I have a couple of questions about absentee ballots in Florida in 2000.
#1. Was Judge Lacey Collier correct (as in, did he make the right decision, in your honest opinion) in ordering some previously rejected absentee ballots to be counted? For the record, here is relevant information about this from pages 77-78 here:
http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817928820_55.pdf"Fred Bartlit, the Bush lawyer handling the matter, next decided
on a lawsuit in Leon County, but when that court publicly
wondered whether it had jurisdiction, the Bush effort shifted to thirteen individual county courts. That wasn’t much better, in part because Florida was then in its contest period in which only the loser could sue and everything took place in Leon County, home of the capital, Tallahassee. By then, the Bush lawyers in Tallahassee were beginning to ask each other some pointed questions about Bartlit’s preparation. But the legal team finally found an appropriate forum for its complaint, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola. There, the Bush team asked for a declaratory judgment that certain specified grounds for invalidating overseas military ballots were illegal, and an injunction requiring the canvassing boards to reverse their rulings. That ruling would come in the form of a declaratory judgment and temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Lacey A. Collier on December 8 and 9, respectively. Judge Collier would order officials not to reject a federal write-in ballot that has been signed and dated “solely because the ballot or envelope does not have an APO, FPO, or foreign postmark;” or “solely because there is no record of an application for a state absentee ballot.”24"
Also, for the record, this appears to be the text of Judge Lacey Collier's ruling itself:
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/123/1305/2479737/#2. Did the media stations that conduct the Florida recount (in 2001) include the absentee ballots that Judge Lacey Collier ordered be counted in their calculations?
After all, it certainly *wouldn't* be very fair to exclude these absentee ballots from the 2001 media Florida recount! Thus, I am wondering if these absentee ballots were indeed counted in this recount.
(Also, for the record, Yes, I certainly know that there (unfortunately) *was* unequal treatment of Florida's absentee ballots among various Florida counties. However, that is a separate discussion for another day.)
Anyway, any thoughts on these questions of mine?
