During the 2000 presidential election, Florida's electoral process became the focus of a series of court hearings in which the legitimacy of Florida's recount of a closely contested race was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court (Bugliosi, 48-50). At issue herein is a brief description of the arguments for and against the decision taken by the Supreme Court to halt the recount, overturn the ruling of the Florida State Supreme Court permitting the recount to continue beyond the statutory deadline for reporting a winner, and to base its decision on the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
In rendering its decision to halt the Florida recount, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling violated 3 USC Section 5, which basically states that during a presidential election, the state electors must be selected six days prior to the day when they will cast their votes for a presidential candidate (Bugliosi, 131). In addition, the plaintiff, George Bush, argued that the Florida Supreme Court's decision violated Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that "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" (Bugliosi, 134). The argument was augmented by Bush's claim that the lack of a uniform standard in Florida counties regarding the counting of votes violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution (Bugliosi, 135).
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush's petition by a 5-4 vote. Justices voting in the majority were Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy. Dissenting were Ruth Bader Ginsberg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer. According to Vincent Bugliosi (130-133), the Supre...