Supreme Court Hears Recount Case

* Re “Divided 5-4, U.S. Supreme Court Orders Halt to Florida Recounts,” Dec. 10: It was about time the U.S. Supreme Court stopped this charade that Vice President Al Gore’s helpers have orchestrated and insist on pursuing to get ahead. The elections are over. The game has been played and the play-tapes were reviewed more than once in the dark rooms. What “was” cannot be changed to “is” by continually changing the rules until the preferred outcome is obtained.

To call the vice president’s lawyering a democratic pursuit of the will of the people is tantamount to assuming the voters are idiots in desperate need of Gore’s condescending intellect. No, there is nothing wrong with the American educational system. We have been taught to easily recognize the ongoing larceny in progress and have decided that enough is enough.

DAN MATULICH

Rolling Hills Estates

* For the Supreme Court to rule that Florida should cease counting before the court heard arguments on the case was not a legal decision but a political one. Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom I previously had respect, spun this court into the mud by writing that George W. Bush stands a “substantial probability of success” in overturning the Florida Supreme Court and arguing that a recount might undermine the legitimacy of a Bush presidency if the high court ultimately rules against a Gore lead in the votes.

It is clear the cards are stacked against all Americans when the highest court in the land pre-decides that hearing one candidate won the presidency while the other candidate is sworn in would upset us. And, of course, they’re right. We are all in serious trouble.

RENNY TEMPLE

Pacific Palisades

* So the candidate who avers to “trust the people” brushes aside his own 300,000-plus nationwide popular-vote deficit and runs, lawyer propelled, to the Supreme Court to have himself declared court-appointed president of the United States. This is democracy?

FRED KORNFELD

Los Angeles

* I’m so tired of this “chad” nonsense. It is the responsibility of every voter to check his or her ballot (as well as check the choices). The instructions are printed boldly in many areas around the polling places. At some point, we all need to remember that the voter bears major responsibility here. So why the uproar about ballots that are not clearly marked, and thus should not count?

It couldn’t be because Gore needs a few hundred more votes, could it? No, of course not. That would be a partisan strategy, instead of a “clear and accurate count.”

MARK MARTIN

Eagle Rock

* If the justices are so concerned about equal protection because different standards are used in different Florida counties, why are they also not concerned that old, inefficient voting machines are used in different counties also? Where’s the equal protection when some counties use voting machines with styluses that don’t punch through or are not aligned properly while other counties, usually in more prosperous areas, have updated voting machines?

HELEN TIEGER

Huntington Beach

* I found it ironic that Robert Scheer (Commentary, Dec. 10) complains that James Baker “has smeared the motives of the Florida Supreme Court justices for daring to come to conclusions not to Baker’s liking” but in the same article smears the U.S. Supreme Court for coming to conclusions he doesn’t like, twice. I quote, “ruling by the right-wing-led U.S. Supreme Court” and “if a partisan U.S. Supreme Court proves to be an enemy of representative democracy.”

I do not believe that he meant “right-wing” and “partisan” as compliments. Apparently, only liberal Democrats can smear the motives of the courts that rule against them.

MARK SCHMUCKER

Los Alamitos

* I am saddened to learn that in the eyes of the Supreme Court I have no right to vote for my president, only an empty privilege that can be revoked at any time by my state Legislature or the highest court in the land. My belief in our democracy has been shaken to the core.

KATY TERLINDEN

Long Beach