run, big roads, and
some agricultural issues.

We do not vote for a person to become president, we vote for political
parties, for political programs. But usually the leader of the biggest
party becomes the prime minister. He may be replaced though, at any
time, by his party.

This means that the leaders of the parties are not as important as in
american politics, nobody cares if a leader has been in the military or
not, or if he smoked pot as a young student or not.

It is not the person who is important but the political program of the
party.


--
Roger J.

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 06:37:12 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net...
On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:47:13 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message

snip

It was not only 7 members of the US Supreme Court, it was 3 members of
the Florida Supreme Court, Judge Sauls, and Gore's Florida campaign
chair (Florida's attorney General Bob Butterworth). It was Butterworth
who quit Gore's campaign and then sent a letter to the Palm Beach County
Canvassing Board telling them that their recount was a violation of
equal protection.



I've stated there was a violation of equal protection. There were lots of
violations of equal protection. Justice Kennedy decided to pick this
particular one, at this particular time. Clearly, by doing so, they were
choosing sides. Otherwise, they would have objected to the far greater
equal protection issues inherent in the differences between polling
procedures in poor rural counties as opposed to rich republican counties.
They also wouldn't have made this ruling inapplicable to any other
situation. This was a court that was almost, but not quite completely
disinterested in any equal protection law, up until, and, coincidentally,
after this time.

Which still doesn't change the fact the court could not remove Bush's
electors.

This does not matter. The certification was based on a recount which did
not include all the votes, and was thus invalid.

You pick the bits of republican party disinformation you've chosen to use,
and ignore the broader issues. These issues include the importance of
settling the matter; the importance for the supreme court not to appear
partisan;

The arguments in Bush vs. Gore were started by the DEMOCRATS in the Florida
Legal System. Upholding those arguments does not make the Supreme Court look
partisan.

No, they were started by the republicans, who made the first motion to the
supreme court.

It was the DEMOCRATS who said the safe harbor date was the final
deadline, the SCotUS UPHELD this ruling. It was the DEMOCRATS who said
that changing the counting standards would NOT withstand the scunity of
the US Constitution, the SCotUS UPHELD this argument.

No, it was the Jim Baker legal team that asserted all of this. These
arguments were brought by the republicans. Despite their later claim that
Gore was whining to the court, it was Bush that brought suit.

the importance of states rights,

This is not a state's rights case. This is a case of the rights of the
state legislature. According to the Constitution, the legislatures are
to enact election code, not courts.

The legislature cannot arbitrarily change the election code after the
fact. The supreme court in Florida was protecting the rights of voters by
attempting to keep the legislature from prematurely pledging their
electors. It was attempting to protect the rights of 80,000 voters whose
ballots were NEVER counted. Sadly, it failed in this attempt.

and the rights of the
electorate in a particular state to chose their method of recount.

IF a state wants their votes to count, they must follow the Electoral
Count Act of 1887, or risk having their state disqualified from the
Electoral College.

And that happens alot? Is there a case where the statute was enforced?
This is malarky.

You also ignore the obvious fact that the recounts were proceeding
fairly.

That is a myth. The lack of a counting standard is not an accurate way
to count votes.

No, it was simply true. People doing the recount were stunned by this
ruling. It was as if the court was taking away the rights of the people to
elect a president. That is what in fact they were doing.

Justice Souter writing, "But evidence in the record here suggests that a
different order of isparity obtains under rules for determining a
voter's intent that have been applied (and ould continue to be applied)
to identical types of ballots used in identical brands of machines and
exhibiting identical physical characteristics (such as "hanging" or
"dimpled" chads)."

All
of these issues were brushed aside by the court in order to prevent the
recount from continuing. Using the equal protection clause was a
calculated ploy to checkmate the FSC. They are, after all, brilliant
men and women. It worked. Their guy is president, despite the
possibility that it would go otherwise.

Do you really believe that the PARTISAN Republicans in the US House, who
were outraged that the Democrats in Florida had changed the counting in
violation of 3 U.S.C. section 5, were going to elect Gore??? You can't
be that naive.

Yes, they would have done it. They wouldn't have had any choice. Think
about the ramifications if

A) Gore won the popular vote by a wide margin.
B) Gore won the recount of Florida.
C) House installs Bush as president.

Nobody would have cared what somebody said about this in 1887.

The numbers are overwhelmingly in support of the
equal protection
argument. 12 bi-partisan judges along with Butterworth vs. 6 Democrat
judges.

Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It
was also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria,
since it would be overturned due to having been decided after the
election.

Correct, that is why the FSC should have ENFORCED the existing
counting standards. That would have solved their 3 U.S.C. section 5
problems.

Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Yet they violated Florida Code, and both the Florida and Federal
Constitutions by endorsing an uneven counting standard.



The FSC clearly believed that the counting standards being used were
sufficient. I agree.

The NARROW decision by the court thought that it was sufficient. The
majority between the three courts DISAGREED.

Who cares? FSC had jurisdiction. The Supreme court stepped in, with a
moronic equal protection argument crafted by Kennedy that nobody thought
made any sense (Scalia, to his credit, called it a 'bunch of crap', but
subsequently denied the statement.) However, because of the fact that it
stopped the recount, they all signed on. They all knew that any delay
might be fatal for their guy.

I believe that having both a republican and a democrat
deciding,
together, that a vote is valid is going to give a better indication of
the desire of the voter than a counting machine would.

Again with the myths.

You say myth, I say fact. Your republican buddies were sending down
congressional staffers to harass election officials. What a bunch of
assholes. The election officials were shocked and stunned when their
efforts were obviated by the supreme court. They had been working on this
for weeks, night and day.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes
in poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection
was, of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

All the votes were counted at least twice. Gore never made a claim
that the ballots were not tabulated.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

As demonstrated by 4 members of the Florida Supreme Court.



You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court
from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so
obviously wrong.

You are still using a false premise. The courts cannot decide a
presidental election.

Apparently, they can. They did in this case, simply by stopping a recount
that was proceeding towards an overturn to the election. They knew it. I
knew it. You knew it. The NYT knew it. The Washington Post knew it. Your
mother knew it. Everybody knew it. The Supreme Court stopped the recount,
and thus chose the president.

snip

The majority of the election boards in Florida were controlled by
Democrats. The DEMOCRATS make the final decision on what would be
counted as a vote.

This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers.

The PARTISAN Democrats who were deciding on what were legal votes does
not matter?? The same PARTISAN Democrats who got their hands slapped by
11 Judges.

This is specious nonsense. You simply can't pretend that the counts were
not being carried out by both republicans and democrats. Both teams were
intent on a victory. They wouldn't have let anything else occur.

The
republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they
could, to slow the process. However, the vote was slowly inching
towards the proper result. Remember the "Brooks Brothers" riots?
Republican congressional staffers, intentionally flown down to disrupt
the proceedings, and thus slow things down?

And you believe that these same Republicans were going to allow Gore to
win in the Electoral College?

Yes, they would have been forced to. There would have been no alternative,
as I point out above.

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of
no legitimate state
interest served by these differing treatments of the expressions
of voters' fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly
arbitrary."


Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to
continue the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the
court.

Because the court upheld the 7-0 Florida Supreme Court's ruling.
Between the two courts, the numbers here are 12 bi-partisan justices
vs. 4 Democrat justices.



This makes no sense. It's impossible to call any of the 5 justices on
the conservative block bi-partisan.

But I didn't say 5, I said 12. These arguments were made by the
DEMOCRATS in the Florida Judiciary and upheld by the Republicans in the
US Supreme Court.

Only the FSC counted. The USSC stepped in, again, based on shaky legal
arguments, to stop the recount because their conservative candidate was
losing. It really is as simple as this.

The FSC also can't be counted as among those who supported this.
Perhaps I misunderstand. It voted 4 to 3 to continue the recount, as
was proper.

But it was 7-0 FSC decision that said no recount could go past the safe
harbor date. Further, this was a narrow decison to allow a recount to go
forth with an uneven counting standard.

They were attempting to prevent James Baker and his gang of thieves
(including Kathleen Harris) from certifying the election in order to
support a partisan cause.

