Word: validity
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...some of the court's own members, have attacked the ruling as antidemocratic and politically motivated. Many say they were pained to see a court that once distinguished itself by removing barriers to voting--including racial prohibitions, poll taxes and literacy tests--stand in the way of counting valid votes. And Justice John Paul Stevens spoke for disillusioned observers everywhere when he declared in dissent that the decision to stop the vote count and declare Bush the winner "can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land...
Americans generally believe that if the law is being violated, the courts can set things right. But Bush v. Gore makes clear that this is not always the case. Even the majority conceded that among the tens of thousands of uncounted "undervotes" and "overvotes" in Florida, there may be valid votes that simply did not register on the machines. It would be hard to hold otherwise, since the machines' designer had testified that the machines are imperfect and that the only way to get a full count is to examine the undervotes by hand...
...court said that even if there are additional valid votes, it was too late to count them. The Democrats had argued that the counting could continue up to Dec. 18, when the Electoral College meets, leaving enough time to develop a uniform standard and count all the votes. But the U.S. Supreme Court's majority held that the Florida legislature wanted electors chosen by Dec. 12, and since the ruling came down after 10 p.m. on that day, there simply was no more time to count votes. In other words, the court did not find that the certified results...
...Florida, only ballots that were not punched at all, nicked or partly punched should have been set aside [ELECTION 2000, Dec. 4]. Then those ballots should have been evaluated and recounted by hand and the total of valid votes added to the original machine count. This process should not take more than 48 hours. (It would take less than 24 hours in Canada!) Anyone objecting to it and finding legal reasons for multiple delays and a total recount is a partisan who has a vested interest in the result. If there is serious concern that the machine counts could...
...that why Bush's lawyers have fought hand counts of undervotes so doggedly? Yes, but they have valid reasons for opposing the counts - chiefly that there is no single standard for them. They also say handling the ballots "spoliates" them, a lawyerly way of saying counters can push chads through accidentally. Bush lawyer Phil Beck wanted Lewis to rule that only a chad with a stylus imprint could count, not one pushed through, say, by a finger. Lewis dismissed that request for now, but in the end his decision may not matter...