Kristen,

Sorry for the length of my post but I thought I would put in my .02 worth here.

>>>The Supreme Court chose to end the recount, on a somewhat shaky legal argument, and did so by a 5-4 vote.

That is simply not true.

The 1st Supreme Court verdict was 9-0 – It remanded the ruling done by the Florida State Supreme Court (FSSC) which completely changed the election law AFTER the election and allowed selective county hand recounts. Ironically it only allowed 4 counties to be recount, the 4 most Democratic counties in Florida. This was an obviously a hyper partisan ruling that was designed to get Gore into office. The remand was the most strongly worded rebuke in the courts history and all nine justices agreed that the FSSC had acted in an unconstitutional and illegal manner that promoted one candidate over the other.

This should have ended the court battles but the Gore campaign (specifically Ron Klain and David Boies) continued pushing court cases up to the overly friendly FSSC. They needed to get a recount of only pro-Gore counties and they needed to change the counting methods in order for Gore to win. Remember the state had been recounted twice already and Bush won both times. Gore could have asked for a whole state recount but did not fearing that the disputed overseas ballots in sitting in Miami-Dade County would swing the vote clearly for bush. (NOTE: Those ballots were never counted, since they were destroyed by the Democratic county commissioner before the media consortium count.)

So following Klain and Boies strategy they ran to their ally the FSSC. Nobody thought they could win after the stunning rebuke the USSC had given them instead the FSSC in a 4-3 decision (three of the justices learned something from the rebuke) ignored Florida State Law, the US constitution and federal election law and ordered a statewide recount of ONLY the undervote’s, something that all court rulings (county, state and federal) have said cannot be done. But not only did they order ONLY the undervotes to be recounted, they stated clearly that the standard to be used was to be left up to each individual county. Meaning that there was no standard whatsoever. What many legal scholars see was the 4 highly partisan judges on the FSSC giving the finger to the USSC and in fact ensuring a victory for Gore.

When we (the Democratic Party) received this ruling we were actually aghast. This went way too far by 1) ordering a whole state recount which couldn’t be done in time, therefore sending the election to the Florida senators as per the election law. 2) Changing election laws after the election, by stating only undervotes should be counted and 3) Setting no standard for which to count the undervotes which the USSC had already chastised the FSSC in the first ruling.

When this went to the USSC there were was one basic issue being argued by both sides: Can election laws be changed AFTER an election? Al Gore and the FSSC said they needed to be changed to ensure a fair election while the Bush campaign said you have to abide by the laws. In this case SEVEN (7) of the justices agreed that you have to abide by the laws and not change them after the fact to ensure your victory.

USSC Ruling – “Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy.”

Toobin along with many of the far left commentators and late night comedians never mention that the ruling was 7-2 instead the obfuscate and claim it was 5-4 because of the remedy issue, but this is a sleight of hand that prays on the uninformed.

It is true that there were 4 dissenting opinions, while 7 votes were cast that it was unconstitutional. This is how the pundits and spinmeisters. However it’s not that hard to understand how this can happen and does happen on a fairly regular basis. Imagine you don’t feel well and you go to your doctor. He sends you to a specialist and the specialist has you examined by 9 doctors. At the end of the day 7 of the nine doctors say you have cancer. 2 of the 9 say you don’t. So you ask the 9 doctors what remedy do I have for my condition? 5 of them want to give you chemotherapy for your cancer. But 2 want you to drink 4 glasses of drink carrot juice every day for 2 weeks to help cure your cancer. The other 2 doctors the ones, who say you don’t have cancer at all, tell you that you don’t have to do anything, but drinking carrot juice won’t harm you.
Now let’s analyze what we have.

You have 7 doctors who say; you have cancer, while 2 say you don’t.
You have 5 who want you to start chemotherapy
You have 2 who want you to drink carrot juice.
And you have 2 who want you to do nothing, but say it is okay to drink carrot juice.

The 64,000-dollar question is:

How many doctors say you have cancer?

It’s a tough question isn’t it because only 5 want you to do chemotherapy and we know that drinking carrot juice won’t cure cancer! So obviously only 5 doctors think you have cancer, Right! This is what Toobin and the late night comics want you to believe. But the correct answer is seven doctors think you have cancer the only difference is on remedy. SEVEN doctors can agree on a problem but disagree on a solution. Just as the “Seven justices agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy, . . . The only disagreement is as to the remedy.”

Once we realize that the first vote was 9-0 and the second was 7-2 (and the 2 thought it was wise to extend the deadline and have the whole state recounted not just the undervotes) we realize that this was not a political decision at all but rather one that protected our sanctity of voting by NOT changing the rules to ensure victory of a chosen candidate.

Cheers

PS I worked for the Democratic Party of Florida before, during and for a short time after this debacle. I was immersed in it and detested the Klain/Boies win-at-any-cost strategy. They were the slimy ones and Al Gore erred in picking their game-book to use. Warren Christopher and Bill Daley were much more upstanding and wanted a fair election and a fair recount, they spoke out against the 4 county recount strategy, questioning its legality, and the maneuvering to the FSSC, saying that even if Gore did win using these strategies it would be an illegitimate victory and that illegitimacy would carry on to his presidency. They wanted every vote counted fairly and let the chips fall where they may, I too believe that is the correct strategy.

Flawed analysis of the 2000 Florida recount.

What the Supreme Court decided did not matter. By the time of the Supreme Court decision, the "recount" was severely flawed, and the rulings by the Florida Supreme Court were partisan with accepting the conditions of the recount. If the US Supreme Court had not made their due process decision, then the Florida Republican legislature would have picked the Electors (which they had every right to do). The Republican House of Representatives would have set aside any challenge to legislature selected Electors and George W Bush would have won the Presidency. Without a clear recount victory which never happened for Al Gore, Gore was never going to win the Florida Electors.