You are thoughly confused. The 4-3 decision came on 12/8/2000, but the
same court, in a 7-0 decision, crafted the remedy that allowed for Bush
to be certified on 11/26/2000.

Yes, and then they ordered a full recount of all undervotes on the 8th. If
they believed the election to be certified, this was an odd way of showing
it.

They prevented one illegal attempt at certification,
and then demanded
that all votes be recounted.

The attempt was not illegal, it followed Florida Code. BUT, in a 7-0
decision the FSC allowed for certification to be granted based on a 4
county recount. Bush won that recount, thus he was certified the winner.

Without counting undervotes. That was the basis of the FSC decision on the
8th. It required a count of undervotes.

Seems like
the right decision to make given the situation. Only a partisan supreme
court, bent on installing their chosen candidate, would think
otherwise.

You have confused a recount under Fla. Stat. 102.166 vs. 102.168. The
Supreme Court did not stop the recount under 166, they stopped the
recount under 168. By the time the court got the case, Bush had his
slate of Florida Electors.

Which was not based on a valid recount. The undervotes (and probably,
overvotes) needed to be counted.

snip

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when
it looks like they are going to lose.

The only place they can lose is in Congress, not the courts. What
codes do you believe that they quoted incorrectly?



Again, you stick to the same tired legal argument. Given a Gore victory
in Florida, the electorate would have demanded that he be sworn in as
president, regardless of what the congress wanted.

A number of Democrats, but not a majority of the electorate. Most of the
electorate is smart enough to understand that a count with no standards
is meaningless.

The 1887 statute was
nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate.

Electors are counted by the laws passed under this act. We saw these
laws used in the 2000 and the 2004 Election. In 2000, there was an
attempt to disqualify Bush's electors, but this challenge fail to get
any support in the Senate. Not a single Democrat would sign on. In 2004,
the challenge was debated, but failed to get the required number of
votes.

IF the electorate was so upset in 2000, then the Democrats would have
had the public support to bring a challenge to the floor, but they did
not have the support, thus the DEMOCRATS in the Senate did not allow it
to go forth.

There would have been
mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the will
of the people. This is obvious.

Maybe a number of Gore Democrats, not a majority of the people.

Gore Democrats WERE a majority of the people....

The supreme court ruling was a brilliant checkmate of the Gore people,
the FSC, and the American people.

Gore was checkmated on 11/26/2000, not 12/12.

No, actually not. The FSC was attempting a fair recount. The supreme court
stepped in afterwards.

snip

Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you
can't count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge
recount before the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable
procedures,

They had 30 days, Gore did not support a full recount (he never filed
for one), thus he wasted the time needed. 3 U.S.C. section 5 has been
on the books since 1887. Gore knew the deadline.



This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately
pushed for a statewide recount.

And he should have INSISTED that the counting standards were not changed
from the previous elections.

There had been a history of 80 years in Florida of using 'the clear intent
of the voter' to decide recounts. This is the real issue. The FSC ruled in
the proper way. The SC overturned their ruling to stop the recount, in
order to prevent Gore from being president.

However, that was not really possible, due to Florida
law. They would
have had to wait until certification to request a statewide recount. By
then, they would have lost the momentum.

This is incorrect, there is no limit on the number of counties that Gore
could have protested under Fla. Stat. 102.166. Gore argued all the way
to the US Supreme Court that he was not required to recount all of the
ballots.

Again, they admit now that it was a mistake. He simply didn't have time to
request recount in all counties. There was a 72 hour time limit.

and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers
are required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to
prevent the votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good
reason to stop the recount.

Why do believe that two identically marked ballots do not mean the
same thing??



The same can be said of any hand recount, unless all ballots are
counted by the same individual at the same exact moment. This is
clearly impossible. The nature of the problem was such that there were
a broad variety of personalities and interpretations of the law. This
is inevitable.

Actually it is pretty easy. Florida had not allowed a dimpled chad to be
a legal vote in the past, thus it cannot be a legal vote in this
election.

However, again, and again, there were checks in place.

The counting standards are the checks and balances, the Florida Supreme
Court threw them out.

The people doing the counting are the checks and balances. The US Supreme
Court threw them, and their efforts, out.

By asserting (as
you do below) that the democrats were in control, you imply the
democrats were cheating. This is unfounded, and is also revisionist.

When the Democrats VIOLATED the LAW, i.e. 3 U.S.C. section 5, as to
change the counting standards, that PROVES they were cheating.

What a crock of smock.

It was the republicans who flew in hundreds of supporters to harass
election officials.

It is called protesting the violation of the law.

Right, perhaps you should reread the NYT article on the matter. What a
bunch of criminals. This kind of thing is a federal offense. Sadly,
without a fair supreme court to judge the matter, none of them are likely
to be called to justice.

Article II is the very reason why the recount should have
been stopped.
A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not settle the
issue.

There were adequate procedures in place.

The Florida Supreme Court IGNORED those procedures.

Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was
clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was
the right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can
have these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would
have happened.

BUT to be legal, and it has to be complete with counting standards that
were in place BEFORE the election, and completed by the safe harbor
date.

Ah, checkmate! No matter what the electorate actually said. The process is
far more important that what the voters actually want. eh? That sickens me.

There were monitors from
both parties.

But that does not change the fact that the majority of the canvassing
board were controlled by Democrats.

This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic
observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established. That
was the point of the FSC ruling, which was overturned. Any attempt to
influence things one way or another was immediately challenged.

And those challenges fell on deaf ears. Don't you remember the partisan
fights in Palm Beach County?

Right! They were all intended to slow things down enough to fall beyond
the 'safe harbor' date. It was calculated and orchestrated by the
republicans. What a bunch of assholes. Let the goddam recount happen!
Their guy probably would have won anyway. But instead of trusting that the
electorate recount would prove that, they decided to wade in with a bunch
of whoring staffers. I say again, assholes!

Letting the recount proceed would have settled the
question once and
for all.

Using an arbitrary counting standard does NOT settle the question.



You seem to believe that counting standards are uniform. This has never
been the case. There are as many standards as there are polling places.
The idea that a single, uniform standard is in place elsewhere is
absurd, and given the nature of the issue, can only be construed as a
rationalization for the 5 majority justices' partisan ruling.

Why are you ignoring what the Democrats in the Florida Judiciary had to
say about this issue??? IF you take a look at the opinions from Gore vs.
Harris I and I, along with Bush v. Gore, you will find that there are
MORE DEMOCRATS making these same arguments.

I guess they had more self respect than the supreme court, which appears
to have voted along conservative/liberal lines. Sadly, Kennedy was unable
to make up his mind, first siding with the liberals, and then being
coerced by Scalia and Rehnquist into changing his mind. His equal
protection argument was nonsense, but the liberals thought he might side
with them if they bought in. Fools.

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting too close
for
comfort.

Bush already had 271 electoral votes committed to his election. It
was NOT too close, it was OVER. The reason to stop the recount was to
keep the Florida Supreme Court from rewriting Florida Election Code.



Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to
certify the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were
active recounts. Kathleen Harris, appointed by the republican
candidate's brother, Jeb Bush, was the election official responsible
for this. She was, up until election day, a Co-Chair of the campaign
for George W Bush. Hardly a non-partisan. Her attempts to certify the
election results were stopped by the FSC. Jim Baker and the gang were
outraged, and attempted to force the issue by getting the legislator to
pledge their electors prematurely, before the hand recounts. They were
trying to cheat the state out of a recount in a presidential election
that hinged on 500 votes.

You seem to have forgotten that Bush received Florida's electors as a
result of the ruling from the Florida Supreme Court. The COURT set up
the recount, and the COURT set the new date for certification. Bush was
certified under their ORDERS.

The recount did not include undervotes or overvotes. Both needed to be
considered. Thus, the FSC mandated that a recount of undervotes be done.
This clearly meant that they felt that any prior certification was in
error.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways.
The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a
recount by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is
appropriate only if the returns submitted the Department so late
that their inclusion will compromise the integrity of the
electoral process in either of two way: (1) by precluding a
candidate, elector, or taxpayer from contesting the certification
of an election pursuant to section 102.168; or (2) by precluding
Florida voters from participating fully in the federal electoral
process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Clearly you are wrong. You are ignoring the ramifications of the
Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the make up of Congress on 1/6/2001.


