Dear Ratan:
It can be overridden by the State Legislature and signed into law by the Govenor refuting any decision by the court. Furthermore, the constitution can be amended and as such is the last word on state affairs (it can overrule any court decision). The Legislature could write a law stating that without an act of God, elections are to be certified by seven days after an election poll closing, period, for non overseas ballots, and ten days later for the overseas ballots, period. This is the correct meaning of the statute in question (which means it must be applied to this election that occurred on Nov 7, 2000). After the Govenor signs it into law, the court must use that as the final word.
The only override the court has is to declare the law unconstitutional thereby sending a fight up to the level of constitutional admendment (In no way would it go this far, it would look like the court is totally biased (which means it should recuse itself) and would no longer be able to function as another way would be impeachment of all the justices).
So, the case in which the Florida Supreme Court would run roughshod over the election laws would be pretty unlikely. If it did, the consequences would be prolonged and terrible to it and all parties benefiting from the decision.
Amy, mt reading of these laws shows that the election being certified places a higher burden on the loser to prove wrongdoing. A recount can only be given if, either a machine tabulation error (the counties in question use machines to tabulate) or outright fraud (something that has a very high standard of proof). Also, the Texas laws you refer to have very strict counting regulations for PCBs not present in Florida election law (perhaps that is why the deadlines are strict). Also Volusia county uses OSBs. This makes recounts much faster, allows easy checking for voter intent (mark is far closer to the Bush circle than the Gore circle (10:1 or better (distance between circles to distance between closest circle and voter mark) where as in PCBs less than 2:1)). This ease of figuring voter intent leaves a lot less doubt and can be agreed to all but extremely partisan people. Furthermore, OSBs stop double votes and most can stop no votes while the voter is scanning their ballot in (rejects can be done over and the voter can shred the mismarked ballot (or by tearup or other means)). This yields far more accurate counts, allows a voter a "do you really mean it" second chance, and allows only disputed ballots, those with no vote for an office, to be separated and then manually recounted. The initial accuracy is so much higher (less than 1% (more like 0.1%)), that the number of questionable ballots is two to three orders of magnitude less. When recounted, since the number of real disputes is probably less than 1% (again more like 0.1%), the recount only has a few hundred ballots that must be critically examined at most. This can be accomplished in a few hours rather than a few weeks. In addition, the challenges that could work would probably be less than the differences in even this election in Florida (or for that matter in the whole country). This yields a far more unassailable result (even Gore would not complain about losing at even very thin margins (except to his partisan voters who didn't vote)). In this election, anywhere from 10,000 votes (at high end of ranges) to 100 votes (more probable) nationwide would be in dispute.
Of course this does not get into the question of those voters denied a chance and outright fraud (say ballot stuffing). But, this would not include, bias of the electronic voting machines (because a small sample could find out if this was true or not)(one reason to NOT have an all electronic system), bad clerks summing up the results, etc.
Pete |
