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Carter says Florida Voting Still Not Fair
linuxwrangler writes "Ex president Jimmy Carter is claiming that Florida has still not created conditions for a fair election. The Carter Center has monitored over 50 elections worldwide for fairness and says that the absence of uniformity in voting procedures and the lack of a non-partisan election commission sets the stage for a repeat of the 2000 election. That election, overseen by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (aka co-chair of the Bush-Cheney state campaign committee), was officially decided by a margin of 537 votes. According to Carter, Florida governor Jeb Bush (aka brother of George W. Bush) has done little to correct the problems found in the 2000 election. In addition, Harris' successor Glenda Hood, (aka an elector for George W. Bush in 2000) recently attempted to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."
You are obviously a biased democrat. I see that you are maligning Katherine Harris, among others.
Katherine Harris's determinations during the 2000 election were the correct interpretation of the law. She did nothing other than apply the law exactly as it was written, saying that a vote is a legal vote only if it occurs via the procedure established by the legislature, to which the US Constitution grants the plenary power for determining the process for selecting the states electors, which need not even be a public vote.
If you recall, her views were upheld by the lower court's democratic judges, and were only overturned by the Florida Supreme Court (whose decisions were vacated by SCOTUS and exposed as nonsensical). When the issue went to the US Supreme Court, three of the justices above were prepared to overrule SCOFL on this point and reinstate her original position, but the per curium opinion resolved the case on the equal protection issue without addressing whether her interpretation of the statute was correct. It's kind of unfortunate that SCOFL tried to completely take over the electoral process with their stupid standardless statewide manual recount, because otherwise, Harris could have been proven correct in her application of the law.
I believe that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling that Harris abused her discretion by following the law as written is one of the worst examples I have ever seen of judicial activism for partisan purposes. There was NO basis in law whatsoever for their actions and what SCOFL did was truly disgusting partisan legislating from the bench to try to steal an election.
Oh, and Bush wins even without Florida. Though I believe the electoral college futures market is the best predictor. They say Bush will win Florida. While Rassmussen has it as a tossup.