(no subject)

[theweaselking]

iocaste212 posts this, and I really had to quote it in it's entirety.

"The Sixth Circuit has just held the voting technology employed in Ohio's 2000 election to be unconstitutional and potentially racially discriminatory, relying on the decision in Bush v. Gore:

Finding no compelling reason supporting the State’s continued certification of the deficient non-notice technology, i.e., punch-card system and centralcount optical scan systems, and in light of the fundamental nature of the right to vote, the State’s actions violate the Equal Protection Clause. The continued certification of this technology by the Secretary of State does not provide the minimal adequate procedural safeguards to prevent the unconstitutional dilution of votes based on where a voter resides. Unequal treatment and unfairness are perpetrated by allowing this technology to remain certified and the State’s reasons for maintaining this disparate system are far from compelling.

The dissent, however, is of the view that the Bush v. Gore decision has no precedential value:

Bush v. Gore [] provides little support for the majority’s conclusion that a decision by a state or local government to employ certain voting technology must be subjected to strict scrutiny. As Professor Hasen has explained, the Bush v. Gore Court described voting as a fundamental right, but did not “even bother[] to undertake” the “hornbook” analysis of asking whether the state’s interest in meeting an impending federal election deadline was “compelling” enough to overcome the fundamental right of voters to have their vote counted...

An expansive reading of Bush v. Gore portends problems far graver than simply a heightened standard of review. Professor Hasen has convincingly shown that Bush v. Gore applied the Equal Protection Clause to an area of election law entirely different from prior caselaw, but did so without explaining “which kinds of procedures and mechanisms used for voting constitute arbitrary and disparate treatment that value one person’s vote over another” and therefore violate the Constitution. The absence of guidance on these crucial matters leaves lower courts to evaluate for themselves not just the jurisprudential complexities that arise in election law cases of first impression, but also the potential policy implications of extending a Supreme Court precedent whose rationale is far from clear. Those policy implications, in my view, counsel strongly against extending the rationale of Bush v. Gore to the distinct area of voting technology.

In other words, Bush v. Gore was a blatantly outcome-oriented decision that eviscerated the rights of African-Americans to have their votes counted in the 2000 election, and therefore we should ignore it when it would require actual, you know, equality."