Did the county commission act in an arbitrary or capricious manner? Apparently there was no formal procedure for determining the fitness of the counting method at the county level. If there is no formal procedure, then is it the fault of the county commission that it could be construed as arbitrary and capricious? I trust not, since the commission evidently has no inherent power to change the law by itself.
Ordinarily I would then drift towards the questions of who the trier of fact is and who the trier of law is for this particular situation. Again, however, there is no formal procedure, so it is not clear to me if these terms would even apply.
The reason I felt OK bringing up various forms of evidence was because various liberals seem to be claiming that no evidence of fraud exists, thus inviting the question of what constitutes various types of evidence and evidence hierarchies.
Would the reasonable person standard apply to a situation like this?
from:
The reasonable person standard refers to a hypothetical, average person’s reaction to the actual circumstances of alleged illegal activities such as harassment, negligence or discrimination. It serves as a comparative standard for courts to assess liability.
If there is no overt procedure to follow, then perhaps the “reasonable person” standard could be construed to prevail. The commissioners might be able to take some legal shelter from this, especially if the legislature has not performed its duty in enacting enforcable laws and procedures.
The real offense here is apparently that the county commission has highlighted a glaring omission in the law which is not their fault. They have exercised their discretion according to law by refusing to rubber stamp a process at their level. The existing law does not seem to preclude them from doing so. However, by doing so, their action resulted in lighting a fire under the state legislature to come up with a missing procedure— how to certify vote results at the county level. The political hacks at the state level apparently pulled some levers with the state supreme court to avoid confronting this problem head on (as a rational governing body might ordinarily do?).