the fact that the Florida Supreme Court actually ordered a statewide hand recount yesterday proves that it wasn't really impossible
Manual recounts aren't impossible, but accurate and fair ones are the closest thing to being that way.
No one that I recall ever stated that having a statewide manual recount was impossible, just unfair unless it could be proven that fraud, manipulation, or malfunction were involved. If anything was impossible, it was completing such a recount within the necessary 7 days time required for certification.
This is another aspect of this election that people don't seem to understand. The florida legislature mandated that certification shall (must) be completed in 7 days unless there were extenuating circumstances that prevented it (like acts of god, hurricanes.. etc). The reason this is part of the law is to maintain the voter's right to FINALITY.
Again, if no one can prove fraud, manipulation, or malfunction, then all vote counts must be certified with 7 days from the date of the election.
Now some folks are claiming "Why should that be such a hard and fast rule since the electors don't have to be selected until Dec 12th??" Why not use the additional time?
Well, one can make the same statement with the meeting of the Electoral college, can't they? Why do they have to meet on the 18th of December?
After all, the inauguration doesn't occur until the 20th of January, right?
Why do we have to have the inauguration on the 20th of January? Can't we push it back a bit further, so that we have no doubt who is really the "chosen one"?
This is why there are laws that are set down by the legislature and NOT THE COURTS. There is NO TORT being suffered by any specific voter. There is no voter who can be identified as those who actually cast these undervotes. No one can come out and claim "you should be counting my vote because I was too stupid to cast it properly".
Thus, in the interest of finality, the FLSC has NO RIGHT to be overturning the legislative intent as securing finality. They have essentially opened up the can of worms EVEN MORE by not specifying the criteria for what constitutes a "valid vote", as well as only providing for manual recounts of the undervote.
Furthermore, their requirement that only counting undervotes violates the specific election requirements of various canvassing boards like Miami-Dade, where partial manual recounts are not permitted. If you all recall properly, this is why they stopped their original manual recount. They were not permitted by their own election rules, to manually recount only the undervotes. They were required to count all or none and they realized they couldn't achieve that in time.
So now the FLSC has essentially overruled their election rules as constituting some kind of violation, which it CLEARLY DOES NOT. They have the right to decide their own election and canvassing regulations, not the FLSC.
That, in a nutshell, is why the USSC will be forced to step in and end this.
Regards,
Ron |
