Q:  Huh?

A:  The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote is "clear intent of the voter."  The Florida Court was condemned for not adopting a clearer standard.

Q:  I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's law after the election.

A:  Right.

Q: So what's the problem?

A:  They should have.  The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining what is a legal vote"

Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law.

A:  Right.

Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been overturned.

A:  Right.  You're catching on.

Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for changing the rules.  And since it didn't, it's overturned for not changing the rules?  That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, legal votes could never be counted if they would end up with a possible Gore victory.

A:  Right.  Next question.

Q:  Wait, wait.  I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some counties counted votes differently from others.  Isn't that a problem?

A:  It sure is.  Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties record 99.7% of the votes.  Some, like the punchcard systems in largely Democratic-leaning counties record only 98% of the votes.  So approximately 2% of Democratic-leaning votes (several thousand) are thrown in the trash can.

Q:  Aha!  That's a severe equal-protection problem!!!

A:  No it's not.  The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 2% of Democratic-leaning ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" was not a problem.

Q:  Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked more than 10,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or both Gore and Buchanan?

A:  Nope. The courts have no problem believing that Buchanan got his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Hitler.

Q:  Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem?

A:  The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 2% of Democrat-leaning voters (largely African-American) disenfranchised.  The problem is that somewhat less than .005% of the ballots (100 to 300 votes) may have been determined under slightly different standards, because judges and county officials -- doing what Americans have done for more than 200 years -- will look at the ballots under strict public scrutiny and record voters' votes.  At the end of the day, they may have a slightly different opinion about a few hundred votes, but a single judge was overseeing the entire process to resolve any disputes under a single standard. 

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