Editorials - 12/14/00

Supreme Court errs in hearing election case

Because the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a decision by Florida's Supreme Court and stopped all manual recounts, Texas Gov. George W. Bush will become president Jan. 20. As one news analyst put it Wednesday morning, Bush is the winner according to the rules in place, not necessarily because he received the most votes. Had the recount been allowed to proceed, Bush may very well have been the clear winner.

If the Supreme Court had allowed the hand counts to continue, while agreeing to hear the case, the votes would have been tallied, and at least the wishes of the voters would be known. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer called his own court's decision to halt the recount "improvident."

By agreeing to hear the case, these Supreme Court justices, who have championed states' rights, reversed themselves. Traditionally the nation's highest court has been reluctant to intercede in matters of state law, allowing individual state courts to interpret state statutes. By intervening here, the Court opened itself up to charges of partisanship.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent, said it best: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Before Monday's Supreme Court ruling, the consistent thread throughout the myriad judicial decisions relating to this election has been to avoid disenfranchisement of any American.

We find it sad that the Supreme Court, which led the way in ending discrimination at the polls with sweeping civil rights decisions, is the one court that found it OK to exclude the will of some of the people.

The Supreme Court's decision told us something else. The day after Election Day we wrote here that in light of this year's close races, no one should ever think their vote doesn't count.

Apparently, according to a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, some votes don't count. And, as they decided that simply counting votes might cause "irreparable harm" to Gov. George W. Bush, they may have done irreparable harm to our country's highest judicial body.

If the votes are ever counted, which some historian or member of the media is likely to do, and it is proven that Gov. Bush did not win Florida, both his presidency and the reputation of the Supreme Court may be forever tarnished.

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