Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 20:31:23 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu Cc: Doug Young <dougy@bryden.apana.org.au>, Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>, Jason <kib@mediaone.net>, ldmservices@charter.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Will It Never End? (was Re: CA Power Shortage (was Re: Why do you support Yahoo!)) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20001220184139.0462dbb0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20001220121628.C83116@rfx-64-6-211-149.users.reflexco> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20001220120244.04767ed0@localhost> <001d01c06a2d$279654d0$aa240018@cx443070b> <002301c06a1d$a52783c0$19bad818@debbie> <002701c06a25$27e7c9d0$aa240018@cx443070b> <006a01c06a40$11ffc580$ad181f40@bignet.net> <06fc01c06a28$7d9c3840$847e03cb@apana.org.au> <00b401c06a45$4d279020$ad181f40@bignet.net> <001d01c06a2d$279654d0$aa240018@cx443070b> <4.3.2.7.2.20001219223202.0467c4e0@localhost> <000d01c06a4e$15def320$847e03cb@apana.org.au> <4.3.2.7.2.20001220120244.04767ed0@localhost>
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At 01:16 PM 12/20/2000, Crist J. Clark wrote: >And the whole reason it was tossed to the US Supreme Court was that >the Florida state court made an blatently partisan ruling in the first >place. The Florida Supreme Court, despite being composed mostly of Democratic appointees, did not make a partisan ruling. It simply insisted that Florida law -- which requires that ballots be counted so that the voter's intent is registered -- be enforced. It did not undertake to choose the president, as the US Supreme Court did, or to change the law. In fact, by insisting upon the "intent of the voter" standard, the Florida Supreme Court explicitly AVOIDED making new law or changing the rules after the election. That standard is Florida law -- and also the law in a large number of other states (see Stevens' dissent). Yes, that standard is flexible, and intentionally so. There are so many types of voting machines and ballots, and so many different things that can go wrong with them, that nothing else is universally applicable. Allowing county election judges to use their discretion to interpret that standard for the voting mechanism used, and to determine the voter's intent, is... well... allowing them to be judges! To rule that this violates the "equal protection" clause of the state or Federal Constitution is tantamount to saying that having different judges presiding in different courts, or having different district attorneys in different jurisdictions (DAs routinely use their discretion as to which cases to prosecute), or having police officers who can decide to cut you a little slack if you JUST BARELY don't make it through a red light, violates the people's rights too. In that case, we have a much BIGGER "equal protection" problem and might as well dismantle all of our court systems right now. >Still, even if the Florida Supreme Court was itself misguided, I >personally don't see how it was a manner for the Feds to get >invovled. I agree. The Feds should not have taken the case -- and certainly should not have granted a PRELIMINARY stay of the Florida Supreme Court's recount order before hearing the case. >As long as the state of Florida had its Electoral College >representitives casting their votes by the deadline, I think it would >be up to the Florida executive (in the form of the Sec. of State in >this case), the court (Florida Supreme Court), and the legislature >(who is GOP dominated) to duke it out for themselves. And _that_ would >have been a fun show to watch. In the end, I believe the legislature >had the final say on the Electoral College reps by Florida law, so it >most likely would have gone the same way if things had been up in the >air to the last minute. Florida law delegates the Legislature's right to choose to the people. Had the legislators appointed electors by resolution, they would have been changing the rules after the election and thus would have been violating not only Florida law but Federal law. >Each state casts its votes for the President, and how they decide to >cast them, as it currently stands in Constutional law, is deliberately >vague If it were vague, it'd be unconstitutional. Fortunately, IMHO, it's pretty clear. >and separated from the popular vote. It makes the use of a popular vote an OPTION. This is deplorable and must be changed, or we have no right to call our government democratic. >Unless the state has >Constitutional issue to be raised (and the only one I ever saw >seriously raised, certain fringe groups' accusations of civil right >violations aside, was whether the FL recounts could be done in time >(they realistically could not) They absolutely could have! This was one part of the US Supreme Court's majority opinion that was patently and provably false. The 12th (the day which the majority frittered away before issuing its ruling) was NOT