Electors chosen by the states will participate in the only federal election we have. This means that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to decide legal or constitutional issues over how those electors are chosen. The Supremes took the Florida case and promptly reminded state election officials, and the Florida Supreme Court, that there was a pesky little Constitutional guarantee out there concerning equal treatment under the law. The U.S. Supreme Court did not tell Florida it could not recount the votes. If Florida wanted to recount the votes \ufffd fine. Just one condition: The U.S. Supreme Court told Florida to apply the same standard to every ballot in every county in the state.

The good Democrats of Florida would not be permitted to apply a liberal standard (counting dimpled chads) to ballots cast in heavily Democratic counties, and a hard-line conservative standard (counting completely punched ballots) to votes cast in big Republican counties. When the Florida election officials received the Court's ruling, they decided that there just was not enough time to recount all of the votes using the same standard. Florida certified the election for Bush \ufffd who, by the way, had won repeated recounts up to that point.

Florida Democrats were upset that Bush kept winning all the recounts. They were desperately searching for a magic formula that would give the win to Gore. The only formula was to apply different standards to votes cast in different areas of the state. Our Constitution says no. All Florida voters stand equal under the law.

Only the liberal mind could categorize this as an outrage.