S. Wallerstein calls me to account for my comment about the butterfly ballot. He is quite right. No one could have predicted anything that bizarre. On the other hand, the Gore/Bush contest looked to be quite close, and it was, I think, entirely predictable that even a relatively small Nader vote might throw a state into the Bush column and give him the election. In the peculiar American electoral system, third parties frequently can have this sort of effect, both on the right and on the left. As is frequently observed, in a parliamentary system, small third parties can play a very important role in national politics, making them a rational vehicle for dissent from the dominant consensus.
Carl corrects my faulty memory of the numbers of probably unintentional Buchanan votes. I called them "Jewish" because I recalled that they showed up in a heavily Jewish area, which is what led commentators to conclude that they were mistakes, given Buchanan's politics. Is that memory also faulty?
I think it is fair to say that no one anticipated the appalling Bush v. Gore High Court decision. As I recall, the late and entirely unlamented Antonin Scalia actually said in his opinion that the decision was not to be taken as a precedent!
Pretty clearly, my memory is not what it used to be [and in fact ever was]. In the future, I shall rely more heavily on Google.
bush v. gore was a per curiam opinion, meaning no justice signed it.
ReplyDeleteit doesn't really say that it can't function as a precedent. the language is "our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." i take this to be a bland statement that this case, like many cases, was fact-intensive, so it would be dangerous to try to infer broad legal principles.
Yes, the butterfly ballot was used in a heavily Jewish area, but that does not mean that many of the unintentional Buchanan voters weren't goyim.
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