Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I) was a lawsuit pertaining to the 2000 Presidential Election.
There were two main issues:
- Whether the county canvassing boards' authority to conduct manual recounts to correct "errors in the vote tabulation" extended to efforts to remedy situations where machines, though perhaps correctly functioning to detect properly marked ballots, did not count votes on certain ballots on which votes might be found under a manual inspection with an "intent of the voter" standard (Harris had ruled that it did not); and
- How such recounts in the case at hand could be made to fit into the statutory scheme, which as Harris interpreted it contemplated a quick certification followed, if necessary, by an election contest during which a court (rather than the canvassing boards) would be empowered to correct errors
Regarding the first issue, the court ruled that, while Harris was generally entitled to deference in her interpretation of state laws, in this case the interpretation "contravene the plain meaning" of the phrase "error in the vote tabulation" and so must be overturned.
Regarding the second issue, the court ruled that the statutory scheme must be interpreted in light of the Florida state constitution's declaration that "all political power is inherent in the people," with any ambiguities therefore construed "liberally." Preventing the canvassing boards from continuing to conduct recounts beyond the seven-day timeframe (specified in the law, but with ambiguity as to how firm it was intended to be), would "summarily disenfranchise innocent electors " and could not be allowed except unless the recounts continued for so long as to "compromise the integrity of the electoral process." The court ordered counties to submit returns by November 26, until which time the stay of certification would stand.
|
Famous quotes containing the words palm, beach, county, canvassing, board and/or harris:
“Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)
“I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and Id bet I wouldnt lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.”
—Berkeley Breathed (b. 1957)
“While I believe that with a fair election in the South, our electoral vote would reach two hundred, and that we should have a large popular majority, I am yet anxious, as you are, that in the canvassing of results there should be no taint of dishonesty.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (18221893)
“She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“Mother came to us destitute. She brings a child into the world, takes one look at him and promptly dies. Without leaving so much as a forwarding name and address.”
—Vernon Harris (c. 1910)