Again, you appear unwilling or unable to understand my point. This law
is irrelevant, and was never really considered by either the FSC or the
US SC.

INCORRECT. Both the 7-2 and the 5-4 decision SPECIFICALLY deal with this
law. The deadline set by the FSC, and upheld by the US Supreme Court is
part of this 1887 law. The idea that election laws cannot be changed
after the vote has taken place is also a part of 1887 law. Both can be
found in 3 U.S.C. section 5.

Nobody was changing election law. The FSC was interpreting existing
law, and also using 80 years of precedent on the matter of "clear intent",
which is also included in the wording of 33 other states. This is clearly
within their jurisdiction.

It was yet
another historical anomaly, like laws against spitting on
the sidewalk. The recounts were proceeding, and the result would be
binding, because the electorate would demand it. This was a special
situation, and only those bent on preventing any kind of recount would
even consider invoking that law, particularly since the legislature was
usurping the will of the people in attempting to pledge their electors.

You are trying to tell me that PARTISAN REPUBLICANS were going to allow
Gore into office. I don't buy that for a second.

They would have been lynched if they failed to uphold the results of the
election, either physically, or during the next election. Not doing that
would be tantamount to condoning a coup.

Under the
Electoral Count Act of 1887, the courts could not remove
Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the recount had been
completed, Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25 Florida
Electors with the signature of the state's executive. The court
cound NOT change this fact.


Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this.
The fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

I don't need a website, all I need is the law. 3 U.S.C. section 15
does not allow for a court to remove a slate of electors. Only
Congress has that power.


Yawn. Sure thing bub.

Yep, it is a sure thing.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors
with the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can
change this fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

3 U.S.C. section 15 proves you to be in error.



Again, it's beside the point.

Gore can't win with out this law. It IS THE POINT.

Disagree.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor
can they take them away.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic.

You hang your hat on the dissent of the US Supreme Court, then you
call their opinions moronic. I have given the law as laid out by
Justice Breyer's dissent.

Actually, I hang my hat on the idea that

a) the recounts were proceeding in a reasonable fashion.

Yet, several Democrat members of the Florida Judiciary disagreed.

A majority believed it.

b) there were checks and balances in place to ensure that any counted
ballot reflected the 'clear intent of the voter'.

Which were thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court.

By the partisans, as shown below.

c) The recount was inching towards a Gore victory.

With a recount that endorced an uneven counting standard that violated 3
U.S.C. section 5.

Disagree.

d) if the recount had overturned the election result, the congress
would have had no choice but to acquiesce.

Congress is going to throw out the rule of law to allow Gore to steal an
election. Fat chance.

Lynching argument.

e) The supreme court knew this. Scalia attempted get the court to stop
the recount even before hearing Gore's arguments prove this.

If Gore is going to win the white house on this late date, he has to win
his arguments before Congress, not the courts.

Lynching argument.

f) A supreme court justice would NEVER use such strong language, as was
used by Justice Stevens, without real cause. BTW, Stevens is a
republican.

Dissent does not rule the day.

The point was that Stevens, a republican, believed so strongly that the
court was acting in a crass, partisan way, that he included unheard of
invective into his minority opinion. This is evidence that any justice
with a thread of moral fiber would have at least thought twice about
weighing into this matter. Scalia, O'Connor, and the rest were so
determined to stop this recount that they threw theirs and the rest
of the court's moral credibility to the wind. That was his problem with it.

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular,
Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of
clerks, acting inappropriately through the whole situation. O'Connor
believed, without real evidence, that the FSC was 'stealing the
election', and thus made up her mind to prevent the recount early. She
expressed her dismay over an apparent Gore victory publicly. Scalia was
openly partisan through the entire thing, sending scathing memos to
Stevens. Rehnquist and Thomas are both very conservative. Kennedy's
clerks were vetted by republican hardliners for him, so he wouldn't
stray from the straight and narrow. This block of conservatives was
able to bring the matter before them, and rule on it, without even
consulting the other justices. They attempted to do this quietly, while
the other justices were ON VACATION, to the utter astonishment of
clerks, the press, and the media.

Which still does not change the fact that the court could not remove
Bush's electors.

The FSC could, and did. The certification was invalid.

get a clue:
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 22:11:35 -0600, learning wrote:

In <pan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net>, on 04/10/05
at 08:26 PM, Bob Monsen <rcsurname@comast.net> said:

You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court
from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so obviously
wrong.

If you look at the subject header, and then reflect on what happend to
this woman in that same state, and that same court, I think its easy to
see that the FSC has credibility problems from the get-go.

Right, they are a bunch of assholes who sided with precedent, law, and
common sense against the Christian right and the grieving parents, who
were unwilling to let go. Get out the crosses! Put on the sheets! String
them up!

This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers.
The republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they
could, to slow the process.

Meanwhile, Big Al hired telemarketers to call tends of thousands of
Floridians, the day after the election, and tell them that their votes
were not being counted, when there was no proof that such a thing was
going on. Class act, all the way to the end

This doesn't sound like Al Gore to me. Gore was the gentleman throughout.
That is probably the reason he let the republican trample him, and steal
the election. He also was a Bore. He seems to have fixed that, though,
based on his speeches during the recent election cycle, which were
calculated, cunning, and bold.

However, the vote was slowly inching towards the proper
result. Remember
the "Brooks Brothers" riots? Republican congressional staffers,
intentionally flown down to disrupt the proceedings, and thus slow
things down?

Not much compared to the actual candidate authorizing the thousands and
thousands of calls filled with lies to incite the public, and create
even more problems. Class act, all the way to the end

nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate. There would have
been mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the
will of the people. This is obvious. The supreme court ruling was a
brilliant checkmate of the Gore people, the FSC, and the American
people.

The paranoia that you continue to pour out is actually quite
frightening.

Paranoia? It's clearly documented in lots of places. Justice Stevens says
as much in his minority opinion.

What is amazing to me is you give all this credit to the Bush people for
"checkmating" Gore and overthrowing the Republic, and yet the liberal
left continues to call Bush a stupid man, who has no brains. Based on
your position, he is smarter than the left, and if he is stupid, what
does that leave the liberals?

It wasn't Bush, it was Jim Baker, and his trained attack dogs. He is
smarter than any 10 Bushes you care to name. In fact, he is smarter than
any 10 people you care to name, republican or democrat. This is the guy
who should be president, not that spoiled rich boy born again former drunk
who can't even string two words together without a hidden speaker up his
ass.

Baker wouldn't have gotten us into a war with Iraq. He wouldn't have cut
taxes in such a cavalier manner during an insanely expensive set of wars.
He wouldn't have ignored or fired his generals. He is intelligent,
cunning, and yet respected all over the world. A diplomat, a statesman, a
great man. He is also an asshole, and a pit-bull. However, I'm not worried
about that. You need backbone to be president these days. He wouldn't have
hidden on air force one during an attack on American soil.

This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately
pushed for a statewide recount. However, that was not really possible,
due to Florida law. They would have had to wait until certification to
request a statewide recount. By then, they would have lost the momentum.

No, Gore's mistake was being such a butt head that the citizens of his
own state didn't even want him to be president. If he had only won his
own home state.........

That is just wrong. Gore was a statesman and a gentleman. He acted like
one throughout the entire process. Some of his people got out of hand, but
that was a response to the pit-bull attacks by the Baker team.

Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was
clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was
the right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can
have these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would
have happened.

The right thing to do is to follow the law, which is what they did. The
wrong thing to do is to pretend to be a democracy, and alter the laws on
the fly, to fit the agenda of the masses.

Of course, it's much better to just appoint presidents. That way, you
don't have to worry about having a president that won't bend over for any
corporate interest that comes his way. Bush must enjoy that position, he
appears to occupy it constantly.

This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic
observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established.

The voter makes his intention known by punching the ballot. Does the
left now believe in telepathy, and the ability to divine intent by
handling the ballot and invoking the spirit of democracy to inspire them
as to the wished of the person who handled the ballot before?

