"Mark Cook" wrote in message
m...
"KMAN" wrote in message
...
"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:
in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 2/20/05 5:59 PM:
A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:
in article K53Sd.37676$t46.25480@trndny04, No Spam at
wrote on 2/20/05 11:42 AM:
just after Bush stole his first presidency.
Bush won the election by every recount so far - have you found a
different
result? I would like to see it. I am not some blind follower of
Bush
but
I'm
getting tired of this stupid "Bush stole the election" crap. What
happened
in Florida was absurd, but the result has been verify many times.
???
Perhaps you are unaware that the the Republicam members of the
Supreme
Court
stopped the recount.
Well, that would be because the recount was being performed in
violation
of
state and federal law in a biased manner that threatened the accuracy
of
the
election, and therefore the recount was ruled to be unlawful. The
Supreme
Court is neither Republican nor Democrat, it's a neutral body that
rules
on
the law, not on politics.
True or false: it was the Republican appointees to the Supreme Court
that
voted to stop the recount.
The logical fallacy of the false dilemma. The political affiliation of
the
Justices is irrelevant.
Apparently it wasn't since they voted exactly along party lines.
Coincidence? Only a nut like you would believe that.
Apparently you have not read Gore vs. Harris, which became Bush vs. Gore,
or
Palm Beach County Canvassing Board vs. Harris.
Down party lines???? More Democrat propaganda.
I think you'll find this useful. It was designed for teens, and you seem to
have an adoloscent approach to things...
====
Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent US Supreme Court
decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me?
A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got the
most votes.
Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right?
A: Right.
Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal?
A: Oh no. Six of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the
hand-counts were legal and should be done.
Q: Oh. So the justices did not believe that the hand-counts would find any
legal ballots?
A: Nope. The five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine justices
agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate
number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the
voter." So there are legal votes that should be counted but can't be.
Q: Oh. Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't
conservatives love that?
A: Yes. These five justices have held that the federal government has no
business telling a sovereign state university it can't steal trade secrets
just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does the federal
government have any business telling a state that it should bar guns in
schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection clause to
force states to take measures to stop violence against women.
Q: Is there an exception in this case?
A: Yes, the "Gore Exception." States have no rights to control their own
state elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This
decision is limited to only this situation.
Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating!
A: Nope. They held, "Our consideration is limited to the present
circumstances, as the problem of equal protection in election processes
generally presents many complexities."
Q: What complexities?
A: They didn't say.
Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes can't
be counted because the Florida Supreme Court, "changed the rules of the
election after it was held." Right?
A: Wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme Court
did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court found
the failure of the Florida Court to change the rules was wrong.
Q: Huh?
A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote
is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for not
adopting a clearer standard.
Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's
law after the election.
A: Right.
Q: So what's the problem?
A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court
should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining what is
a legal vote"
Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law.
A: Right.
Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been
overturned.
A: Right. You're catching on.
Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for
changing the rules. And since it didn't, it's overturned for not changing
the rules? That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did,
legal votes could never be counted if they would end up with a possible Gore
victory.
A: Right. Next question.
Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some
counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem?
A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems.
Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties
record 99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely
Democratic-leaning counties record only 98% of the votes. So approximately
2% of Democratic-leaning votes (several thousand) are thrown in the trash
can.
Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!!!
A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 2% of
Democratic-leaning ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That
"complexity" was not a problem.
Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked more
than 10,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or both Gore and Buchanan?
A: Nope. The courts have no problem believing that Buchanan got his
highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with
Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Hitler.
Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem?
A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 2% of
Democrat-leaning voters (largely African-American) disenfranchised. The
problem is that somewhat less than .005% of the ballots (100 to 300 votes)
may have been determined under slightly different standards, because judges
and county officials -- doing what Americans have done for more than 200
years -- will look at the ballots under strict public scrutiny and record
voters' votes. At the end of the day, they may have a slightly different
opinion about a few hundred votes, but a single judge was overseeing the
entire process to resolve any disputes under a single standard.
Q: A single judge? I thought the standards were different. I thought that
was the whole point of the Supreme Court opinion.
A: Judge Terry Lewis, who received the case upon remand from the Florida
Supreme Court, had already ordered each of the counties to fax him their
standards so he could be sure they were uniform when the US Supreme Court
stopped him from counting the uncounted votes (because they were favoring
Gore, according to Scalia's stay opinion).
Q: Hmmm. Well, even if those .005% of difficult-to-tell votes are thrown
out, you can still count the votes where everyone, even Republicans, agrees
the voter's intent is clear, right?
A: Nope.
Q: Why not?
A: No time.
Q: I thought the Supreme Court said that the Constitution was more
important than speed.
A: It did. It said, "The press of time does not diminish the
constitutional concern. A desire for speed is not a general excuse for
ignoring equal protection guarantees."
Q: Well that makes sense. So there's time to count the votes when the
intent is clear and everyone is treated equally then. Right?
A: No. The Supreme Court won't allow it.
Q: But they just said that the Constitution is more important than time!
A: You forget. There is the "Gore Exception."
Q: No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agree
the intent is clear? Why not?
A: Because they issued the opinion at 10 p.m. on December 12.
Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes?
