Judge Rejects ACLU Ballot-Count Suit (Florida)

[Khephra]

MIAMI -- Election officials in two Florida counties will not be required to count absentee ballots returned after the polls closed on Election Day, regardless of what problems caused the ballots to be mailed late to voters, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked in a lawsuit for an emergency order requiring Miami-Dade and Broward officials to count the late ballots.

The uncounted ballots would not change the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, where President Bush defeated Sen. John Kerry by about 375,000 votes.

snip.........

"Voters have failed to show the defendants arbitrarily or deliberately delayed" sending the absentee ballots, U.S. District Judge Alan Gold wrote. He noted the three voters named in the suit could have requested ballots earlier than "just days before the election."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-florida-absentee-ballots,0,3978587.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

[LisaM]

1. What about equal protection of the voters?

I thought a lot of people requested absentee ballots to get around the machine problems. This just makes me MAD.

[bobbieinok]

2. nice to have courts that 'protect the people's right to vote'

[Catch22Dem]

3. Now wait a minute, a lot of people are upset about this, but...

We gotta pick a position and stick with it. I vividly recall a lot of us Dems getting pissed off that they agreed to count overseas absentee ballots that didn't get mailed on time in 2000.

[krkaufman]

6. Yes, but is this the county/location that lost the absentee ballots...

... that were supposed to be mailed out? If so, it's a special case.

[Catch22Dem]

7. You're correct, but I didn't get that impression...

If it WAS from that area and THOSE ballots that didn't get to them on time, then they have every right to have them counted.

[Samantha]

4. You don't mean to suggest they are DISENFRANCHISING THE MILITARY

do you?

Where's the outrage.

We have no PR.

[0rganism]

5. So only the presidency counts now? Thats the ONLY reason to measure votes?

Maybe some of the ballots had something to say about Martinez-Castor, or the state legislature, or the school board or county dog-catcher or a ballot initiative or SOMETHING.

What a total fucking loser of a democracy. I am ashamed of my nation.

[PATRICK]

8. If the ACLU had done the whole job

that is the police's work for them in showing how the votes got derailed

if they had tackled the BBV issue instead of enabling it for a sidebar on
the disabled...

they wouldn't be looking so foolish and toothless now. Along with ball of string in pocket Nader.

Can they find anymore great projects? Florida is a biiiiig tarbaby.