December 9th 2000

Analysis of recent decision of Florida Supreme Court regarding presidential elections

Full text of this scandalous decision is available here.

The final judgment under review denies all relief requested by appellants Albert Gore, Jr. and Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President of the United States, in their complaint contesting

the certification of the state results in the November 7, 2000, presidential election. Although we find that the appellants are entitled to reversal in part of the trial court's order and are entitled to a manual count of the Miami-Dade County undervote, we agree with the appellees that the ultimate relief would require a counting of the legal votes contained within the undervotes in all counties where the undervote has not been subjected to a manual tabulation. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

This describes the best of what kind of Justices are presiding over Florida Supreme Court. We have a bunch of brainwashed partisanship stooges who sold themselves to DNC but the worst of all is their lack of professionalism, common sense and respect of basic legal procedures and laws. This kind of a decision can only happen in some Milosevic's court of lawlessness or Castro's revolutionary courts. If we can understand partisanship we can't understand nonsense they wrote in this verdict. If they have wrote that: "We think that Al Gore should be president because he is Democrat" it would be far better than this. This commentary would never see the daylight but just reading above statement tells you of what kind of lunacy is going on in Florida Supreme Court. First, they deny all relief which is understandable because the same court ordered extension of recounts that was honored by Katherine Harris. She accepted all results submitted by the deadline set by Florida Supreme Court. After initial denial court in the same decision further grants not just a relief but "ultimate relief" to plaintiffs!? It looks more like Wheel of Fortune or that Millionaire show then the court, especially Supreme Court of Florida. Court actually decides to annul its own decision then decides to grant relief plus "ultimate relief". All you ever wanted is granted to you by Santa Claus. If court wanted to grant Miami County manual recount (no more hand jobs) then the court was supposed to extend deadline in the first place. What is even worse, court decides to grant manual recount of all invalid ballots (undervote) without any explanation.

The trial court did not make any findings as to the factual allegations made in the complaint and did not reference any of the testimony adduced in the two-day evidentiary hearing, other than to summarily state that the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proof.

This is not illegal or uncommon practice. Judge simply weighed their evidence and in his opinion that was not enough to contest regularity of elections unlike Federal Election Comission in Yugoslavia in 1996 ruling that because of some opposition graffiti near voting place Milosevic's party should win by default.

These five instances, as summarized by the appellants' brief, are as follows:

(1) The rejection of 215 net votes for Gore identified in a manual count by the Palm Beach Canvassing Board as reflecting the clear intent of the voters;

(2) The rejection of 168 net votes for Gore, identified in the partial recount by the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board.

(3) The receipt and certification after Thanksgiving of the election night returns from Nassau County, instead of the statutorily mandated machine recount tabulation, in violation of section 102.14, Florida Statutes, resulting in an additional 51 net votes for Bush.

(4) The rejection of an additional 3300 votes in Palm Beach County, most of which Democrat observers identified as votes for Gore but which were not included in the Canvassing Board’s certified results; and

(5) The refusal to review approximately 9000 Miami-Dade ballots, which the counting machine registered as non-votes and which have never been manually reviewed.

Instance number one was rejected because Palm Beach County didn't submit their results before the deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court. Partial recounts are not allowed by the law.

Instance number two is the same case as instance number one.

Instance number three is not clear but there are only 51 votes in dispute.

Instance number four is also not clear because the court is not referencing official election commission but biased partisanship observers from Democratic Party which is irrelevant.

Instance five is direct consequence of instance two. Manual recount was aborted in Miami.

For the reasons stated in this opinion, we find that the trial court erred as a matter of law in not including (1) the 215 net votes for Gore identified by the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board 6 and (2) in not including the 168 net votes for Gore identified in a partial recount by the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board.

These findings have no legal basis and are based on blind partisanship, disrespect of the law and lack of any common sense. Court never mentions that most of those votes were dimpled and dimpled votes are not valid. Manual recount in Broward County and Palm Beach County produced less than 50 votes gain for Gore. Only after dimpled votes were counted and other illegal ballot cards, Gore started to gain substantially. It seems that Florida Supreme Court wants to legitimize lawlessness and anarchy and favors organized crime and gangsterism in Florida.

However, we find no error in the trial court's findings, which are mixed questions of law and fact, concerning (3) the Nassau County Canvassing Board and the (4) additional 3300 votes in Palm Beach County that the Canvassing Board did not find to be legal votes.

At least something that makes sense.

Lastly, we find the trial court erred as a matter of law in (5) refusing to examine the approximately 9000 additional Miami-Dade ballots placed in evidence, which have never been examined manually.

If we once again examine results in Palm Beach and Broward County where manual recount of all votes including invalid ones produced less than 50 votes gain for Gore then there was no reason to waste time on checking manually invalid votes in Miami because their number was less than the number of invalid votes in other two counties. Gore and Lieberman are dead wrong if they think that they have the right to demand endless recounts that can not help them change outcome of recent presidential elections. Recounts can be demanded only if the error of counting is bigger than the difference in total number of votes for each candidate. If manual recount of 800,000 votes in two counties produced only 50 votes gain for them then it is obvious that manual recount in Miami would produce even less votes and since the difference between Bush and Gore is over 500 votes then it wouldn't make any sense wasting tax payers money on endless recounts and further destabilizing country resulting in stock market fluctuations.

After that goes legal BLAH, BLAH. Interesting parts are:

Similarly, the Florida House of Representatives Committee on Election Reform 1997 Interim Project on Election Contests and Recounts expressly declared: Recounts are an integral part of the election process. For one's vote, when cast, to be translated into a true message, that vote must be accurately counted, and if necessary, recounted.

Was it necessary? After full recount, Bush was still in the lead. After absentee ballots, Bush increased his lead. After full manual recounts in Broward County and Palm Beach County, Bush was leading while Miami abandoned manual recounts because after counting thousands of votes it produced only 4 votes gain for Gore. It is absolutely important for all of you to understand that Bush's lead started to evaporate after dimpled votes were included in those 3 counties. Dimpled votes are not valid or legal and certainly do not reveal intention of the voters. Dimpled votes are result of cheating and tempering and can only be produced by someone's attempt to punch a hole through at least dozen ballot cards placed on top of each other. If Florida Supreme Court wants to legalize this then they will first have to abolish all laws regarding tempering and rigging the vote and election process itself. Unfortunately, Florida Supreme Court refuses to give its own definition of voters intent and legality of dimpled votes.

Furthermore, with voting statistics tracing a decline in voter turnout and in increase in public skepticism, every effort should be made to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.

Too bad they didn't read this part. After their criminal decision today, election process in the U.S.A. will only further suffer and make future elections even less popular and draw away even more voters from elections. Legalizing dimpled votes is like legalizing fake diplomas.

Integrity is particularly crucial at the tabulation stage because many elections occur in extremely competitive jurisdictions, where very close election results are always possible. In addition, voters and the media expect rapid and accurate tabulation of election returns, regardless of whether the election is close or one sided. Nonetheless, when large numbers of votes are to be counted, it can be expected that some error will occur in tabulation or in canvassing.

That's why machines are used to avoid biased and subjective counting. Only hanging chads can be counted manually because they might not have been accounted by machines. Too bad there is nothing about conspiracy committed by Florida media that announced Gore as a winner although he trailed Bush big time. Recount of six million votes produced less than 1000 votes difference.

Only top three cases are legal and valid

Moreover, counting uncontested votes in a contest would be irrelevant to a determination of whether certain uncounted votes constitute legal votes that have been rejected.

This is rejection of counting all votes in Miami. Court says that only contested votes should be counted.

