Bush v. Gore

Electoral College Reform

Northside — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:50:25 -0500

Stating the obvious? Yes. But a more detail analysis is worth a look. Below, I revisit the 2000 presidential election. All data presented was current as of then.

In a true democracy, "one person (equals) one vote" applies. However, the misinformed and Republicans, often one-and-the-same, don't realize that ours is a republic, in which the "one person (equals) one vote" rule does not apply. In the U.S., the presidential election is determined through the electoral college. A state's electoral votes are loosely tied to its population.

State Population EV Candidate
WY 495,304 3 Bush
D.C. 572,059 3 Gore
VT 609,890 3 Gore
AK 628,933 3 Bush

FL 16,028,890 27 Bush
NY 19,004,973 31 Gore
TX 20,903,994 34 Bush
CA 33,930,798 55 Gore

Rhetorical question: Why do Republicans repeat their mantra "one person (equals) one vote" but remain resistant to electoral college reform that would reflect this refrain? Simple. 1 EV from CA carries the weight of about one-eighteen an electoral vote from WY. In other words, an EV cast from WY is 18.3 times more valuable than 1 EV cast from CA.

Here, let's reform the electoral college such that 1 EV' in WY = 1 EV' in VT = 1 EV' in TX = 1 EV' in CA, where EV' denotes the reformed EV value.

State EV' Candidate
WY 1.00 Bush
VT 1.23 Gore
TX 42.20 Bush
CA 68.50 Gore

Given the distribution of states won by each candidate (Bush 30 includes Florida, Gore 21 includes D.C.), the result produces a different electoral college outcome.

Candidate States Won EV' Recieved
Gore 21 284.73
Bush 30 284.61

Not only did Gore win the popular vote (not relevant), where "one person (equals) one vote" by more than 537,000, but he also edges Bush in a modified electoral college, where 1 EV' = 1 EV'.

Scalia Thinks Stolen Election 2000 is a Big Joke

Bob Fertik — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:08:59 -0500

Antonin Scalia is the fascist Justice who personally shut down the state-wide recount in Florida on December 10, 2000 when he issued an emergency injunction in Bush v. Gore saying an accurate recount would hurt George W. Bush. Scalia's unprecedented injuction created a furor among law school professors, and 673 signed a letter of outrage that was published in major newspapers. Two days later, Scalia was one of five partisan Republicans who threw out 175,000 never-counted Florida votes so they could declare George Bush the winner. When those votes were finally counted, Gore won Florida under all 6 scenarios in which all of the votes were counted.

Like his appointee George Bush looking for WMD at the Radio/TV Correspondents Dinner, Scalia loves to joke about his worst crimes. Impeach Antonin Scalia!

Justices defend Florida recount decision

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 24, 5:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Three of the five Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 say they had no choice but to intervene in the Florida recount.

Comments from Justice Anthony Kennedy and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor are in a new book that was published this week. Justice Antonin Scalia made his remarks Tuesday at Iona College in New York.

Scalia, answering questions after a speech, also said that critics of the 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore need to move on six years after the electoral drama of December 2000, when it seemed the whole nation hung by a chad awaiting the outcome of the presidential election.

"It's water over the deck — get over it," Scalia said, drawing laughs from his audience. His remarks were reported in the Gannett Co.'s Journal-News.

The court's decision to halt the recount of Florida's disputed election results, thus giving Bush the state's electoral votes, has been heavily criticized as an example of the court overstepping its bounds and, worse, being driven by politics.

Rather than let the recount take place and leave state officials and possibly Congress to determine the outcome of the election, the court's five conservative justices decided to intervene.

They eventually overturned a ruling of the Florida Supreme Court and halted the recount of the state's disputed election results 36 days after the voting. The decision effectively gave Bush Florida's electoral votes — and the presidency — by 537 votes.

"A no-brainer! A state court deciding a federal constitutional issue about the presidential election? Of course you take the case," Kennedy told ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg in her new book, "Supreme Conflict."

Kennedy said the justices didn't ask for the case to come their way. Then-Vice President
Al Gore's legal team involved the courts in the election by asking a state court to order a recount, Kennedy said.

Legal scholars and the four dissenting justices have said the Supreme Court should have declined to jump into the case in the first place.

In a decision made public on the evening of Dec. 12, 2000, the court said the recount violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because Florida counties were allowed to set their own standard for determining whether to count a vote.

