-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! A President on Inauguration Day? Don't Count On It Saturday, December 9, 2000 By Andrew Hard Dare to think that the 2000 election is even close to over? You might want to think again, as scenarios abound to account for the next several weeks leading up to Inauguration Day and just possibly beyond. Colin Hackley/AP Friday: Bush attorneys confer during a late night emergency hearing before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis in Tallahassee, Fla. With the Florida Supreme Court ruling in favor of Al Gore on Friday — reversing a previous circuit court decision and ordering manual recounts in all 67 of the state's counties — eventualities arise from the U.S. House and Senate selecting between a court-appointed and a Legislative-appointed slate of electors to a further protraction of legal battles. While the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the quick appeal submitted by Republican lawyers and ordered a halt to the recounts on Saturday until the high court could settle the issue, the possibility that recounting may resume after a Monday hearing sets the stage for eventualities of all sorts. Depending on the outcome the potential statewide recount, the Republican-controlled Legislature could set up a contest between two rival Florida slates of electors, when they choose their own electors on Monday. The potential for two electoral slates to be presented to Congress when they meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes cast by the Electoral College on Dec. 18 sets up an endless list of possibilities in the coming weeks before Inauguration Day. The last time Congress was presented with two slates of electors was in 1960, when Richard Nixon was certified the winner in Hawaii with 141 votes more than John Kennedy. After a recount that lasted well into December, Kennedy was declared the winner of the popular vote by 115 votes. The votes arrived just as Congress convened with Vice President Nixon presiding. The first three votes for Nixon were presented first, followed by the three for Kennedy along with a note from the Republican Hawaiian governor urging Congress to accept the later. Democrats stood ready to protest if the GOP electors were accepted, but Nixon steadfastly recognized the Democratic electors. A similar scenario might unfold if a statewide Florida recount places Gore ahead of Bush in the popular tally. The difference being that Florida's highly-Republican Legislature is convening Monday to choose the state's slate of electors. In order to afford the new recount credibility, the Florida Supreme Court may have to issue a court order to force Secretary of State Katherine Harris to decertify Bush as the winner of Florida and re-certify the new results if she is unwilling. The newly certified results will show Gore the winner in Florida, contradicting the electoral slate selected by the legislature on Monday, and thus ending up with both Democratic and Republican electors claiming the right to cast their presidential votes for the state. If such a turn of events occurs, either the Supreme Court will intervene — which may be their very motive for accepting Bush's latest appeal — or the matter will end up in the Congress on Jan. 6th as it did in 1960. If that happens, Gore will preside over the affair as president of the Senate, his due as vice president, unless he chose to recuse himself from the process altogether. Since the choice may not be as clear as the example from 1960, with the Hawaiian Legislature not putting forth their own electoral slate, a joint session of the new Congress would be forced to vote on the matter as they would if one member of the House and one member of the Senate challenged a state's electors (and, yes, Joe Lieberman would cast a vote in the new Senate). With the new House controlled by the GOP and the new Senate tied 50/50 — with Al Gore casting the deciding vote — the matter could very well end up deadlocked with the House accepting the Bush electors and the Senate behind Gore's. The largest difference between how this process plays out and how a challenge of a state's electors occurs is that federal law says unless both houses of Congress agree to challenge a state's electors — the slate of electors must be counted. When two slates are offered to the Congress, a deadlock remains a deadlock. An added complication is a federal law mandating that, in the eventuality of split between the House and Senate on the matter of a state's electors, the electors certified by the state governor should be considered the valid slate. Also, the Senate President must certify the electoral votes, this being Vice President Gore, the chance of a deadlock in the Congress becomes even more likely. Such a thing has happened before, when multiple electors were offered from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon in the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. The president of the Senate declined to decide on the matter — Sen. Thomas Ferry, R-Mich., as Vice President Henry Wilson had died in 1875 — citing a lack of Constitutional support for a decision either way. The Congress elected to turn the decision over to a bipartisan commission of 15 individuals made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. The panel voted on each state separately, dividing along partisan lines in every case with the Republican majority giving each state's electoral votes to Hayes, the Republican candidate. After the Electoral Commission's concluded its decisions on Feb. 27, the Senate still had to confirm the electoral votes, which it did on March 2 and Hayes was sworn in as president on the 3rd. Another likely scenario is if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to involve itself in the matter. Whether the justices choose to do so to adress Bush's appeal or to prevent a Congressional deadlock, the Supreme Court may decide that it is the last bastion keeping the Electoral College from not meeting and the election being cast into the House. A Supreme Court ruling would consider many factors of both Constitutional and Federal law, many of which are without precedent. One of the major factors involved in their decision would be Article II of the Constitution, which deals with the Legislature's role in choosing electors. According to Article II, Section 1, clause 2 of the Constitution: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". "The wording of the clause, 'in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,' could be a major consideration of the Supreme Court in this case," said Edward Eberle, a Constitutional law professor at Roger Williams School of Law. Other factors which Eberle said the Supreme Court could consider — depending on the circumstances of their ruling — are whether the Florida Supreme Court acted responsibly and legally by extending the deadline of Florida's vote certification and whether the next president could be elected by a seated majority of the nation's electors, discounting Florida's electoral votes altogether. "Of course," he said, "the Supreme Court will be loathe to cast their decision on the matter and interfere with a state election." And thus, the high court may refuse to accept the case altogether. In which case, the election will be cast into the new Congress, with the House electing the president and the Senate the vice president, each state casting one vote in both cases under the 12th Amendment. This option leaves open the possibility of either a Bush-Lieberman or Gore-Cheney administration. A deadlck would leave the Speaker of the House next in line to assume the presidency followed by the Senate president por tempore. Of course, another possibility is that a statewide recount would not produce enough votes for Gore to erode Bush's 537 vote certified victory in Florida, in which case he would remain the victor in the state's presidential election. There also is the final possibility offered up by the dissenting Chief Florida Supreme Court Justice, that the entire process of the statewide Florida manual recount would pitch the entire country headlong into a "constitutional crisis." *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? 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