Circuit Court Okays Vote Swapping Site

scubacuda writes "C|net reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court has ruled in favor of Alan Porter's website, Voteexchange2000.com, a site enabling Gore and Nader voters to swap their Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. In response to the court's decision, Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's Southern California office, said, "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (For a look at some of the legal issues behind "vote swapping," visit Gigalaw)"

Comments

9th Circuit Court?

[rworne]

Oh boy.

This court is one of the most-overturned circuit courts in the US. They are famous with coming up with some of the most crackpot far-leftist decisions. They recently came to fame by banning the Pledge of Allegiance. To quote from CNN:

The 9th Circuit is the most overturned appeals court in the country and is considered by legal scholars to be the most liberal. States under its jurisdiction are Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

I really would not hold any decision they make of any value at least until it has had a chance to go through the appeals system.

Re:9th Circuit Court?

[danb35]

the 9th circuit never banned the pledge of alliegence. They just said no-one should be forced to say it

Not even close--that's been firmly established for many years. The grandparent post is pretty near accurate.

To be a bit more precise, the Ninth Circuit held that the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and was therefore unconstitutional. As the court wrote:

The Pledge, as currently codified, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion because it sends a message to unbelievers "that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community."

Newdow v. United States Cong., 292 F.3d 597, 608 (9th Cir. 2002), quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 688 (1984) (O'Connor, J, concurring).

In response to the grandparent's point, it's true that in terms of the number of cases the Supreme Court hears, the reversal rate of the Ninth Circuit is very high--as a previous poster pointed out, a few years ago the Court reversed 27 out of 28 cases. However, in terms of the number of cases decided by the Ninth Circuit, the reversal rate is very low--for example, a quick search on LexisNexis indicates that the Ninth Circuit issued over 3,000 decisions during 1997.