![]() On NovemHarris declared Bush the winner in Florida by 537 votes, even though there were counties still tallying ballots. ![]() O'Connor noted that the Florida Legislature "has created a detailed, if not perfectly crafted statutory scheme that provides for the appointment of presidential electors by direct election," and that "the Legislature has designated the secretary of state as the 'chief election officer.'"įlorida's secretary of state at the time, Katherine Harris, was not only a Republican, she also co-chaired Bush's campaign in the state. Therefore, each individual county was left to devise its own standards." "More importantly, the court failed to provide any standard more specific than the 'intent of the voter' standard to govern this statewide undervote recount. "Accordingly, there was no guarantee that those ballots deemed undervotes had not been previously tabulated," O'Connor asserted. “Before there was 2020 there was 2000. "The Florida Supreme Court provided no uniform, statewide method for identifying and separating the undervotes," she noted, a reference to instances when voting machines could not read ballots. "I am concerned that the Florida Supreme Court transgressed the lines of authority drawn by Article II of the federal Constitution in substantially changing the state Legislature's statutory scheme for the appointment of presidential electors," O'Connor wrote. Supreme Court while self-described "dirty trickster" Matt Schlapp and future seven-count felon Roger Stone led an effort to fly hundreds of paid operatives to Florida to harass and intimidate Miami-Dade officials-the so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot"-in a bid to thwart their court-ordered work. In her memo, O'Connor attacked the unanimous NovemFlorida Supreme Court decision that the results of manual ballot recounts in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties must be included in the final state tally, while giving the three counties five days to certify their results.ĭuring that period, Bush's legal team appealed to the U.S. ![]() Her memo laid the groundwork for the controversial 5-4 ruling that stopped Florida's court-ordered recount in a too-close-to-call contest between Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore and gave the presidency to the Republican Texas governor. However, the newly released documents-part of a trove of former Justice John Paul Stevens' papers-include a four-page memo O'Connor sent to her colleagues on December 10, 2000, even before they heard arguments in Bush v.
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