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

To: Neocon who wrote (118067)	12/20/2000 11:07:45 AM
From: mst2000	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

You said "Although the SCOTUS affirmed the right of the SCOFLA to order the manual recounts in the first place, as part of the contest period, it took the position that the SCOFLA did not have the right to override the intent of the legislature to meet the "safe harbor" provision, ending the contest period." I think that statement can be fairly read to suggest that a MAJORITY of the court took that position. When only 3 did. Last time I looked, it takes 5 justices joining each other to constitute a majority of SCOTUS. Which is why your statement is false. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas took the position you ascribe to the court as a whole, but 6 justices could not join them in taking it that far. Which means that SCOTUS did not decide that the FSC had improperly overridden the legislature's method of resolving this. By the way, your last statement is mindblowing: "Since the legislature determines the means of selection of electors under Article II of the Constitution, and is under no obligation to choose them through general balloting, it has an absolute right to end the contest when it wants to." I seriously doubt you could get one Supreme Court justice to agree with that statement, even the Gang of Three. Once the legislature enacted laws before November 7 that provided for the selection of electors by general ballot, it was utterly without authority to change that after the election. That was precisely the harm that Congress was trying to avoid by enacting Title 3 -- that a rogue legislature would try to appoint a slate of bogus electors after a slate of electors had been properly certified based on laws in effect prior to the election. The reason why the Florida legislature's "plan" to appoint electors by December 12 if the Court contest was not resolved by then was so completely irresponsible and lawless is because they had already determined the manner of selecting electors prior to the election -- by general ballot -- and were trying to change it after the fact if a legitimate contest proceeding under their own statutes either was resolved in Gore's favor or delayed past December 12 -- because it would have produced a result that was not to their political liking. even more unprincipled than SCOTUs (but not by much). As the media recount continues, the ugliness is only going to get worse, because it is becoming patently obvious that Gore beat Bush and that a recount under any standard would have ended up with a Gore victory. Wait and see.