AZGrizFan wrote:OSBF wrote:
at least he didn't need to have the supreme court step in and seat him because a majority of the population wanted the other guy.
Are you serious? At your advanced age one would have assumed that you actually understood how a president is elected....you might want to sit this one out, OS....you're not helping your cause here.
Also, regardless of whether the Supreme Court "stepped in," or not, at the time the Supreme Court decided
Bush v. Gore, George Bush's victory in the December 2000 Electoral College vote was a given. The only question was how much more damage would be done to our electoral system by the Gore campaign before this outcome was reached.
The Supreme Court made this point to the Florida Supreme Court in the first post-election decision to reach it in November 2000 (
Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, when it unanimously vacated and remanded its first decision to the Florida Supreme Court with a stern reminder that electors to the Electoral College are selected by the state legislatures -- not the voters (it is a happy coincidence that every state legislature has enacted a process by which its choice of electors is dictated by popular vote, but you actually have no constitutional right to vote for the president) (citing an 1892 case,
McPherson v. Blacker, which had held that the delegation of the authority to the state legislatures to choose electors in Art. II, Section 1, Cl. 2 of the Constitution was absolute).
The first decision remanded by the Supreme Court was a tangible message to the Florida Supreme Court to butt out; that there were at least five votes on the court which would not tolerate the Florida Supreme Court intervening in the process of selecting electors which had been constitutionally delegated to the state legislatures alone and the Florida Supreme Court had no business changing or modifying the rules fixed by the Florida legislature. (The 5-4 split on the potential application of
McPherson to the question of the intervention of the Florida Supreme Court was later revealed in
Bush v. Gore).
Even after that first decision, the Florida Supreme Court continued to referee this election dispute. In
Bush v. Gore, It issued an injunction barring the Florida Secretary of State from certifying the challenged election recount result and indicated that it directed a further recount, the results of which it would certify.
At this point, the Florida legislature began the process of selecting its electors, with the majority indicating that it would seat the electors dictated by the outcome by the recount of the popular election which the Secretary of State had been prohibited by the court from certifying -- regardless of the outcome of the recount ordered by the Supreme Court. The decision to do this may have been political, as the majority of state legislatures were Republicans, but it was also clear that the constitutional deadline to certify the state's electors was approaching and the recount directed by the Florida Supreme Court was likely not to be completed in time.
So at the time
Bush v. Gore reached the Supreme Court, there was a substantial risk that two slates of Florida electors -- one group resulting from the Florida Supreme Court recount and perhaps representing Gore; and the other resulting from the original recount chosen by the Florida legislature and representing Bush -- might demand to be seated at the Electoral College as the rightful Florida electors. This would have placed the House of Representatives in the place of selecting which electors to seat -- meaning that the Bush electors would been most likely seated by the Republican majority in the house. More court challenges were surely to follow.
Ultimately, if this scenario had played out weeks later the Supreme Court would have had to resolve the question of the legality by which the disputed Bush electors were seated, after much more damage was caused by this lingering dispute. I know the Supreme Court has taken criticism for
Bush v. Gore, but the real mess was caused by the Florida Supreme Court's meddling in the process in a way which effectively arrogated to itself the legislative perogative to select presidential electors. Whatever its stated reasons in
Bush v.Gore, in my opinion, the US Supreme Court saw the disaster which was about the emerge at the Electoral College and intervened to end that dispute before it could happen.
