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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TheLineMan who wrote (83014)	11/20/2000 10:36:05 PM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I really don't care who ends up being President out of this. My one hope is that the US Supreme Court is smart enough to realize that they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by getting involved in this case. It is bad enough that the Florida Supreme Court will be called party hacks over this, the last thing we need as a country is for people to stop trusting the US Supreme Court. These disputes are all about Florida law, not Federal Law, anyway. Thus the US Supreme Court should decline to hear them even if the Florida Court makes a blatantly erroneous decision. As for the legal issues, they were addressed by the lower court. Basically the statute is very clear. It states: Title IX, Chapter 102, section 102.112 Deadline for submission of county returns to the Department of State; penalties.-- (1) The county canvassing board or a majority thereof shall file the county returns for the election of a federal or state officer with the Department of State immediately after certification of the election results. Results must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the first primary and general election and by 3 p.m. on the 3rd day following the second primary. If the returns are not received by the department by the time specified, such returns may be ignored and the results on file at that time may be certified by the department. I added the bold. This statute is actually quite clear, and the time for filing returns is mandatory and can not be extended - note the word "must". On the other hand, the last sentence uses the word "may", implying that the Secretary of State has some discretion in deciding whether or not to ignore late returns. Administrative law is quite clear that when an officer of the state has a discretionary power, the courts may not overturn an exercise of that power unless there is no possible way in which the action could be justified. Thus since Harris provided a system of rules for determining when to accept late rules, it would seem that here exercise of power would be tough for the court to overturn. On the other hand, this court may well ignore precedent and established legal principles, and simply do what they want to do. That would be my expectation. Carl