A Decade After Bush v. Gore.....

[dieseldiva]

I've often heard it said that Bush "stole" the 2000 election. I have to admit that I wasn't paying close attention at the time and because of that, I cannot give any personal opinion. What I'd like is other's opinions, based on fact please.

Here is an article by George Will that caught my interest.....if you have something that argues the other side of the fence, I'd like to read it.

A decade after Bush v. Gore
By George F. Will
Sunday, December 12, 2010; A25

The passions that swirled around Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that ended 10 years ago Sunday, dissipated quickly. And remarkably little damage was done by the institutional collisions that resulted when control of the nation's supreme political office turned on 537 votes out of 5,963,110 cast in Florida.

Many controversies concerned whether particular votes could be said to have been cast properly. Chads are those bits of paper that, when a ballot is properly cast by puncturing spots next to candidates' names, are separated from the ballot. In Florida, there were "dimpled" chads that were merely dented and "hanging" chads not separated from the ballots. Furthermore, there were undervotes (ballots with no vote for president) and overvotes (votes for two presidential candidates) and ill-designed (by a Democrat) butterfly ballots.

The post-election lunacy could have been substantially mitigated by adhering to a principle of personal responsibility: Voters who cast ballots incompetently are not entitled to have election officials toil to divine these voters' intentions. Al Gore got certain Democratic-dominated canvassing boards to turn their recounts into unfettered speculations and hunches about the intentions of voters who submitted inscrutable ballots. Before this, Palm Beach County had forbidden counting dimpled chads.

Once Gore initiated the intervention of courts, the U.S. Constitution was implicated. On Nov. 7, Gore finished second in Florida's Election Day vote count. A few days later, after the state's mandatory (in close elections) machine recount, he again finished second. Florida law required counties to certify their results in seven days, by Nov. 14.

But three of the four (of Florida's 67) counties - each heavily Democratic - where Gore was contesting the count were not finished deciphering voters' intentions. So Gore's lawyers persuaded the easily persuadable state Supreme Court - with a majority of Democratic appointees - to rewrite the law. It turned the seven-day period into 19 days.

Many liberals underwent instant conversions of convenience: They became champions of states' rights when the U.S. Supreme Court (seven of nine were Republican appointees) unanimously overturned that extension. But the U.S. high court reminded Florida's court to respect the real "states' rights" at issue - the rights of state legislatures: The Constitution gives them plenary power to establish procedures for presidential elections.

Florida's Supreme Court felt emancipated from law. When rewriting the law to extend the deadline for certification of results by the four counties, the court said: "The will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle." But under representative government, the will of the people is expressed in statutes. Adherence to statutes - even adherence stigmatized as "hyper-technical" - is known as the rule of law.

In the end, seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices (and three of the seven Florida justices) agreed on this: The standardless recount ordered by the Florida court - different rules in different counties regarding different kinds of chads and different ways of discerning voter intent - violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

Two of the seven U.S. justices favored ordering Florida's court to devise standards that could pass constitutional muster and allowing the recount to continue for six more days. Five justices, believing that the recounting had become irredeemably lawless, ended it.

Once Gore summoned judicial intervention, and Florida's Supreme Court began to revise state election law, it probably was inevitable that possession of the nation's highest political office was going to be determined by a state's highest court or the nation's. The U.S. Supreme Court was duty-bound not to defer to a state court that was patently misinterpreting - disregarding, actually - state law pertaining to a matter assigned by the U.S. Constitution to state legislatures.

Suppose that, after Nov. 7, Florida's Legislature had made by statute the sort of changes - new deadlines for recounting and certifying votes, selective recounts, etc. - that Florida's Supreme Court made by fiat. This would obviously have violated the federal law that requires presidential elections to be conducted by rules in place prior to Election Day.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. But this difficult case seems to have made little discernible law. That is good because it means no comparable electoral crisis has occurred. What the Supreme Court majority said on Dec. 12, 2000 - "our consideration is limited to the present circumstances" - has proved true. And may remain true, at least until the next time possession of the presidency turns on less than one ten-thousandth of a state's vote.

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[BillChaffey]

First of all, I did not read all of the learned Mr. Will's article. When I arrived at his opinion\intimation that the Florida judges voted along for the Party that appointed them (paragraph 5) and the U. S. Supreme Court did the same. (paragraph 6) In my opinion is a CROCK.

 

[greg334]

In addition to all of that, the court's decision can not tell the Representatives in the house who to vote for when the actual vote for the president is taken.

This is up to those representing the people to decide and even if the laws of Florida say the majority voted for X, it does not mean that the votes cast for X will mean they have to vote for X.

 

[RLENT]

I've often heard it said that Bush "stole" the 2000 election. I have to admit that I wasn't paying close attention at the time and because of that, I cannot give any personal opinion. What I'd like is other's opinions, based on fact please.

