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

To: Srexley who wrote (125002)	2/2/2001 1:08:22 AM
From: mst2000	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Hey, thanks for the civil tone of your responses, sincerely. It has been pretty unusual in these parts. The legality of the manual recounts is pretty simple. Under Florida law, as it existed prior to the election, a candidate has the absolute right to request a recount at any time up to the point of certification. They are requested on a county by county basis. There is no provision for a "state wide" recount. Gore requested recounts in 4 counties several days before the certification deadline, which imposed upon the 4 counties a legal obligation to conduct a 3 precinct sample. If that sample indicates that a recount may change the outcome of the election, it must be conducted. Each county that did a sample concluded that a recount should continue (but not until they had fended off Katherine Harris - see below). The certification deadline cannot cut off the recount, because the right to request the recount exists literally up to the moment the certification is signed. Kathy Harris, instead of allowing each County canvassing board to comply with its legal duty to the requesting candidate, advised the canvassing boards (in some cases without having been asked first) that, in her opinion, the recounts were permitted only under circumstances that were extremely narrow - machine error only. Apart from being inconsistent with prior Florida practice in local elections, that advise was in direct contradiction to the statute, which imposes no such limitation, and bases the right purely on the sample -- and the Florida supreme court unanimously ruled that she overstepped her legal authority (and acted unlawfully) in giving this "advice". This interference added more delay to the process, which ,as you know was very time sensitive (not a coincidence) as the canvassing boards attempted to clarify whether she was right or wrong (in at least 1 or 2 instances, communicating with the AG's office or going to court). She then indicated that the recounts must be complete by the certification deadline, or she would ignore any change in vote tabs resulting from them, which was an equally absurd decision (and an abuse of her infamous "discretion" which she somehow managed to exercise in every instance to favor the Bush campaign, of which she was the statewide co-chair) because the statute allows the candidate to request a recount and force a sampling literally up to the moment the certification is signed. All this in an election in which less than 1,000 votes more or less separated the candidates out of 6 Million cast, and where there were approximately 100,000 undervotes, and massive ballot irregularities, most of them in these very 4 counties. In the meantime, Jim Baker was flooding the airwaves with the absurd contention that all votes had already been counted three times, when no manual review of punch card ballots was EVER conducted even once. The Bush campaign then embarked on a litigation strategy to uphold Harris' view of the statute (the one that read an explicit right to request and force a recount out of the law entirely), and when they lost 7-0 in the FSC, they appealed to the USSC. Now who would have thought, going into the election, that it would be so hard to get a manual review of ballots in a razor close election, in a state that explicitly allows manual recounts if requested in a timely fashion, in counties where the total undervote and overvote was over 10 times as high as the statewide average; or that the candidate who says he believes in States rights (from Texas) would go to federal court -- the US Supreme Court no less -- to reverse the State Supreme Court's unanimous interpretation of state law, in order to prevent local election officials from looking at uncounted ballots to see what they say -- applying standards of review that were far less liberal (in counting votes) than the standard that has existed under the state law in Texas for years. That's what I call scorched earth legal tactics. It goes on from there, culiminating in the abomination at the USSC in which Dubya was appointed Prez by a 5-4 decision. But it's late and I'm tired. I'll try and respond some more tomorrow when I have a little more time and energy. Thanks again for the civility. It would be a better world if there was greater civility between political "adversaries". MST