Reference.com

Bush v. Gore

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case heard on December 11, 2000. In a per curiam opinion, by a vote of 7-2, the Court held that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots was unconstitutional, and by a vote of 5-4, the Court held that no alternative method could be established within the time limits established by Florida Legislature. The per curiam opinion was argued on the basis of Equal Protection.

The decision stopped the recount that was occurring in Florida and allowed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris's previous certification of George W. Bush as the winner of Florida's electoral votes to stand. Florida's 25 electoral votes gave Bush, the Republican candidate, 271 electoral votes, defeating Democrat Al Gore, who ended up with 266 electoral votes (with one District of Columbia elector abstaining). A majority (270) of the electoral votes are needed to win the Presidency or Vice Presidency in the Electoral College.

Background

The Presidential election in question took place November 7, 2000. Under the Electoral College system, each state conducts its own popular election for President, and the winner of each state's election receives a number of electoral votes. The winner of a majority of the electoral college is elected President of the United States. In 2000, 270 electoral votes were required for victory.

On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush had a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily-mandated automatic machine recount was issued. The recount resulted in a much smaller margin of victory for Bush — on November 10, with the machine recount finished in all but one county, Bush's margin of victory had decreased to 327. Florida's election laws allow a candidate to request a county to conduct a manual recount, and Gore requested manual recounts in four Florida counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade. The four counties granted the request and began manual recounts. However, Florida law also required all counties to certify their election returns to the Florida Secretary of State within seven days of the election, and several of the counties conducting manual recounts did not believe they could meet this deadline. On November 14, the statutory deadline, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that the 7-day deadline was mandatory, but that the counties could amend their returns at a later date. The court also ruled that the Secretary, after "considering all attendant facts and circumstances," had discretion to include any late amended returns in the statewide certification. Prior to the 5 p.m. deadline on November 14, Volusia county completed its manual recount and certified its results. At 5 p.m., Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that she was in receipt of the certified returns from all 67 counties, while Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties were still conducting manual recounts.

Harris issued a set of criteria (see the full criteria) by which she would determine whether to allow late filings, and she required any county seeking to make a late filing to submit to her, by 2 p.m. the following day, a written statement of the facts and circumstances justifying the late filing. Four counties submitted statements, and after reviewing the submissions Harris determined that none justified an extension of the filing deadline. She further announced that after she received the certified returns of the overseas absentee ballots from each county, she would certify the results of the presidential election on Saturday, November 18, 2000. She did just that, certifying victory for Bush.

Case

The oral arguments in Bush v. Gore were brought before the court on December 11 by lawyers representing both sides. Bush was represented before the Court by Theodore B. Olson, a Washington, D.C. lawyer and future Solicitor General. Gore's oral argument was delivered by attorney David Boies. Due to the nature of the case, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its opinion just 16 hours after hearing arguments. The Florida Supreme Court provided the requested clarifications on Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board while the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating Bush v. Gore; the two cases were subsequently combined.

Jurisdiction

"Final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had" may be appealed to the Supreme Court under . In general, the Supreme Court will not hear a case when the state court has remanded the case for further proceedings. There are exceptions to this rule under Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, but they are relatively rare.

Relevant law

U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2

Article II defines the executive branch of the federal government. Article II, Section 1, Clauses 1 and 2 specify the roles of President and Vice President and the method of their election. Clause 2 specifies the number of electors per state, and, most relevant to this case, the manner in which they are selected: The determination to be made was whether the Florida Supreme Court had violated the intent of the Florida Legislature.

3 U.S.C. § 5

Section 5 of Title 3 of the United States Code regulates the "determination of controversy as to appointment of electors" in Presidential elections. Of relevant note to this case was the so-called "safe harbor" provision, which allows states to appoint their electors without interference from Congress if done by a specified deadline: Since the electors were set to meet December 18, the "safe harbor" deadline was December 12, just one day after the case was argued before the Court.

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1

The Fourteenth Amendment consists of the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause among many other provisions of importance after the Civil War. Of importance to this case were only the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. The Equal Protection Clause ensures: The case brought into question whether the standard of counting legal votes in Florida and subsequent recounts met the requirements of this clause.

Issues

The court had to resolve two different questions to fully resolve the case:

  • Who wins on the merits of the case: Bush or Gore? In other words, are the recounts as they are currently being conducted, constitutional?
  • If the recounts are unconstitutional, what is the remedy?

The court, especially the majority, had trouble with the timing. The court thought that there was little chance of the recount being finished by the December 12 safe harbor deadline, even though the 5 person majority ordered the recount stopped three days earlier.

Bush made two distinct claims, one relying on the Equal Protection clause, and the other based on Article II. Gore disputed each of these claims.

Equal Protection claim

Bush argued that the recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because there was no statewide standard that each county board could use to determine whether a given ballot was a legal vote. Because each county used its own standard to count each vote, Bush argued, some counties would have more liberal standards than other counties. Therefore, two voters could have marked their ballot in an identical manner, but one voter's ballot in one county would be counted while the other voter's ballot in a different county would be rejected, due to the varying standards.