"Counting somebody else's dimpled chad and not counting my dimpled chad is not giving equal protection of the law," Scalia said at Iona. Justice
Clarence Thomas and the late Chief Justice
William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, also were part of the majority.

O'Connor said the Florida court was "off on a trip of its own."

She acknowledged, however, that the justices probably could have done a better job with the opinion if they hadn't been rushed.

Still, O'Connor said the outcome of the election would have been the same even if the court had not intervened.

She was referring to studies that suggest Bush would have won a recount limited to counties that Gore initially contested, although other studies said Gore might have prevailed in a statewide recount.

Bush v Gore

Louis C. DeWeese — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:58:13 -0500

I know that this is 6 years ago, but I find myself STLL bitter about the total lack of accountability of The Supreme Court for its BLATANT JUDICIAL ELECTION OF A "president"!!!!! How can this Court be held accountable????

Gore's Irony of Crisis: Danger or Opportunity?

Chip — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:25:50 -0400

Al Gore is a statesman. When he conceded in 2000, it was to avoid a constitutional crisis. So it was especially ironic and poignant in January when the statesman who preferred concession to provoking a constitutional crisis spoke out about the dangers facing our constitution today: governmental eavesdropping on American citizens, breaking the rule of law, torture by Americans, expansion of executive power by a unilateral executive, perpetual war, and the obliteration of our constitutional system of checks and balances.

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint under the rule of law.

...as Justice Frankfurter once wrote, 'To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between the president and the Congress.'

...if the pattern of practice begun by this administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. That is why many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this president means that the next will have unchecked power as well. And the next may be someone whose values and beliefs you do not trust. And that is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this president has done."

Gore openly admitted that there are many things he doesn't like about politics; his demonization is no doubt one example. Even today, radical rights trot out false allegations about "algore" claiming to have invented the internet. The obvious tactic is to make him appear untrustworthy on the basis of a trumped up lie. Those same people defend Bush's layers upon layers of lies, believing the pretenses for the neo-conservatives' preemptive war in Iraq. But the point remains that the smears are easy to resurrect; they are in the collective American conscious, rightfully or not.

Already having won the popular vote, he saw the presidency snatched from him in a unprecedented, non-precedent setting Supreme Court decision. He's obviously enjoying his work on climate change with An Inconvenient Truth. He has a lengthy history of involvement in planet earth issues. He says he's happy now, doing what he's doing, but he hasn't said definitely that he wouldn't run.

Would he accept a draft? Should he?

Let's impeach the Supreme Court's Felonious Five

Bob Fertik — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:10:58 -0400

Republicans are talking about impeaching judges for wretched decisions.

Good! Let's impeach the Supreme Court's Felonious Five for Bush v. Gore - the most wretched decision since Plessy.

From today's First Read:

Back to all the talk of retribution against judges. We wondered whether or not Congress actually can impeach judges over decisions it doesn't agree with. The constitutional scholars we talked with don't think so. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman cites the 1804 impeachment -- and acquittal one year later -- of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who Ackerman says was accused, with some justification, of partisanship and serious judicial mistakes. "Just making legal mistakes is not ground for impeachment," he says. "We've had this argument before."

Ackerman adds that this doesn't mean the debate can't take place again -- but that overturning such a precedent would be "a wrench in a 200-year tradition." (He notes that judges who commit high crimes and misdemeanors, like corruption, can be impeached.) Rehnquist made a similar point in a 2003 speech: "The significance of the outcome of the Chase trial cannot be overstated... [I]t represented a judgment that impeachment should not be used to remove a judge for conduct in the exercise of his judicial duties. The political precedent set by Chase's acquittal has governed that day to this: a judge's judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment."

Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University, argues that there has to be some remedy or check for extreme judicial errors. Nevertheless, he says, "We've had a number of what I think many would consider terrible decisions by the courts over the years, and you don't go running to the impeachment tool every time one of them comes to a decision you don't like."

House Judiciary Committee spokesman Jeff Lungren tells First Read that the committee's counsels "agree that we don't impeach for bad opinions." He adds, however, that it would be wrong to think that the federal judiciary is completely independent or immune to congressional oversight -- noting that Congress sets judges' salaries, that it can impeach them for crimes and misdemeanors, and that it can pass laws switching jurisdiction from state courts to federal ones (as it did with its recent legislation regulating class-action lawsuits).