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Sunday Morning News

Election 2000: U.S. Supreme Court Enters World of Hardball Politics

Aired November 26, 2000 - 8:26 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The Supreme Court is moving into the rough and tumble world of hard ball politics involving itself in the Florida recount controversy. The cases will be heard on Friday and Bob Franken is at the Supreme Court in the middle of all the rough and tumble.

Hi, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One doesn't normally associate rough and tumble with the Supreme Court, but this is the court of last resort. There is some question whether it will actually be the last resort. Still, they are going to be hearing on next Friday, which is with remarkable speed, the Bush campaign proposal to overturn the Florida Supreme Court ruling, saying that the Florida Supreme Court violated state law, federal law and the constitution in its ruling permitting the hand counts.

The briefings, the first briefings on this are due Tuesday -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Bob, it's time to bring your questions into the picture here with, or with your feedback, rather, into our e-mail session. We've got questions for you. And we're also going to bring in Jeff Flock. Correct?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Jeff Flock is down in Florida and he's been watching things down there, battling storms, pestilence and all sorts of biblical activities. Jeff, good to see you, sir.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: My specialty.

O'BRIEN: Yes, why...

FLOCK: Happy to be here.

O'BRIEN: The first one is rightly posed to Mr. Franken back up there at the Supreme Court. It comes from Steve Burbank (ph), who is in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Here it is. "My guess is the U.S. Supreme Court will find that the Florida Supreme Court exceeded its authority and that they, the U.S. Supreme Court, will rule that the rules of the election before the election actually took place will take precedence and the practical result will be to award Florida's electoral votes and hence the election to Bush." FRANKEN: It sounds like he wrote the Republican brief.

O'BRIEN: The party of the first part and the aforementioned and so forth.

FRANKEN: Thereof. Go ahead.

O'BRIEN: What are your thoughts on that one? It's a bit of speculation, but weigh in if you like.

FRANKEN: Well, that's certainly going to be the guess of the Bush campaign lawyer. That's precisely the arguments that they made. The Democrats would probably guess that, in fact, the reason the Supreme Court took this was to restate the concept of states' rights, and that is to say, say that the State Supreme Court has the right to do it.

The fundamental issue is the separation of powers, not on the federal level, but on the state level, because the charge is that the Supreme Court of Florida usurped the responsibilities of the legislature.

PHILLIPS: All right, we've got a question for Jeff down to West Palm Beach. There we go. We're getting it fired up here. Here's, this question comes from Ken for you, Jeff. "Does the Palm Beach County canvassing board have enough time today to count the remaining ballots?"

FLOCK: Boy, now, that is a good question. That's the question of the day. They are right now -- here, we just got the latest numbers. They are right now at 4,037 ballots counted. They have 4,000 to go still. So if you look at the math, if you do the math for what they've done thus far and the rate that they've done it, there's no way they get done. But here's what they're doing right now.

They've found that there have been a number of precincts that have had a lot of disputed ballots that when they go back and look at 'em, they're really not disputes. They're pretty clear who they voted for. So they've sent some of those precincts back to the counters again, asking them to take a look, send us only the disputed ballots.

So this may move the process along because that means a lot of those 4,000 could be dealt with by the counters instead of the canvassing board, because they really want to get it done.

PHILLIPS: And, Jeff, if they don't make the deadline, it doesn't count, correct? All of that has basically been wasted time and they take the old numbers?

FLOCK: No.

PHILLIPS: No?

FLOCK: Well, actually, not necessarily. The counting, the canvassing board believes it has the authority to certify a partial result. The way it would work is this. They would take the precincts that they've done and substitute the hand count results for the practices that they've done. They would take the result of the machine recount for the remaining precincts that they didn't get to and put those in and certify those as well. So you'd have a mix and match. Hand counts for some precincts, machine recounts for the other precincts and, of course, that would be open to fairness questions, but that's what Judge Burton says he intends to do is certify whatever they've got and so that this is not all for naught.

O'BRIEN: All right, this -- we have time for one more at this juncture. This comes from Andy Roberts. "With all of the attention on Florida, where does the national vote total stand and when will the final popular vote be known? Is Gore really the winner in this vote?" Bob, you want to take that?

FRANKEN: Well, it's not the one that matters. The one that matters is the electoral votes so we can, of course, have controversy that lasts far beyond the election and part of it might be over popular vote versus Electoral College. That'll get us back to a debate about the Electoral College.

The ball game is the 270 votes needed to get the Electoral College.

FLOCK: And I would just point out that if it wasn't for all this other mess, we would be focusing on that issue, the issue of the guy who won the electoral vote didn't win the popular vote. We'd also be focusing more, perhaps, on the butterfly ballot here in Palm Beach, which everybody seemingly has forgotten about. That's not even an issue anymore because of the focus on all these recounts. So, who figured?

O'BRIEN: It's a tangled and twisted plot, isn't it?

PHILLIPS: Perfectly said.

O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen, thanks very much. We're still taking your e-mails. We'll be able to address more of them a little later in the program so please keep sending them for now. For now, thank you, Bob and Jeff.

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