Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Florida 2000: A Recap

I just noticed an anonymous off-topic comment on a previous post:
12/12/2000 - The Supreme Court decided voters' choices aren't really all that important. During most of our history, when we did have Democracy in the USA, votes were hand counted. I wonder when and how we will get Democracy back into the USA.
I've heard similar ill-informed nonsense for years. Here's my substantive reply:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gore won. That's why they stopped the count. Democracy worked when votes were hand counted for most of our history. The Supreme Court ended democracy in the USA when they interfered with the counting of the votes.

Bottom line: GORE WON!

El Jefe Maximo said...

This post is a good a short summary of the facts and law pertinent to the 2000 election controversy as I have seen.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Jefe:

Thanks. Readers should surf to Jefe's Kingdom of Chaos blog.

Anony:

Debaters apply logical reasoning to verifiable facts, a lesson you seem to have skipped:

1) If no official count had Gore ahead, how can you say Gore won?

2) Florida law authorized punchcard voting in 2000. Are you saying that you can overrule lawful local decisions on the design of the voting process? Such an argument is substantially more hostile to state law than any SCOTUS ruling.

3) The recount was halted because the deadline for recounts had expired and further delay would have allowed Florida's final certification to be challenged by Congress--and thus Florida's results to be decided by persons other than the Florida electorate.

4) By your theory, the 1962 Baker v. Carr decision was wrong because the Court interfered with apportionment in elections for the General Assembly of Tennessee. If anything, Bush v. Gore seems more supportable because it involved an election for national, not state, office.

5) You're welcome to keep commenting. But, absent supplying sourced facts and sound syllogisms, I won't waste my efforts or readers' attention on your adolescent opinions. Try Kos or the Puffington Host.

Anonymous said...

Gore won.