Actually, the democrats believed that the votes could be counted by simply
examining them by hand. This has a precedent that goes back hundreds of
years. Fortunately for the republicans, it's now not possible to recount
votes, because the electronic voting machines have no paper trail. So,
even if the electronic machines are proven to be unreliable, and skew
their votes in one way or another, there is no recourse. The only record
of 'the clear intent of the voter' for most of Florida, and soon for the
rest of the country, is now the electronic counts in a Microsoft Windows
database application. THAT is scary.

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was
getting too close
for
comfort.


Again, massive amounts of paranoia coming through.

What a smudge. Again, this is shown by article after article. It's also
given credence by clerks from inside the court.

Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to
certify the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were
active recounts.

All she was doing was following the law. Did she follow the law, as it
is written? Yes. That does not make her a republican stooge.

No, she was made a republican stooge long before. She IS a republican
stooge. Everybody knew that at the time. She was working for GW Bush up
until election day. She was rewarded for these efforts by a seat in the
house.

Yawn.
Sure thing bub.

Quick, someone create a web page and put this guy out of his misery....

You pathetic fool.

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular,
Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of
clerks, acting inappropriately through the whole situation.

O'Conner is NOT a conservative, and neither is Kennedy. Take a look at
their record, and you cannot call them anything but liberal, NWO
thinkers.

Ah, if you are a Nazi perhaps. They DID vote against the overturn of Roe V
Wade.... I guess that makes them liberals.

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

another web site. Gee, that must make it all true.

You are too weak to actually follow the link? It's a Vanity Fair
article. It is well researched, and tells the inside story of the court's
decision.

The bigger issue here is two fold.

1) you are paranoid beyond belief.

And you apparently don't even know what the word means. And anyway, just
because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you...

2) you actually think that either side, right or left, is smart enough,
and has the brain power to pull off what you accuse them of, in the time
that it occured. Forget the legal argument, forget the fact that your
hat with the tiny propeller has been hit by lightening, and forget the
fact that "they" are everywhere, and realize that our government
officials are stupid, incapable of quick, efficient thinking, and unable
to organize and agree on anything, EVER.

nobody had to organize this. 5 members of the supreme court did it. how
impossible is that?

Your arguments might pass muster if the people you accuse of wrongdoing
were smart enough to do it in the first place. A quick read of this, and
a thousand other usenet groups and you will see that in general,
politicians are idiots, incapable of independent, 'on your feet'
thinking, and could in now way ever pull of the conspiracy you are
presenting. Its just not possible. We see these morons in action every
day. No way could either side pull off such a titanic steal.

Christ, why do I bother? You apparently don't even understand what I'm
trying to say.

It has been four years, and Bush is still president, the liberals have
given up, except for you and that bald advisor guy on CNN. The legal
challenges have all failed, and yet you and three other tin foil hatted
conspiracy theorists are still spewing all the legal double talk, with
no hope of accomplishing anything, other than dragging it on and on and
on and on.

This is totally uncalled for, and misses the point entirely. I was
defending an offhand remark. I got clobbered by a bunch of conservatives.
Thus, in order to defend it, I had to dig back into the record to figure
out what happened. I did this by reading various liberal articles on the
subject. These included the article printed in Vanity Fair, articles by
Dershowitz and Bugliosi on the legality of the court decision, and various
newspaper articles which are still left on the web from that time.

I'm not as conversant in this stuff as the conservative Marc Cook, who
appears to either be a lawyer, or to have recourse to lots of legal
information (he certainly uses lots of legal terms). Thus, I'm a bit
behind the curve. However, I'm still convinced of what I said initially,
even after reading his arguments. He is wrong. The supreme court was
wrong. The Florida Supreme Court was right, but was prevented from doing
the right thing, and finishing the recount, because of a set of legal
maneuvers by James Baker. The election may not have been stolen, but we
will never know now.

Its one thing to disagree, its another to dedicate your
life to a cause
that has no reason to exist, and can never be brought to a conclusion to
meet your fears.

Again, you are assuming facts not in evidence. Please get a clue.

Move on man. There is so much more you could do with your legal skills,
and so many topical issues you could get involved in that would benefit
everyone.

At least Marc Cook tries to be civil, even when he thinks I'm being pig
headed and stupid, and spends time researching the issues. He clearly
believes what he is saying, whether what he is saying is true or not.

Your posting

A) Accuses me of paranoia
B) Misunderstands my argument completely
C) Attempts to patronize me.
D) Gives me inane advice.
E) Tries to stroke me into not responding.

Please, come up with something more substantial next time.

------
Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Bob Monsen]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:47:18 +0000, Clarence_A wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net...

Again "Bob Monsen" has shown that facts are irrelevant to him and
the DemonRats who have an unreasonable belief that the results
were incorrect and there was a conspiracy involved.

He will continue to argue with no other point than asserting that
HE is right and everyone else is wrong.

He is also incapable of learning since he will not consider
anything which does not allow him to interpret the outcome as
wrong.

Why bother? He's a lost cause, impossible to be reasoned with!
Unlike Gore, he has been unable to come to grip with the truth!

Ah a cherished posting from Clarence_A. (What does the 'A' stand for?)

Thanks for this pithy, insightful analysis of the situation. I'm impressed
with your understanding of the issues, and dazzled by your clever
rhetorical style!

--------
Warmest regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Mark Cook]

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.18.19.39.895787@comast.net...

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 06:37:12 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.11.03.26.36.426909@comast.net...
On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:47:13 +0000, Mark Cook wrote:

"Bob Monsen" <rcsurname@comast.net> wrote in message

snip

It was not only 7 members of the US Supreme Court, it was 3 members
of
the Florida Supreme Court, Judge Sauls, and Gore's Florida campaign
chair (Florida's attorney General Bob Butterworth). It was
Butterworth
who quit Gore's campaign and then sent a letter to the Palm Beach
County
Canvassing Board telling them that their recount was a violation of
equal protection.

I've stated there was a violation of equal protection. There were lots
of
violations of equal protection. Justice Kennedy decided to pick this
particular one, at this particular time. Clearly, by doing so, they
were
choosing sides. Otherwise, they would have objected to the far greater
equal protection issues inherent in the differences between polling
procedures in poor rural counties as opposed to rich republican
counties.
They also wouldn't have made this ruling inapplicable to any other
situation. This was a court that was almost, but not quite completely
disinterested in any equal protection law, up until, and,
coincidentally,
after this time.

Which still doesn't change the fact the court could not remove Bush's
electors.

This does not matter. The certification was based on a recount which did
not include all the votes, and was thus invalid.

This is false. Fla. Stat. 102.166 does not require a protest of all ballots.
You said yourself that Gore wasn't required to file for a full recount at
this time. The Democrat majority of the Florida Supreme Court moved the
certification date for this recount. Bush was certified under their order.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

Further, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, only Congress can determine
if a slate of electors are invalid, not the courts.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/us­code/3/15.html

You pick the bits of republican party disinformation you've chosen to
use,
and ignore the broader issues. These issues include the importance of
settling the matter; the importance for the supreme court not to appear
partisan;

The arguments in Bush vs. Gore were started by the DEMOCRATS in the
Florida
Legal System. Upholding those arguments does not make the Supreme Court
look
partisan.

No, they were started by the republicans, who made the first motion to the
supreme court.

Judge Sauls, a Democrat, was making the equal protection argument. This is
Gore v. Harris (I), which became Bush v. Gore.

"Having done so, Plaintiffs are estopped from further challenge of this
process and standards. It should be noted, however, that such process and
standards were changed from the prior 1990 standards, perhaps contrary to
Title III, Section (5) of the United States code.

Furthermore, with respect to the standards utilized by the Board in its
review and counting processes, the Court finds that the standard utilized
was in full compliance with the law and reviewed under another standard
would not be authorized, thus creating a two-tier situation within one
county, as well as with respect to other counties.

The Court notes that the Attorney General of the State of Florida enunciated
his opinion of the law with respect to this, in a letter dated November 14,
2000, to the Honorable Charles E. Burton, Chair of the Palm Beach County
Canvassing Board, which, in part. is as follows: "A two-tier system would
have the effect of treating voters differently, depending upon what county
they voted in."

