Actually Bosco, I agree with you. The "dimple" question was not before the FSC and any ruling on "dimples" would have been dicta, not binding law. On the other hand it is very bad form for an attorney to submit false affidavits and courts do not look kindly on those who do it. The dimple question is an important one, though, and eventually I would not be surprised to see the FSC reach a ruling on it. There would seem little question that uniform rules should be applied to all ballots and precincts - it would obviously be unfair to use a restrictive counting rule in one place and a more liberal one in another. At this point all the ballots in Florida were counted using a restrictive counting method, i.e. machine-readable ballots. Then certain counties favorable to Gore were counted using a much less restrictive method, i.e. partially detached chads. Using both counting methods Bush won. Now Gore would like to fall back to a more liberal counting method still, that being dimpled chads, but would like to apply this method only to Democratic precincts.
This whole concept is unfair on its face. First of all, prior to the election the rules were apparent that only proper votes would count. You can't change after the fact to counting dimpled chads which could represent people who thought about voting for a candidate but then changed their minds. Furthermore, you can't change it just in one or two counties. On the other hand, without counting dimpled chads Gore can not win. Broward county did count them, I believe, and the dimpled chads went for Gore in about the same percentage as the county did. Presumably if dimpled chads were counted in a Republican county they would run in favor of Bush in a similar proportion to the way the county voted.
Therefore I expect that the question of dimpled chads will be raised again, and will go to the Florida Supreme Court. At that point the false affidavit may become an issue, and perhaps Gore would be well advised to use a different attorney. As I said, courts are not amused by false affidavits.
Carl |
