Talk:Bush v. Gore/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Include a good book on it?

I read a book by David Boies, "Courting Justice", which had a lot of detail about Bush v. Gore. Do we think it would be appropriate to cite or mention it somewhere, for people who are interested in more detail? Kevin Baastalk 22:55, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

older comments

Vandalism a 2003 recount really said Gore won? I think not. Source please?Mlaird1 03:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hope that works. I tried to make it unbiased and discuss both sides by reading them and providing a summary useful for a layperson like me... Please desuckify if if it needs it and let me know how I can improve in the future - Reboot

I would like to see the references to "more liberal justices" removed in favor of "minority" or something that isn't point of view based. Although its a common viewpoint, "liberal" and "conservative" in this context is a point of view. Despite the fact its one I share - Reboot

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that the more liberal justices were the dissenting ones, and the more conservative ones formed the majority. I suppose we could NPOV it up by attributing this comment to others, rather than to the wikipedia as such, but it's not as though the comment is controversial in any way, so far as I know. The article isn't saying that they are liberal or conservative because of how they ruled in this case. It's saying that the judges who were already known to be more liberal supported Gore, while the justices who were already known to be more conservative supported Bush. john 01:25 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure which scale of conservative vs. liberal is being referred to here. Is it one on social spending (conservative = no handouts, liberal = support the poor), or one on fiscal policy (conservative = reduce spending, liberal = raise taxes), or one on foreign policy (conservative = isolationist, I suppose, and liberal = interventionist, I suppose), or one on civil rights (conservative = no changes to laws, liberal = pass laws to guard rights, I guess), or one on traditional marriage (this one I'm sure of, conservative = only allow man+woman marriage, liberal = allow gay/lesbian marriage)? I find US politics very confusing, and am not sure I have all those different liberal vs. conservative scales correct. I think there is an illusion that the US Republican party is conservative, but they appear, at least in this administration, to be interventionist (liberal foreign?), huge spending (liberal fiscal?), opposed to gay marriage (conservative on marriage), opposed to civil rights legislation (conservative on civil rights), and opposed to social spending (conservative on social spending). As I say, the words "conservative" and "liberal" seem, to me, to be not very meaningful, but probably heavily emotionally laden, without context.

I think it is important that the previous decision of the supreme court to send the case back to the Florida Supreme Court be addressed in this Article. The Federal code that enacts section II of the constitution gives the states the right to exercise the safe harbor portion of federal presidential election code. This code basically states that if a state certifies election results by the date specified in the code, the electors cannot change their vote when the meet to elect a president. If the supreme court had allowed a re-count, the electors could of ignored the results in Florida and voted for whomever they wanted. The Safe Harbor provisions are an important part of this. The Florida Supreme court had a chance to order a state wide re-count after the first decision. They choose to ignore the US supreme court. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.110.248 (talk) 17:19, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Two issues

I have heard (although I haven't Googled-up any supporting documents) that the equal-protection argument of the majority rang quite hollow since many of the justices had, as a rule, rejected equal-protection arguments when they had come up in previous cases. (Worth looking into this and maybe mentioning something about it in the article?)

My second, related, remark concerns the following sentences:

Bush... charged that the recounts in Florida violated the equal protection clause... [because] the votes were being counted unevenly, with standards varying from county to county.... Gore... responded that... requiring all ballots to be treated in the same fashion would require a uniform federal standard for counting votes, something that had never been established.

Perhaps the latter point should be amplified a bit in the article: the idea, as I understand it, is that since there's no federal standard for even collecting and counting votes in the first place (the running of elections being left to the states and/or local authorities), how can there be an equal-protection argument concerning the lack of standards in recounting votes? An interesting argument, to say the least. - dcljr 23:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your first point is correct and merits inclusion if it can be attributed to a critic with acceptable credentials. As to your second point, there's a federal standard to the extent of the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution. One could make an argument that a state is free to choose whatever standard for a recount it preferred, but must choose one standard that will apply statewide. Otherwise, citizens in some counties are being deprived of equal protection. Of course, the Court had no problem with the differences in the initial count. I think that hard data support the conclusions that precincts using punch-card voting were more likely to be predominantly African-American, that punch cards were more likely to be fouled up than the machines used in other precincts, and that the result was that the use of different voting methods in different areas within Florida meant that African-Americans' votes were more likely to be discarded. The Court could have carried its equal-protection analysis to the logical conclusion and held that no valid voting had occurred and that Florida could not name any presidential electors -- but then, of course, Gore would have had a majority of the electors actually named, and would have become President. JamesMLane 23:49, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
To carry the last sentence to it's logical conclusion, since many other states besides Florida have the same mixture of voting methodology, the Court would have had to not only find that no valid voting had occurred and that all other states similarly situated could not name any presidential electors; of course that would have meant that naming the winner of the 2000 election would most likely have taken many additional months as a myriad of court cases from all the other affected states wound through the court system. What the Court was actually saying in this decision, is that the PROCESS of both voting and recounting must be standardized throughout a given state; not that the physical method must be exactly the same within each county. Banker Man (talk) 03:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't there a machine recount a day or so after the first official count? I seem to remember that Florida state law required a machine recount, which left Bush with a slightly smaller margin of victory than the first count. The article, as currently written, doesn't mention the machine recount. If such a recount took place, it should be mentioned in the "Background" section. - Walkiped 00:30, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One thing that might irk alot of us is the fact that Bush didn't "win" barely or by a little - he was literally appointed president by the supreme court. It is one thing to be elected and to have the court verify that he won, but another thing if the court decides that because there is not sufficient time the votes as contributed will stand. iLuOna

Yes, it is a bummer when the rules put a time limit on certain activities. "Once it appeared we lost, if we only had a little more time to find some additional votes, our side would have won." But then the Court stepped in and said you have to play by the rules in effect. Boo-hoo, go home and cry. Banker Man (talk) 03:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Except that Bush did, in fact, win. He got more votes. That's what "winning" an election means. Not having more people "intending" to vote for you, but actually having more votes. The Supreme Court didn't decide who would be president, it simply upheld a previous decision. And please quit abusing the word "literally".Heqwm (talk) 03:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Something that we need to add is that each justice did an about face on his/her judicial philosophy. Normally, the liberal wing is about more federal government power, but in this case, they were arguing for states' rights. The conservative wing is normally for states' rights, but in this case, those justices were arguing for stronger federal power.

This is a vast oversimplification of conservative views, but it's irrelevant, since your argument violates WP:NOR. Find a reliable source to say this, and it can be cited. THF 17:56, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Another conservative principle is that decisions should be made by the people through their elected representatives, rather than having the courts overrule legislation. The people voted to have a deadline. The Supreme Court upheld that decision.Heqwm (talk) 03:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The Court's decision

In the first paragraph it describes how the court ruled that there was a lack of standard and it violated equal protection. It has been a long time since I read the decision but I recall that they also stated, quite ridiculously, that their ruling applied only in this case. Am I wrong? If they did write that it applied only in this case then that is an extremely important point to include here. I now see that it is referred to in Dershowitz's comments, but it should be included in the court's decision. It is essentially unprecedented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.66.156 (talk) 03:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

My pet peeve on this court decision is that Gore's supporters continually change the vote on whether Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional from a 7-2 vote to a 5-4 vote. I know that people have their bias, but can't we all at least agree to leave a fact standing as a fact" I have changed it back several dozen times on 3 different Wikipedia articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkwikiwiki (talk • contribs) 02:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Kronius' Edits

I beefed up the Background a lot. I had no idea it was going to get as long as it did when I started. I thought the article needed a comprehensive, step-by-step account of the recount fiasco, since that was the heart of the litigation.

I also added a section on Relevant Law, and modified "The Decision" section a tad. The article said that the Court held that a voter has no right to vote for electors in a presidential election. This isn't exactly true, so I took it out. What the Court said was simply a restatement of the well-accepted principle that a voter has no constitutional right to vote for electors. The Constitution gives full plenary power to the state legislature to determine how it wants to choose its electors, and the court's opinion even points out that historically, some state legislatures just picked the electors themselves without giving their citizens any say. However, it is also a well-accepted principle under Equal Protection, that once the state legislature gives its citizens the right to vote, it must give every citizen an equal right.

I want to add some information like that and some other stuff to the discussion section, but I'm too tired right now after all the work on the Background. Kronius 03:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC) [edited Kronius 03:37, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)]

Lower Court Rulings

This is a great article but a good understanding of the legal issues of the 2000 Election seems lacking because there are no detailed articles on the several Florida Supreme Court and the various Florida Circuit Court decisions (from both the contest phase and protest phase of the recount). If anyone has an inclination to create these articles, that would be great. The U.S. presidential election, 2000 and related articles just skim over these decisions and don't explain the legal issues involved. This Bush v. Gore article seems to be in a vacuum and out of context as a result. NoSeptember (talk) 16:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"I dissent"

To Kevin baas: How do you know that "I dissent" instead of "I respectfully dissent" is significant? No source is cited for this. Can you find one? I can find you many, many dissents, the vast majority of which are very measured in tone, that use the phrase "I dissent" instead of "I respectfully dissent." I'll name you some, in reverse chronological order: United States v. Booker (Thomas, J., dissenting from remedy); Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union (Breyer, J., dissenting); Tennard v. Dretke (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); Pliler v. Ford (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Colorado General Assembly v. Salazar (Rehnquist, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Yarborough v. Alvarado (Breyer, J., dissenting); Groh v. Ramirez (Kennedy, J., dissenting); Demore v. Kim (Souter, J., dissenting). And, I should emphasize, these cases are only those falling within the last couple of terms; nor, for that matter, are these the only cases, even in those terms, where the phrase "I dissent" was used. And in some of these cases (see, e.g., Demore v. Kim), the dissenter in question used "I dissent" in one place and "I respectfully dissent" in another. I can't imagine clearer evidence that "I dissent" is not some pointed remark, instinct with significance. Because of these things, I feel obliged to revert your change. Respectfully, Hydriotaphia 01:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

As an aside, I would agree with you if Justice Ginsburg had written something like "I vigorously dissent." Justice Scalia (big surprise there!) has done this at least once. See Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 636 (1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting). But since Ginsburg didn't do this, and since, as I think I've shown, "I dissent" is a pretty common phrase, I feel my continuing disagreement is justified. Hydriotaphia 19:19, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I do not have a source for it, but I do remember much was made in the media about the phrase "I dissent" being used instead of "I respectfully dissent." This could have just been some media types trying to gin up the controversy, but it was discussed. NoSeptember talk 19:26, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, but can we agree that a memory that some media figures talked about the phrase isn't enough to justify inclusion in an encyclopedia article? Hydriotaphia 20:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
We can write that thsi phrase has been said to be relevant whereas it is not:
  • "While Justice Ginsburg's opinion drew considerable notice for its omission of the adverb "respectfully" from the closing "I dissent," that was a choice, it was pointed out, that she frequently made for economy of style rather than to convey a particular level of anger" The New York Times February 20, 2001 Tuesday BUSH V. GORE: A special report.; Election Case a Test and a Trauma for Justices By LINDA GREENHOUSE)
  • "I can only respond in the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I dissent. Which I believe may have been her way of saying that the learned Chief Justice and the rest of the Court's majority were in error, and that the hypocritical, self-deluded lot of them ought to be stuffed in the trunk of a late-model luxury car and driven into the nearest river." Village Voice (New York, NY) February 20, 2001, Tuesday THE W: ELECTORAL GANGSTA

Apokrif 16:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Justices use "I dissent" all the time - the assertion is without justification.