The voter in a county where a manual count was conducted, would benefit from
having a better chance of having his or her vote actually counted, than a
voter in a county where a hand count was halted. As the State's chief legal
officer, I feel a duty to warn that the final certified total for balloting
in the State of Florida includes figures generated from this two-tier system
of differing behavior by official Canvassing Boards, the state will incur a
legal jeopardy under both the United States and the state constitutions.

This legal jeopardy could potentially leave Florida having all of its votes,
in effect, disqualified, and this state being barred from the Electoral
College's election of a President."

http://www.quarterly-report.com/election_2000/sauls_opinion.html

It was the DEMOCRATS who said the safe harbor date was the final
deadline, the SCotUS UPHELD this ruling. It was the DEMOCRATS who said
that changing the counting standards would NOT withstand the scunity of
the US Constitution, the SCotUS UPHELD this argument.

No, it was the Jim Baker legal team that asserted all of this. These
arguments were brought by the republicans. Despite their later claim that
Gore was whining to the court, it was Bush that brought suit.

In Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Harris (11/21/2000), 6 Democrats
and 1 Independent ruled that the safe harbor date was the final deadline.
When you read this decision, be sure to take notice that Jim Baker is not
part of the FSC.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is appropriate only
if the returns submitted the Department so late that their inclusion will
compromise the integrity of the electoral process in either of two way: (1)
by precluding a candidate, elector, or taxpayer from contesting the
certification of an election pursuant to section 102.168; or (2) by
precluding Florida voters from participating fully in the federal electoral
process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/sc00-2346.pdf

As I pointed out above, Judge Sauls, a Democrat made the equal protection
augment. When you read the Palm Beach, you will find 2 other Democrats (and
the Independent) making the same argument.

Justice Wells writing his dissent said "I must regrettably conclude that the
majority ignores the magnitude of its decision. The Court fails to make
provision for....(9) the effect of the differing intra-county standards."

and

"Harding with Shaw concurring. "...as I have serious concerns that
Appellant's interpretation of 102.168 would violate other votes' rights to
due process and equal protection of the law under the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments to the United States."

Notice what Justice Harding use of the term "equal protection".

the importance of states rights,

This is not a state's rights case. This is a case of the rights of the
state legislature. According to the Constitution, the legislatures are
to enact election code, not courts.

The legislature cannot arbitrarily change the election code after the
fact. The supreme court in Florida was protecting the rights of voters by
attempting to keep the legislature from prematurely pledging their
electors. It was attempting to protect the rights of 80,000 voters whose
ballots were NEVER counted. Sadly, it failed in this attempt.

The legislature did not change the laws, that would be the Florida Supreme
Court. Further, you have it backwards. The Florida Legislature did not
attempt to pledge a second slate of Bush electors until the FSC issued it's
order for a standardless partial recount of disputed ballots on 12/8/2000.

and the rights of the
electorate in a particular state to chose their method of recount.

IF a state wants their votes to count, they must follow the Electoral
Count Act of 1887, or risk having their state disqualified from the
Electoral College.

And that happens allot? Is there a case where the statute was enforced?
This is malarky.

The Elector Count Act of 1887, i.e. the Federal Code that guides Congress in
the counting of Presidential Electors, has been used in every Presidential
election since 1888. In 1960, 2000, and 2004, the challenge provisions found
in 3 U.S.C. section 15 have been used.

In 1960, the Democrats prevailed to keep the Kennedy electors from the state
of Hawaii. They failed to get a challenge started against Bush's Florida
Electors in 2000 because no Democrat Senator would sign on. In 2004, the
Democrats found both a member of the House and Senate to sign on to a
challenge to Ohio's electors, but lost on the floor of the Senate and the
House.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/us­code/3/15.html

You also ignore the obvious fact that the recounts were proceeding
fairly.

That is a myth. The lack of a counting standard is not an accurate way
to count votes.

No, it was simply true. People doing the recount were stunned by this
ruling. It was as if the court was taking away the rights of the people to
elect a president. That is what in fact they were doing.

Florida Code requires the "clear intent of the voter" to be determined by a
uniformed counting standard.

There were two problems with the recount. First there was no counting
standard being used to determine "clear intent of the voter". Identical
ballots, with identical problems were not being counted in the same manner.
Second, counties had included dimpled chads in their recounts. This was a
change in Florida election practices, thus a violation of 3 U.S.C. section
5.

Justice Souter writing, "But evidence in the record here suggests that a
different order of isparity obtains under rules for determining a
voter's intent that have been applied (and ould continue to be applied)
to identical types of ballots used in identical brands of machines and
exhibiting identical physical characteristics (such as "hanging" or
"dimpled" chads)."

All
of these issues were brushed aside by the court in order to prevent the
recount from continuing. Using the equal protection clause was a
calculated ploy to checkmate the FSC. They are, after all, brilliant
men and women. It worked. Their guy is president, despite the
possibility that it would go otherwise.

Do you really believe that the PARTISAN Republicans in the US House, who
were outraged that the Democrats in Florida had changed the counting in
violation of 3 U.S.C. section 5, were going to elect Gore??? You can't
be that naive.

Yes, they would have done it. They wouldn't have had any choice. Think
about the ramifications if

A) Gore won the popular vote by a wide margin.

The US has elected Presidents who lost by popular vote by a wider percentage
than the 2000 election. Bush and Gore was less that 1%. The 1824 Adams won
the electoral college, lost the popular vote by appox 18% (Adams 108,740 to
Jackson's 153,544).

B) Gore won the recount of Florida.

Based on a violation of 3 U.S.C. section 5.

C) House installs Bush as president.

The rule of law Republicans are going to throw out Bush's electors that were
legally sent under Florida code, and replace them with Gore electors sent by
a violation of the law?? You are naive.

Nobody would have cared what somebody said about this in 1887.

IF 3 U.S.C. section 15 is not enforce, how is Gore going to challenge Bush's
Florida electors?

The numbers are overwhelmingly in support of the
equal protection
argument. 12 bi-partisan judges along with Butterworth vs. 6 Democrat
judges.

Thus, they were ruling that the procedures outlined were invalid. It
was also not possible for the FSC to come up with any new criteria,
since it would be overturned due to having been decided after the
election.

Correct, that is why the FSC should have ENFORCED the existing
counting standards. That would have solved their 3 U.S.C. section 5
problems.

Thus, the FSC, who were attempting to uphold the constitution by
ensuring that all votes were counted was checkmated by an evil, self
serving legal strategy.

Yet they violated Florida Code, and both the Florida and Federal
Constitutions by endorsing an uneven counting standard.



The FSC clearly believed that the counting standards being used were
sufficient. I agree.

The NARROW decision by the court thought that it was sufficient. The
majority between the three courts DISAGREED.

Who cares?

Those of us that understand that the narrow 4-3 ruling was not supported by
the majority of Judges who look at this case.

FSC had jurisdiction.

As did the US Supreme Court.

The Supreme court stepped in, with a
moronic equal protection argument crafted by Kennedy that nobody thought
made any sense (Scalia, to his credit, called it a 'bunch of crap', but
subsequently denied the statement.)

The argument started with Gore's own Florida Campaign Chair (Fla. Attorney
General Bob Butterworth, Democrat).

However, because of the fact that it
stopped the recount, they all signed on. They all knew that any delay
might be fatal for their guy.

The court could not change the outcome of the election.

I believe that having both a republican and a democrat
deciding,
together, that a vote is valid is going to give a better indication of
the desire of the voter than a counting machine would.

Again with the myths.

You say myth, I say fact.

Your reply has nothing to do with my point.

Your republican buddies were sending down
congressional staffers to harass election officials. What a bunch of
assholes.

I am not registered with any party. Just because I understand the legal
process, does not make me buddies with the Republicans.

The election officials were shocked and stunned when their
efforts were obviated by the supreme court. They had been working on this
for weeks, night and day.

The order for the recount came down on 12/8/2000, and was stopped on
12/9/2000. That is not "weeks, night and day." It was less than 24 hours.

