Fla. Vote Certification Deadline, Tues. 5 pm?

[Scarberry, Mark]

 If the state court hearing is Tuesday morning, then there would still be
time for a certification by Tuesday, 5 pm. So I don't see how the injunction
has prejudiced the Democrats. And if courts are going to start enjoining
Florida officials from enforcing deadlines, why not enjoin them from
enforcing deadlines for seeking hand recounts? Then the entire state could
be recounted by hand, including Republican counties where thousands of
ballots were read by the machines as not including a vote for president. (I
think there were 22,000 such ballots in one republican county, Duvall
County, if I remember correctly.)

Also, for those who watched the Palm Beach County voting commissioners last
night vote on TV 2-1 to do a hand recount of the entire county: Did anyone
else see that there was a man standing next to Ms. LePore (who cast the
deciding vote) who instructed her to withdraw her second for the motion to
wait for an advisory opinion from the Sec. of State's office? If he turns
out to be a Democratic official, then we will have Exhibit A for the GOP
suit in Federal Court, with a party official telling an election official
how to vote on a crucial matter--and doing it on national TV. Ms. LePore
(who designed the controversial ballot) looked dazed, and she obviously was
taking orders from whoever that man was. Perhaps Michael Masinter or someone
else from Florida can identify him.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

-----Original Message-----
From: Darren Hutchinson
To: CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
Sent: 11/12/00 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: Fla. Vote Certification Deadline, Tues. 5 pm?

I expect litigation seeking an injunction preventing the state from
discarding the votes until the recounts occur.  One state judge has
already
enjoined Palm Beach County from certifying its election results until a
Tuesday hearing.  The state is a defendant in that lawsuit.  I imagine
that
those plaintiffs will seek futher injunctive relief, preventing the
state
from enforcing the deadline.  Without such relief, the court's ealier
injunction imposes a penalty upon the plaintiffs (the results cannot be
certified until after the hearing, but the state will disregard the
votes
after 5pm Tuesday).

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for con law professors
[mailto:CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu]On Behalf Of Scarberry, Mark
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2000 11:39 AM
To: CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
Subject: Fla. Vote Certification Deadline, Tues. 5 pm?


 CNN reports that the head of the Florida statewide canvassing board
says
that any county not certifying its results by Tuesday at 5 pm will not
have
its votes counted:

CNN:
"Bob Crawford, who replaced Gov. Jeb Bush as commissioner of Florida's
Canvassing Commission, said Saturday that if a county misses the state's
deadline for certifying results, the entire county's vote will be thrown
out."

" 'The statute is very clear that if a county's results are not to us by
5
p.m. Tuesday we shall ignore that county's vote, and the counties need
to be
very aware of that,' Crawford told reporters. 'Candidates asking for
recounts need to be aware of that.' "

MY COMMENT:
If Democrats say that Bush waited too long to ask for a hand recount in
Republican counties, perhaps Republicans will say that Gore waited too
long
also, and that any hand recount that can't be finished by 5pm on Tuesday
comes too late. Since the Palm Beach County election commission isn't
even
meeting to talk about how to do it until Monday morning, and since they
took
so long to recount 1%, we are headed for a further deepening of the
morass.

My solution would be for the Bush and Gore campaigns to agree (and I
hope
that Florida officials would then go along) either than all counties
will be
hand recounted or that none will be.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law