Reefer Madness?

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:11:36 +0100, M Holmes wrote
> Arjan Hulsebos writes:
> 
> > On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:37:57 +0100, M Holmes wrote
> > > The US put two armies of lawyers into three separate courts to sort 
> > > it out and pretty much everyone else switched back to CSI or NASCAR until
> > > they got back with the result.
> 
> > When there are court battles over the result of the elections, *something*
> > *somewhere* is pretty fubarred.
> 
> I totally disagree. The election was extremely close. At one point 
> if Al Gore had made another 600 votes he'd have shut down the 
> counting and called off his appeal and it would have been over (the 
> Bush team let their right of appeal run out on the clock as part of 
> their tactics).
> 
> The three levels of Court (state, federal, supreme) had serious 
> issues of great substance to settle. At the most trivial were the 
> rules of what constituted a legitimate vote. The Florida rules 
> applied there, but were in some senses ambiguous, thus the hanging 
> and pregnant chads debate.
> 
> Then there were arguments about timing for the sundry appeals, 
> verification, signing off the results etc. Essentially there were so 
> many votes to count by hand that there was no way to get the hob 
> done before the votes were legally due to be certified. That meant 
> sampling and both camps had an interest in doing the sampling such 
> that it would uphold their vote/skew things their way (choose one).

Well, up until a few years ago, all elections in the Netherlands were counted
by hand. All results were in (barring recounts) within a few hours. recounts
were usually in during the night.

> Then the Florida state courts put Katharine Harris (sp?) in a bind. She
> had to legally certify the vote by a specific date or she would be
> breaking the law. The Gore tem couldn't let her do that because they
> were still behind in the vote. They got the State Court to back them 
> and so Katharine Harris was ordered by a State court to break 
> Federal Law. That had to go to the Federal courts. Something the 
> Bush team wanted strategically anyway because they knew that the 
> State courts were Democrat appointments and were famous for leftist activism.
> 
> Added to that was a side argument about military votes whch had been
> excluded due to a fault in the military postmarking scheme.  The Bush
> team tactically wanted them in "How can we exclude legal votes by
> soldiers serving abroad?" because they were more likely Republican votes
> and the Gore team wanted them out for the same reason. This did harm
> Gore public relations of course, and in fact the 600 or so votes thus
> acccepted did keep Bush in the lead at a point where Gore was within 
> a couple of dozen votes of getting a lead and closing dowwn the process.
> 
> Both the state and federal courts got their say-so on those.
> 
> The federal court fights reslulted in decisions going both ways, though
> with a decisive edge to the bush team.  Eventually it went to the
> Supreme court as a result of the timetable argument.  Florida was
> getting close to being unable to fulfill its constitutional requirement
> to send electors to the Electoral College.  That would have created a
> whole other mess.
> 
> In the end though, the election was settled according to the rules laid
> down by law, with a bit of legal argument about what those laws actually
> meant. This is precisely how a constitutional republic is supposed 
> to work.
> 
> > No, not at all. No court should determine the outcome of an election
> 
> No court did. The courts ruled on what were legally valid votes, 
> which votes could be legally appeald and recounted and what the timings
> available for such action were. They ruled on those based on laws which
> were already on the books. Those rules, once interpreted by the 
> courts, were applied to the votes and a valid recount taken.

You've shown that the courts did decide the outcome of the elections after the
votes were in.

> > that's
> > the prerogative of the voters. There should be protocols on who is allowed to
> > vote, who is allowed to be voted, how a voter should vote, and how to count
> > the votes. You may have court battles over that _before_ the elections. Once
> > that has been sorted out, you only have to follow the protocols.
> 
> In a perfect world yes. In our imperfect one, there was some 
> ambiguity in some of the rules, and some of the state rules turned 
> out to contradict federal ones in minor, but in this elction,
>  crucial ways. That mean court rulings were needed.

The ambiguities should've been ironed out before the elections were held,
including the timetable issues. If you have to go to court afterwards, it
makes you look silly, especially if you have to ask the judge "Is this a
legitimate vote?".

Gr,

Arjan H