Re: FL voting laws

[Bob Hoffmann <escape@alt-escape.com>]

At 01:26 PM 11/10/2000 -0800, Stephen Cooke wrote:
>                   "TO VOTE for a candidate whose name is printed on the
>ballot, mark a cross (X)
>                     in the blank space at the RIGHT of the name of the
>candidate for whom you
>                                          desire to vote."
>
>                         - From Florida statute concerning guidelines for
>election ballots

Yes, and this starts "The general election ballot shall be in substantially 
the following form."  Yet Palm Beach ballots used punch cards, not 
write-in-the-X paper ballots.  Punch cards must be considered 
"substantially" equivalent.  But how to adapt the paper ballot to the punch 
card ballot, and whether anything was "substantially" changed?  The paper 
ballot presumably wasn't in a booklet form (I presume), as the punch card 
system is (as in left-hand page, right-hand page).  So is the entire 
punch-card system illegitimate?  Boy, the lawyers will have fun with this one.

Guidelines for the presidential vote:

"The general election ballot shall be arranged and printed so that the 
offices of President and Vice President are joined in a single voting space 
to allow each elector to cast a single vote for the joint candidacies for 
President and Vice President."

Presumably, these are additional guidelines to the above "right-X" 
guidelines.  But in court, one side would argue that these latter 
guidelines are the only explicit guidelines for the Presidential election, 
and that they were indeed followed.

And this is an issue because of the Electoral College.

Constitutional crisis, anybody?


Bob Hoffmann
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