A: No. January 6, 2001 is the deadline. In the Election of 1960, Hawaii's
votes weren't counted until January 4, 1961
Q: So why is December 12 important?
A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the results.
Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court?
A: Nothing. In fact, some 20 states still (as of December 13, 2000)
haven't turned in their results.
Q: But I thought...
A: The Florida Supreme Court had earlier held it would like to complete its
work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United States
Supreme Court is trying to "help" the Florida Supreme Court out by forcing
the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not
binding.
Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the votes
counted by December 12.
A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped the
recount last Saturday.
Q: Why?
A: Justice Scalia said some of the counts may not be legal.
Q: So why not separate the votes into piles -- hanging chads for Gore,
indentations for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate or
the other -- so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining
who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out,
the American people will know right away who won Florida?
A: Great idea! An intelligent, rational solution to a difficult problem!
The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held in stopping the count on
December 9 that such counts would be likely to produce election results
showing Gore won and that Gore's winning would cause "public acceptance" and
that would "cast a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy" that would harm
"democratic stability."
Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't
accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory?
A: Yes.
Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? Or a political one?
A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, this
reason has no basis in law. But that didn't stop the five conservatives from
creating new law out of thin air.
Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the
votes afterward?
A: The US Supreme Court, after admitting the December 12 deadline is not
binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12.
Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for
arbitrarily setting a deadline?
A: Yes.
Q: But, but...
A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it sets
for other courts.
Q: Tell me this, are Florida's election laws unconstitutional?
A: Yes, according to the Supreme Court, the Legislature drafted the law in
such an unfair way that the Florida votes can never be fairly counted.
Q: Are the election laws of any of the other 49 states unconstitutional as
well?
A: Yes, if one logically applies the Supreme Court opinion. The voters of
the 50 states use different systems and standards to vote, and 33 states
have the same "clear intent of the voter" standard that the US Supreme Court
found was illegal in Florida.
Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out?
A: Um. Because.um...the Supreme Court doesn't say.
Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by
the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won
the election there, right?
A: Right. But a careful analysis by the Miami Herald shows Gore won
Florida by about 23,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors). See
http://www.herald.com/thispage.htm?c...ion/104268.htm
Q: So, what do we do? Count under a single uniform standard? Have a
re-vote? Throw out the entire state?
A: No. As there's no time for a re-vote or a re-count based on the
non-binding "deadline", the Supreme Court will just choose itself who will
be President, and it picks Bush to win 5-4, based on the flawed count it
just called unconstitutional.
Q: That's completely bizarre! Were there any apparent conflicts of
interest?
A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers at law firms working for Bush.
Thomas's wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the
Bush administration.
Q: Why didn't they remove themselves from the case?
A: If either had recused himself, the vote would have been 4-4, the Florida
Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed, and
Scalia feared Gore would have won the election.
Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way.
A: Read the opinions for yourself:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/00pdf/00-949.pdf
(December 9 - stay stopping the recount)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/supr...-949_dec12.fdf
(December 12 - opinion)
Q: So what are the consequences of this?
A: The guy who got the most votes in the US, in Florida, and under our
Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America's second choice (George W. Bush)
who won the all- important 5-4 Supreme Court vote, which trumps America's
choice.
Q: I thought in a democracy, the guy with the most votes wins. At least in
the Electoral College, shouldn't the guy with the most votes in Florida win?
A: That's true, but in this election it seems that the guy with the most US
Supreme Court votes wins.
Q: So what will happen to the Supreme Court when Bush becomes President?
A: He will appoint more pro-Republican justices.
Q: Is there any way to stop this?
A: YES. No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate.
It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic
Senators stand up to Bush and his Supreme Court and say that they will not
approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be
democratically elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror will end..and
one day we can hope to return to the rule of law and the will of the People.
Q: What can I do to help?
A: Email this article to everyone you know, and write or call your Senator,
reminding him or her that Gore beat Bush by several hundred thousand votes
(three to five times Kennedy's margin over Nixon) and that you believe that
VOTERS, not JUDGES should determine who wins an election. And to protect
our judiciary from overturning the will of the people, you ask your Senators
to confirm NO NEW FEDERAL JUDGES APPOINTED BY A NON-DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED
PRESIDENT until 2004 when a president is finally chosen by the American
people in a new election.
Q: What do the four dissenting US Supreme Court justices have to say about
all this?
A: Read excerpts below:
Justice John Paul Stevens (Republican appointed by Ford):
"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the
winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is
perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial
guardian of the rule of law."
Justice David Souter (Republican appointed by Bush):
"Before this Court stayed the effort to [manually recount the ballots] the
courts of Florida were ready to do their best to get that job done. There
is no justification for denying the State the opportunity to try to count
all the disputed ballots now."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Democrat appointed by Clinton):
"Chief Justice Rehnquist would "disrupt" Florida's "republican regime." [In
other words, democracy in Florida is imperiled.] "The court should not let
its "untested prophecy" that counting votes is "impractical" "decide the
presidency of the United States."
Justice Steven Breyer (Democrat appointed by Clinton):
"There is no justification for the majority's remedy . . . We risk a
self-inflicted wound -- a wound that may harm not just the court, but the
nation."