[Am-info] Re: questions of 'integrity'

[Mitch Stone]

John, we're headed way off topic here, but I have to repeat that the 
Supreme Court was in no way obligated to intervene in the Florida 
recount. Both the laws of the State of Florida and the Constitution 
anticipated electoral imperfections and controversies. The court needed 
only to allow the process to work itself out to whatever conclusion would 
have been supported by the law.

The Supreme Court made a complete pig's breakfast out of the election and 
created potential confusion for future elections. They failed to create 
any useful standard for counting or recounting ballots. In fact they 
based their decision in the broadest interpretation of equal protection, 
then wrote their decision so narrowly that it would apply only to this 
one situation. The high court sometimes forgets that they have the 
obligation to make sense within the context of the Constitution -- to 
clearly explain themselves -- not just to render a verdict supported by 
legalistic weasel-words.

I've read opinions from all over the philosophical spectrum that 
questioned the court's intervention in the election and the reasoning 
they used in the decision. We will see, eventually, whether the court 
cares to hear cases based on challenges to they way state votes are cast 
and counted, on the same "equal protection" standard they applied to 
recounts in this case. If they don't, we'll have even more cause to be 
cynical about the court's role in this election, and that would be a real 
shame.

 Mitch Stone  
 mitch@accidentalexpert.com