I'd like to know why that was "bad law," as it was no law at all. If the Florida legislature had a statewide vote for electors, then recounts should be statewide, too. The Florida Supreme Court went rogue when it allowed only the heavily Democrat counties to be recounted, and SCOTUS stopped that.
-PJ
SCOTUS itself warned, “Don’t go citing this Bush v. Gore decision in any future filing before this court.” (quote very approximate)Holding that the EV already cast for Bush were legit would have been the same thing, but less intrusive. After all, the ballots had already been mailed to Washington - so it would have been just another way to, as Clinton in artfully put it, “stop the voting.” But the other out would have been to say that “If those ballots aren’t true, we don’t know what is true. But they do make crystal clear that Florida never intended not to cast its Electoral votes. Those votes may be uncountable in time for the mandated deadline - but they are not thereby extinguished.
That would have been significant because it woulda meant that number of EVs required for the absolute majority of EVs required by the Constitution would not be reduced. Meaning, that if the House didn’t accept Florida’s EV ballots for Bush, Gore would not win the EC but rather that the issue would default to the (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives.