keithmestl:
Altanon:
Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words:
You must be kidding. Are there still people out there who don't know what the Supreme Court ruling was in this case? The court did not say Bush won the election. The question put to the court was, "Can Al Gore violate election law and have only a partial recount instead of a state-wide recount?" Gore wanted to ignore Florida election law and cherry pick which counties to recount. The court said, no, you have to follow the law. Recount all the votes or forget it. Some independent entities then took it upon themselves to see what would have happened if Gore had had his way, and were dismayed to find they couldn't count the votes to Gore's benefit. Bush was the winner by tiny margins every time. So, even if the court had decided in Gore's favor and allowed him his partial recount, Bush still would have won. Get over it. And what is this "52%" on the poster? Gore certainly didn't have 52% of the vote.
For the record, in Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court 1) ruled 7-2 that the statewide recount that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because of inconsistencies in recount procedures applied in various venues across the state, 2) ruled 5-4 that the Florida Supreme Court had set December 12 as the date for the recount and no valid recount could occur by then. (The ruling on Bush v. Gore occurred that same day, 12/12/00.) The minority justices wanted to send the case back to the Florida Supreme Court and have them address what to do. This 5-4 ruling effectively ended the election. The US Supreme Court had issued an injunction to stop the recount three days earlier, by a 5-4 majority consisting of the same five judges. The reason for that injunction, according to the majority opinion written by Justice Scalia: "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires." The final vote count in the election: Bush 50,456,002 (47.87%) 271 electoral votes Gore 50,999,897 (48.38%) 266 electoral votes Nader 2,882,955 (2.74%) no electoral votes