Florida Supreme Court ordered every county in Florida to start immediately manually recounting all “under-votes”, ballots which did not indicate a vote for president. The outcome of elections was still unclear and there were enough contested ballots to place the outcome of the election in doubt.
It was found that in the State of Florida a significant of electors did not correctly mart the ballot, and thus the votes they have submitted should not be counted. Many people have complained that the ballot sheets were very confusing to fill in and that caused the mistake. Also different standards were applied from ballot to ballot and county to county. Because of those and other procedural difficulties, the court held that no constitutional recount should be held.
I think that for reasons of federalism the decision of the Florida’s Supreme Court’s decision should be respected. Moreover, that ruling decision was fundamentally right. According to the U.S. Constitution, every vote should be counted. There is a principle in American legislation that all votes must be treated equally. That is why similar votes could not have different weight. It is all that the 9th Circuit Court’s decision demanded.
According to the democratic spirit of the law, the most important is to have fair elections where every person may express his or her opinion. From this view point, the decision of Florida Supreme Court was correct.

I think that the Florida Supreme Court has violated Article II Section 1 Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution by making new election law. In my opinion, the standardless manual recounts have violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution. The Equal Protection clause guarantees individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by “later arbitrary and disparate treatment.” Because of this fact, the per curiam opinion held 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court’s recounting of ballots was unconstitutional. Recounts have taken the place throughout the history and are fair in theory, but the Florida recount was unfair in practice. The court has limited the equal protection application.
According to the logic of the decision of Florida Supreme Court, every election with differing voting apparatus is consequently unconstitutional. It would mean that we have to make new laws and precedents during every election. A broad principle that was used by the 9th Circuit Court, that all votes must be treated equally, would make all elections unvalid. It is impossible to insert this-time-only clause in every new election precedent.
The recount scheme was unconstitutional because the Florida Supreme Court has made a new election law, which only the state legislature may do. Consequently, the 9th Circuit had interfered with a state constitution.

compare the political logic of the resolution of the 1876 (Hayes) election with the resolution of the 2000 election. Why court has intervened in one case not in the other.

Until this election of 2000, the 1876 elections had been the most disputable in the history of U.S. The presidential election of 1876 between the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden has some interesting parallels with the presidential election of 2000. In particular, the 1876 election involved an Electoral College dispute which was not explicitly covered by the U.S. Constitution as well as in the year 2000. But in the 19th century, the problem was resolved by an Electoral Commission created by Congress and consisting of 5 Supreme Court justices, 5 senators, and 5 House members, not by the Supreme Court probably because it is one of the problems that need special and unusual methods to make a right and just decisions.
In 1876 elections, the Republican candidate won the presidency by one electoral vote. In 1876, it took the country four months to decide who had been elected – and it turned out to be the candidate who had won fewer popular votes. In both elections Florida played a central role in the controversy and the Electoral College and the popular vote were won by different candidates. Republicans’ claims that Hayes was elected centered on Democrats’ use of fraud, violence, and intimidation against black voters in the Southern states of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. In 2000 elections in Florida there have also been racial issues and discrimination toward African American voters.
The 2000 presidential election has renewed an old debate about an 18th century institution that critics say is unnecessary, archaic, and even dangerous to the will of the majority – the Electoral College.

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