Recount and the U.S. Supreme Court Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Recount and the U.S. Supreme Court - Essay Example a political battle ended by the federal courts as the Florida Supreme Court ordered for a state-wide recount which is later on brought to an end by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, the Supreme Court resolved whether the recount is constitutional and identified a remedy once deemed unconstitutional. Within the American Judiciary, a writ of certiorari could be granted only for compelling reasons but of judicial discretion. One of the grounds cited by the judges, as per asserted in Rule 10, was the occurrence of discrepancy on the decision of Florida Supreme Court for ballot recounts. It could be recalled that in December of the same year, the Florida Supreme Court stated multiple court decisions regarding the presidential election and the process of manual recount which was mandated to be statewide and even with the appeal of Bush, were ordered for stay. Justice Scalia argued that the petitioner Gore has a substantial probability of success and a manual recount was granted in order to count the legally casted votes that may not be counted by the machine such as in cases of dimpled chad. Moreover, it was accounted by the justice that halting the pro cess of recounting votes will inevitably shed a confusion of the legitimacy of the election. Yet the issue remains, why did the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the decision of Florida Supreme Court on its mandated recount? The majority of the justices elected that the decision of Florida Supreme Court for state-wide manual recounting was unconstitutional as they reckon that the Florida Legislature aimed to utilize the â€Å"safe-harbor† benefits of â€Å"determination of controversy as to appointment of electors† as stated in Title 3 of the United States Code  § 5. Three justices, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, claimed that the Florida Supreme Court’s decision violated the intent of Florida legislature while seven of them concurred that there was a defiance of the Equal Protection Clause in manual counting as there has