To: Neocon who wrote (110575 ) 12/11/2000 1:25:01 PM From: mst2000 Read Replies (1) | Respond to Neocon - You confuse the manual recount provided in the Protest section of the Florida election code with the "rejection of legally cast votes" standard applied by the Florida Supreme Court in the Contest provisions of the same statute - provisions which grant the Courts to fashion any order it deems appropriate to assure that the intent of the Code (which is, indisputably, to give effect to the will of the people expressed through the right to vote by anonymous ballot). More importantly, the Dade County Canvassing Board voted to start a recount, and then stopped it only because it believed it could not meet the deadline established by the Court. In doing so, it violated the Gore campaign's rights under Florida statute, and disenfranchised thousands of legal votes in Dade County. The US Supreme Court can give effect to what the law originally contemplated by ordering Dade county alone to finish the recount it started before the vote was certified. It chose not to order a recount of the ballots which the machines tabulated because there is no real dispute over those ballots -- there is no need for a Court, in a legal proceeding to contest specific ballots, to include ballots which are not disputed in substance by either side. The Florida Supreme Court chose to extend that relief to a manual recount of undervotes across the state of Florida only because of its desire to protect, in an equitable relief sense, the fairness of the "recount" process to Mr. Bush. But any Democrat would be more than satisfied with a result which merely finishes the Dade recount which was legally requested and illegally interrupted, which has been their sole goal from day one.