Because of this, all the votes were not counted, particularly votes
in poorer areas of Florida, which are predominately black, and thus
predominately Democratic. This obvious violation of equal protection
was, of course, not a problem for the supreme court.

All the votes were counted at least twice. Gore never made a claim
that the ballots were not tabulated.

That is a crass misuse of their power.

As demonstrated by 4 members of the Florida Supreme Court.

You are saying that the 4 members who were trying to prevent the court
from mortgaging its reputation to assure a victory for GW Bush were
misusing their power? That would be laughable if it weren't so
obviously wrong.

You are still using a false premise. The courts cannot decide a
presidental election.

Apparently, they can. They did in this case, simply by stopping a recount
that was proceeding towards an overturn to the election.

A standardless partial recount of disputed ballots, that violated 3 U.S.C.
section 5, does not overturn an election.

They knew it. I
knew it. You knew it. The NYT knew it. The Washington Post knew it. Your
mother knew it. Everybody knew it.

My mother knew that Gore was trying to steal an election.

The Supreme Court stopped the recount, and thus chose the president.

No, because Congress only has the authority to throw out any slate of
electors that were not "regularly" given. Bush did not win until Congress
rejected the Democrats challenge to his Florida Electors on 1/6/2001.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/us­code/3/15.html

snip

The majority of the election boards in Florida were controlled by
Democrats. The DEMOCRATS make the final decision on what would be
counted as a vote.

This does not matter. There were republican and democratic observers.

The PARTISAN Democrats who were deciding on what were legal votes does
not matter?? The same PARTISAN Democrats who got their hands slapped by
11 Judges.

This is specious nonsense. You simply can't pretend that the counts were
not being carried out by both republicans and democrats. Both teams were
intent on a victory. They wouldn't have let anything else occur.

The fact show that the Democrats held the majority of the Election Boards in
the state of Florida. Those boards were controlled by Democrats who made the
final decisions. The Republicans could have complained, but they do not have
the power act upon those complaints alone.

The
republicans were, of course, told to make as much trouble as they
could, to slow the process. However, the vote was slowly inching
towards the proper result. Remember the "Brooks Brothers" riots?
Republican congressional staffers, intentionally flown down to disrupt
the proceedings, and thus slow things down?

And you believe that these same Republicans were going to allow Gore to
win in the Electoral College?

Yes, they would have been forced to. There would have been no alternative,
as I point out above.

Yet, when it came time for the Democrats to challenge Florida in the
Electoral College, not a single Democrat Senator would sign on.

"Washington, DC - Congresswoman Barbara Lee today joined members of the
Congressional Black Caucus in opposition to counting Florida's 25 electoral
college votes for George W. Bush.

A formal objection to counting Florida's electoral votes must be presented
in writing, signed by at least one Senator and one Representative, under 3
U.S.C. section 15. Unfortunately, not one single Member of the Senate
submitted an objection, thereby rendering the objection out of order."

http://www.house.gov/lee/relea­ses/01Jan06.htm

As Justice Souter noted, "I can conceive of
no legitimate state
interest served by these differing treatments of the expressions
of voters' fundamental rights. The differences appear wholly
arbitrary."


Right. He wanted to apply uniform standards. He also wanted to
continue the recount. He was overruled by the Bush supporters on the
court.

Because the court upheld the 7-0 Florida Supreme Court's ruling.
Between the two courts, the numbers here are 12 bi-partisan justices
vs. 4 Democrat justices.

This makes no sense. It's impossible to call any of the 5 justices on
the conservative block bi-partisan.

But I didn't say 5, I said 12. These arguments were made by the
DEMOCRATS in the Florida Judiciary and upheld by the Republicans in the
US Supreme Court.

Only the FSC counted. The USSC stepped in, again, based on shaky legal
arguments,

If they are so shaky, then why did the Democrats in the Florida Judiciary
make these arguments?

to stop the recount because their conservative candidate was
losing. It really is as simple as this.

Except that Bush was not losing. He already held Florida's Electors.
Post-certification recounts are not binding upon Congress.

The FSC also can't be counted as among those who supported this.
Perhaps I misunderstand. It voted 4 to 3 to continue the recount, as
was proper.

But it was 7-0 FSC decision that said no recount could go past the safe
harbor date. Further, this was a narrow decison to allow a recount to go
forth with an uneven counting standard.

They were attempting to prevent James Baker and his gang of thieves
(including Kathleen Harris) from certifying the election in order to
support a partisan cause.

You are thoughly confused. The 4-3 decision came on 12/8/2000, but the
same court, in a 7-0 decision, crafted the remedy that allowed for Bush
to be certified on 11/26/2000.

Yes, and then they ordered a full recount of all undervotes on the 8th. If
they believed the election to be certified, this was an odd way of showing
it.

Yet your Justice Breyer pointed out in his dissent that the court could not
take Bush's Florida Electors away. That is the law as laid out in 3 U.S.C.
section 15.

"Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced the certified totals
Sunday night, after a deadline for counties to submit amended returns from
hand recounts passed at 5 p.m. The final tally, according to Harris, was
2,912,790 votes for Bush; 2,912,253 for Gore."

"Accordingly, on behalf of the state Election Canvassing Commission and in
accordance with the laws of the state of Florida, I hereby declare Governor
George W. Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for the president
of the United States," Harris said.

Florida's electoral votes would give Bush, the Republican candidate, one
more than the 270 needed to win the presidency in the Electoral College.
Gore, the Democratic candidate, holds a total of 255 electoral votes."

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/26/presidential.election
/

This announcement came about via the remedy crafted by the DEMOCRAT majority
of the Florida Supreme Court.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/sc00-2346.pdf

They prevented one illegal attempt at certification,
and then demanded that all votes be recounted.

The attempt was not illegal, it followed Florida Code. BUT, in a 7-0
decision the FSC allowed for certification to be granted based on a 4
county recount. Bush won that recount, thus he was certified the winner.

Without counting undervotes. That was the basis of the FSC decision on the
8th. It required a count of undervotes.

The undervotes were consided in the recount under Fla. Stat. 102.166. The
difference is that 166 is not required to recount votes in all of the
counties.

Seems like
the right decision to make given the situation. Only a partisan supreme
court, bent on installing their chosen candidate, would think
otherwise.

You have confused a recount under Fla. Stat. 102.166 vs. 102.168. The
Supreme Court did not stop the recount under 166, they stopped the
recount under 168. By the time the court got the case, Bush had his
slate of Florida Electors.

Which was not based on a valid recount. The undervotes (and probably,
overvotes) needed to be counted.

So you are telling us that the DEMOCRATS on the Florida Supreme Court
endorsed an illegal recount under 102.166? This after you said that Gore was
not required to protest all of the counties under this code. Why are you
changing your augment?

snip

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

Partisan nonsense. Saying one thing, then changing their minds when
it looks like they are going to lose.

The only place they can lose is in Congress, not the courts. What
codes do you believe that they quoted incorrectly?

Again, you stick to the same tired legal argument. Given a Gore victory
in Florida, the electorate would have demanded that he be sworn in as
president, regardless of what the congress wanted.

A number of Democrats, but not a majority of the electorate. Most of the
electorate is smart enough to understand that a count with no standards
is meaningless.

The 1887 statute was
nonsese. Nobody considered it even worthy of debate.

Electors are counted by the laws passed under this act. We saw these
laws used in the 2000 and the 2004 Election. In 2000, there was an
attempt to disqualify Bush's electors, but this challenge fail to get
any support in the Senate. Not a single Democrat would sign on. In 2004,
the challenge was debated, but failed to get the required number of
votes.

IF the electorate was so upset in 2000, then the Democrats would have
had the public support to bring a challenge to the floor, but they did
not have the support, thus the DEMOCRATS in the Senate did not allow it
to go forth.

There would have been
mass demonstrations, and they would have eventually bowed to the will
of the people. This is obvious.

Maybe a number of Gore Democrats, not a majority of the people.

Gore Democrats WERE a majority of the people....

49 of 240 million people is not the majority.

The supreme court ruling was a brilliant checkmate of the Gore people,
the FSC, and the American people.

