Originally Posted by mayonaise
their decision in halting the recount was because they saw no way possible for the complete and total recount to be done constitutionally, which would include seting up a constitutionally equal system, starting over from scratch, and counting ALL the ballots cast - not just some of them as they had done. all of this by december 12, 2000. the florida supreme court offered no recounting procedure that would follow constitutional standards. the ruling by the florida state supreme court to initiate a hand-recount was given on december 8th. whether four days would have been enough was never part of my argument, and it's nothing more than conjecture at this point. because they thought that there was no possible way to complete the recount by dec 12, how does that make their ruling illegal? certainly there's nothing about THAT in the constitution.
The part about that situation that frustrates me is that the court decided that the ballots were being counted in such a way as to violate the 14th amendment, and in the same decision they abridged the right of every person to have their voted counted. Its contradictory. I can't possibly think that they Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, et al, didn't notice the contradiction.