A committee of the Florida legislature listens to members of the public
If the Republicans who dominate the Florida legislature just wanted to be one of the dogs in this fight, they got it. Surprising few Democrats but alarming many, a GOP-dominated special committee voted along party lines Thursday to recommend calling a special session of the legislature next week to discuss the possibility of naming its own slate of electors by December 12.
Republicans call it a "safety net" to ensure that the rights of Florida's 6 million voters are represented in the electoral college vote in Washington Dec. 18 if Al Gore's contest runs long — not least because if no Florida electors show up, Gore wins the presidency.
Joe Lieberman weighs in
Democrats scoff and call it "an insurance policy" to make sure it's George W. Bush's electors who go north to D.C. and Bush that follows them. They say that Bush's slate was already filed in Washington after Sunday's certification, and that the only reason Republicans want to do this is to overturn an imminent Gore win in the courts.
Like everything else in Florida this fall, it's gone national. Joe Lieberman was out in front of the cameras in Washington before the committee's gavel was cold, warning that the move would set a "terrible precedent" for future elections and "threatens to put us in a constitutional crisis which we are not in now by any stretch of the word." He asked them, Bush-style, to "reconsider." Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, dusted off for the attack, called the special session a "Bush-brother brazen power play designed to circumvent the counting of the votes in our court system." (When asked about it, Bush gave his usual spiel about "counts and recounts" and referred the reporter to James Baker.)
An endgame in sight?
Both sides are also trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court involved. David Boies argued in filings to the Court Thursday — and for the cameras — that neither the Constitution nor federal law gives the legislature the power to name its own electors. The Gore team would like the Court to stay away from this one for now. Bush's lawyers had already asked the Court, while it considered the Florida Supreme Court's pre-certification behavior, to go ahead and plan the endgame as well.
"By acting now to reject the Florida Supreme Court's unwarranted intrusion into the regulation of the manner of appointing electors, this court will eliminate the potential for a constitutional crisis arising out of an unseemly conflict among Florida's legislative and judicial branches regarding the appointment of electors," the Tuesday filing read.
Besides the "in such a manner as the legislature thereof directs" passage in the U.S. Constitution, an 1845 federal law gives state legislatures the power to choose the method of elector appointment if the state "has failed to make a choice on the day provided by law." Republicans argue that that day was November 7, and with the electorate still undecided, the Dec. 12 deadline is in danger from Gore's lawyers. Democrats argue that the voters did choose on Nov. 7, and we just don't know what the choice is yet.
In the end, the lawyers decide
Making a move unprecedented in Florida history doesn't seem to trouble Republican legislators; they claim they'd be restoring order to a process gone mad. Democrats insist the Republicans, who control the House 77-43 and the Senate 25-15, are crazy with power — and will have hell to pay from the voters if they go through with the appointment and Jeb Bush signs off on it. (Republicans gently point out that it's Floridians that put them in charge in the first place; Democrats say that was then and this is now.)
Guess what? With even constitutional scholars mostly split on philosophical lines, this, like everything else, will probably be decided by lawyers. The U.S. Supreme Court, while it deliberates this weekend, could do us all a favor by setting aside a few paragraphs for this one.