November 23, 2000
Friday, October 29, 2004, 12:41 AM
NYT Headline: "Bush Takes Appeal To U.S. Supreme Court; Cheney In Hospital With Mild Heart Attack".

Rep. Dick Armey, majority leader at the time, said of the FLorida Supreme Court's ruling, that "a partisan court made a partisan decision" and said that the Florida Legislature had a "duty to step in and restore honesty and the rule of law."

Sen. Trent Lott, majority leader on the other side of the Hill, said that it was a "chilling reminder of the need for vigilance to ensure that the actions of unelected judges do not usurp the right of thhe people to govern themselves in a democracy" and that "This cannot stand".

Here's what George W. Bush said about the ruling: "We believe the justices have used the bench to change Florida's election laws and usurp the authority of Florida's election officials."

Some analysts worried about the possiblity that Florida would send two sets of electors and that the Congress would have to decide which slate to accept.

Miami-Dade County decided to stop counting, because officials there believed they could not meet the Sunday 5 p.m. deadline for getting their returns in to the Secretary of State's office.

Bush sued election officials in 13 counties in Florida for rejecting absentee ballots from military personnel.

In the motion to the U.S. Supreme Court for expedited consideration of the Florida Supreme Court ruling, the Bush campaign wrote: "This court has previously granted expedited treatment of cases involving substantial questions of national importance. The importance of this case is at least equal to, if not greater than, those landmark decisions. The presidency itself is at stake."

And so it was.

I remember being really sure that if there ever was a "political question" that the Supreme Court would refuse to take, this was it. Sure were a lot of wrong predictions made that year.


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If it was wrong to vote twice, why didn't they tell me that?
Thursday, October 28, 2004, 01:08 PM
Those were the words of Adell Hardiman, who voted twice in the 2000 election. He was talking to a reporter at the time. Which just goes to show you that you *can* vote early and often but there are risks. Be forewarned!

A West Virginia elector may cast the wrong vote this election; he's a Republican elector who may not vote for Bush.

Today's big story, however, is all about challenges to voter registrstions and voter eligibility. Earlier, in Ohio, a federal judge issued a TRO stopping hearings on thousands of voter registrations that Republicans requested, claiming the registrations were fraudulent.

This ruling applied to six counties. Hearings continued in other counties.

Then, the Ohio attorney general appealed the order.

In a separate move, African American voters in Cincinnati filed suit against Sec. of State Blackwell saying that challenging voters on election day violates the Voting Rights Act, being particularly discriminatory to African American voters.

In Florida, "Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday he would have no problem if Republican poll watchers challenge the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots on Election Day, despite growing concern that it could create gridlock and scare away qualified voters.
...
The Florida Republican Party has not decided whether to instruct poll watchers to challenge voters Tuesday, spokeswoman Mindy Fletcher said."

But also, "Pozzuoli and GOP officials in Tallahassee said this week that their attorneys will have lists of voters whose registrations appear flawed. They are preparing to try to stop them from voting."

That about wraps up another day of pre-election chaos.

Oh yes, one more thing: VerifiedVoting, which is the site for which I'll be helping collect election-day incident reports, was just Slashdotted. Ouch!


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November 22, 2000
Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 10:17 PM
NYT Headline: "Florida Court Backs Hand Recounts and Orders Vote Deadline of Monday".

The ruling was unanimous. The court said that the secretary of state could not certify official results of the election until Sunday evening, and if the office was not open Sunday, the certification would have to take place Monday morning.

The scope of the secretary of state's discretion to ignore late county election returns in general was severely constrained in the ruling.

The opinion had some pretty quotable quotes in it (unlike the oral arguments). For example:

"Courts must not lose sight of the fundamental purpose of election laws: The laws are intended to facilitate and safeguard the right of each voter to express his or her will in the context of our representative democracy. Technical statutory requirements must not be exalted over the substance of this right."

No standards were set on which chads to count. Good thing, too, since all three counties doing recounts were using different standards which changed as the recounts progressed. Once again, I wistfully contemplate uniform national standards...

How were these legal challenges funded? By emergency fundraising, of course, by both parties. Gore raised $3 million within 24 hours of the polls closing on November 7; the Bush campaign started a few days later and had raised $4.6 million by the time the Florida court ruling came down.

Nowadays, everyone knows you have to get started much earlier than that.


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November 21, 2000 part 2
Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 09:59 PM
I'm trying vainly to find a quotable quote from the oral arguments in front of the Florida Supreme Court and failing. It wasn't just lack of sleep that made it difficult last night; it was the lack of sound-bytable material.

The questions centered around the Florida statue, 102.111 and 102.112. I vaguely remember looking them up and reading the fine print. What a waste of brain cells! (I lived in New York at the time.)

But here's why I looked it up.

Mr. Hancock: ...it is plainly set forth in the statute, that, in that recount, county officials should look at those ballots to determine the intent of the voter...

Justice Harding: But there is, also, a provision of that statute that says it should be done within seven days.

Mr. Hancock: Yes, Justice Harding, there is, and there is the following section, after that, that says that the first section you cite says they shall be done in seven days or not counted. The next section says they may be counted, if they are not done in seven days, so there is a conflict.

So the Court was stuck trying to figure out a schedule which would get the votes counted and get all challenges in court concluded by Dec. 12, as mandated by federal law.

Another choice bit:

Mr. Hancock: ...even if you leave aside the manual recount provisions, you have got a statutory system that does not contemplate that seven days brings down a curtain.

Justice Harding: What is the time limit, then?

Mr. Hancock: Well, Your Honor, if I were sitting in your chair, that would be a difficult question for me. It is an even more difficult question standing where I am.

A question no one wanted to answer because the only way to do it was to make up aschedule out of whole cloth.

You can relive those electrifying moments by listening to the arguments via the Florida Supreme Court's web site. Or you can just wait a few weeks for the remake.



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Recess appointment, anyone?
Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 10:12 AM
I was trying to convince a family member that a recess appointment to the Supreme Court is perfectly legal -- and after all, that's how Earl Warren got on the Court -- but he wasn't buying it. Maybe this article will convince him. It describes talk amongst administration officials about doing just that, should Rehnquist not be able to resume his duties after all. All very hush-hush, given the election, of course.

We probably have too many lawyers and judges involved in this mess already. But what we don't have is enough poll workers; we're short by about half a million nationwide. What happens when there aren't enough qualified volunteers?

"As long as they're breathing and they can walk in, we have to take them," says Barbara Jackson, Baltimore's director of elections. "The people we hire for the most part are elderly, undereducated, and frequently unemployed."

Another thing we're short on is absentee ballots arriving in the mail on time in Broward County. "Your ballot is in the mail" now joins the top ten things not to believe from a government official. That's about 58,000 folks who are wondering how they are going to vote. Enough to swing Florida?

At first I thought the absentee ballot story was on a parody site, since the other headlines included Man Accused Of Trying To Run Over Katherine Harris, (yes, *that* Katherine Harris), and right below that, Fishing Trip Unearths Mammoth Tooth, Other Fossils, but on second look it appears to be legit. Maybe they just have weirder news down there in Florida.


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