"The 2000 election was decided by the Supreme Court"

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

We're going to get into the tall grass here with this, but that seems to be where you're determined to take it.

This "every vote needs to be recounted" argument is specious. First, every vote WAS recounted, more than once, if memory serves. You are talking about a specific type of statewide recount with parameters that exceed any that anyone was reasonably talking about using. Second, such a statewide recount is not mandated (nor allowed, I believe) by Florida election law, which played into the SCOTUS decision. This is far from the "truest" reflection of voter intent. The Gore approach, and yours apparently, is to count as many times and in as many different ways as you can, with the hope that SOMEWHERE along the way enough votes get picked up. "Didn't get enough? Well count them again!"

Frequently lost in this discussion is the fact that there were actually two rulings that came out of the Court: one 7-2, and one 5-4. It was the 7-2 ruling that actually found the recount procedure to be unconstitutional--certainly within the Court's jurisdiction to decide. The second (and more controversial) decision, was to end ALL recounts, present and future.



Fine.



This is akin to saying that a game was won on a last minute shot, when in reality it was won by the sum of all points scored during the game. Just because the SCOTUS ruling resulted in a Bush presidency does not mean SCOTUS "determined the outcome," to use your phrase. In fact, the 4-county recount requested by Gore then underway would have STILL resulted in a Bush presidency.

The most correct way to say it is, "The Supreme Court accelerated Bush's assumption of the presidency after it was determined he won the election."

You are just back to making stuff up again. Counting every single vote again would give us the "truest" reflection of voter will. I am surprised you would dispute that. If you are of the opinion that a recount is more accurate than the first count (and I think that goes without saying), then a recount of every vote most certainly does give you a better view of what the voters wanted because it is more accurate (and the recounting standards are also uniform whereas they would not have been the first time around). Under every single recounting method that involved an entire state recount, Gore won.

I am not arguing that an entire state recount was the correct legal result, which is in part why I am not screaming on the street corner that "Gore won!" But it does seem pretty clear that he was the guy voters intended to elect in Florida. Florida had a crap system, confusing ballots and an overtly biased Secretary of State who did everything she could do to slant the results. In the end, Gore still could have won if he had successfully argued for the very method of recounting that Bush advocated. Oddly enough, neither the state nor the US Supreme Court adopted either approach advocated by Bush or Gore.