We do agree, however, that it is absolutely essential in this proceeding and to any final decision, that a manual recount be conducted for all legal votes in this State, not only in Miami-Dade County, but in all Florida counties where there was an undervote, and, hence a concern that not every citizen’s vote was counted.

Court now reverses itself and ask that all undervotes be counted although not all of them were contested. This is the best example that clearly illustrates mindless partisanship, biased rulings and blind servitude to DNC that appointed members of the court in the first place. "If we have to say that we are scum we will say it just to serve our masters no matter what". Truly sad.

This essential principle, that the outcome of elections be determined by the will of the voters, forms the foundation of the election code enacted by the Florida Legislature and has been consistently applied by this Court in resolving elections disputes.

This is the same propaganda garbage from the web site of CPUSA.

We are dealing with the essence of the structure of our democratic society; with the interrelationship, within that framework, between the United States Constitution and the statutory scheme established pursuant to that authority by the Florida Legislature.

And you are promoting Fidel Castro's revolutionary laws and his Cuban constitution that says: "What ever Castro says it is the law even if he frequently contradicts himself."

The circuit court concluded as to Palm Beach County that there was not any "authority to include any returns submitted past the deadline established by the Florida Supreme Court in this election." This conclusion was erroneous as a matter of law. The deadline of November 26, 2000, at 5 p.m. was established in order to allow maximum time for contests pursuant to section 102.168. The deadline was never intended to prohibit legal votes identified after that date through ongoing manual recounts to be excluded from the statewide official results in the Election Canvassing Commission's certification of the results of a recount of less than all of a county's ballots.

This is untrue because if manual recount was ordered for all ballots then you can not discard some of them because of the lack of time. Two machine counts were already done and there was no reason not to use them instead of manual recounts. Gore never contested machine counting but only wanted to lower margin of error. Florida Supreme Court doesn't know which districts were included in those partial manual recounts and there is a strong possibility that under pressure of Gore, districts with more votes for him were counted first in order to gain more votes faster similar to announcement of his alleged victory on the night of the elections. Florida Supreme Court likes to tell us about "will of the people" but now they tell us that it is irrelevant to what districts were counted first and that we should disregard other districts with more votes possibly for Bush. If Gore would have won that way would that be "will of the people"? Certainly not and that's why this is a very good example of obvious biased judgment on behalf of the court.

On this record there can be no question that there are legal votes within the 9,000 uncounted votes sufficient to place the results of this election in doubt. We know this not only by evidence of statistical analysis but also by the actual experience of recounts conducted. The votes for each candidate that have been counted are separated by no more than approximately 500 votes and may be separated by as little as approximately 100 votes. Thousands of uncounted votes could obviously make a difference.

Wrong again! On what grounds they claim that there MUST be some legal votes in those 9,000? Did they examine them by hand? Statistical analysis showed that after hundreds of thousands of ballot cards counted manually in Palm Beach County Gore gain only 4 votes. Only after counting dimpled and invalid ballot cards ordered by some Democratic judge, Gore instantly gained 200-300 votes. Same result was reported in Miami after manually counting 30,000 votes that produced only 4 votes gain for Gore. Those 100-200 votes gain that come later in Miami was the result of counting dimpled and invalid ballot cards. Obviously, judge that denied relief to Gore doesn't believe that dimples and illegal ballot cards should be counted and since statistics show that manual recount produces small gains for Gore there was no reason to contest election results.

This Presidential election has demonstrated the vulnerability of what we believe to be a bedrock principle of democracy: that every vote counts.

All votes were counted. The only problem is that one of participants doesn't like the outcome and wants more votes for himself. There are no votes missing. Counting invalid ballot cards and dimples is not democracy but travesty and crime that has only one goal and that is destruction of democracy and victory of totalitarianism, gangsterism and dictatorship. It is obvious that Democrats cheated big time and that Gore is using force, intimidation and blatant media propaganda to win these elections. This is certainly not "will of the people" but exercise of bully mentality common to totalitarianism and dictatorship.

