Court Arguments on Equal Protection

* I was floored that on Monday the Supreme Court seemed to take seriously the Bush arguments for equal protection under the law. Neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore has the “right” to be president or the “right” to be protected from a loss of that office.

The equal protection argument does, however, apply in this case. The individual voters in Florida have a right to expect that each of their votes counts equally. In the counties where the old, unmaintained punch-card machines were used, between 4% and 5% of the votes were “undervotes.” In the counties where optical scanning was used, under 1% of the votes were undervotes. The voters in the punch-card counties have the right to expect the state officials to make every effort to examine the ballots and try to lower the margin of error in their counties to be more equal to the error rate in the optical-scanning counties. I have begun to question why the old, poor machines are so heavily concentrated in the Democratic counties. Are the votes of the citizens of those counties less desirable than the votes in Republican counties?

LEANNE JEWETT

Los Angeles

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Punch-card machines and optical scanners only count perfectly marked ballots. How can anyone argue that each of the more than 42,000 uncounted ballots should not be inspected to see if it shows the voter’s attempt to cast a vote?

BILL ROSS

Santa Ana

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Justice Sandra Day O’Connor just can’t fathom why voters couldn’t properly cast their votes. She may be on to something. Were there any Republican precincts with a very unusual amount of undervotes like those in the heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County? Just a statistical anomaly, I suppose, or maybe those darn Democrats just can’t figure out how to punch a ballot.

MARIE McFARLAND

Solana Beach

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Your recommendation for a recount (editorial, Dec. 12) would be more credible if you also talked about a common standard for the recount in all Florida counties. Also, why crucify Justice Antonin Scalia for asking the tough questions? In my opinion, those who just want to do recounts in conditions favorable to Gore are equally undemocratic.

KRISHNA CHANDRA

Irvine

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Your snipe at the “anti-democratic” Scalia and Robert Scheer’s character assassination of the same “villainous” justice (Commentary, Dec. 12) show that the truth, logic, reason and the rule of law never get in the way of The Times’ propaganda tripe. All that was being stopped in Florida by the real Supreme Court was election by speculation via a state Supreme Court’s blatant usurpation of power in violation of both the equal protection and due process clauses of our Constitution. Face it. Emperor Gore has no clothes. Dimples only count on cheeks, not ballots.

HYATT SELIGMAN

Orange

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For Ronald Brownstein to even suggest the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the recount for political reasons was the height of political bias on his own part (Washington Outlook, Dec. 11).

The only reason the Supreme Court was involved is due to the outlandish political activism by the Florida Supreme Court. This issue is at the heart of polarization of conservatives and liberals: Do we maintain the equal but separate status of the judicial and legislative branches of government, or do we allow activist judges to interpret the law and violate the Constitution? Logic and truth say the former.

TOM BARRON

Westwood

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The setup: Scalia prevents votes from being counted, thus ensuring Bush is elected president.

The payoff: President Bush appoints Scalia as chief justice.

MICHAEL LINFIELD

Pasadena

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After almost a century of riding roughshod over states’ rights, the Democrats have found a use for them. I guess it is just a matter of whose ox is being gored.

W.L. SIBLEY

Northridge

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When I heard Chief Justice William Rehnquist announce “George W. Bush and Richard Cheney vs. Albert Gore et al.,” I immediately thought Joe Lieberman must right about now be asking, “What am I? Et al.?”

HANK ROSENFELD

Santa Monica