1996 Florida Supreme Court Ruling Paves Way for Seminole Dismissal
If legal precedent means anything, Gore will lose any hope his team has that more than 15,000 absentee ballots will be thrown out by Florida Circuit Judge Nikki Clark.
Even if Clark throws out the ballots, the Bush campaign can immediately file an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court - a very partisan body that nonetheless will be hard-pressed to ignore its own ruling four years ago.
As it turns out, in 1996, a contested Volusia County race for sheriff was brought before it with allegations remarkably similar to those being made now in Seminole County.
A local Democrat is charging that more than 2,000 absentee ballots were altered when Seminole election officials allowed Republicans to add missing voter ID numbers.
In the 1996 Volusia case, the loser of the sheriff's race, Gus Beckstrom Jr., sued, demanding that more than 6,000 absentee ballots be thrown out because elections officials had altered them with felt-tipped pens because the voting machine couldn't register a vote.
Beckstrom wanted all the ballots to be thrown out and for him to be declared the winner.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled the ballots would remain as votes. Beckstrom lost.
The Orlando Sentinel quotes Donald Dean, dean of Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, as noting that "in the Volusia case, the court ruled that election officials don't have to be perfect. All they have to do is substantially comply with the law." |