At the time I was working (or not ) from home and so followed the whole debacle quite closely (glued to the tube for days on end would be a fair description)

I think that one of the most salient points that Will makes is contained in the following statement:

"The post-election lunacy could have been substantially mitigated by adhering to a principle of personal responsibility: Voters who cast ballots incompetently are not entitled to have election officials toil to divine these voters' intentions."

While his statement is true enough as far as it goes, I don't think that it, or the article, really addresses everything that happened - and the lunacy exhibited by both sides.

No big surprise there I suppose, given Will's politics.

What became clearly apparent to me as the saga unfolded (and which I somewhat dismissed at the time) was that the whole matter was less about respecting the will of the voters, and more about which side would be able to grab the reins of power.

From my perspective, the unbridled lust for power was certainly evident on both sides - particularly the further away you got from the top of the food chain - probably just because those at the top are better skilled at hiding it. Often, the lower the level of whatever partisan hack one was looking at, the more shrill the message became, and the more desperate they seemed.

I think that to some extent, the above is caused by how divisive and polarized we have allowed our politics to become. And I think that what it portends for body politic in the future is not good: the acquisition and maintaining of political power has become the be-all and end-all for most of those who seek political office - and they will sacrifice all that ought to be holy to achieve power. It is an indictment of many who seek office.

In the interests of full transparency, I thought, at the time (and actually still do today) that the Republicans had the better argument, and appeared to be operating from higher moral ground, in terms of the principles involved. However, at this point, I seriously question whether their actual motivations were quite as sterling as they attempted to portray them.

FWIW, I contributed either $500 or $1000 to the Bush campaign to fund the subsequent court actions to settle the matter - largely because I believed that Gore, as president, would be extremely dangerous to personal liberty and individual freedom in this country. And I still believe that today.

Unfortunately, what I did not see, was dangerous Bush would turn out to be .... had I had the benefit of the hindsight I have now, I certainly would have not contributed.

When looking at the political landscape, one is hard-pressed not to feel a bit like Diogenes:

.... ever in search for an honest man .....

 

[dieseldiva]

Thanks RLENT, you've given me food for thought....and I agree with that last sentence!

 

[RLENT]

DD,

You're quite welcome, of course

Back many moons ago, when I was working on the tax thing, the observation was (particularly with respect to that issue), that the only solution there really was to getting a handle on government as an all-pervasive entity, intruding into nearly every aspect of everyone's lives, and restrain it, was to deprive it, to a very great degree, of the power it has - a power that is almost always a consequence of the power to tax.

If the government was not involved in the redistribution of wealth there would much less incentive for those with less-than-sterling motivations to serve.

It's important to understand what I really mean about the redistribution of wealth - I'm not talking soley about a welfare deadbeat that's unwilling to work and living off the dole. That is really insignificant in the big scheme of things.

What I am talking about is the structuring of the tax code to provide large breaks to certain corporations and none to others, favorable (or unfavorable) treatment, and setting up the game board to the detriment of some and the benefit of others, so as to pick winners and losers. Even the funding of various government bureaucracies itself.

If things were not this way (as they are currently), I rather suspect that the type of person that would be attracted to serving would be far, far different.

 

[greg334]

I believed that Gore, as president, would be extremely dangerous to personal liberty and individual freedom in this country. And I still believe that today.

What?!?

Really?!?

Isn't the same true about McCain?

 

[RLENT]

What?!?

Really?!?

Isn't the same true about McCain?

Absolutely ..... another (currently) totally worthless POS (with all due respect for his prior service)

 

[greg334]

What I find intriguing is the fact that many jump up and down over Obama trashing the Constitution which looks like they have falling for the propaganda but they fail to look at what McCain and others have done, like McCain-Feingold and the impact that has on the right of the individual.

 

[dieseldiva]

What I find intriguing is the fact that many jump up and down over Obama trashing the Constitution which looks like they have falling for the propaganda but they fail to look at what McCain and others have done, like McCain-Feingold and the impact that has on the right of the individual.

But it wasn't McCain v. Gore, it was Bush v. Gore that was settled 10 years ago today.......and that's what the original post is about.

 

[greg334]

Yea I know but I'm trying hard to get this thread off topic so we can talk about pickles and shorts.

Regardless, the president is not in control.

They may drive policies but they do not create laws.

TOO much of a big deal is made out of the office of the president.

In many ways it wouldn't matter who became president, the congress still holds the purse strings and make laws. The proof seems to be in the tax provision renewal, where the president made a "deal" but is ineffective in getting that deal to solidify in congress where he has no control.

I would however agree that Gore would set forth policies that we would never recover from, he would have set back basic civil rights of each individual in this country by doing things with the agencies he controls that equal Wilson and forget 9/11, he would have sent an envoy to reason with Bin Laden and try to understand his anger while justifying to the public that the attack was not on the country itself but what it stands for - the destruction of the environment exclusively by the rich and greedy United States.

 

[Ragman]

Yea I know but I'm trying hard to get this thread off topic so we can talk about pickles and shorts.

Trouble maker.