In the United States we strive for elections in which as many
ballots as possible are counted. However, by delaying the
California recall, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals crafts its
argument as if the recall exists in a vacuum ignoring variables
such as other elections, campaigns and relevant election laws.
Shockingly enough, this election is not held in a vacuum.
Long-standing polls show two trends: increasing opposition to the
recall and mounting support for Republican Tom McClintock. The
recall’s delay helps fund-raising legend Gov. Gray Davis
because his fund-raising machine will proliferate with time, while
support for the recall will decrease, if current trends continue.
Meanwhile, should the campaign last an additional five months as
the 9th Circuit suggests, McClintock, who planned for an 80-day
campaign, could run out of money during an extended campaign.
Moving the election to March 4, as the 9th Circuit Court
suggests, also provides an important advantage to Democrats: It is
the day of the Democratic presidential primary, when
California’s Democrats will be choosing between highly
qualified candidates to oppose President Bush. As this primary is
an important political event, putting the recall election aside,
Democrats will head toward the ballot box March 4 at a much more
inflated rate than Independents and Republicans, who will not be
voting in a primary. The 9th Circuit calculated and brought to
fruition this “Democratically” advantageous delay.
This liberal activist court chose to remove itself as a neutral
observer and enter the recall’s political fray in order to
exact revenge against the Supreme Court’s 2000 Bush v. Gore
ruling. The 9th Circuit slyly aims to hypocritically remind us of
its disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision by
(inappropriately) applying the Bush precedent as its primary
explanation for ruling punch card usage as unconstitutional in
California. In their decision, the 9th Circuit Appellate judges
declared, “In Bush, the Supreme Court held that using
different standards for counting votes in different counties across
Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause. … (In California,
the) theory is the same, that using error-prone voting equipment in
some counties, but none in others will result in votes being
counted differently among the counties.”
However, the theory used by the Supreme Court in Florida cannot
properly be used by recall opponents in California. In Florida, the
Supreme Court stopped Florida’s recount because people who
voted with the same voting system (punch cards with hanging chads,
trichads, pregnant chads, etc.) had their votes counted differently
and more carefully in heavily democratic Broward or Miami-Dade
counties. This theory does not apply to California because people
using the same voting system will have their votes counted by the
same standard. Within Los Angeles County, a white Bel-Air
resident’s and a minority Compton resident’s punch card
ballot will have an equal chance of being counted.
The court also used other questionable reasons to justify the
delay, including insinuating that California voters, especially
minority voters, are not smart enough to choose a single candidate
from 135 choices. It also argues that since there exists ample
reason to delay bringing Propositions 54 and 55 to the voters, the
recall might as well be delayed, too. These terrible supplemental
reasons can be brushed aside without hesitation.
The 9th Circuit Court chose its desired end, a delayed recall to
benefit Democrats, then decided on the means to accomplish this
end: a faulty decision wrapped around the Supreme Court’s
Bush case.
I am opposed to this recall because it is not conducted
democratically; categorizing a “no” vote on the recall
as a vote for Davis, the politician with the most
“votes” may indeed lose. Nonetheless, the recall is
mandated under California law, and as enumerated in statute must
occur within 80 days of the Secretary of State’s recount
petition certification. This 80-day campaign, with an election on
Oct. 7, was the basis on which all parties planned, and yet was
completely ignored by the 9th Circuit.
With the utmost of partisan intentions, three activist liberal
justices, still upset about the 2000 presidential decision, decided
to exact their own partisan revenge by altering the 2003 California
gubernatorial recall election in order to help advance a Democratic
victory.
Halper is a fourth-year business economics student.