This article is NOT about the Election

Remember that this article is NOT about the Election itself, it is about the BUSH v. GORE decision ONLY. By putting in detailed descriptions of the reasoning of the Harris I and Harris II decisions, the article has essentially become about the election. When I wrote the background originally, I felt it was necessary to go step-by-step through the election procedures in order to provide the factual background necessary to understand the Bush v. Gore decision. That is why I included brief summaries of the Harris I and Harris II holdings -- that is all that one needs to understand where the parties were at when Bush v. Gore was decided. The analysis of those decisions should go into separate articles. --Kronius 16:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

To Kronius: I haven't decided whether to revert. But I would argue that, for example, Note 3 is both further removed from the topic of Bush v. Gore and also longer. I am not familiar enough with normal Wikipedia practice but it seems to me that as long as the discussions of the Harris I and Harris II cases were short, they logically go here, because nobody will care about researching either of these cases unless they are researching Bush v. Gore. My guess is that if I looked at other famous court cases there will not be a separate entry for each level of the court system they went through. 199.171.86.185 19:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, it might not be a bad idea to make the detail about the other decisions into footnotes as well. I definitely don't think they belong in the main body because all that you need to know is the holding, not the reasoning. As is the case with almost any Supreme Court ruling, the factual/political background is much more important to the Bush v. Gore decision than the lower court rulings leading up to it. --Kronius 18:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Plus, my main problem was that the way they were written, they interrupted the flow of the background. It might be possible to include them in the main body but reword them a little to flow better... --Kronius 19:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

"Subsequent history" section

This section, recently added, is completely unsourced. I'm pondering whether I should get rid of it. What do people think? Hydriotaphia 07:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I say cut it. The controversy over the electoral college more properly belongs in an article about the 2000 election, and falls outside the rather narrowly drawn scope of this article. (It would be different if the section discussed proposed changes to the rules that the case actually turned on, like the safe harbor deadline.) Morinao 13 January 2006


I disagree with the text in 'Background', paragraph seven. The Fl.S.C. did not order a statewide manual recount by county, it ordered that ... undervotes, not already examined in the 'three counties plus portions of Miami-Dade-county' manual recount, should be examined by the Leon County district court. I think it should be pointed out that, if it was carried out, the court order would subject M-D county ballots to being recounted at different times, with different rules, depending on precinct.

In addition, I disagree with 'Remedy', in so far as it implies that the USSC was under some obligation to provide a constitutionally acceptable remedy. Not correct, if the state of Florida wished to proceed with a recount, the state's remedy must be constitutional. Comments?--CorvetteZ51 03:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


OK, nobody commented, so I made some changes. I think it is important for Wikipedia readers to be aware that, although lots of people did not like the decision of the USSC, the so called 'statewide' recount, had some legal problems. How do I put my timestamp on the 'list of edits-history'? --CorvetteZ51 01:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Feature?

All, this article has turned out pretty well and is surprisingly balanced. What do you say about giving it a once over to make sure it meets the criteria and then submitting it as a front page feature candidate? Reboot 21:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Infoxbox

Given this sentence from the decision ("Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities."), can the infobox really start with the word "any"? I think not. savidan(talk) (e@) 17:03, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Decision section contradicts itself

The first sentence of the section entitled "The Decision" reads:

A 5–4 majority ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional.

Yet further down, a summary of the various positions reads:

The finding that using different standards of counting in different areas without a single overseer violated equal protection was approved by 7 to 2.

To reconcile these, I'd suggest a sentence like the following;

A 7-2 majority ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional; a narrower 5-4 majority supported the remedy of ceasing all recounts.

Any objections, or better suggestions? --Delirium 05:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It contradicts itself because this article is inaccurate in that respect, in several places and in the colored graph. There was only one majority opinion. The majority's per curium decision was agreed to by 5 justices, there were 4 dissenters, including Breyer and Souter. It was a 5-4 decision. Justice Breyer and Justice Souter did not agree with the majority's per curium opinion - they dissented (not in part). While Justice Breyer agreed that there "may well" have been reason to adopt uniform standards to avoid any Equal Protection problem, he said said he "need not" address the constitutional limits on the content of such a standard "in light of the majority's disposition" (i.e. not theirs). Justice Souter in his dissent from the per curium opinion stated that he found the disparity in standards across jurisdictions raised an equal protection clause problem, he said there was "no justification" for the majority to deny the Florida Supreme Court the opportunity to craft a uniform standard for recount in all counties. This slight agreement on what the dissenters see as a moot point in light of the majority opinion, was then picked up by that 5 justice majority opinion, as quoted in note 19 of the article, in saying "seven justices of this court agree that there are Constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court...", but that does not make that per curium decision a 7-2 opinion. Some people believe that the majority did this, and made the highly unusual decision to make such an opinion a per curium one, precisely to exaggerate the extent of concurrence. Regardless, there was only one majority opinion here, 5-4; there were four full dissents. The repeated assertions of a 7-2 majority in this article are inaccurate and render it non-neutral in that this idea makes the decision look not as close and politically divided as it actually was. I know that this confusion has been perpetuated through some uninformed media and/or media promoting a Bush POV, as well as at least one lesser constitutional law casebook, but if one reads and understands the decision properly, there is no valid support for citing Bush v. Gore as 7-2 ruling or decision or the per curium opinion as a 7-2 majority opinion.--JLSWiki 21:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
It is true that the claim that there was a 7-2 per curiam decision would be inaccurate. That is not what Delirium was saying, however. Nor does Delerium's wording suggest that the decision was 7-2 on the whole case, only on the issue that had a 7-2 majority. To break this down: since 2 of the dissenters agreed that the recount was unconstitutional, but believed that it would be possible to remedy this, a 7 (5 per curiam + 2 dissenters) - 2 (2 dissenters) majority believed that the recount was unconstitutional. Two put it differently, Breyer (1), Rehnquist (2), O'Connor (3), Scalia (4), Thomas (5), Kennedy (6), and Souter (7) believed that the recount already conducted was unconstitutional, Ginsburg (1) and Stevens (2) believed that it was not. The two dissenters disagreed as to the remedy, but Delirum's wording explicitly states that. The text is now fixed, but it seemed worth noting this in the discussion for the benefit of future editors. Jamesofengland 04:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
JLSWiki is entirely correct. There is a serious problem here. "2 of the dissenters agreed that the recount was unconstitutional" is false and is the key, common misunderstanding. The article and a couple others, which I have fixed, contend(ed) something which is flatly contradicted by the dissents, that Souter and Breyer saw constitutional violations in the Florida recounts. The only neutral way I can think to say is that they saw problems or causes for concern which did not rise to the level of "violation". (and which were less serious EP problems than the majority "remedy" created.) Much less than zero time at the moment to expand (this article needs more than off-the-top-of-one's-head work), so I haven't touched on fixing this more in depth article.John Z (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
The comments in this section (before your comment) are from 2006 and 2007. I recommend you re-read the article, rather than relying on those comments. SMP0328. (talk) 21:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
The problems are still in the article. This seemed to be the best discussion of them.John Z (talk) 21:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Full criteria used by Harris

Can we put this somewhere other than an endnote. Apparently the use of the bullet points inside the blockquote inside a note is confusing Wikipedia and making the endnotes section look ugly. -- SilverStar 09:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, I already put it in its own section in the endnotes. -- SilverStar 04:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Image of Boies

Moved from User talk:SilverStar -- SilverStar★ 00:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I had a look to see what I could find. The only image under free use I could find was [1]. If it was cropped so just Boies was showing, do you think that'd be better than nothing (unfortunately, he's not really facing the camera)? Trebor 21:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so, the image should be similar in quality to Bush's lawyer's. I think no image is better for the time being. I, too have looked for a picture of him, but can't find any good free ones. -- SilverStar★ 00:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Separate References and Notes Section

I understand there are differences of opinion about whether or not to have a separate REFERENCE and NOTE section in an article, I believe in this article separating the two seems essential, especially when someone adds a citation request to every other sentence in a section i.e. 3.3.1 Per curium. Since that section deals specifically with the courts published opinion, which is already referenced, it seems to me that it would be far easier to add a footnote quoting the opinion verbatim so any reader can easily compare that with the paraphrased information and if there is a dispute of interpretation it could be reviewed in discussion and referenced further if necessary. Awotter 09:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts on this article and "Courting Justice;" David Boies; 2004

An added thought on the first paragraph of the "Background" section: the traditional electoral college winner-take-all system -- giving a state's entire bloc of electoral votes to the winner of its popular vote -- exists in all states but Nebraska and Maine (since 1972), which award electoral votes based on district-by-district popular votes. This is called the Congressional District Method [2].

This article has an excellent reference section at the bottom, and there is good detail interspersed throughout, but, as NoSeptember points out above, there are history items that can be added. One place might be between the last paragraph on Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in the article's "Background" section and its "Case" section, which goes abruptly to oral arguments before the bench prior to the final Supreme Court of the United States adjudication. This Wiki article may have been about the case itself but it's the run-up that I find interesting. I should mention that my point of view on this is highly opinionated.

The case is complex to me for many reasons. For one, the constitutional issues are complicated. There were many concurrent parallel actions, including court actions and courts involved. I bought Courting Justice mainly for the Microsoft case, but quickly jumped to the Bush v. Gore section, which the book covers in its final three chapters. When I read the Bush v. Gore case section I found Mr. Boies didn't always specify which of the three or four courts involved he was writing about. This is a purposely non-sequential narrative of sometimes parallel events and perhaps the reader is assumed to know the hierarchy of the courts and historic context. For example in the lead-up to Boies' active involvement in the case there are many references to "supreme court," when what was meant was the Florida Supreme Court. I had the same problem reading through supreme court decisions of both the Florida Supreme Court and the Supreme Court Of the United States so this may have more to do with the fact I don't have much knowledge of the law. This is also a book using footnotes with critical explanatory text that may have been more appropriately placed in the main body of text.

