Word: handing
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Florida Supreme Court might more probably hold that Harris' decision to reject the hand counts was arbitrary. After all, Harris made her decision before the votes at issue were tabulated, so she may be hard-pressed to argue that she really took into account all the relevant facts. Her critics say she acted before the votes were in for a partisan reason: because she did not want the hand recounting to continue, perhaps eroding Bush's narrow lead. But in her defense, Harris can say, as she has repeatedly, that she was just enforcing the deadline for reporting votes...
...Which is why the Gore camp's best legal argument may be not that Harris abused her discretion, but instead that she had no discretion at all about whether to count the hand-recounted votes. Florida law imposes an obligation on the counties to act when a sample manual recount indicates an error in vote tabulation that could affect the outcome of the election. And among the options given to counties is manually recounting all the ballots. In a county such as Miami-Dade, where 653,963 punch-card ballots were cast, it may not be possible...
...part, the Bush campaign has been arguing for days that hand recounts are inherently unreliable and subject to manipulation. And last Saturday it made that case in graphic terms, offering examples of misplaced and mishandled ballots in several counties...
...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 GOP 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...