Representatives Committee on Election Reform 1997 Interim Project on Election Contests and Recounts:

[A]ll election contests and recounts can be traced to either an actual failure in the election system or a perception that the system has failed. Public confidence in the election process is essential to our democracy.

System has obviously failed because Florida Supreme Court took Gore's side because of partisanship and blatant ignorance of the law. Gore never proved any wrongdoings on behalf of Bush and Republicans. All this mess only proved Gore and Democrats of tempering election because:

1. Florida media announced Gore as the winner based on gossips among Gore's supporters

2. Contrary to the laws of mathematics and statistics, Gore continuously shaved Bush's lead when the real results were published showing him trailing by hundreds of thousands of votes.

3. Gore had much more dimpled votes and since dimpled votes are indicator of rigging this explains why he is constantly narrowing Bush's lead.

Furthermore, Florida Supreme Court doesn't respect decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and always assume that its decisions are final and not appealable. While Gore constantly spits on the U.S. Supreme Court because most of Justices were appointed by Republican presidents he always accepts all decisions of Florida Supreme Court because all of the judges were appointed by Democratic governors. It is thus impossible to understand how Florida Supreme Court means to bring back confidence to voters and insure that election process survives by awarding "ultimate relief" to Al Gore!? That's why they are supposed to be objective and neutral regarding both candidates to preserve current system of democracy and elections, not to completely destroy it. Al Gore knows that he has lost Florida but because he is a sore loser he wants to contest and drag outcome. If we also know who is backing him, CPUSA, labor unions, organized crime and mafia then it is understandable why he is doing all of this, but to say that this is people's will and that he fights for the people is the worst hypocrisy ever since Castro proclaimed Cuba the freest country in the world. If bunch of communists, gangsters and various special interests groups represent people then I'm sure that Stalin and Hitler were representing people as well.

We are mindful of the fact that due to the time constraints, the count of the undervotes places demands on the public servants throughout the State to work over this week-end. However, we are confident that with the cooperation of the officials in all the counties, the remaining undervotes in these counties can be accomplished within the required time frame.

I can bet that once again undervotes will not be counted on time and just wonder if this court once again reverses itself and award another "ultimate relief" to Gore, maybe all felon criminals can vote for Christmas and help him win elections.

In tabulating the ballots and in making a determination of what is a "legal" vote, the standards to be employed is that established by the Legislature in our Election Code which is that the vote shall be counted as a "legal" vote if there is "clear indication of the intent of the voter." Section 101.5614(5), Florida Statutes (2000).

However, Florida Supreme Court prohibits Legislature to appoint its own Electors. Fortunately, not all Justices think the same:

I join Justice Harding’s dissenting opinion except as to his conclusions with regard to error by Judge Sauls and his conclusions as to the separateness of section 102.166 and 102.168, Florida Statutes (2000). I write separately to state my additional conclusions and concerns.

I want to make it clear at the outset of my separate opinion that I do not question the good faith or honorable intentions of my colleagues in the majority. However, I could not more strongly disagree with their decision to reverse the trial court and prolong this judicial process. I also believe that the majority’s decision cannot withstand the scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the United States Constitution.

My succinct conclusion is that the majority’s decision to return this case to the circuit court for a count of the under-votes from either Miami-Dade County or all counties has no foundation in the law of Florida as it existed on November 7, 2000, or at any time until the issuance of this opinion. The majority returns the case to the circuit court for this partial recount of under-votes on the basis of unknown or, at best, ambiguous standards with authority to obtain help from others, the credentials, qualifications, and objectivity of whom are totally unknown. That is but a first glance at the imponderable problems the majority creates.

Importantly to me, I have a deep and abiding concern that the prolonging of judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis. I have to conclude that there

is a real and present likelihood that this constitutional crisis will do substantial damage to our country, our state, and to this Court as an institution.

Also problematic with the majority’s analysis is that the majority only requires that the “under-votes” are to be counted. How about the “over-votes?” Section 101.5614(6) provides that a ballot should not be counted “[i]f an elector marks more names than there are persons to be elected to an office,” meaning the voter voted for more than one person for president. The underlying premise of the majority’s rationale is that in such a close race a manual review of ballots rejected by the machines is necessary to ensure that all legal votes cast are counted. The majority, however, ignores the over-votes. Could it be said, without reviewing the over-votes, that the machine did not err in not counting them?

It seems patently erroneous to me to assume that the vote-counting machines can err when reading under-votes but not err when reading over-votes. Can the majority say, without having the over-votes looked at, that there are no legal votes among the over-votes?

The majority quotes section 101.5614(5) for the proposition of settling how a county canvassing board should count a vote. The majority states that “[n]o vote shall be declared invalid or void if there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter as determined by the canvassing board.” § 101.5614(5), Fla. Stat. (2000). Section 101.5614(5), however, is a statute that authorizes the creation of a duplicate ballot where a “ballot card . . . is damaged or defective so that it cannot properly be counted by the automatic tabulating equipment.” There is no basis in this record that suggests that the approximately 9000 ballots from Miami-Dade County were damaged or defective.

There is no doubt that every vote should be counted where there is a “clear indication of the intent of the voter.” The problemis how a county canvassing board translates that directive to these punch cards.

Should a county canvassing board count or not count a “dimpled chad” where the voter is able to successfully dislodge the chad in every other contest on that ballot? Here, the county canvassing boards disagree. Apparently, some do and some do not. Continuation of this system of county-by-county decisions regarding how a dimpled chad is counted is fraught with equal protection concerns which will eventually cause the election results in Florida to be stricken by the federal courts or Congress.

The law does not require futile acts. See Haimovitz v. Robb, 130 Fla. 844; 178 So. 827 (1937). Section 102.166(5)(c) requires that, if there is a manual recount, all of the ballots have to be recounted. I cannot find that the Miami-Dade Board’s decision that all the ballots could not be manually recounted between November 22 and November 26, 2000, to be anything but a decision based upon reality. Moreover, not to count all of the ballots if any were to be recounted would plainly be changing the rules after the election and would be unfairly discriminatory against votes in the precincts in which there was no manual recount. Thus, I agree with the trial court that the Miami-Dade Board did not abuse its discretion in discontinuing the manual recount.

Directing the trial court to conduct a manual recount of the ballots violates article II, section 1, clause 2 of the United States Constitution, in that neither this Court nor the circuit court has the authority to create the standards by which it will count the under-voted ballots.

Clearly, in a presidential election, the Legislature has not authorized the courts of Florida to order partial recounts, either in a limited number of counties or statewide. This Court’s order to do so appears to me to be in conflict with the United States Supreme Court decision.

I must regrettably conclude that the majority ignores the magnitude of its decision. The Court fails to make provision for: (1) the qualifications of those who count; (2) what standards are used in the count–are they the same standards for all ballots statewide or a continuation of the county-by-county constitutionally suspect standards; (3) who is to observe the count; (4) how one objects to the count; (5) who is entitled to object to the count; (6) whether a person may object to a counter; (7) the possible lack of personnel to conduct the count; (8) the fatigue of the counters; and (9) the effect of the differing intra-county standards.

This decision will be reversed soon and counting will not be completed but what Gore wants is to keep counting until he gets more votes then Bush and then to stop counting and ask to be declared president. That will not happen and we will witness some kind of riots like in Serbia. Fortunately, Gore and DNC have no support of army so we don't have to worry about coup d'etat. Clinton will refuse to leave the White House, Democrats will obstruct Congress and Senate, China and Russia will offer assistance not to mention Fidel Castro and his garbage propaganda about decay of capitalism and democracy.

FS Net Editor