Florida State Supreme Court
The Florida State Supreme Court, though well intentioned, erred when it set November 26th at 5 PM as the deadline for receiving and certifying the vote counts from the 67 Florida counties. The court's job is to interpret laws written by the state legislature when parties cannot agree in the law's interpretation. In this specific case, the court instead used its own judgement to re-write the state law concerning the time limit in forwarding final vote counts to the Florida State Secretary. That the Florida state legislature may have failed, in writing the law, to allow enough time to manually count 500 to 600 thousand ballots is not sufficient reason for the court to step in and change the laws cut-off date.
I believe that this is the question that US Supreme Court is planning to address on December 1st when oral arguments are heard. The Florida State Supreme Court has over-stepped the necessary separation between the judicial and legislative branches and the US Supreme Court wants to insure that this separation is not eroded by the decision in Florida.
11/24/00
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