a hard deadline. Electoral votes are not counted until January, and states have delayed sending electors until then (as Stevens points out in his dissent). Now, I'm not saying that Gore realistically could have won. However, all of the impediments he faced were political and partisan. The deck was stacked! Had the Supreme Court not overruled the will of the people, the Republican Congress would have -- proving that we have a government of, by, and for the two major parties. Like Crips and Bloods fighting over a city block, these two gangs care not about the inhabitants but only about the amount of turf they can capture. It's sad and really quite scary. >and whether a revote was even possible >(that was rejected before it got near the US Supreme Court)), IMHO, a revote would have been the correct solution to the problem. An election is a data gathering process. As any scientist knows, it is not appropriate to draw conclusions from data gathered with so large a margin of error as to make the result inconclusive. (If you do, you'll be laughed out of any respectable scientific journal.) Instead, you obtain a better measuring instrument (or change your procedure to reduce the margin of error) and measure again. In Florida, there was precedent for a new election. The case law was already there, so no new law needed to be made. There should have been a revote -- especially in Palm Beach County, where 19,000 overvotes were registered and at least 2,500 votes were mistakenly cast for Buchanan. >I don't >see why the Feds have much say in how a Florida county or the state >add up their votes. They shouldn't. Under the current system, they should simply accept the electors and their ballots as input. Under a better system, they would accept counts of the popular vote, collected via standardized procedures by personnel with no party affiliation. Under the best possible system, they would accept data for a "single transferable vote" (sometimes called "instant runoff") election. >Say what you want about Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, but at least he >had the grace to spare the country this kind of thing in '60 when he >conceded to Kennedy. They'd still be counting the chads of deceased >(and I don't mean ones that have died since the election) voters in >Illinios to this day. In Florida this year, it was even worse. Thousands (mostly blacks) were turned away from the polls because their names were removed from the voting rolls. The computer service firm which removed their names admitted that the process -- which was designed to purge deceased citizens and felons from the rolls -- was fraught with error. That difference was enough to give the election to Gore. Then there were the Republicans that tampered with ballot applications in two counties, ensuring that Republicans received ballots when Democrats did not. And the fact that the "butterfly" ballot was patently illegal under Florida law. Oh, and the police roadblocks that "just happened" to spring up between black neighborhoods and their polling places. And the understaffed polling places that kept voters waiting for hours... and then closed without allowing them to vote. I don't like either Bush or Gore, by the way. Each became the candidate by right of succession rather than because he was a good choice. Both are insincere politicians whose agendas are dictated not by good sense but by party platforms and campaign contributions. We didn't even have good third party candidates this time around. Nader is hopelessly egoistic and espouses some very extreme stances. (For example, thanks to Jamie Love, who works on his staff, he espouses the notion that intellectual property laws should be abolished, rather than fixed so that they strike a proper balance between the interests of consumers and content providers.) Nader hijacked the Green Party to serve as a bully pulpit for... Ralph Nader. Buchanan? Even worse.... Among other things, he has praised Hitler's "leadership" and is openly bigoted. Gore's record as vice president -- he at first supported such things as online privacy, but flipped at the behest of powerful interests -- makes it clear that he would not have been a particularly good president. And Lieberman, like Tipper Gore, is pro-censorship. (So, ironically, is McCain -- who to this day is actively promoting legislation to censor Internet access at schools and libraries.) In any event, it is undeniable that if the rules were followed -- that is, if the will of the people had mattered -- Gore would have won. Bush is, to put it simply, not a legitimate president. The United States, which is often called in to supervise elections in countries that are new to democracy, will face the irony of spending four years (hopefully no longer!) under the questionable governance of a president who did not win the election: "President by Mistake" George W. Bush. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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