CDR: The cause of uncertainty in the election outcome.
James A. Donald
jamesd at echeque.com
Sun Nov 19 11:23:44 PST 2000
Because the vote is so close, the outcome depends entirely on a multitude
of judgment calls about which votes count, and which are counted, and how
they shall be counted.
The normal procedure in England and the democracies descended from England,
or imposed by English troops, is that the major parties reach agreement
before and during the vote count, on how the votes shall be counted. In
the US however, you have a multitude of laws, laws which contradicted each
other, and contradicted actual practice. For example a lot of perfectly
good absentee ballots that were presented by the military in accord with
the usual military practice were rejected this time because they did not
comply with the letter of the law, even though they complied with custom
and practice.
The cause of the uncertainty is judicial imperialism.
It is often said that Americans are litigious,but the cause of this
destructive litigation is judicial willingness to unpredictably overturn
existing practice.
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