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Those miscast votes alone would ultimately have given Florida to Gore.
Bird’s original and follow up opinion pieces on the injustices perpetrated or allowed by some Florida election boards, courts, the Florida Secretary of State and the US Supreme Court in blocking hand recounts and the disenfranchisement of ex-felons allowed to vote in other states seem now, regrettably, to be moot points and the country will just have to lump it as those are statutes and practices (for the time being, anyway) of Florida or the present interpretation of the US Constitution.
Before this past election imbroglio, the Florida Supreme Court had rarely been overruled and had a high standing with legal scholars. Those Florida Supreme Court justices, of both political parties, followed their consciences and plain common sense in unanimously ordering a hand recount, a decision tardily, but timely (for the GOP), overturned by the US Supreme Court.
Pond’s reaction to the past election is that everything worked just fine. Let’s hope this opinion is not widespread and that a majority will recognize that our creaky system needs an overhaul.
Thomas Spande
Sperryville
96.8%