There have always been issues about vote counting, but we've never had a decision that the failure to have consistent standards is a violation of the equal protection clause. To decide so important an equal protection issue in two days without the opportunity to think through their decision was very unwise. And that's especially true because the Constitution gives to Congress the power to decide disputes such as this. For that reason alone, they should have left it to the Congress. What troubles me is my fear that these five Republicans inappropriately injected themselves into the case because they feared that Gore would get more votes than Bush.
Lawsuits are limited in what they address.
For instance, the disenfranchisement of African Americans could have been taken into account in Congress, but not in that lawsuit. Also, the Court was quite aware that the so-called Dec. 12 deadline was not a mandatory deadline under federal law. The context did not appear to require that the date was to be met at the expense of counting the votes. The question whether the Florida legislature intended it to be so under state law should have been left to the Florida Supreme Court. The failure of the five Republican justices to do so was an outrageous usurpation of the Florida Supreme Court's authority.