I think the Leon County [3] Florida Circuit Court is located in Florida's 2d Judicial Circuit (whose Judge Sauls Sanders weighed in on a lower court decision), which also seats the 11th United States Circuit Court [4], whose jurisdiction is over (Northern?) Florida.

The Supreme Court sometimes has a habit of parsing its decision into components, with a number of the justices concurring or joining (sometimes multiple times) in the majority or minority decisions. Sometimes justices will join parts of decisions or draft opinions separately. For example the Bush v. Gore Justice Breyer dissenting opinion is joined by Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, except for part 1.A (in which Breyer admits there may have been an Equal Protection issue -- lack of a uniform statewide recount standard, e.g., whether unperforated, dimpled ballots should be counted ) and joined by Justice Souter in part I. In all, there was one per curiam (anonymous, "by the court") opinion, one concurrence (Rehnquist), and four separate dissents. Though this case had two of nine justices dissenting on the Equal Protection component, I agree with JSLWiki's assertion above that there was one 5-to-4 decision. I think two were equal protection "non-dissenters with qualification." For example Breyer cast one of the four dissenting votes, while agreeing that one facet of the majority's equal protection argument may have had merit -- a uniform, specific standards that may have benefited basic fairness. But he added that he need not rule on this, considering "the majority's disposition." It's easy to see how many construe this as a 7-to-2 decision, especially since I don't think there was an "official" opinion in Bush v. Gore.

The Supreme Court also conflated a couple of actions related to Bush v. Gore into one decision -- actions like its granting writ of certiorari in Bush v. Palm Beach Canvassing Board [5]. Yet I would subjectively liken parts of the final decision to circular logic but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg describes it more accurately in her Bush v. Gore dissent, "...the Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested."

And how does one interpret stopping the recounts based on a reason given by at least one of the justices -- that a recount may ultimately "hurt" Bush or Gore -- if the court hadn't known before the facts were in that they were going to hold for Bush, unless (as posited elsewhere) this was remedy for the sake of remedy, and it was really based on the truth not getting out, especially considering the Supreme Court tradition of placing a lower threshhold on the damage to the respondent Gore than damage to petitioner Bush? The minority view was that a stay of the recount order -- in the case where Gore had enough in uncounted votes for the Florida margin but it were not discovered -- would have harmed Gore significantly by taking away from him his legitimate presidency. The opposite majority opinion, as cited by Scalia, was that if allowing the recounts revealed that Bush had the margin, this would have cast a shadow of illegitimacy on his presidency (despite confirming it). Despite the implausible implication that the latter case would have been more damaging, the recount stay-nonstay equation potentially hurt Gore immeasurably more.

In Courting Justice, one of Mr. Boies' points is that the Supreme Court wished to leave a non-broad decision that did not set precedents (citation forthcoming). Yet subsequent equal protection cases (like the 2003 U.S. Ninth District California governor recall election [6] case against California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley) do reference the Bush v. Gore case.

I find it ironic that a Reconstruction era constitutional amendment (and a poorly written one), meant to indirectly reinforce rights of former slaves with punishment of states that continued to practice slavery, by taking away those states' representation, was used by the Supreme Court to hold in favor of President Bush. Yet this is often how our government and our Judiciary work. The 14th Amendment's equal protection language has been cited (sometimes by both sides) in arguing "separate but equal," racially segregated schools in lower courts [7], before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education [8]. Here, the Court, in one of its shining moments, struck down "separate but equal" in the field of public education. In fact application of the 14th Amendment to protect general civil rights has run the gamut from, when in 1865, Ohio Representative John A. Bingham borrowed its heart (Section 1 - with the "equal protection" and "due process" clauses) from existing Ohio state law, to the endeavors of the anti-slavery Radical Republicans, to the argument in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut (predecessor to Roe v. Wade) "marital privacy" case, that the right to contraceptives was a personal liberty.

Boies' contends that this decision showed judicial inconsistency. Chief Justice Rehnquist's past rulings had shown that for years Rehnquist had taken a narrow view of the 14th Amendment, believing it was "misapplied" (P. 225; The Brethren; 1979; Woodward, Armstrong), when used to grant rights to women (as in Part II of his Roe v. Wade abortion ruling dissent) [9] and other groups. Yet in Bush v. Gore the Chief would interpret it to ensure the rights of a rich, white male, George W. Bush. It think it also ironic that the federalist Bush camp would argue central government over the sovereignty of states. This latter point is shared by others, one being Alan Dershowitz, who said for Bush to do this showed chutzpah.

Boies in a less serious thought asks if one couldn't argue that since Florida voters didn't get the same type of voting machines, then none of the Florida votes should count.

The Boies book says that the ultimate winning point, equal protection, was buried near the end of both the Bush team's legal brief and oral arguments (by attorney Ted Olson); that Justice Kennedy seemed even to try to "draw out" (my surmisal) the equal protection argument from Olson, while Olson kept plowing forward with the other two of three Bush arguments, non-compliance with U.S. Code Title 3 and the U.S. Constitution Article 2. I've seen books that characterize similar "prompting" or tipoffs by S.C. justices from the bench in early abortion cases. The justices are human and often the real reasons and motives behind their decisions may be hidden.

Though the Boies book gives a good "insider" perspective one recalls that Boies represented a principal, Gore, so his views reflect the Gore view; and that Boies became involved in the case somewhat in middle of the process, landing in the eye of the storm, Tallahassee, a full week after the electionso there's no direct first-hand account here of preliminary action. The machine recounts -- mandated in Florida because Bush's margin was <0.5% -- were already complete (most states allow for recounts when the vote margin is a small percent). The Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris had announced she and the Florida State Department would not accept recount returns after the Florida state election deadline of November 14. The protest phase had been entered because the Gore camp had asked for a manual recount in discrete county canvassing boards. This too was in Florida election tradition. I heard more than I'd have liked about his wife's opinions in this book, but found it interesting to read that after public disclosure of his helping Gore in this, Boies received a death threat and his 15-year-old son received multiple threats -- one delivered to him at his high school during the school day. After this the Boies family hired a private guard for their house, forced their son to stay indoors while at school, and the mother drove him to and from school. Nothing came of these threats. Also interesting is how the Boies team had dinner with and probably tried to liquor up a drinking partner of Judge N. Sanders Sauls before a lower case, in order to glean information on how the judge might rule.

Boies recounts one of the Gore team, Mr. Ron Klain, on hearing the decision, immediately wanting to file papers with the Florida Supreme Court the morning after the U.S.S.C. decision. The idea would have been for the Florida Supreme Court to then set an objective state standard. It could then order the recount of the 60,000 undervotes, by applying that standard to determine each voter's intent. If completed before December 18th, the U.S. Code's "safe harbor" deadline, they hoped that Congress would accept a Florida Supreme Court certification for Gore, if in the end it turned out Gore had the requisite number of recount votes. In the end Gore and Gore alone who decided to not pursue this and conceded, ostensibly for the good of the nation.

The Bush team, going in to the Leon County trial court (Courting Justice; P. 430), had something of a win-win situation. Since the state supreme court had not wanted applied to set a specific standard, the Bush team couldn't tell the Leon County court what specific guidelines it wanted in counting the "undervotes," other than the generalized clear "intent of the voter." This way Bush could later argue lack of a specific state standard. On the other hand if a standard WERE set it could argue "new law" had been set after election day. The Leon court decided about 11:30 PM that night that recounts would go on.

Boies felt what was wrong with the U.S. Supreme Court majority decision was that the court:

  • said it was unwilling to apply the decision principles in Bush v. Gore to other cases
  • lacked consistency, predictability, and did not adhere to precedent
  • trumped a state supreme court's ruling on state law, while intervening in that state's ongoing process
  • stopped the recounts prior to a decision on the case's merits
  • decided on issues not fully litigated in the appeals court that sent it
  • allowed appeal arguments contrary to positions taken in the lower courts, while ignoring lower court admissions and concessions
  • ignored normal requirements for record evidence and factual findings
  • assumed Florida's uniformity-assuring procedures would not work without waiting to see if they did work

Boies says Justice Ginsburg's dissent methodically refuted the validity of a conclusion based on the cases cited by the majority.

Lawrence Tribe's involvement as part of the Gore legal team in this started earlier than Boies’ and I would have liked to have seen him argue before the Supreme Court, since he had done so a few dozen times. Or to see his writings on Bush v. Gore. Given the U.S.S.C. seemed to have made up its mind in favor of President Bush beforehand, as opined by Boies and others (citations coming), and already decided the case for Bush, it's interesting in hindsight to entertain the effect that a liberal slant would have had on the bench with Mr. Tribe advocating. As a sidebar San Franciscans may have been treated to Breyer saying to Tribe, ""I went to Lowell (a merit-based public high school in San Francisco) -- you went to Lincoln."

William Kristol also has a book covering this case. It includes contribution by the astute Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize Supreme Court correspondent for the N. Y. Times who has made frequent appearances on PBS' "Lehrer News" and "Washington Week" TV shows as an analyst. She is another who writes that it was odd that the court's decision restricted its application of Equal Protection (in elections) to this case only.

Ms. Greenhouse says in Learning to Live with Bush v. Gore; 2001; P. 365; with respect to the court's statement that their equal protection consideration is only applicable here because an Equal Rights discussion in elections render many complexities, that "In effect, this statement gave Bush v. Gore the weight of an unpublished opinion, at most an equal protection holding for a class forever to be limited to one member." In the ending paragraph of this writing, she says "The election in Florida would have sorted itself out somehow, quite possibly on the floor of Congress, and quite likely by the eventual election of George W. Bush. It would have been a somewhat unnerving but indisputably powerful civics lesson in the strength of our democratic institutions. But the Supreme Court instead delivered a different lesson, a powerful lesson of its own and one that we would not have expected from these particular justices: that in a test of democratic self-governance, the Court has the last word and the Court knows best. Watch what we do, not what we say, and you too can learn to live with Bush v. Gore."

Others write that the Article II and U.S. Code arguments set up the equal protection.

At the time there was media speculation that if a manual recount were to find that Gore had more votes than Bush, there would have been a fierce legislative challenge, with the Republican majority House selecting a president, and the Democratic (with Senate ex officio President Gore's tiebreaking vote) lower house a vice president. That would have given us a Republican president Bush and a Democratic vice president Lieberman. That is, if actions were to go along partisan lines in this and there was no reason to expect otherwise:

The decisions of the Republican-majority Florida legislature, the Republican Florida Secretary of State, the Democrat Florida Supreme Court, (possibly the Florida Circuit Court), and even some of the Florida canvassing boards were on partisan lines. According to Boies, the decision of the Miami-Dade canvassing board on whether to do a hand recount went along lines influenced by the "Elian Gonzalez vote." During the recount, Cuban Republicans drove through Miami streets, with placards and loudspeakers urging people to "remember Elian" and vote for Bush. The anger that had prevailed against Dems in the heavily Cuban-descent Miami community, who'd voted nearly 80% for Bush, was because the Clinton-Gore administration had allowed the U.S. government to take into custody the young Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez [10], in a pre-dawn raid, to send him back to Cuba. Who can forget the images of a helmeted INS agent brandishing an assault rifle just feet from the boy's terrified face [11], as Elian hid in a closet? The board voted 2-to-1 to stop counting.

On that three-person Miami-Dade board one Dem voted for a recount. Two members voted for stopping the recount. Only one of these was a Republican, but both either depended on the sizable, heavily pro-Bush Miami Cuban vote or on Miami Cuban political consultants. Others say the canvassing board's anti-recount vote may have been heavily influenced by pro-Bush marchers protesting on the street and pounding on the doors of the vote-counting room.

There are two views on the protests outside of the vote recount room: 1. the protesters intimidated the ballot re-counting and the canvassing board so it decided to move the counting to a room more within the sanctum of the building for security and efficiency, and, 2. the protesters were peaceful but the canvassing board wanted to conduct recounts away from public scrutiny or monitoring. This was covered by network TV news and in Time Magazine Europe [12], which says the latter may have intimidated the board into voting to quit the recount, or at least given it an excuse. Other sources on this are [13] [14].

The ultimate U.S. Supreme Court ruling was on ideological lines as well as political ones. Had a recount shown Gore had an electoral college victory on top of the apparent popular vote margin, there may have been massive public pressure brought to bear on anything contrary from the court.

Another thing I've pondered is Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's role in this. I don't think she wrote an opinion, yet was regarded as the swing vote. There was "internet scuttlebutt" (possibly generated by Mr. Isikoff and Time Magazine, but unsourced) that the justice was at a dinner, watching the election results, and became angry on seeing TV reports that Gore was now winning. Another is that she was angry at the state supreme court for not having addressed all the issues after the remand, and may have taken this out on the Gore team. The Supreme Court practice of timing its members' resignations is not new and sometimes backfires. And it sometimes backfires. While this is not the forum to argue whether it influenced O'Connor's decision, I don't think she wanted to retire during the tenure of a "President Gore."

In Courting Justice Boies said that after the final decision he was approached by Russian journalists, puzzling over what they should tell their people, with respect to how the American people seemed to have just accepted a selection of president by the court. Boies says they aggregately asked, "Why are not people demonstrating in the streets, marching on Washington? Where is your Yeltsin?"

It was the 1876 Samuel Tilden - Rutherford B. Hayes presidential election that gave birth to the Election Count Act, Title 3, Section 5, of U.S. Code, the first of Bush's three arguments before the US Supreme Court. As told in Breyer's dissent and Boies' book, a similar situation was found in 1876 when Samuel Tilden decidedly won the popular vote but found the presidency handed to Rutherford B. Hayes, by vote of a special commission, one-third composed of members of the Supreme Court. The U.S. Army had to dispatch artillery companies to Washington to quiet the civil unrest. One of the four states with the disputed votes? – that’s right, Florida.

DonL 19:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Information gap

The events leading up to the case should be covered better, but more so in the article United States presidential election, 2000 than here. Right now we seem to jump from election night to final USSC case. Little to no discussion of:

The automatic recount
The 4 county recount
The court case to extend the recount period and the extension granted
The Eleventh circuit ruling
The first USSC consideration
The official certification at the end of the extended period and the incomplete recounts in 2 of the counties
The contest phase court case
The Fla Supreme Court appeal of the contest case
The statewide recount process that was ended by the USSC
I'm sure I missed some other details. NoSeptember 06:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality issue in the "Public Response" section?

The public response section, in particular the phrasing ("reeked of cronyism"?) seems rather biased. Anyone agree?

There probably is cronyism in Supreme Court activity and decisions. From the process of nominating of and consenting to Supreme Court justices by the president and the senate (sort of the executive's executive branch's "judiciary spoils system") in the U.S. Constitution, there can arise examples of cronyism. Pres. Bush's attempt to appoint the highly unqualified Ms. Harriet Miers to the supreme court was just that. But the second U.S. president, John Adams, found out what happens to a president who does NOT avail himself of the spoils system when he kept Washington's cabinet.
It may have been true that Justice Scalia hunted with Mr. Cheney or his family members worked for a law firm representing Mr. Bush and Justice Thomas' wife gathered applications for Bush administration jobs by way of the American Heritage Foundation[15][16]. These may have been enough to warrant recusals, but past supreme court justices of greater eminence than Scalia and Thomas have been guilty of not recusing themselves when appropriate. But I think this would be more a conflict of interest. So I agree -- I don't think Bush v. Gore "reeked" of cronyism. I think the question is more whether the Court should have even taken this case. I notice this article has been tightened up a little. The worst factual error, maybe not non-POV -- that Bush v. Gore was a 7-2 decision, when it was really a 5-4 or 5-2-2 decision -- has been finally corrected.
DonL 07:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Does it seem fair that this one article is cited without the inclusion of the numerous other studies that differed in their findings?

An article (Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote / http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?ex=1183176000&en=5a6cbad813487af8&ei=5070) by By FORD FESSENDEN and JOHN M. BRODER, which appeared in the November 12, 2001 New York Times noted Bush still would have won the election in a number of scenarios. These include: if the statewide manual recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had been carried out and even if Gore got his wish of recounting four hand-picked and predominantly Democratic counties.
They summed up the research like this: "Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore."
Thanks for the post -- I tend to agree. I think that, had this stayed out of the USSC, and Gore not requested statewide recounts, Bush would still have gained the presidency in a number of scenarios. I feel Ms. Harris suffered from the same logic that the USSC did in judging against the Gore team based on the delay that she herself had caused. The Gore team weighed slamming her with conflict of interest but decided against it. IMHO it was more shortcomings in state law, state election law, and possibly lower courts that enabled Harris to take advantage of the situation. While I think it unfair that one of the justices would nudge Mr. Olson, Bush' lawyer, during his oral argument toward using the equal protection argument, which was buried near the end of their brief, this has happened before. I think there may have been severe voter suppression and possibly fraud but can't prove it here. I'd like to agree with Mr. Jay Leno when he said that Pres. Bush buried his dog under the White House lawn -- "right next to 40,000 Florida votes," but take more note in Mr. Jim Hightower's remark that the "missing 100 million votes," the number of registered voters not voting in the 2000 election, was a bigger deal. Going back as far as 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, the USSC likes to assert, reassert, and define itself -- and, boy, did it flex last week.
DonL 05:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality in "Background" section

There are severe neutrality problems with the "Background" section, as it can be interpreted as showing Sec. of State Harris as "framing" a Bush victory. Granted, that's what I think actually happened, but the article needs to be neutral! I have nominated this section for review.

Sibleydc 04:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Sibleydc: I agree about Ms. Harris. As I posted elsewhere in this discussion, I think that she was in compliance with the inefficiently written Florida laws and only acted in a partisan way. Could you please add some more POV violations? I would have liked to have seen the claims of election law violations, voter suppression, and voter fraud investigated. Tonight I've made my first entry in this article, by adding sources to someone else's entry about Harris being Bush's Florida campaign co-chair. Thanks.
DonL 05:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

encyclodoc: This article is clearly non-neutral with respect to Ms. Harris. I understand the contention on both sides about this issue, but this is not the place to grandstand and insert superfluous descriptions of Ms. Harris being attached to the Bush Campaign.

She was following the law. The law gave them so much time to count votes. It's not her fault that Bush happened to be in the lead. It's almost the same as a coin flip if it's a close election. I'm sure some people would say that the coin flip was fraudulent, but if she followed the law, it would be legal. If she hadn't certified at that time, then she would be breaking the law, and if it was found that Gore actually won after that point, the Bush campaign would be able to sue, and in contrast, they would actually have a credible case. I don't see the problem people have here with following laws. It doesn't matter whether she was a political activist, a purple hippo, or a giant green slug that likes to eat Marsian rocks. Isaac Pankonin 06:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Question on removal of Talk section entry

With respect, I'm not understanding why an entry in this Talk section, sequentially before this entry on 4 August 2007 11:42 PM PST, was removed in which someone calmly and courteously asserted the position that Ms. Harris had an arguably biased and partisan connection with President Bush and then-Governor Bush? Granted, 1. the allusion may have gone beyond stating just a party affiliation between Harris and the GWB campaign, 2. entries about this relationship in the article might have been construed as slightly superfluous, and 3. most other persons, entities, and organizations involved in this paralleled-nature chess match comprising the motions, the suits, the injunctions, the reviews, and the stays. that led to the Bush v. Gore decision, had biased, partisan interests in this -- from the voters, to you and me, to the locals, to the canvassing boards, to law enforcement, to the state legislature, to the state supreme court, and on and on, but isn't a discussion section supposed to encourage discussion in which this all gets aired out? Bush would have become the president in most permutations and twist of events, owing to the composition of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2000 depending on whether other scenarios would have taken a federal legislative or a federal judiciary route. Please tell me if you'd like me to list references or citations to what I've stated and I'll insert them in the Talk section. I'm loathe to add anything to the article proper since it needs so much work. Passez un bon weekend.
DonL 06:41, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

"Art." vs "Article"?

forgive my ignorance, but i noticed that in several places in this article the convention of listing articles as "Art. I" for example, is used. Is this mandated by a style rule? I find it disrupting to the flow, rather than using the full word, e.g. "Article I". I'd like to go through and replace these instances, but not if it'll break some stylistic rule. I realize that within the united states code "Article" is virtually always abbreviated this way, but, this article isn't the united states code, so i don't think it should be bound by its style. thoughts? Anastrophe 03:40, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Public Response Scope

Most of the material under "Public Response" had nothing to do with public response -- it was a detailed legal criticism. Most of the public are not lawyers. So I moved it to a new section "Criticism." I'd really prefer to see that criticism integrated with the description of the issues, but I'm not that energetic.

A public response section is very hard to do factually, anyway, but I think there really was a significant public response, so we should try.

Bryan Henderson 17:59, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree however, I would like to see two changes made that are essential to the impartiality of this article 1)"including a second term in which the vote was in his favor but marred by voting problems caused by extremely long lines and constant challenges by Republican operatives in primarily minority dominated districts in Ohio. Since minority voters tend to vote Democratic, some observers believe the election may have turned out in favor of John Kerry if all Ohio voters who wanted to vote had been able to cast ballots" is a very strong and opinionated statement without ANY support or citation whatsoever. It should be removed. (Republican operatives? Come on people). 2. The last citation in this section is to a progressive web page that calls itself an independent journalistic review site. Any way you read it however it is an oped piece without any type of internal citation support or impartiality. The citation and its corresponding claim that 8 independent new sources state that Gore actually won need to be removed.

I'll wait to make any changes until I see what kind of response this garners but...if you want to bash Bush and the Republicans and their actions in the elections I can give you appropriate websites to do it at. But let us stick to impartiality here. Boris B

Jurisdiction

I removed the following from the Jurisdiction section:

Since the Florida Supreme Court remanded the case, it is somewhat surprising that the Supreme Court heard Bush v. Gore at all. Even more controversially, the opinion in Bush v. Gore did not discuss this rule or point to one of the exceptions under Cox Broadcasting.

This sounds like an opinion to me, rather than a fact about the case. If you disagree, state why here. SMP0328. (talk) 03:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality Tag

The tag at the top of the article "nominating" the article to be checked to see if it's neutral should be removed. Either the article is neutral or it should be reformed so as to become neutral. In either case, that tag should be removed. SMP0328. (talk) 22:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Bill Clinton's opinion

User:Anastrophe removed the following sentence I'd added, saying it "Bill Clinton's opinion is not germane to this article":

In his autobiography My Life, United States President Bil Clinton wrote that "If Gore had been ahead in the vote count and Bush behind, there's not a doubt in my mind that the same Supreme Court would have voted 9 to 0 to count the vote and I would have supported the decision.... Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case."[1]

I disagree - Clinton was commenting on Bush v. Gore; the article is about Bush v. Gore, and Clinton's opinion is, IMO a notable one. Does anyone else object to its inclusion?Mdiamante (talk) 15:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

it's a completely partisan opinion by a partisan commentator. mr. clinton is not a constitutional legal scholar. shall we add, say, a rush limbaugh quote as a counter-argument - he has about the same qualifications as mr. clinton, in terms of the relevancy of his personal opinion. Anastrophe (talk) 17:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
By all means, add a Limbaugh quote if it's properly sourced. Maybe there should be a separate section for Public Response; I see that there was one last

summer, but it was removed for not being properly written. Perhaps, then, a well-written "public response" section would be in order. But the opinion of the US President when the decision was made, IMO, certainly deserves a mention. Mdiamante (talk) 19:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

i guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. i've no desire to see limbaugh's opinion in this article any more so than clinton's. there's a peanut gallery of about a 100 million voters who would probably like to weigh in as well! Anastrophe (talk) 20:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
If Bill Clinton's comment belongs in this article, then everyone who's publicly commented on Bush v. Gore should have his comment or comments added to the article. SMP0328. (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
  1. ^ Hirschkorn, Phil. "Crowds line up for Clinton book". CNN. Retrieved February 2, 2008.

Removed

May 23, 2008

I have removed two statements from the Criticism section:

It was seen by many as a departure from the stare decisis principle of paramount importance in the history of the Supreme Court and the American Legal system.[citation needed]

Rehnquist died and O'Connor retired after Bush became President, and were respectively replaced by John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

The first sentence was unsourced (see cite tag) and appears to be hyperbole. The second sentence comes after a reference to then-Justice O'Connor being upset when it appeared that Al Gore had won. There is no connection made regarding the retirement of Justice O'Connor or the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist to the decision in Bush v. Gore. SMP0328. (talk) 22:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

June 2, 2008

I have removed this sentence from the Remedy issue subsection of the The Court's decision section:

While Stevens concluded his opinion with the words "I respectfully dissent", Justice Ginsburg concluded her opinion with the words "I dissent".

While this statement is correct, it doesn't explain why it's relevant that Justice Ginsburg didn't use the "respectfully." At best, it's trivial. It certainly isn't relevant to how the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. SMP0328. (talk) 21:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I now see that this was discussed above. Ferrylodge (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

December 11, 2008

I removed this sentence from the Commentary section:

Though all U.S. Supreme Court Justices who ruled in favor of Bush were Republican appointees, three Florida Supreme Court judges who ruled in favor of Bush were Democratic appointees.

The only relevance that sentence could have would be to claim the party affiliation of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices in the majority affected their judgment. Speculation on why the Justices of either Supreme Court voted as they did should not be in the article. SMP0328. (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with you on this one. But before I explain why, I'd like to point out that the wrong reference seems to be showing up on the talk page, even though you typed the correct reference. The correct reference is:
Rotunda, Ronald. “Yet Another Article on Bush v. Gore”, Ohio State Law Journal, Volume 64, page 283 (2003).
I absolutely do not think that Rotunda was arguing that the party affiliation of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices in the majority affected their judgment. Quite the opposite, Rotunda was arguing that the majority decision was correct, and he was disproving that party affiliation determined the outcome. Some people had been arguing that party affiliation affected the outcome, and Rotunda disproved that by pointing out that Democratic judges were on board with the SCOTUS decision too. Please consider rephrasing rather than deleting, because this is a very important point. Democratic state judges were on board with the SCOTUS decision.Ferrylodge (talk) 23:28, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
I removed the link from my post (thanks for pointing that out); in preview the link was correct, but when saved the error you noticed occurred. The removed wording did not, IMO, convey the message you say it was meant to convey. If that sentence is restored, it must first be reworded. SMP0328. (talk) 03:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
The removed material was written in a just-the-facts style so that people can draw their own conclusions. Here is the pertinent material from the Rotunda article: "There are those who claim that only conservative Republican-appointed Justices ruled against Vice President Gore in this case. Not only is that claim inconsistent with the position of Justices Breyer and Souter, it is inconsistent with the position of three of the Florida justices who dissented. No Justice on the Florida Supreme Court was a Republican appointee, but three of them concluded that the recount that Vice President Gore wanted was unconstitutional. Three of the seven Florida Supreme Court justices also found an Equal Protection violation when the manual ballot-counters used different procedures to examine identical ballots and count them differently."
Maybe you could re-draft the sentence in question?Ferrylodge (talk) 06:11, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
The reworded version of the removed sentence is a major improvement. The name of person who responded to that claim is now in the body of the sentence. Good Job. SMP0328. (talk) 01:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Thx. :) Incidentally, your initial edit-summary said this was a "POV-push". It might have sounded a bit less accusatory or inflammatory if you had said something like "possible" or "apparent" POV push. But anyway, all's well that ends well (to coin a phrase).Ferrylodge (talk) 08:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Duly noted. SMP0328. (talk) 22:14, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Restructuring

I've restructured the article a bit. If it's acceptable, then I'd be glad to work on the article some more.Ferrylodge (talk) 10:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Your changes have improved the article and are a perfect example of being bold. I've made a few tweaks of my own. SMP0328. (talk) 18:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll wait awhile and see if anyone has any problem with the changes. Then, I'd like to take a crack at the section with the tag on it ("Analyses of other aspects of the decision"). Hopefully, we can fix it up to the point where the tag can be removed.Ferrylodge (talk) 18:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll tentatively remove the tag, because it seems that all the material in that subsection appropriately belongs under the new subheading: "Analyses of other aspects of the decision." The subsection still needs a lot of work, but I would not support moving further material out of that subsection. Additional material should probably be included in the subsection, and I'll try to work on that later.Ferrylodge (talk) 15:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I reverted here. There were so many cases in December that I think it helps to give full dates in footnotes. Also, something should be said about the gap between certification and Dec. 8.Ferrylodge (talk) 21:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The rapid development refers to the cases in the Florida and United States Supreme Courts. Those are the only cases that matter. As for the footnotes, the sentences to which those footnotes apply already referred to the date of those decisions. It's superfluous to refer to those dates a second time. SMP0328. (talk) 21:17, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
You've been making excellent edits here, but I disagree about this one. Between the certification by Harris and the Florida Supreme Court decision ordering a statewide recount, there were decisions of both the Florida Supreme Court as well as the US Supreme Court, not to mention the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, the lower courts in Florida and the U.S. District Court. The court activity was immense. IMHO, it deserves a sentence merely alluding to what happened.
As for the full dates in the footnote, can you humor me on that, please? Someone may look to the footnotes to find a particular decision, and the full date will be helpful. Also, some of the cases had the same :::::name in the same court, even though on different dates in December. For example, there was a "Bush v. Gore" that was on the SCOTUS application for stay, plus the "Bush v. Gore" that was on the merits. Likewise, there was more than one "Gore v. Harris" in the Florida Supreme Court.
This article is getting to be in very good shape now, thanks in large part to your edits. Maybe we should turn our attention to the commentary on other aspects of the decision.Ferrylodge (talk) 21:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Never! I will never... oh, okay. Can you add a footnote for the Eleventh Circuit decision, as an example of those cases not mentioned in the article? SMP0328. (talk) 02:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Sure, thanks. :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 02:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for adding the footnote. SMP0328. (talk) 02:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I would like to say that I read this article for the first time today and I think it is an extremely well written article. I urge you to try again for FA status - I think it deserves it. The two (very minor) criticisms that I have are:
  1. At the very end of the lead section, the word controversial is linked. I thought it would go to an article about this particular controversy, but it does not. "Controversy" is a very common word, so I think this would be an example of over-linking.
  2. In the last section, the opening sentence is "This Supreme Court decision prompted a great many reactions from scholars, pundits, and others who were either very pleased or very displeased with what the Court did." I think that "very pleased or very displeased" seems to make their opinion more personal than they necessarily are. I would suggest something more like "both agreeing and disagreeing with" or "for and against".
Again, great work! JohnMGarrison (talk) 07:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks very much, I went ahead and made those changes.Ferrylodge (talk) 07:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Clinton

I really don't like the idea of giving a whole separate subsection to the views of Bill Clinton. See Undue weight.Ferrylodge (talk) 23:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I separated Bill Clinton's comment, because it didn't belong with the scholarly analysis. Those other analyses shouldn't not be called "scholarly" because Bill Clinton's comment was added to that subsection. Is Bill Clinton's comment even noteworthy? SMP0328. (talk) 00:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, the notability criterion say that "Notability is distinct from 'fame'". So, the fact that a famous person is saying something does not automatically make it notable. If Clinton had made this statement as part of a reasoned legal analysis of the case, then it definitely would be notable, but you're right that it has questionable notability as an isolated remark.Ferrylodge (talk) 00:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Good job expanding the subsection, including finding a critic of the Dred Scott comparison. SMP0328. (talk) 03:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm going to make you take care of it next time.  :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 03:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Importance level

The level of importance of this article has decided to be "low". Here are the different levels of importance for a law article:

* Top - The article is about one of the core legal topics. Adds articles to Category:Top-importance legal articles

Most people know of Bush v. Gore and it would appear that this article should be at least be at the Mid level. Does anyone feel the low level of importance is being properly applied to this article? SMP0328. (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC

I think that the article should receive a rating of high because the case is well-known and is historically significant because it led to the election of President Bush. Red1530 (talk) 16:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe "Mid" would be the appropriate rating. "Low" is too low--it's too famous to fairly say that it is "not generally common knowledge to lay people." But "High" is too high--it surely is not "one of the most historically significant aspects of the law," since, as the article itself notes, it didn't even effect the outcome of the election, nor articulate any new principle of law that has forced the states to change their election proceedures. It may be well known, thanks to the political controversy, but that's already rapidly fading now that neither Bush nor Gore is the standard-bearer for their respective factions. User:QBeam 9 June 2009 —Preceding undated comment added 20:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC).

External links in this article

I believe that most of the external links in this article violate Wikipedia policy, specifically the rule Links normally to be avoided: … 11. Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies). (see wp:link) I boldly removed the inappropriate links, and was immediately reverted by user:SMP0328., who asked me to bring up the matter here. So I am doing so, with the proviso that unless somebody quickly explains why those links do not violate the policy, I am going to remove them again. Looie496 (talk) 00:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

These are the links currently in the External links section:
Looie496 wants to delete all of these links, except for the New York Times and The Nation links. The only one that appears to be a blog is the third one (from the Federalist Blog). The other links seem legit. Do you, Looie496, believe 6 out of those 8 links are of "blogs [or] personal web pages"? Also, rather than simply deleting these links, you can find appropriate links so the information could still be found via this article. SMP0328. (talk) 00:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
The Wilkes link is clearly to a personal web page. (That's what brought me here—he or somebody who likes him has been spamming links to that page in multiple articles—and once here I noticed the other links to pages that would not constitute acceptable sources if used as references.) The Berkowitz and Wittes link would be a valid source if used as a reference in the article, but if it supplies important information, why isn't it mentioned in the article? Using it as an external link looks suspiciously like an evasive POV-push. The Sutin and Levine items look to me like camouflaged blog entries. Looie496 (talk) 01:26, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree the Wilkes link should go. The Berkowitz and Wittes link should stay (it isn't necessary for it to be mentioned in the article). The Levine links don't seem relevant, because one simply talks about how to challenge the Florida electors and the other seems to be a POV push. The Madison link is definitely a blog, so it has to go. I would keep the Sutin link, because it provides a timeline for the events dealing with the Florida recount. In conclusion, I would dump the Levine, Wilkes and Madison links; keep the rest. SMP0328. (talk) 01:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Done as specified. Looie496 (talk) 16:03, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Dred Scott Comparison - Completely Irrelevant

Bill Clinton's views concerning a comparison with Dred Scott are not even remotely noteworthy. Ironically, this issue was addressed in another section above, with one of the editors concluding that the fame of Clinton alone would not suffice to make the comparison noteworthy. Another editor (or perhaps it was the same) then suggested that it might be noteworthy if it involved some sort of legal analysis. The parties seemed to agree but then - inexplicably - left it in without explaining how Clinton's comparison amounts to a legal analysis. Exactly how does Clinton's statement that the case would go down in history as one of the worst SCOTUS cases along with Dred Scott amount to any sort of legal analysis? With all due respect, I would argue that this is nothing but a conclusory assertion unsupported by any sound legal reasoning and should not be included in the article. If others want to leave it in, fine, but they should realize that this will open up the flood gates for including virtually any other opinion of a famous person regardless of how unsubstantiated it may be. Come on guys, this is a legal article; we're above the whole POV thing.65.247.226.99 (talk) 01:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The earlier discussion resulted in (1) the Dred Scott comparison being made its own section, as opposed to being in the material about "scholarly" discussion of the decision; and (2) it added criticisms of that comparison so there would be balance. In no way should the Dred Scott comparison be considered to be "scholarly" (that's why it's not in that part of the article anymore). SMP0328. (talk) 01:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Correct. Wikipedia articles reflect a variety of viewpoints; it's not as though this is a law-specific wiki, where such considerations indeed might not be appropriate. Incidentally, the Dred Scott page itself has many non-scholarly reaction quotes. Best, Mdiamante (talk) 19:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I forgot to address the amendment to include criticisms issue. Based on my reasoning concerning Clinton's statement, the criticisms are equally irrelevant and should not be included (in my humble opinion). To Mdiamante - I realize this is not Lexis. However, I think we can set a good precedent in the legal articles by refraining as much as possible from POV editing. I've always criticized Wikipedia based on its lack of reliability and blatant bias, but when I came across this article I thought "Wow, maybe this is a topic I can help contribute to without all of the POV nonsense." Then, of course, I saw the Dred Scott section and thought "shit." It's not so much that I don't think ANY cases or legal topics should include sections/statements from groups/individuals unconnected to the legal community. Indeed, it would be insane to make such a claim, given the almost-revolutionary impact of some cases - not just on society, but on legal thought. See, e.g., Roe (which, by the way, I was pleasantly surprised with). Rather, I just think some are not, and this happens to be one of them. Perhaps my opinion would be different if old Bill had supported his statement with some sort of reasoning, but he clearly did not. It was just a conclusory assertion; something my mother might say in a fit of anger. But alas, this is not a battle I'm going to wage. I will continue browsing legal articles when I get some time and decide if the POV is decidedly less prevalent than in other areas. If so, I'd love for Wikipedia to become a hobby.65.247.226.99 (talk) 06:01, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm astonished that there is a section and discussion on this that lacks by far the most important Dred Scott comparisons - the ones made by Breyer (and Stevens) in their dissents! That "we do risk a self-inflicted wound–a wound that may harm not just the Court, but the Nation." (Breyer) Self-inflicted wound being unmistakable as Charles Evans Hughes's description of Dred Scott.John Z (talk) 22:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
The difference is the material in that section refers to comments expressly mentioning Dred Scott or replying to such comments. The dissenting opinions in Bush v. Gore don't refer to Dred Scott; also, the Court could commit "a self-inflicted wound" without it being on the level of Dred Scott. Your reference to those dissenting opinions would be original research. SMP0328. (talk) 23:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
"Self-inflicted wound" in the dissents clearly referred to Dred Scott - this caused substantial commentary. I'll dig up some refs when I have time. The phrase is famous, and could not possibly be understood as anything but a Dred Scott comparison, and it is hard to see how it is not appropriate in a section entitled "The Dred Scott comparison", as the afaik universal opinion in RS's is that it was such a comparison.John Z (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
If you have RS interpreting that quote as a reference to Dred Scott, make sure you include who or what made that interpretation; don't state it as fact. SMP0328. (talk) 00:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this is or ever was seriously disputed, which is wikipedia's definition of a "fact" (which does not need attribution in the body, but only a cite) - WP:ASF. I'll look for contrary opinions too. BTW, the 7-2 problems noted above remain in the article as I said above. Thanks for the courtesy of replying to my concerns.John Z (talk) 00:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Closely related case?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Court's opinion at Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000) in the same case, just at a prior stage in the litigation? postdlf (talk) 15:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, I think I am wrong... From the procedural history in Bush v. Gore, it looks like this particular opinion followed from a second complaint filed by Al Gore, separate from the one that lead to the first opinion. postdlf (talk) 15:56, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
The litigation that would become Bush v. Gore was commenced shortly after the Supreme Court remanded Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. Although they both involved the same general issue (the 2000 Presidential election in Florida), they are separate cases. SMP0328. (talk) 18:00, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming. postdlf (talk) 18:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Unclear about the opinions

I have learned that in a per curiam decision there is no formal enumeration of the opinions of the justices, but in my opinion it is a serious fault in the article that the deciding justices (clearly 5-4: Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, & Thomas concurring, and Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, & Breyer opposed) are not plainly and clearly called out. We even have a section "Vote breakdown and opinions" that somehow does not state this basic information, though I think it really deserves to be in the lead section. A naive reader (such as myself) wanting to check this information without knowing what a "per curiam" decision is, should really not have to discover this after 15 minutes study.

Wikipedia demands reliable sources, but permits inference based on a trivial calculation. I think this truly is such a case, even if the precise details of the opinions of all justices about every point cannot be documented. Four justices signed dissents, in a court of nine members, 9-4 = 5, and it is obvious who those five were, even if two did not sign on to the concurrence (let me not speculate as to why). I believe all this is widely and generally known, and surely there are Wikipedia-reliable sources to confirm, so that my inference is not "original research" (OR).

If there is a technicality here that I do not understand (which is quite possible), it seems to me that point ought to be called out and explained clearly for the naive reader, probably in the first paragraph of the "Vote breakdown and opinions" section, and the obvious bottom line declared, slightly qualified if really necessary. Bush v. Gore is of course an exceptional case, as our "per curiam decision" article points out. So perhaps this is a place to "break the rules"? Thanks -- Wwheaton (talk) 06:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Although Justices Souter and Breyer labeled themselves as "dissenting", they expressly agreed that Florida's recount procedure was violating the Equal Protection Clause and so on that issue they have been included with the five justices in the per curiam opinion. That's why the vote on the Equal Protection issue is said to be 7-2. I have added a source referring to the Equal Protection vote being 7-2. SMP0328. (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
According to historical American legal precedent, dicta from dissenting court opinions are not considered valid holdings and are not included in the ruling. One cannot unilaterally define the decision ruling line by line. Describing the per curiam ruling as 7-2 is misleading, particularly because Souter and Breyer both spent paragraphs in their dissents dissecting and criticizing the EPC argument of the majority opinion, and whose support was tepid at best. Certainly we are in no position to ignore the SCOTUS majority/concurring/dissenting system and tell them how they ruled. If consensus cannot be built on the issue, the "7-2" reference should be removed for clarity. Kaalel (talk) 01:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
The majority opinion referred to seven Justices agreeing with the Equal Protection ruling. Also, keep in mind that the article refers to the vote being 7-2 regarding Equal Protection and 5-4 regarding the remedy. SMP0328. (talk) 02:14, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Seven justices do not agree with the EPC aspect of the ruling. Both Souter and Breyer raised doubts over the reasoning of the majority opinion on that issue. Nor would Souter and Breyer's dissenting opinions be included with that opinion if they did agree. It is wholly inappropriate for us to disregard Souter's and Breyer's dissensions and independently declare them to be in support of the majority opinion, much less part of it. Kaalel (talk) 02:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Barring objections, I will go forward with removing the 7-2 reference for the sake of NPOV accuracy and reader clarity. Kaalel (talk) 23:06, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
The cited source seems straightforward: "Noting that the Equal Protection clause guarantees individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by 'later arbitrary and disparate treatment,' the per curiam opinion held 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional." So, I object to removing this info. Is there a reliable source that contradicts it?Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:07, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Simply holding up a source and ignoring the earlier discussion is inappropriate. It also directly contradicts the original court documents, and the dissents by the justices in question. Reverted. Kaalel (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I just looked at the actual opinions. Souter, at section III of his dissent, and Breyer, at section I.A.1, ¶2 of his dissent, both agreed with the majority that the lack of a uniform recount standard for determining voter intent posed an Equal Protection problem, but they dissented from the majority because they both disagreed with the majority's remedy for that violation: stopping the recount. Had they agreed with the disposition of the case, but not the reasoning, their opinions would have been concurrences; but as they disagreed with the disposition though agreeing in part with the reasoning, they filed dissents. Stevens and Ginsburg, in their dissents, make clear that they did not believe there was a substantive Equal Protection violation at all. So 7-2 on the Equal Protection issue is correct. postdlf (talk) 21:57, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
They agreed on the issue generally but had a range of criticisms. More importantly those dissents are not holdings and are not part of the court ruling. It's inaccurate to present it as formal support. Kaalel (talk) 22:02, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree it is at least a bit misleading to say that the Court "ruled 7-2" on that issue, given that they did not merely dissent in part from the Court's ruling (their opinions would have been identified as such if they had), and so did not join it at all. So there should be a more nuanced way of noting the partial agreement of the other two with the majority on the EP issue, without making it sound like they joined the ruling in any way. postdlf (talk) 22:04, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Then perhaps the solution would be to state the court's ruling and then include a mention of the degree of Souter's and Breyer's support on that issue. Kaalel (talk) 22:11, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion of Roy Innis quotation

Including Roy Innis's criticisms without acknowledging his ties to right-wing activism is a mistake. The article lends him the title of CORE chairman without mentioning that CORE is a now a one-man band that has been repudiated as fraudulent by its own founders (according to Wikipedia's own article on Innis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Innis) and CORE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Racial_Equality#CORE_since_1968). Lacking material significance, it is unclear why Innis's opinions inform on this article at all. If these comments are to be included, they should be given adequate context in order to avoid giving his statements undue weight. Failure to do so is misleading to readers and a violation of Wikipedia's NPOV guidelines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Due_and_undue_weight Kaalel (talk) 01:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Whether Roy Innis is "right wing" or has ties to any "activism" has the feel of POV. Who determines who is "right wing"? What relevance do such descriptions have to the article? Should Jesse Jackson be labeled as having "ties to [left]-wing activism? SMP0328. (talk) 02:14, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Jesse Jackson is well-known and requires no introduction, nor would "left-wing activist" be an adequate description. Innis is a self-described conservative activist who is a relative unknown. Simply calling him CORE Chairman is misleading to any reader who is not familiar with the subject. His opinions should be given context or removed.Kaalel (talk) 02:45, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
That's your opinion of both men. Articles are to consist of facts, not opinions. SMP0328. (talk) 02:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
My opinions, whatever they may be, do not enter into it. Innis is primarily known for his conservative corporate lobbying. It features heavily in all Wiki articles involving him. Consciously refusing to include that fact, without adequate grounds, is a clear violation of NPOV. Unless you have a distinct reason to deny that he is a conservative, this matter should be closed or referred. Kaalel (talk) 02:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe such labeling would be POV, especially only applying such labeling to only one person. You still haven't explained why calling him "right wing" is relevant to the article. Should we also mention that he is Black? SMP0328. (talk) 03:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
As I have explained, it is clear from other Wiki pages that Innis is primarily a conservative activist. CORE is functionally a lobbying front for himself and his son Niger. What is unclear is why his opinions are being equated with that of well-known figures like Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, etc., without mentioning Innis's background. Kaalel (talk) 03:16, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
It shouldn't be too hard to find sources calling CORE conservative, or allied with the Republican party. Sean Hannity of all people was their keynote speaker at their MLK day dinner a couple years ago. Innis is not a mainstream (or, arguably, even legitimate) civil rights leader. But the easiest way to deal with it is simply to remove the quote, as Innis has nowhere near the profile of Jesse Jackson regardless of how he's characterized. For that matter, I think the whole section on the Dred Scott comparison should probably be removed as out of proportion to its significance. postdlf (talk) 03:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
You clearly have a higher opinion of Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson than of Roy Innis. That's fine, but whether someone is Conservative or Liberal is rarely going to be relevant to an article. Roy Innis being a Conservative is no more relevant to this article than is Jesse Jackson being a Liberal or whether Bill Clinton is a Moderate or a Liberal. SMP0328. (talk) 03:41, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
The affiliation of a political activist clearly has relevance to a topic dominated by political affiliation. It would be similarly difficult to talk about Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly without mentioning their roles as conservative commentators. Seeing as a consensus appears unlikely to be reached, I agree with Postdlf that the easiest solution is to remove the quotation, or indeed the Dred Scott section as a whole. Kaalel (talk) 03:52, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Do you believe a person who is a Liberal should be described as such in an article? As for removing the Dred Scott material, a consensus must be reached first. Two editors do not make a consensus. SMP0328. (talk) 03:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
What's the argument for leaving the section in? postdlf (talk) 04:02, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
For productive discussion we should focus on specific elements of the article, rather than hypothetical changes. Changes to Innis's characterization are prompted by his role as an activist and the nature of modern CORE - not his political persuasion. If there is another person in the article whom you believe needs to be more accurately characterized then please start a new section on the talk page. Kaalel (talk) 04:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Clinton's relationship to Gore is obvious and it would be idiotic to identify him as "Bill Clinton, a liberal," in that paragraph, as if no one knew who the hell he was. Feel free to also add that Jesse Jackson was himself a candidate for president in past Democratic primaries or is typically a staunch ally of the Democratic Party or (even better, if you can cite it) that he campaigned for Gore in 2000. But it's simply not reasonable to question whether Jackson is significantly better known than Innis, if that's what you were getting at, as if quoting Innis is just as meaningful and relevant as quoting Jackson.

On Innis (and CORE under Innis' leadership) as a conservative, see, e.g, [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. It would be hard to claim that anyone who supported Alan Keyes was anything but conservative, and he even endorsed McCain over Obama in 2008. Not noting Innis' alignment would be misleading, because African Americans and civil rights groups in the U.S. are almost entirely aligned with the Democratic Party and the liberal spectrum; omitting that Innis is contrary to that trend would imply to those who don't know him (most of the public at present) that someone predisposed to prefer Gore disagreed with criticism of this court decision. Which is the role that Innis and CORE play politically, but that's getting into commentary...  ; )

Bottom line though, the section is just a quote farm and doesn't add anything substantive to the article. Whether a single line in Breyer's opinion was a veiled reference to the Dredd Scott case, and whether anyone else made that comparison, is worth at most a footnote or single sentence in an article of this size. postdlf (talk) 04:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Even better, if we can cite that CORE/Innes endorsed Bush in 2000 after Alan Keyes dropped out of the race, that would sufficiently contextualize his comments in my view without getting into more abstract political characterizations. postdlf (talk) 04:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I've inserted a link to the full text of the source, which says Innis had previously spoken highly of Bush, and I've inserted that into the article. That's plenty of context, and anyway WP:Synth doesn't let us fish around for info about people mentioned in this article.Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:08, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I think it's far more problematic for SYNTH to state that he had "spoken highly of" Bush, which doesn't necessarily mean he wanted him to be president or that he never praised Gore. It's therefore of unclear relevance to his comment on this case. We should try to confirm that Innis and CORE actually endorsed Bush for president (I'm fairly certain they did after Keyes dropped out). But I still think the entire section should be removed as not contributing anything, and for being just a WP:QUOTEFARM. "Person A and Person B said the case was like Dredd Scott. Person C and Person D said that's crazy." Whatever. The scholarly comment about Breyer's choice of rhetoric might be appropriate in a section on Breyer's dissent...which the case doesn't have yet. postdlf (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't matter what anyone thinks or knows about any of them. Wikipedia should not treat any of those men differently, the views of certain editors notwithstanding. For the article to treat Innis's viewpoint as having less value than that of Bill Clinton or Jesse Jackson would be the height of POV. If that section remains in the article, it should give treat those men's viewpoints equally. SMP0328. (talk) 16:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
As I said above, Clinton's partisanship towards Gore goes without saying, so that doesn't need to be expressly contextualized in this article; and I think it's entirely appropriate to also state that Jackson had endorsed Gore as a candidate or campaigned for him, if you can cite it. That a commenter on the case had publicly supported one of the two candidates is obviously relevant to their view on the court case that decided the election.

And no, I think you're absolutely wrong that we can't weigh different subjects differently based on their relative notability. It's not about who is "correct", it's about who is more important to a subject. WP:UNDUE expressly refers to the prominence of sources or viewpoints, as well as distinguishing between majority and minority views. A film review by Roger Ebert is of much greater value to a film article than Joe Schmoe of the Peoria Alternative Weekly; we would not give Schmoe's review equal coverage and weight to the review of arguably the most famous movie critic in the U.S. And a quote from Jesse Jackson is of much greater value than a quote from Innis simply because he is a much more prominent (i.e., well known) figure. More news outlets will report on a statement by Jackson than a statement by Innis, which means that Jackson's comments are a much more important part of the public reaction and perception.

And I still haven't seen an argument as to why the section should stay in the article at all. It's trivial to note the hyperbolic rhetoric used by Gore supporters, and trivial to note the response to said rhetoric by Bush supporters; there is no showing that the Dred Scott comparison was itself an ongoing dialogue or controversy such that it merits its own section. The only substantive part is the comment on Breyer's choice of language, which as I said above, is premature considering that we don't even have a section yet on Breyer's opinion. postdlf (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

The cited source calls Jackson a "prominent liberal" so I've included that in this Wikipedia article. So now the article says Jackson was a liberal and Innis had said supportive things about Bush. That's a lot more context than there was previously, and if people want more info about Jackson and Innis then they can click on Wlinks. We can't grab further info about Jackson and Innis from other sources that don't mention this case, per WP:synth, and anyway we've already got enough context in the article.Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:14, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I think that the phrase "spoken highly of Bush" remains quite vague and is not particularly descriptive of who Roy Innis is. It could mean all sorts of things. And I also don't think that Jackson can be described simply as a prominent liberal seeing as he is first and foremost a civil rights leader. Nor should we be portraying Innis as equal to Jackson, Clinton, etc. according to NPOV policy. I agree with postdlf that it would be best to speak in terms of campaign support. Innis hosted Bush as the key speaker at the 7th Annual CORE Awards, which occurred after the Republican primary in 2000 [22]. His son also identified himself and his father as "black Republicans and black conservatives", and apparently held a long-standing grudge against Jesse Jackson [http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=20081]. It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that this man's comments have no business being in this section, nor this section in this article. Kaalel (talk) 23:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
What you say may be true, but Wikipedia strives for WP:Verifiability rather than truth. The info now in the article is verifiable from the cited source, and we are obliged to follow along. You have not explained why the additional sources that you're citing are consistent with WP:Synthesis given that they don't discuss the subject of this Wikipedia article.Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm still failing to see how it would violate WP:SYNTH to note, in an article about the case that resolved the election in favor of Bush instead of Gore, whether someone commenting upon the case is on record as having wanted Bush or Gore to win. I think you're just viewing "the subject of this Wikipedia article" too narrowly if you don't see the relevance. But what I'm also still not seeing is any justification for this section, so let's stop wasting time quibbling about the wording. I've said above, many times, why I think it should be removed, and no one has responded with a counterargument. 10, 9, 8, 7... postdlf (talk) 23:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

(Undent) Whenever anyone engages in synthesis, it's because they deem the sources relevant to each other, and those sources may well indeed be relevant, but that's a determination that Wikipedia policy requires the sources themselves to make. If a source says nothing about Bush v Gore, then it shouldn't be cited in this article, no matter how relevant it may be.

As for removing the section about Dred Scott, I slightly favor keeping it for reasons of article stability, at least until a strong consensus forms for removal. Have you looked at the archives?[23] If we take it out, other editors will want it back in. They point out that this article already includes scholarly opinions, so why not a few non-scholarly opinions? Also, the Dred Scott article itself has such opinions in it.Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Giving a description of a relatively unknown figure is of course germane to the topic. A review of the archives indicates that there have been issues with this section before. It is not of particular import, and Roy Innis and other insignificant characters appear to have been added in in an attempt to provide "truth is in the middle" political balancing to a comment by Bill Clinton. That doesn't work and it isn't good writing, nor does it abide by Wikipedia policies. Kaalel (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
The cited source discusses reactions by Clinton, Jackson, Simpson, and Innis. Readers will be well aware that Clinton is the most famous of those. Clinton is also more famous than all of the scholarly authors mentioned in this Wikipedia article, but still we track the sources instead of deleting those non-famous scholarly commenters. I don't see the big deal about mentioning Innis if the source does. Readers can draw their own conclusions.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:48, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Jackson and Simpson are hardly non-famous. Innis is the odd men out here, why specifically is his opinion being included? And again, for what purpose does this section hold? It's a pointless quote farm that has caused disruption since it was first included in the article. Kaalel (talk) 21:53, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I never suggested that Jackson and Simpson are non-famous, and instead I've pointed out that many of the scholarly commenters discussed in this article are non-famous. If some other editors come along and agree with deleting the section, then I'd be glad to go along.Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:28, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I'd also agree with postdlf. Justice Breyer's dissent does not seem particularly notable at this time and the opinions of politicians are, well, just that. Horwitz is a good source but in this case I don't see the point. Removing the section would seem best. - ArtifexMayhem (talk) 05:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
I've removed the section, even though I was okay with letting it stay. Most editors favor removal, and I don't think this is a "major" change that requires more than a simple majority.Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:12, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The issue of who would have won

Hi all. I have concerns about the content dispute that has occurred recently, specifically starting with this edit. I've read the source in question and, according to the citation, either candidate could have won depending on the standard used to count dimpled ballots. I do not think this issue is as simple as saying "X candidate would have won". I suggest further debate on this issue be hashed out on the talk page instead of through edit summaries and reverting. A good place to start would be to locate additional sources that speak to this issue. -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 20:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Check out the current version. I've clarified the Introduction so that it reads that Gore "might" have won a statewide recount (quoting the source). Hopefully, there will be no dispute over this issue. SMP0328. (talk) 02:12, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't know why we are discussing at all what would have happened had there been a state-wide recount, especially not in the lead paragraph. A state-wide recount wasn't at issue in Bush v. Gore. It is tangential at best. I think there is a strong consensus that Gore would have absolutely won had there been a statewide recount, but I don't see at all why it is relevant, especially b/c the specific recount Gore requested in Bush v Gore would not have helped him. That is an extremely important part of the Bush v Gore story, especially because so many people have a misconception that Bush v Gore somehow helped Bush or otherwise altered the outcome of the election.PStrait (talk) 18:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
For the sake of clarity, "I think there is a strong consensus that Gore would have absolutely won had there been a statewide recount" is not true according to the source. As I noted in my first comment, the source claims that the outcome of a statewide recount would have hinged on the standard used to count dimpled ballots. -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 19:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Okay, what I mean is a state-wide recount that counted both undervotes and overvotes. I could provide a dozen references for this except I don't think it is in contest because, as I've said, overwhelming consensus exists. But again, my point is that I don't understand why this is relevant to this article, or at least so relevant as to belong in the lead paragraph. A state-wide recount was not at issue in Bush v Gore. Gore was suing for a very limited recount, the results of which, had it occurred, would not have altered the outcome of the election. That's the key part of the story that needs to be clear.PStrait (talk) 19:44, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Can you provide a few of the aforementioned references? I'm genuinely curious and you seem to be quite familiar with this topic. -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 19:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Here (http://www.rense.com/general16/count.htm) is an extremely conservative source that examined 6 major new analyses of the final ballot analysis, and determined that "Under any standard that counted all disputed votes in Florida, Gore erased Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes," and further, to my point, "Gore followed a legal strategy that would have led to his defeat even if it had not been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court." Again, I really don't see the relevance of discussing the potential outcome of a full statewide recount -- mentioning it at all implies relevance that it lacks. I think a serious misconception about bush v gore exists that this feeds rather than ameliorates.PStrait (talk) 20:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
And your source for these claims is...Matt Drudge?! — goethean ॐ 22:45, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I offered that source b/c it was a conservative making a claim against his interest so I thought it would be accepted by the particular audience of people not aware of all the studies done by major news organizations -- all of which are the basis for this conclusion. Is this a serious request? The study that Drudge is citing was done by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which was a meta-analysis of the studies done by The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the St. Petersburg Times, Cox Newspapers, The Washington Post and the Tribune Co. (which owns Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, etc.). As reported in the Washington Post (11/12/01), "The study showed that if the two limited recounts had not been short-circuited -- the first by Florida county and state election officials and the second by the U.S. Supreme Court -- Bush would have held his lead over Gore, with margins ranging from 225 to 493 votes, depending on the standard. But the study also found that whether dimples are counted or a more restrictive standard is used, a statewide tally favored Gore by 60 to 171 votes." I don't really know why this discussion needs to continue since it is not relevant to the article, a point I have been repeatedly making that seems to be falling on deaf ears.PStrait (talk) 23:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
So do you believe the hypothetical statewide recount reference should be removed from the Introduction? I favor removal, but simply changed it so I could avoid being in an edit war and so the reference matched the source provided. SMP0328. (talk) 23:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Per PStrait's points, I favor the removal of the hypothetical state wide recount while leaving in the fact that Gore's proposed recount method would have made no difference. The state-wide recount is perhaps of interest to a more general article about this event. The result of Gore's proposed method should stay in as it speaks to what would have happened if this court case had gone differently. -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 23:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes it is a serious and genuine request. According to the source currently in the article: "the study, conducted over the last 10 months by a consortium of eight news organizations assisted by professional statisticians, examined numerous hypothetical ways of recounting the Florida ballots. Under some methods, Mr. Gore would have emerged the winner; in others, Mr. Bush". The article then goes on to say that under 7 different standards of counting undervotes, Gore would have won, but that under the standard where " counting dimples that three people saw would have given Mr. Gore a net of just 318 additional votes and kept Mr. Bush in the lead by 219." In my plain reading on this source, it seems clear to me that the election could have gone either way depending on the standard applied to dimpled ballots. Is this the study you are referring to, or was there another study? I'd love to take a look at the sources you mention, especially ones that meet WP:RS guidelines. As far as your point about relevancy to the article, it is well taken. However, you've put forward the claim that an "overwhelming consensus exists" that Gore would have won a state wide recount. As such, I'd really like to see sources that back up this claim. -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 23:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I would perhaps rephrase my statement to say that overwhelming consensus exists that Gore *probably* would have won had there been a full statewide recount of overvotes and undervotes. That is the specific phrasing in most sources I've seen, e.g., http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/. My objection to "might have won" was that it implies a higher degree of uncertainty than actually exists. There is unavoidable uncertainty -- the NORC study didn't have access to 2200 ballots. The 3-person dimpled chad issue you refer to doesn't assume a full count of overvotes, and it also raises some other issues (why 3 person agreement?). But in any event, I think the consensus is that it is very likely (though not guaranteed) that a complete recount would have favored Gore.PStrait (talk) 07:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
We seem to have a consensus, so I have removed the statewide recount reference from the article. SMP0328. (talk) 23:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Ok, I understand your points. Very interesting conversation, this one! -- Sailing to Byzantium (msg), 15:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Though extremely controversial, the decision has never been cited as precedent

The majority opinion specifically says that it can not be used as precedent - this should be clarified in the above statement — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.246.108 (talk) 03:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Lede *HIGHLY* POV

Both sources for the third paragraph prominently state Bush won the journo recount. The article needs to address this prominently and clarify any actual source (and its dubiousness) that suggests Gore "in fact" won anything. The issue that this case ruled on did NOT change the election from what it would have been if Gore had continued his recount; the issue addressed in the NY Times article that Gore may have won under certain selections of excluded ballots (not the popular vote as discussed in the current article) needs to be addressed more appropriately and with unbiased secondary sources (while the Times may be a new agency appropriate for sourcing other articles, here it is itself one of the involved actors & NPOV requires other sources to verify or comment on their – undoubtably disputed – findings).

I'm not blanking such an important topic without discussion, but the current article contracts or embellishes the sources it purports to be using. — LlywelynII 09:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The last paragraph was wordy and vague. I've condensed and clarified it. SMP0328. (talk) 01:00, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
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