FWIW, J. Lewis rules essentially as I thought he would. It pays to read his ruling to appreciate the legal thinking the issue.
Now, despite all the chest pounding we heard from Bill Daley and his Gore supporters, the ruling today IMHO does shift a greater burden upon the Democrats in their appeal to the Florida appellate court, and likely the Florida Supreme Court IRRESPECTIVE of the latter Court's interlocutory order.
Obviously, the important issue at this point is how the Fla. S. Ct. will ultimately rule on the matter. First, it is very unlikely, IMHO, that it will rule on the matter today. So, you Gore supporters, fahgeddaboud' preventing the Secretary of State certifying the election results tomorrow. Second, one must appreciate the grounds only upon which the Supreme Court can overturn the lower court's decision. It will not do so based upon the FACTS of the case, but rather whether the judge has wrongly interpreted Florida law, namely the statute that grants DISCRETION to the Secretary of State to accept or reject election results. In his ruling, J. Lewis ruled that the Secretary of State had BROAD DISCRETION, but that should could not "arbitrarily," in other words blindly, reject. . . or accept, late counts. She merely had to lay a foundation and rationale for her rejection or acceptance. The Supreme Court will have to find that J. Lewis erred in his interpretation of the statute and that the legislature did not intend to give the Secretary of State as broad discretion in light of the hand counts now taking place, as J. Lewis believed, but rather call upon the Secretary of State to allow the hand counts to continue to completion BEFORE rendering her rejection or acceptance of the hand counts.
Notwithstanding, this possible ruling, the Secretary may very well still be within her State granted powers to reject the hand counts not only based upon the rationale set forth in her earlier analysis, but ALSO, the lack of integrity than can be attributed to these hand count. By way of example, just because the Palm Beach Canvassing Board had made the incredulous and indisputably biased, ends oriented decision to counted dimpled or impregnated chads, does not mean the Secretary of State has to accept the same. IMHO, Palm Beach County's decision to include such votes only undermines the credibility of their results.
As I stated here a couple of days ago, this election is OVER. |