Gore was checkmated on 11/26/2000, not 12/12.

No, actually not. The FSC was attempting a fair recount. The supreme court
stepped in afterwards.

This is not a fair recount.

"As implemented by Judge Terry Lewis, the Florida Supreme Court's decision
gave short shrift to Bush's basic right to judicial review of the thousands
of disputed ballot-interpretation decisions made by (among others) openly
partisan Democratic officials. In a series of late-night rulings hours after
the Dec. 8 decision, Judge Lewis refused to suggest (or hear evidence on)
what chad-counting standard vote-counters should use; assigned hundreds of
untrained counters to plunge into this world of standardless
chad-interpretation, without even requiring that they be nonpartisan;
refused to require that a record be kept of chad-interpretation decisions,
thereby making appeals virtually impossible; ignored Bush's request for a
recount of those hundreds of rejected overseas military ballots; and
shrugged off claims that some Gore votes would inevitably be counted twice."

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol­itics/nj/taylor2000-12-28.htm

snip

Again, this whole line of reasoning is self serving. Saying that you
can't count the votes because a) you weren't prepared for a huge
recount before the fact, and thus didn't come up with reasonable
procedures,

They had 30 days, Gore did not support a full recount (he never filed
for one), thus he wasted the time needed. 3 U.S.C. section 5 has been
on the books since 1887. Gore knew the deadline.

This was the Gore folk's real mistake. They should have immediately
pushed for a statewide recount.

And he should have INSISTED that the counting standards were not changed
from the previous elections.

There had been a history of 80 years in Florida of using 'the clear intent
of the voter' to decide recounts. This is the real issue. The FSC ruled in
the proper way.

Dimple chad had NEVER been allowed to be counted as a legal vote. Since the
Democrats in the counties had change this rule, they violated 3 U.S.C.
section 5. That is the real issue, FOLLOWING THE LAW.

The SC overturned their ruling to stop the recount, in
order to prevent Gore from being president.

The court could NOT prevent Gore from becoming President. Congress had the
authority to reject Bush's slate of Florida's electors, with or without a
recount. The courts have NO SAY in what slate of electors Congress will
accept.

You are making argument that is NOT based in the law.

However, that was not really possible, due to Florida
law. They would
have had to wait until certification to request a statewide recount. By
then, they would have lost the momentum.

This is incorrect, there is no limit on the number of counties that Gore
could have protested under Fla. Stat. 102.166. Gore argued all the way
to the US Supreme Court that he was not required to recount all of the
ballots.

Again, they admit now that it was a mistake. He simply didn't have time to
request recount in all counties. There was a 72 hour time limit.

So now are you saying that Gore was asking for an illegal recount under Fla.
Stat. 102.166?? Why did every court that Bush went to allow for this recount
to take place if it was illegal?

and b) you
have to have it done on an arbitrary date, far before the numbers
are required, are sly legal ploys (which smell like Jim Baker) to
prevent the votes from being counted. There really wasn't any good
reason to stop the recount.

Why do believe that two identically marked ballots do not mean the
same thing??

The same can be said of any hand recount, unless all ballots are
counted by the same individual at the same exact moment. This is
clearly impossible. The nature of the problem was such that there were
a broad variety of personalities and interpretations of the law. This
is inevitable.

Actually it is pretty easy. Florida had not allowed a dimpled chad to be
a legal vote in the past, thus it cannot be a legal vote in this
election.

However, again, and again, there were checks in place.

The counting standards are the checks and balances, the Florida Supreme
Court threw them out.

The people doing the counting are the checks and balances. The US Supreme
Court threw them, and their efforts, out.

Openly partisan Democrat who were counting with an arbitrary counting
standard is not "a check and balance".

By asserting (as
you do below) that the democrats were in control, you imply the
democrats were cheating. This is unfounded, and is also revisionist.

When the Democrats VIOLATED the LAW, i.e. 3 U.S.C. section 5, as to
change the counting standards, that PROVES they were cheating.

What a crock of smock.

You can call it what you want, but that does not change this fact.

It was the republicans who flew in hundreds of supporters to harass
election officials.

It is called protesting the violation of the law.

Right, perhaps you should reread the NYT article on the matter. What a
bunch of criminals. This kind of thing is a federal offense. Sadly,
without a fair supreme court to judge the matter, none of them are likely
to be called to justice.

The Florida Supreme Court oversaw this recount. Now you are telling us that
the Florida Supreme Court was not fair.

Article II is the very reason why the recount should have
been stopped.
A recount with an arbitrary counting standard does not settle the
issue.

There were adequate procedures in place.

The Florida Supreme Court IGNORED those procedures.

Actually, they were attempting to continue the recount. The recount was
clearly, and finally, the right thing to do. Even if Gore lost, it was
the right thing to do. Because of the SC's rash partisan ruling, we can
have these kinds of arguments without ever really knowing what would
have happened.

BUT to be legal, and it has to be complete with counting standards that
were in place BEFORE the election, and completed by the safe harbor
date.

Ah, checkmate! No matter what the electorate actually said. The process is
far more important that what the voters actually want. eh? That sickens
me.

We are a Representative Republic, not a democracy. IF OUR Representatives
find a problem with a slate of electors, then OUR Representatives have the
right to throw them out, NOT THE UNELECTED COURTS.

You love the dissent of Justice Breyer, I suggest that you re-read what he
said on the issue.

"The legislative history of the Act makes clear its intent to commit the
power to resolve such disputes to Congress, rather than the courts:

"The two Houses are, by the Constitution, authorized to make the count of
electoral votes. They can only count legal votes, and in doing so must
determine, from the best evidence to be had, what are legal votes .... The
power to determine rests with the two Houses, and there is no other
constitutional tribunal." H. Rep. No. 1638, 49th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1886)
(report submitted by Rep. Caldwell, Select Committee on the Election of
President and Vice-President).

The Member of Congress who introduced the Act added:

"The power to judge of the legality of the votes is a necessary consequent
of the power to count. The existence of this power is of absolute necessity
to the preservation of the Government. The interests of all the States in
their relations to each other in the Federal Union demand that the ultimate
tribunal to decide upon the election of President should be a constituent
body, in which the States in their federal relationships and the people in
their sovereign capacity should be represented." 18 Cong. Rec. 30 (1886).

"Under the Constitution who else could decide? Who is nearer to the State in
determining a question of vital importance to the whole union of States than
the constituent body upon whom the Constitution has devolved the duty to
count the vote?" Id., at 31.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD3.html

There were monitors from
both parties.

But that does not change the fact that the majority of the canvassing
board were controlled by Democrats.

This makes no difference. If there are both republican and democratic
observers, the intention of the voter can easily be established. That
was the point of the FSC ruling, which was overturned. Any attempt to
influence things one way or another was immediately challenged.

And those challenges fell on deaf ears. Don't you remember the partisan
fights in Palm Beach County?

Right! They were all intended to slow things down enough to fall beyond
the 'safe harbor' date.

False, the safe harbor date was not the deadline in the recount under
102.166.

It was calculated and orchestrated by the
republicans. What a bunch of assholes. Let the goddam recount happen!

Then bring on a legal recount.

Their guy probably would have won anyway. But instead of trusting that the
electorate recount would prove that, they decided to wade in with a bunch
of whoring staffers. I say again, assholes!

Letting the recount proceed would have settled the
question once and
for all.

Using an arbitrary counting standard does NOT settle the question.

You seem to believe that counting standards are uniform. This has never
been the case. There are as many standards as there are polling places.
The idea that a single, uniform standard is in place elsewhere is
absurd, and given the nature of the issue, can only be construed as a
rationalization for the 5 majority justices' partisan ruling.

Why are you ignoring what the Democrats in the Florida Judiciary had to
say about this issue??? IF you take a look at the opinions from Gore vs.
Harris I and I, along with Bush v. Gore, you will find that there are
MORE DEMOCRATS making these same arguments.

I guess they had more self respect than the supreme court, which appears
to have voted along conservative/liberal lines. Sadly, Kennedy was unable
to make up his mind, first siding with the liberals, and then being
coerced by Scalia and Rehnquist into changing his mind. His equal
protection argument was nonsense, but the liberals thought he might side
with them if they bought in. Fools.

