[mass55th]

"I realize the Supreme Court does not choose the president but they essentially did in Gore v. Bush. That is the situation I refer to."

Not really. Bush had already been declared the winner. Gore's suit was over his wanting to hand-pick two or three counties in Florida favorable to him, in which to conduct recounts, to see if he could get enough new votes to change the result of the election. The Supreme Court's decision ended the recounts that had been going on, and Bush's victory was upheld. You can't hand an election to someone who has already won it legitimately.

[gundog]

Wasn’t Florida’s Supreme Court a player?

[Political Junkie Too]

The Supreme Court's decision ended the recounts that had been going on, and Bush's victory was upheld.

In fact, that was just part 1.

Part 2 was the actual contested election case in Florida Circuit Court, presided over by Judge N. Sanders Sauls. David Boies represented Gore, and James Baker represented Bush.

See the ruling from Judge Saunders here.

Gore argued two things:

1. Vote totals wrongly include illegal votes and do not include legal votes that were improperly rejected.
2. The election certifications of the canvassing boards of Dade, Palm Beach and Nassau Counties.

For #2, Gore wanted to have the partial recounts counted for him. In some cases, he wanted partial manual recounts included, in other cases he wanted second or third machine recounts included.

Sauders ruled that:

1. The various county canvassing boards acted within their broad discretion and did not abuse their authority.
2. Voting inaccuracies due to punch card systems were widely known for years by the counties, but nobody has shown evidence that voting error affected races.
3. Despite Gore presenting specific cases of votes to be switched, he did not show a preponderance of statistical evidence that it inferred a statewide review would result in his winning the race.

This ruling was made on December 4, 2000, well before the deadline for the Electoral College. Before anything goes to SCOTUS, they will require that all necessary and proper state legal remedies are taken, such as was done in Florida in 2000. Democrats will have to go through the state court systems to contest the elections first, and only then will they go to SCOTUS if the states don't rule in their favor.

-PJ