| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | There are hanging chads and dimpled chads and not everyone agrees how to count them. |
| Posture: | Dunno. Possibly straight to SCOTUS or something. |
| Issue: | Does the FL SC decision about the election violate Art II § 1 clause 2, and does standardless manyal recount violate equal protection and due process? |
| Holding: | Yes, and yes. |
| Rule: | The process implemented here has insufficient guarantees of equal treatment. |
| Reasoning: | There must be uniform rules when deciding "the intent of the voter," or else the same vote might get counted differently. |
| Dicta: | Rhenquist (concurring): a significant departure from the legislative
scheme for appointing electors presents a federal constitutional
question (i.e., we can hear this).
Stevens (dissenting): we're undermining the nation's confidence in elections more than anything else. Oh, and state judges. Ginsburg (dissenting): intervening disrupts the states' right to a republican form of government. Breyer (dissenting): The court should not have taken this case. Quoting Brandeis, "the most important thing we do is not doing." |