Word: handed
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...state supreme court will probably decide that argument. But the hand recount turns out to be an apt metaphor for how Americans view the election itself. They both come down to the same kind of scrutiny: holding the thing up high, examining it closely and trying to see where the light comes shining through...
...week's end, the legal endgame was focused on two sets of lawsuits proceeding on parallel tracks. The Bush campaign had pinned its hopes on a federal challenge to hand counts that now seems to have sputtered to a halt. And the Gore camp was relying on the Florida state courts to force a reluctant Katherine Harris, the secretary of state, to accept votes from hand recounts that it hoped might provide its margin of victory...
...Democrats' bet-the-farm lawsuit began when Harris announced that she would certify the state's vote at 5 p.m. last Tuesday, even though several counties were still counting votes by hand. Harris told the counties they were legally required to submit their vote totals within seven days of the election. Leon County circuit-court Judge Terry Lewis, who was assigned the case, issued an initial decision that offered something to each side. He ruled that the counties could continue their hand counts, but he also affirmed that Harris had the authority not to accept those recounted votes. And there...
...Bush campaign's attacks on hand counting, the fact is that it has a well-established place in election law. Florida law expressly provides for hand recounts. And courts that have reviewed elections decided by hand recounts--from Alaska to Indiana to South Dakota--have overwhelmingly supported them. If the Florida Supreme Court is concerned about the way in which hand counting is occurring, it could take steps to oversee it more directly, either by setting out its own counting standards or by appointing a special master to supervise the process...
Which is one reason why when Republicans went to federal court last week, they led with a more subtle claim. A problem with the Florida hand recounts, they said, was that by conducting them in some counties and not others, the state was depriving voters in counties that were not being recounted of equal protection of the law. It was an odd claim--the G.O.P. doesn't usually ask the federal courts to intrude in state elections--and an unconvincing one. As the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in rejecting it, Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution expressly...