Gore argued that there was indeed a statewide standard, the "intent of the voter" standard, and that this standard was sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause. Furthermore, Gore argued that the consequence of ruling the Florida recount unconstitutional simply because it treated different voters differently would effectively render every state election unconstitutional. and that each method has a different rate of error in counting votes. A voter in a "punch-card" county has a greater chance of having his vote undercounted than a voter in an "optical scanner" county. If Bush wins, Gore argued, every state would have to have one statewide method of recording votes in order to be constitutional.

Article II claim

Bush also argued that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which requires each state to appoint electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." Essentially, Bush argued that the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of Florida law was so erroneous, that their ruling had the effect of making new law. Since this "new law" had not been directed by the Florida legislature, it violated Article II. Bush argued, however, that Article II gives the federal judiciary the power to interpret state election law for itself to ensure that the intent of the state legislature is followed.

Gore argued that Article II presupposes judicial review and interpretation of state statutes, and that the Florida Supreme Court did nothing more than exercise the routine principles of statutory construction in order to reach its decision.

The Court's decision

The majority ruled 5-4 first that the recounts must be stopped, and then after sufficient time had elapsed, that no constitutionally-valid recount could timely be completed by the December 12 deadline. The opinion stated that the state-wide standard (that a "legal vote" is "one in which there is a 'clear indication of the intent of the voter.'") could not guarantee that each county would count the votes the same way, and held that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

Four justices dissented -- two appointed by Democrats and two by Republicans. The four dissenters argued with what they saw as problems with the ruling, including that the principle of fairness. The actual counting had ended with the December 9th injunction issued by the same five justice majority, three days before any deadline.

In brief the breakdown of the decisions were:

  • The remedy of ceasing all recounts was approved by five to four. (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in support; Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens opposed)
  • Seven justices (the five Justice majority and Breyer and Souter in dissent) initially agreed upon review that there might be Equal Protection issues in using different standards of counting in different counties. Although seven ended up determining there was indeed an Equal Protection violation, especially due to the fact that different standards are always used to count votes in a presidential election, only five agreed the recounts should stop. Two wanted to remand the case back to the Florida Supreme Court to permit the court to establish uniform standards of what constitutes a legal vote and then manually recount all ballots using those standards.
  • The view that the Florida Supreme Court acted contrary to the intent of the Florida legislature was rejected by six of the nine justices. (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in support; Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, O'Connor, Souter and Stevens opposed)

Conclusion

Noting that the Equal Protection clause guarantees individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by "later arbitrary and disparate treatment," the Supreme Court decided by a 7-2 vote that the Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional. Even if the recount was fair in theory, it was unfair in practice. The record suggested that different standards were seemingly applied to the recount from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county. Because of those and other procedural difficulties, the Court (this time only by the five-four majority) held that no constitutional recount could be fashioned in the time remaining. The per curiam opinion stated that its applicability was "limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.

Criticism

Part of the reason recounts could not be completed was that various stoppages ordered by the various branches and levels of the judiciary, most notably the Court itself. Opponents argued that it was improper for the court (by the same 5–4 majority) to grant an injunction stopping the recounts pending the outcome of the ruling based on the possibility of "irreparable harm" to Bush by "casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election." Injunctions for irreparable harm cannot usually be granted if doing so would do equal or greater harm to another party (in this case, Al Gore). Apparently, the majority saw less irreparable harm in denying Gore the recount. Critics also argued that the Court's decision itself was a perversion of the Equal Protection Clause that it claimed to defend and contrary to the political question doctrine.

The dissenting opinions were notable for their unusually harsh treatment of the majority. Justice Stevens' dissent concluded:

What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

I respectfully dissent.

This dissent was, itself, criticized, by Nelson Lund; "The best known passage, which comes from Justice Stevens' dissent, consists of a rhetorical flourish rather than analysis."

Conversely, the decision itself was criticized by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, asserting in Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 that "the decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath." Some critics argue the majority themselves seemed to seek refuge from their own logic in the following sentence in the majority opinion:

Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.

The court's defenders argued that this was a reasonable precaution against the possibility that the decision might be read over-broadly, arguing that in the short time available it would not be appropriate to attempt to craft language spelling out in greater detail how to apply the holding to other cases. Critics, however, interpreted the sentence as stating that the case did not set precedent in any way and could not be used to justify any future court decision, and some suggested that this was evidence the majority realized its holding was untenable. It was seen by many as a departure from the stare decisis principle of paramount importance in the history of the Supreme Court and the American Legal system.

In his autobiography My Life, United States President Bill Clinton wrote that "If Gore had been ahead in the vote count and Bush behind, there's not a doubt in my mind that the same Supreme Court would have voted 9 to 0 to count the vote and I would have supported the decision.... Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case.

Criteria for late filing

The actual criteria issued by the Secretary:

See also Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd. v. Harris, 772 So.2d 1220, 1226 n.5 (2000).

See also

Notes and references

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 11:25:08 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation