Be Careful What You Ask For

[Michael McConnell]

A nice point, but is there anything in Florida law that states that ballots
should be excluded when there has been an error of this kind? Or that all
the absentee ballots of a county should be excluded if some of them were
issued after such an error? There must be any number of possible errors in
the administration of the election laws that have no discernible effect on
the reliability of the vote.

Michael McConnell
University of Utah College of Law
332 South 1400 East Rm. 101
Salt Lake City, UT 84112


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael MASINTER [mailto:masinter at NOVA.EDU]
> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 12:25 PM
> To: CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
> Subject: Be Careful What You Ask For
>
>
> In the "Be careful what you ask for" department for Bush, I suppose he
> could win the Supreme Court argument today with an emphatic
> ruling that
> what matters is the way the legislature wrote the law rather than the
> intent of the voters which seemed to drive the Florida Supreme Court
> holding, reaffirming the supremacy of the legislature under
> Article Two.
> Gore therefore loses his contests, but the Seminole and Martin County
> challenges go forward with no regard for the intent of the voters who
> voted absentee, but only with a concern for scrupulously enforcing the
> legislative prohibition against issuing absentee ballots
> absent literal
> compliance with the statute.  There would be great irony for all in a
> Florida Supreme Court decision upholding the contest on the
> ground that,
> though the Florida constitution makes the will of the voter
> supreme, the
> U.S. constitution and the Election Reform Act trump the Florida
> constitution by making technical compliance with Florida's
> election law
> supreme, leaving the court no choice but to uphold the contest.
>
> Michael R. Masinter                     3305 College Avenue
> Nova Southeastern University            Fort Lauderdale, Fl. 33314
> Shepard Broad Law Center                (954) 262-6151
> masinter at nova.edu                       Chair, ACLU of
> Florida Legal Panel
>