Did the Supreme Court make the right decision in Bush v. Gore?
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  Constitution and Law (Moderator: World politics is up Schmitt creek)
  Did the Supreme Court make the right decision in Bush v. Gore?
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Author Topic: Did the Supreme Court make the right decision in Bush v. Gore?  (Read 2738 times)
Alabama_Indy10
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« on: June 29, 2018, 02:07:34 PM »

Did they make the right decision? Explain.
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Solid4096
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« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2018, 02:13:43 PM »

No because appointed judiciaries should never have any authority whatsoever on electoral issues relating to offices that are part of the appointment process.
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Alabama_Indy10
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« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2018, 02:54:25 PM »

No because appointed judiciaries should never have any authority whatsoever on electoral issues relating to offices that are part of the appointment process.

Who should have made the decision?
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KingSweden
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« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2018, 03:05:09 PM »

Based on what I recall of the case, they should have ordered a statewide recount rather than one limited to the counties Gore contested

(Really, though, Gore should have sought a statewide recount from the beginning)
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NewYorkExpress
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« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2018, 03:41:09 PM »

No because appointed judiciaries should never have any authority whatsoever on electoral issues relating to offices that are part of the appointment process.

No. Congress should have sole decision-making power when deciding a contested election.

I'm aware that Bush would have won going that route anyways, but going to the Supreme Court was not the right move for him, politically.
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America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS
Solid4096
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« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2018, 03:43:49 PM »

Based on what I recall of the case, they should have ordered a statewide recount rather than one limited to the counties Gore contested

(Really, though, Gore should have sought a statewide recount from the beginning)

Which would have been illegal under Florida state law. Florida law required candidates to only request recounts in the Counties where they believe errors in the vote totals are most likely to exist. Candidates are not allowed to ask for a full statewide recount.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2018, 03:50:35 PM »

Based on what I recall of the case, they should have ordered a statewide recount rather than one limited to the counties Gore contested

(Really, though, Gore should have sought a statewide recount from the beginning)

Which would have been illegal under Florida state law. Florida law required candidates to only request recounts in the Counties where they believe errors in the vote totals are most likely to exist. Candidates are not allowed to ask for a full statewide recount.

Ignore my comment, in that case
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jfern
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« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2018, 03:56:44 PM »

https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/the-g-exception.html
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MarkD
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« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2018, 04:27:14 PM »

No, it was the wrong decision.

George W. Bush alleged, and the Supreme Court agreed (not the lower federal courts; just the Supreme Court), that the methods of counting ballots in the recount violated the Equal Protection Clause. There was no uniform standard for determining a legally valid vote; some counties treated a dimpled chad as a valid vote and some counties didn't. Because the standard was not uniform statewide, voters were not being treated equally, which violated the Equal Protection Clause. That's the gist of the Court's reasoning. The legal problem with that argument is that there is no precedent ever dealing with the issue of how ballots should be counted. None of the precedents cited by the Court had ever dealt with ballot-counting. Furthermore, it's nonsensical to say that with the Equal Protection Clause having been violated, the solution to the problem is to stop the recounts from continuing. To paraphrase Vince Bugliosi, if any violation of the Equal Protection Clause did occur in the Bush v. Gore case, it did not occur until the US Supreme Court itself stopped the recounts.

On of the most galling things about the Court's opinion is near the very end:
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Methinks I sense a guilty conscious.
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Sestak
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« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2018, 05:30:14 PM »

No, it was the wrong decision.

George W. Bush alleged, and the Supreme Court agreed (not the lower federal courts; just the Supreme Court), that the methods of counting ballots in the recount violated the Equal Protection Clause. There was no uniform standard for determining a legally valid vote; some counties treated a dimpled chad as a valid vote and some counties didn't. Because the standard was not uniform statewide, voters were not being treated equally, which violated the Equal Protection Clause. That's the gist of the Court's reasoning. The legal problem with that argument is that there is no precedent ever dealing with the issue of how ballots should be counted. None of the precedents cited by the Court had ever dealt with ballot-counting. Furthermore, it's nonsensical to say that with the Equal Protection Clause having been violated, the solution to the problem is to stop the recounts from continuing. To paraphrase Vince Bugliosi, if any violation of the Equal Protection Clause did occur in the Bush v. Gore case, it did not occur until the US Supreme Court itself stopped the recounts.

