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Comment by nobody9999 | Hacker News Reader

>Under that logic, the US was over thrown back in 2000 when the supreme court decided the outcome of an election.

That's a really reductive (and, in my view, incorrect) take on the issues in Florida in 2000. It was a hot mess, and I think (IANAL, so I may well be talking out of my ass) the Supreme Court should have kicked this back to the Florida courts, but all such activity was within the bounds of the US Constitution.

The absence of the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, at least AFAIK, wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.

I'd be interested to know what logical steps lead from what I wrote to "Bush v. Gore overthrew the US government."

Would you mind sharing that line of reasoning? Because It's not at all clear to me how you got from point a to point b. Thanks!

N.B.: I did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000 (or 2004, for that matter)

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The government follows the processes of the government. That's how it works. Keep in mind, there is literally 1 mention of the Supreme court in the constitution. It says Congress can "ordain and establish it". It doesn't say anything about Congress authorizing the Supreme Court to decide the outcome of elections, which is what happened. So if we strictly stick to this idea that somehow one election is this critical, then the US government ended back in 2000. The electoral college results were basically just discarded by SCOTUS and Bush was appointed president.

Your argument is that "Republican governors" could follow the processes of the government to somehow influence an election. I don't even think what you're describing is possible. But if it is, well that is the government just following it's own processes. If that makes you upset, you apparently feel that our government is not legitimate. The Republican vs Democrat vs whatever is irrelevant. If the government decides it doesn't like the outcome of an election & throws it out, that's the governments choice.

You're in the same boat that somehow champion's the idea the Roe v. wade is the "correct" decision of the Supreme court on abortion. Guess what: the supreme court basically just goes with whatever is popular at present. You love the idea of the fairy tale high school civics course where the US is some bastion of righteousness & freedom. How many times did the Supreme Court rule that slavery was all fine & dandy? Apparently enough we fought a war over it and had to get Congress to authorize amendments explaining that slavery was in fact not OK.

Your comment doesn't reflect anything I wrote, nor does it even reflect the ideas underlying what I wrote.

So I'm still not clear what chain of reasoning you're using here.

I'll recap my statements to make sure I'm being clear.

You said:

>Your argument is that "Republican governors" could follow the processes of the government to somehow influence an election. I don't even think what you're describing is possible.

That's not my argument at all. Nor did I mention state governors (Republican or otherwise). Rather, I was referring to the 12th Amendment which states, in part:

"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice." [emphasis added]

As I stated in my initial comment, 26 states[2] had Republican majority delegations. Had the election gone to the House for resolution, it's likely that Trump would have been elected (Or maybe not, given the 10 Republican Representatives who voted to impeach Trump) by a vote of 26-23(or 24). Which, of course, would be in direct contravention of the November, 2020 election results.

That's to what I was referring in the comment[1] to which you originally replied. It's not clear to me how following the process set out in the 12th Amendment is akin (or even related, except that it concerned a Presidential election) to the events leading up to and including the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision.

As for the 2000 Presidential election, I'm not clear what you're getting at WRT to an "overthrow" of the government.

Since Marbury v. Madison[3] in 1803, it's been the case in the US that the US Supreme Court is the "supreme" court.

While there have been numerous (some of which you mention) "supremely" bad decisions by that court, and, in fact, as I stated in the second comment[4] to which you replied), I thought Bush v. Gore shouldn't have been decided by the US Supreme Court.

Whether you approve or disapprove specific Supreme Court decisions (I disagree with many myself, not least of which is the Dobbs decision BTW), that doesn't invalidate the decisions.

What's more, the results[4] of the Florida election, while having been reviewed repeatedly, show a really close election which could have gone either way, dependent on a multitude of factors.

All that said, for both elections, the circumstances and outcomes, while hotly debated, were certainly within constitutional bounds.

I still don't get the logical line of reasoning that takes you from the 12th amendment to the decision in Bush v. Gore. Primarily because you haven't provided one.

What's more, you seem to be ascribing a whole bunch of beliefs and attitudes to me which I do not hold.

[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-12/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872345

[2] https://www.270towin.com/2020-house-election/state-by-state/...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32873337

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...

Edit: Cleaned up my prose. Added the missing link, reordered references.

Your complete original statement was "causing various states to (disingenuously) disagree about how to replace the lost documents"

If "various states" happen to "disagree" then it has to be a statement issued by the governors and legislature of those states. The members of Congress are most definitely not "the states". They are popularly elected nowadays and are not selected by the Governor or by the legislature of their home state. They have actually zero authority in their own state.

If a bunch of Congressional representatives happen to disagree, that's just Congress disagreeing. Congress can make whatever rules it wants with regards to a presidential election (see Bush v. Gore as I already stated) including delegating the results of that election to the Supreme Court. I suppose in fact they could actually explicitly pass Federal law determining the outcome of a local school board election if they wanted. In fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if such a law exists already in some form.

If you can't understand that "the states" is not Congress, you have no understanding of the United States.

>Your complete original statement was "causing various states to (disingenuously) disagree about how to replace the lost documents"

I said no such thing. It was this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32865748

that contains that information.

Note that I (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nobody9999) am not the author of that comment.

It was, in fact, a user called dane-pgp (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dane-pgp) who wrote that.

But you (apparently) ignored the rest of his comment which describes the 12th amendment process for the House to elect the President.

So. Let's sum up here:

1. You disagree with someone (dane-pgp) and yell incoherently at someone else (Nobody9999);

2. When that someone else explains, in great detail, to make sure you understand their point, you produce further incoherent ramblings;

3. You continue to rant incoherently with no apparent regard for the law or the constitutuion.

Good show. Catch you on the flip side, although I hope not.

Neither democracy, nor decency, nor legitimacy, nor corruption are binary. One can say that the 2000 election was decided in a corrupt way while understanding that even such a decision left the electoral process largely as functional as it was in 1996 and decisions on the relative merits of different courses of action are left to be judged on their own merits. All your arguments are games and non arguments that refuse to engage with any topic at all in a meaningful way.

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