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Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rappin1 who wrote (19424)	12/13/2000 9:21:34 AM
From: David	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26039

The Florida Supreme Court did about as good a job as any court of human beings could have under the circumstances they faced. They moved at lightning speed for a court. When neither party pushed for a statewide recount, despite their invitation, they initiated one on their own. If they hadn't taken that approach, the Supreme Court surely would have found that a violation of equal protection. They stuck with the statutory standard of "general intent of the voter." If they hadn't, given the Bush arguments, the Supreme Court could easily have found that they departed from the statute; it wasn't as obvious that the Supreme Court could also find that a violation of the equal protection clause. They successfully defended from a skeptical Supreme Court majority their extension of the recount deadline as being within Florida law. In retrospect, if the Florida court could have foretold the future, they would have acted the first time with a statewide recount with some (still undefined) appropriate more specific recount standard, and based that opinion solely on State law, rather than the Florida constitution. By the way, none of this was at all knowable at the time, so you can't blame them for not getting it right. Given the way the US Supreme Court has acted in this -- particularly Scalia's reason for the stay granted on Saturday -- I have my suspicions whether anything the Florida court could have done would have been allowed to work through before a deadline was imposed. As to Miami Dade county, we'll know soon enough what the recount would have shown. You can bet it will be reported using a variety of standards in a private recount. I'm not persuaded that the one third sample done was any more representative than the Gore-selected precincts, but we will know soon enough. And of course the vast majority of the undervote was a true undervote. But some of it wasn't, enough of it to potentially change the election results. We'll know soon enough.