On of the most galling things about the Court's opinion is near the very end:
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Methinks I sense a guilty conscious.
Bingo.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2018, 06:15:12 PM »

Whatever the merits of the decision, which I don't find any,  Bush v. Gore was decided by the simple principle of 5 Republicans beat 4 Democrats.
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SteveRogers
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« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2018, 06:22:29 PM »

it's nonsensical to say that with the Equal Protection Clause having been violated, the solution to the problem is to stop the recounts from continuing.
Not only this, but the majority opinion employed additional phony logic in its opinion in order to skirt that issue. Basically they grossly misrepresented the importance of the so-called “safe harbor” deadline in order to declare that time had run out for a recount. In reality there was plenty of time left before the meeting of the electoral college for a recount to have been completed under uniform standards.
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jfern
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« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2018, 01:28:25 AM »

Whatever the merits of the decision, which I don't find any,  Bush v. Gore was decided by the simple principle of 5 Republicans beat 4 Democrats.

Actually it was 5 Republican hacks beat 2 Democrats and 2 of the kind of Republicans we don't see any more.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #13 on: June 30, 2018, 06:50:38 AM »

Whatever the merits of the decision, which I don't find any,  Bush v. Gore was decided by the simple principle of 5 Republicans beat 4 Democrats.

Actually it was 5 Republican hacks beat 2 Democrats and 2 of the kind of Republicans we don't see any more.

Just because they'd been appointed by Republicans doesn't mean they were still Republicans by 2000.
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Mr. Reactionary
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« Reply #14 on: June 30, 2018, 09:07:14 AM »

Plus it was 7-2.

5-4 was as to the remedy.
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Spark
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« Reply #15 on: July 01, 2018, 03:04:07 PM »

Absolutely not.
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Del Tachi
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« Reply #16 on: July 02, 2018, 02:47:01 PM »

The 7-2 part of the ruling was correct in that the recount did violate the Equal Protection Clause.

The 5-4 part of the ruling is a tough sell, because the determination of what to do with Florida's electors should have been up to Congress and not SCOTUS.

In SCOTUS' defense though, allowing the election debacle to drag on into January would have further hampered the incoming administration's ability to govern.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #17 on: July 02, 2018, 04:48:31 PM »

The SCOTUS should stay out of elections.
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2018, 05:10:37 PM »

Gore was a decent candidate and so was Hilary and they both had to run 2008 campaigns in the aftermath of Lewinsky affairs. Newspapers said Dubya would of won anyway, perhaps it was the right decision. Bob Graham could of been the difference instead of Lieberman
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Computer89
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« Reply #19 on: July 02, 2018, 09:41:20 PM »

The 7-2 part of the ruling was correct in that the recount did violate the Equal Protection Clause.

The 5-4 part of the ruling is a tough sell, because the determination of what to do with Florida's electors should have been up to Congress and not SCOTUS.

In SCOTUS' defense though, allowing the election debacle to drag on into January would have further hampered the incoming administration's ability to govern.

This
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #20 on: July 02, 2018, 11:24:30 PM »

Jeb was Governor, barring a Bob Graham Veep candidacy, who would of did more for the Dems in FL on recount, Lieberman was ineffective in persuading elected officials in FL to reverse course and count dimpled Chad's.
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BRTD
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« Reply #21 on: July 03, 2018, 07:51:49 PM »

Even ignoring the electoral result it was a terrible decision.
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MarkD
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« Reply #22 on: July 06, 2018, 08:25:32 PM »

In my proposal to rewrite Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, I have included, as the very last part, the following:

Section 4: The worst abuse of judicial discretion in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States was Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). Declaring that the right to vote is a fundamental right but then preventing all votes from being counted was fallacious. That decision was a serious and egregious mistake, motivated by party, and nothing like it must ever occur again.

Would you want to see that in the Constitution?
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136or142
Adam T
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« Reply #23 on: July 07, 2018, 03:24:55 AM »

The 7-2 part of the ruling was correct in that the recount did violate the Equal Protection Clause.

The 5-4 part of the ruling is a tough sell, because the determination of what to do with Florida's electors should have been up to Congress and not SCOTUS.

In SCOTUS' defense though, allowing the election debacle to drag on into January would have further hampered the incoming administration's ability to govern.

False.  The Surpreme Court itself admitted the Equal Protection Clause claim was essentially nonsense by saying that their ruling should not be used for precedent purposes.

The state court had already settled the matter and it's usually left up to state courts (if not always with the exception of the Voting Rights Act) to leave election procedures and rulings up to the states.

The only reason for the delay in counting was due to the Brooks Brothers riot that was later determined to be entirely of Republican origin, though I don't know if its known today how high up that went.  Several people, like, for instance, Roger Stone who is now an idiot Trump cultist, participated in that event.

Of course, it has been long determined that Jeb Bush through Secretary of State Katherine Harris illegally removed voters from the rolls in a definite violation of their Equal Protection rights, but the Republican Majority Supreme Court somehow didn't seem interested in seeking a remedy for that.
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