I should bring up one additional aside on the whole Florida mess. Under federal law, the safe harbor day is the date by which all recounts must be complete in order to allow electors to participate when the electors choose the president and vice president. The law stated safe harbor was six days before the electors were to meet. Since the electors were scheduled to meet on Dec. 18, the safe harbor day was Dec. 12. The recount would have already had to have been completed by the time the Supreme Court ruled, one day after arguments.

Following a hand recount, which would take several days, Florida state law requires that each interested party must have the opportunity to legally challenge the vote totals and any individual vote that may have been counted. Given that only five days would have remained before the electors met and no recount had yet begun, the strong likelihood was that the Florida electors would not have been certified and therefore could not vote when the electors met on Dec. 18. That would have the effect of disenfranchising six million voters. The Supreme Court determined that was unacceptable.

So there actually was a reason why the recount was stopped. It was not an arbitrary decision so that they could crown George W. Bush the president. It was mainly made to prevent the disenfranchisement of Florida voters.

If such a scenario were to happen and Florida could not vote, the final tally would have been Gore 268-246. Gore lost the vote of one Democratic elector in Maryland so he didn't get the full 269. Since Gore would have failed to reach 270 votes required to win election, the decision would have moved to the Congress. Under the Constitution, the House decides who becomes president while the Senate decides who becomes vice president.

In the House, the rules are such that it is not an individual vote. Votes are tallied by state delegations where each state gets one vote. So if a state has three Republicans and two Democrats, for instance, the Republican candidate would win the vote of that state. In the House at the time, Republicans controlled 28 state delegations, so the final vote would have been George W. Bush 28-12 with Texas, ironically, voting for Gore since at the time, Democrats controlled the delegation 17-15. States with tied delegations did not get a vote.

In the Senate, Cheney would not have necessarily won the vote. Jan. 3 is the date that a new Congress is seated and when a vote would take place for president and vice president in case the vote is required. On Jan. 2, the makeup of the Senate was 55-45 GOP. On Jan. 3, the makeup was 50-50 with Al Gore casting the deciding vote as President of the Senate in case of a tie. And among the 50 Democratic votes would have been Joe Lieberman voting for himself. Assuming Lieberman voted for himself, that would have made it 50-50 with Al Gore casting the final vote for Lieberman. If Lieberman were to recuse himself, the vote would have been 50-49 in favor of Dick Cheney. So there was a possibility of having a Republican president and a Democratic vice president. The House vote would have remained the same at 28-12 before or after Jan. 3.

It was kind of interesting that between Jan. 3 and Jan. 20, when the new president and vice president are inaugurated, Tom Daschle (D-SD) was Majority Leader of the Senate. On and after Jan. 20, Trent Lott (R-MS) became Majority Leader.

Any way you look at it, Al Gore had no chance of winning. The Florida vote was against him and the makeup of the House at the time was against him as well.

Interesting how the Constitutional process works, huh?

-- Roger

"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -- Benjamin Franklin