From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Thu Nov 09 2000 - 12:22:37 PPET
So it looks as though the next president of the US may be chosen by a
Florida state judge. There might even be jurisdictional feuding
among the judges in Florida to see who gets to do this. How's that
for freaky? A quick thought on the notion of a "revote:"
There's absolutely no Constitutional provision for this, but due to
the Palm Beach County situation both the Gore camp and state
officials are tossing it around now. Now, I'm neither a Gore fan nor
a Bush fan, but fundamental fairness dictates that if there's a
"revote" in one small part of the country to decide this issue, then
there must be a nationwide "revote." Clearly, all the attention and
so forth involved is going to incent more voters to mobilize, and
certain voters perhaps to switch votes; there's more "knowledge"
involved in the revote, and it is fundamentally inappropriate to
allow a statistically insignificant number of voters with hindsight
knowledge to, in essence, pick the president by themselves.
I believe this is a court-challengeable proposition. Anybody have
any thoughts on the matter?
I really wonder what a nationwide revote would reveal on the popular
front, with *everybody* mobilized.
Note that I'm not in favor of a revote: if anything, discard all the
double punched ballots, do the recount, and declare a winner. No
court challenges, no judges involved in the process; Constitutional
law should trump state law, though clearly we're in fuzzy territory.
It shouldn't come down to whether a Dem or a GOP occupies some
particular judgeship, nor should a bunch of whiners + Jesse Jackson
be able to force a far too influential "revote."
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Nov 14 2000 - 04:12:39 PST