Election Rulings
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* George Neiiendam (letter, Dec. 19) tries to draw a parallel between the Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The analogy isn’t exact, however. The Florida court’s stand was to allow the count of as many votes as possible. Indeed, the court expanded the recount to cover all counties, not just the counties requested by Al Gore. It is hard to argue that recording the intent of as many voters as possible violates equal protection. To most of us, equal protection implies the right of every voter to be heard.
As for uniform standards, the plausible reasoning was that if they did set standards, the justices ran the risk of the U.S. court telling them that they created new law, so they went by the “intent of the voter” standard as per existing Florida law. The U.S. Supreme Court trapped them while blocking all voters’ intents from being reflected in the vote count. Who violated equal protection “more”? The answer should be clear.
AVANIDHAR
SUBRAHMANYAM
Los Angeles
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