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Politics : Why is Gore Trying to Steal the Presidency? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (3190)	12/1/2000 12:17:30 PM
From: Ellen	Respond to of 3887

gopbi.com Judge promises quick ruling in dispute over Cheney's home By Mary McLachlin, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 30, 2000 A lawsuit over whether Texas' 32 electors can legally vote for both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is on an express track through a Dallas federal court, with a ruling promised on Friday. The suit, filed originally in Florida by Boca Raton lawyer Lawrence Caplan, raises constitutional issues that could affect the outcome of the election and send it to Congress for a resolution. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater, a conservative and controversial Reagan appointee, has said he intends to rule Friday afternoon so the suit can move quickly to the federal appeals court and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. The crux is whether Cheney is legally a resident of Texas, where he has lived and worked for the past five years, or of Wyoming, where he grew up and which he represented in Congress. He claimed that switching his voter registration and driver's license to Wyoming in July -- just before Bush named him as his running mate -- made him an "inhabitant" of that state again. The distinction is important, since the U.S. Constitution's 12th Amendment forbids a state's electors from voting for both presidential and vice presidential candidates who are "inhabitants" of their own state. Lawyers for three Texas voters asserted Cheney didn't meet either state or federal legal definitions of an "inhabitant" of Wyoming. They cited his homestead exemption claim on his $1.6 million suburban Dallas home, his auto registrations and income tax return addresses as evidence that he still lived in Texas. Cheney, who owns residential property in both Wyoming and Virginia, put the Dallas-area home on the market after the suit was filed. His spokeswoman said he had always planned to sell it after the election. Lawyers for Bush and Cheney said in court documents this week the suit should be dismissed on three points: • The plaintiffs don't have standing to sue because they can't prove they would be personally injured if the 12th Amendment were violated. • The suit improperly involves the court in a "political question" -- the validity of electoral votes -- which the 12th Amendment delegates only to Congress. • A person can change his domicile "instantaneously," according to legal precedent, and "the motive prompting him is immaterial." Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, is a co-counsel on the voters' suit. He said the residency issue hasn't been tested in connection with a presidential election, but comes up constantly elsewhere -- especially where money is involved. "The irony is that people shrug off these kinds of issues with regard to the presidency," Levinson said, "but they certainly wouldn't shrug them off in estate or divorce cases." The plaintiffs have asked the court to certify several "urgent" questions to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and to the U.S. Supreme Court. They include whether a candidate must be an inhabitant of a given state on the date of the election, the date the Electoral College meets, or earlier; whether electors can vote for one candidate only, or are barred from voting for both; and what happens if the one they don't vote for doesn't have enough votes to take office. That would throw the election into the Senate, Levinson said, and probably result in favorable votes for both candidates. "The Electoral College is kind of a constitutional stupidity, but it still controls the election," said Levinson, who co-edited Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies. "The fact that it doesn't make much sense anymore doesn't mean we don't have to live with it."