Why don't you believe that identically marked ballots from identical
machines mean the same thing?

The ONLY reason to stop it is that the count was getting too close
for
comfort.

Bush already had 271 electoral votes committed to his election. It
was NOT too close, it was OVER. The reason to stop the recount was to
keep the Florida Supreme Court from rewriting Florida Election Code.

Yes, there was a rush by the obviously partisan Kathleen Harris to
certify the election results. This was nonsense, given that there were
active recounts. Kathleen Harris, appointed by the republican
candidate's brother, Jeb Bush, was the election official responsible
for this. She was, up until election day, a Co-Chair of the campaign
for George W Bush. Hardly a non-partisan. Her attempts to certify the
election results were stopped by the FSC. Jim Baker and the gang were
outraged, and attempted to force the issue by getting the legislator to
pledge their electors prematurely, before the hand recounts. They were
trying to cheat the state out of a recount in a presidential election
that hinged on 500 votes.

You seem to have forgotten that Bush received Florida's electors as a
result of the ruling from the Florida Supreme Court. The COURT set up
the recount, and the COURT set the new date for certification. Bush was
certified under their ORDERS.

The recount did not include undervotes or overvotes. Both needed to be
considered. Thus, the FSC mandated that a recount of undervotes be done.
This clearly meant that they felt that any prior certification was in
error.

Another false premise. The FSC did not follow your augment that both the
under and overvote needed to be considered. Using your argument, you have
just admitted that their order was invalid.

Gingsburg and Beyer are wanting to have it both ways.
The
ruling from
the Florida Supreme Court should be respected, but if it stops a
recount by the safe harbor date, the FSC is wrong.

From: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Katherine Harris,
11/21/2000.

"Ignoring the county's returns is a drastic measure and is
appropriate only if the returns submitted the Department so late
that their inclusion will compromise the integrity of the
electoral process in either of two way: (1) by precluding a
candidate, elector, or taxpayer from contesting the certification
of an election pursuant to section 102.168; or (2) by precluding
Florida voters from participating fully in the federal electoral
process." (reference to footnote 55)

"Footnote #55 See: 3 U.S.C. § § 1-10 (1994)."

The Safe Harbor date can be found in the above US Code.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ele­ction/sc00-2346.pdf

and that because of this, the results du jour should stand. This
amounted to an appointment of GW Bush as president of the united
states.

You are using a false premise.

Actually, I'm not.

Clearly you are wrong. You are ignoring the ramifications of the
Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the make up of Congress on 1/6/2001.

Again, you appear unwilling or unable to understand my point. This law
is irrelevant, and was never really considered by either the FSC or the
US SC.

INCORRECT. Both the 7-2 and the 5-4 decision SPECIFICALLY deal with this
law. The deadline set by the FSC, and upheld by the US Supreme Court is
part of this 1887 law. The idea that election laws cannot be changed
after the vote has taken place is also a part of 1887 law. Both can be
found in 3 U.S.C. section 5.

Nobody was changing election law. The FSC was interpreting existing
law, and also using 80 years of precedent on the matter of "clear intent",
which is also included in the wording of 33 other states. This is clearly
within their jurisdiction.

You are stilling ignoring the fact that dimple chads were not legal votes
before the 2000 election. That is why you have lost this point over and over
and over again. 3 U.S.C. section 5 does not allow for such a change.

IF you want Congress to accept a recount, that recount should at least
follow the law.

It was yet
another historical anomaly, like laws against spitting on
the sidewalk. The recounts were proceeding, and the result would be
binding, because the electorate would demand it. This was a special
situation, and only those bent on preventing any kind of recount would
even consider invoking that law, particularly since the legislature was
usurping the will of the people in attempting to pledge their electors.

You are trying to tell me that PARTISAN REPUBLICANS were going to allow
Gore into office. I don't buy that for a second.

They would have been lynched if they failed to uphold the results of the
election, either physically, or during the next election. Not doing that
would be tantamount to condoning a coup.

The Republicans would be upholding the legal and fair results of the
election. The only coup attempt was by the Democrat illegally changing the
law to Gore's favor.

I note that you are supporting violence to get an unconstitutional recount
recognized by Congress.

Under the
Electoral Count Act of 1887, the courts could not remove
Bush's slate of Florida Electors. If the recount had been
completed, Gore was ahead, Bush would still hold 25 Florida
Electors with the signature of the state's executive. The court
cound NOT change this fact.


Whatever website you are digging this stuff out of is wrong on this.
The fact that there was an ongoing recount made this moot.

I don't need a website, all I need is the law. 3 U.S.C. section 15
does not allow for a court to remove a slate of electors. Only
Congress has that power.


Yawn. Sure thing bub.

Yep, it is a sure thing.

Again, with or without Bush v. Gore, Bush holds Florida's Electors
with the signature of the state's executive. No court ruling can
change this fact. No recount can change this fact.

Wrong again. Your site is obviously in error.

3 U.S.C. section 15 proves you to be in error.



Again, it's beside the point.

Gore can't win with out this law. It IS THE POINT.

Disagree.

Then you are wrong. That law is the roadmap that Gore MUST use to win.

The SCotUS cannot give Bush a electors that he already has, nor
can they take them away.


Again, this whole line of reasoning is moronic.

You hang your hat on the dissent of the US Supreme Court, then you
call their opinions moronic. I have given the law as laid out by
Justice Breyer's dissent.

Actually, I hang my hat on the idea that

a) the recounts were proceeding in a reasonable fashion.

Yet, several Democrat members of the Florida Judiciary disagreed.

A majority believed it.

Between the 3 courts, your "majority" was out numbered by 2 to 1.

b) there were checks and balances in place to ensure that any counted
ballot reflected the 'clear intent of the voter'.

Which were thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court.

By the partisans, as shown below.

Correct, the partisan Democrats of the Florida Supreme Court threw out the
counting standards.

c) The recount was inching towards a Gore victory.

With a recount that endorsed an uneven counting standard that violated 3
U.S.C. section 5.

Disagree.

It is still a fact.

d) if the recount had overturned the election result, the congress
would have had no choice but to acquiesce.

Congress is going to throw out the rule of law to allow Gore to steal an
election. Fat chance.

Lynching argument.

More endorsement of violence to get an unconstitutional recount recognized
by Congress.

e) The supreme court knew this. Scalia attempted get the court to stop
the recount even before hearing Gore's arguments prove this.

If Gore is going to win the white house on this late date, he has to win
his arguments before Congress, not the courts.


Lynching argument.

Again with the violence argument to get an unconstitutional recount
recognized by Congress.

f) A supreme court justice would NEVER use such strong language, as was
used by Justice Stevens, without real cause. BTW, Stevens is a
republican.

Dissent does not rule the day.

The point was that Stevens, a republican, believed so strongly that the
court was acting in a crass, partisan way, that he included unheard of
invective into his minority opinion. This is evidence that any justice
with a thread of moral fiber would have at least thought twice about
weighing into this matter. Scalia, O'Connor, and the rest were so
determined to stop this recount that they threw theirs and the rest
of the court's moral credibility to the wind. That was his problem with
it.

There is nothing moral about supporting an illegal recount.

g) The supreme court was packed with conservatives. In particular,
Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor were, according to leaked admissions of
clerks, acting inappropriately through the whole situation. O'Connor
believed, without real evidence, that the FSC was 'stealing the
election', and thus made up her mind to prevent the recount early. She
expressed her dismay over an apparent Gore victory publicly. Scalia was
openly partisan through the entire thing, sending scathing memos to
Stevens. Rehnquist and Thomas are both very conservative. Kennedy's
clerks were vetted by republican hardliners for him, so he wouldn't
stray from the straight and narrow. This block of conservatives was
able to bring the matter before them, and rule on it, without even
consulting the other justices. They attempted to do this quietly, while
the other justices were ON VACATION, to the utter astonishment of
clerks, the press, and the media.

Which still does not change the fact that the court could not remove
Bush's electors.

The FSC could, and did. The certification was invalid.

Then why did the Democrats in Congress accept an invalid certification?

get a clue:
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm