Presidential Election Trials: 2000

Tuesday, December 12

At 10:00 P.M., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the counting of Florida's disputed presidential votes must end. The majority justices were Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas. Their ruling said the immediacy of the December 12 deadline for immunizing Florida's electors from a challenge in Congress made it impossible to find a way to count the votes that would meet "minimal constitutional standards" and meet the deadline that "is upon us.

Dissenters Breyer and Souter agreed with the majority that varying standards for counting the punch-card ballots in the Florida counties offered problems of due process and of equal protection. The answer, they said, was not to end the recount but to extend it to December 18, the date of the electoral college meeting. Such a recount would be a "tall order," said Souter, but "there is no justification for denying the state the opportunity to try to count all the disputed ballots now."

Justice Ginsburg was more outspoken. "The court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical," she wrote, "is a prophecy the court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States."

Justice Stevens was equally perturbed. "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election," he wrote, "the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."