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In my honest opinion, I think the 9th Circuit ruling is consistent with Bush v Gore and should be upheld if the SCOTUS applies that same rationale. Moreover, I think that the SCOTUS will simply affirm in any case just because they won't want to revisit the issues of Bush v Gore [which they'll have to, in order to overturn].

That being said, the guidance of Bush v Gore that you cannot have voters subjected to differing standards has been unevenly applied by lower courts, to say the very least. Furthermore, many states still have disparate voting systems statewide, and so that's an additional caveat.

It's really up in the air what the SCOTUS might do. It's conceivable that the SCOTUS will take the case and extend the stay indefinitely, even if it rules after Oct 7 [thus allowing this recall to proceed]. It's also conceivable that the Supreme Court will not extend the stay, even if they do take up the case [thus postponing the recall to March].

If I had to guess, they will decline review, but that's a very low confidence conjecture. The case law pursuant Bush v Gore is simply to novel and undeveloped to guess with any great deal of certainty..

Federal Election Law is fairly clear on Presidential elections. Bush V. Gore was about a State Court trumping a Federal Election. This is different in that it is a Federal Court trumping a State Election and State Law.

It is iffy on how this might come out.

Nice try, but the "equal protection" portion Bush v Gore applied to the different treatment to be given different ballots cast using the same method applied not by state legislature (the party that is Constitutionally-charged with setting the rules of a Presidential election), but a state court changing the rules after the election was run in order to effect a different result.

This, on the other hand, is trying to declare that because some jurisdictions (which just happen to be the most-reliably Democratic ones) still use punch-card ballots (which are still legal in California), those ballots are by definition treated differently because they realize they can't gin up enough "no" votes to save Gray-Out Davis and they fear they can't gin up enough votes for Bustamonte to get him in in that eventuality.

If they calim to be based on Bush v Gore, it's a deliberately corrupted version of Bush v Gore, which recognized different voting procedures in different districts as valid parts of elections (viz Scalia concurrence).

In any case, the 202 election was valid but this cannot be - with the same equipment?

The 9th *knows* what they are doing is pulling it out of a hat. They are willing co-conspirators with the ACLU in defying democracy. par for the judicial activist course.